"Great Comedians Get Away With It"
First things first… I’ve been working on a new project I’m proud to share: the Kids Popcorn Podcast. In each episode, I interview an interesting person about movies they watched as kids and the kids movies they find interesting today. The first episode drops Oct. 27, 2025, so I hope you subscribe through the links on popcorn.29sunset.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
While I’ve happily devoted lot of my attention to the podcast in recent weeks, there’s plenty more to notice in the world. Below, I’ve written about the No Kings protests, a skillful Trevor Noah comedy set, a take on “One Battle After Another” I’m guessing you haven’t seen, a trash prestige TV show, why the New York Mets’ season was honorable, and more. LFG.
- No Kings
- “Great Comedians Get Away With It”
- Edgelord Shooters
- DEI by Other Names
- An Underappreciated Aspect of “One Battle After Another”
- Trash Prestige TV
- Finally Learned My Lesson on Stephen King
- Don’t You Dare “LOLMets”
- “The Compound Interest of Design”
No Kings
The child and I went to the No Kings demonstration in San Francisco this weekend. As I gather it went down most other places in the country, it was an energetic, determined, bubbly mix of middle-aged normies in Skechers slip-ons, young adults with trans rights messages on their t-shirts, teenagers live-streaming, people of indeterminate background wearing inflatable costumes, and many more gradations of folks united in their belief that Donald Trump and his followers are a grave danger to our friends, neighbors, and ourselves, in large part because they are openly contemptuous of freedom as we understand it.
Early estimates from organizers put attendance at about 7 million, which would be about 2% of the entire country. Even halved — and the pictures from New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other places, suggest organizers are not exaggerating much, if at all — that would place this weekend’s demonstration among the top five or six biggest such actions in American history. There is real feeling against Trump, and the opposition party — whoever it is — would do well to get on board.
Also, this was probably my favorite sign I saw.
“Great Comedians Get Away With It”
In recent years, I’ve read a lot about and watched a lot from comedian Anthony Jeselnik, who is usually very thoughtful about what standup comedy actually is, how it works, and how it affects the people who do it for a living. In particular, I appreciated this profile in Vulture in which he explains precisely how his standup character works. There’s also a short clip of Jeselnik speaking on Theo Von’s podcast in which he succinctly pushes back on comedians who don’t want to be held accountable for their words, saying that yes, comedians want to make people laugh, but, quoting Andy Warhol, “art is getting away with it.” He continues, “If you put out a special, and everyone’s pissed, you didn’t get away with it.”
I thought about that clip while watching this video of Trevor Noah at the Comedy Cellar that was posted on Oct. 8, and captioned, “Trevor chats with the audience after the show.” Watch the whole thing. He talks about Charlie Kirk, and he talks about the Riyadh Comedy Festival and a bunch of his fellow comedians who took Saudi money to perform there. But he does it in such a way that he eviscerates certain viewpoints about those issues without specifically slamming individuals for their choices. If you want to be mad at him about some aspect of this set, perhaps you can find it, but… I think he gets away with it.
Edgelord Shooters
Remember the guy who shot the ICE facility in Dallas and killed a couple detainees before taking his own life? That was less than a month ago, but feels like ancient history, doesn’t it? Soon afterward, Garbage Day published a piece that makes sense to me, placing the Dallas shooter and Charlie Kirk’s shooter in the same bucket of “edgelord shooter.” I’m accustomed to thinking of such shooters as attention-seekers, but whereas in previous eras I understood such people would seek out sheer numbers of victims to gain attention, the Garbage Day piece posits that, “They’ve clearly realized that targeting high-visibility figures within Trump World is a more effective way of getting attention, or causing chaos, or because they think it’s funny, or because Trump back in power hasn’t been the glorious revolution they were promised. They’re covering their bullets in memes, taunting law enforcement and the media in their manifestos, and going after the biggest targets they can. And now that we live in Trump World, there’s no bigger target.”
Just as the Kirk shooter appears to have had politics that do not align cleanly with any major national political figures or movements and instead seems to have been a well-known type of Fairly Online Guy who liked video games and memes at a level Gen X and older folks often do not realize is common for young men his age, the Dallas shooter appears not to have had a clear political motivation for his actions and was deeply immersed in online gaming culture. In other words, to understand who they were, we probably need to understand the baseline Fairly Online Guys that are legion these days, but not necessarily legible to folks who have no access to those cultures, even from a distance.
DEI by Other Names
I appreciate that Anil Dash stated something I’ve seen in my work life, and described by others, but never explained so plainly:
The net result is a situation I’ve come to describe as the “**Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era of DEI. Much of the work of inclusion and support is still going on, because the spirit of kindness and justice is an unstoppable one. But just as there have always been LGBTQ+ people in the military, and the DADT legal framework just allowed institutions to continue to be in denial about reality, many pragmatic organizations have begun evolving to say “fine, we won’t call it DEI if these delicate MAGA crybabies can’t hear those words — but we can still do the work”.
Striving to make an organization diverse, equitable, and inclusive — and fostering an authentic sense of belonging — is good. The people who do not think it is good almost invariably are those already in positions of power and who believe they are inherently better than disfavored groups.
An Underappreciated Aspect of “One Battle After Another”
The latest Paul Thomas Anderson film, “One Battle After Another,” is a full-throated scream of a movie. I don’t care enough to prognosticate about what awards it might receive, but I do get the sense it will eventually be enshrined in pop culture film canon as a capital-G Great Movie because, in addition to being an excellent thriller with relatively nuanced politics, it has DiCaprio doing something a little different as he gets to middle age and it can stand as PTA’s big popular statement film.
All that said, an aspect of the movie that jumped out at me, but that I haven’t seen mentioned at all, is how DiCaprio’s character — who I’ll call Bob for simplicity’s sake — is even more of a chump than most people seem to realize, as illustrated by the sequence in the middle of the movie when Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro) is leading him out of danger.
During that whole thing, not only is Sergio cool, calm, and confident as hell in the organization he has obviously built up over time, but Bob sees none of it. No, really, he just doesn’t see it; he’s too busy trying to find an outlet to charge his phone that he doesn’t notice any of it.
Moreover, Sergio’s organization is a contrast with the revolutionary model presented by the French 75. Sergio doesn’t need elaborate passwords because he has authentic community and trust.
I could go on with more about “One Battle…” from “All hail St. Nick,” to the cars, to the music. It’s well worth seeing.
Trash Prestige TV
Over the past few months, I’ve worked my way through the first three seasons of “For All Mankind,” an Apple TV+ drama that speculates what might have happened in the space race had the Russians put a man on the moon first in 1969. Season 1 and Season 2 are perfectly solid, though I certainly wouldn’t put them in the upper echelon of prestige TV, and even at its worst depths, when the show focuses on traveling through space and solving problems having to do with space travel, it shines. However, it constantly falters when it attempts to tell stories about spycraft, or agency bureaucracy, or really anything that isn’t space adventure. (Obviously, if you care about spoilers, proceed at your own risk.)
Season 3 is a dumpster fire, descending into “Scandal”-level melodrama that depends on characters being unreasonably dense, but the decline starts in Season 2, when the emotional climax of the season depends upon NASA sending a divorced couple to live together on the American moon base, which simply would not happen — never mind that Gordo was supremely unqualified to fly at that point, too. The less said about Karen’s inappropriate behavior with a certain family friend, the better. It gets even more melodramatic in Season 3, along similar lines, and the addition of a private space company is just another way for the show’s writers to display their inability to crack a corporate intrigue storyline.
But the worst offense the series commits is its blunt ahistorical treatment of actual historical figures and events. I get that it’s speculative fiction, but Ronald Reagan is still Ronald Reagan, and throughout the 1980s, this show treats him as a kindly grandfather patriot who provides unwavering personal support for the astronauts and wants to see them do great things in the program. Did I mention that one of those astronauts, Ellen, is a gay woman? And that she and her gay husband hide their secret lives in order to serve NASA? And that Ellen’s One True Love sees all this and leaves her suddenly so that Ellen will focus on NASA and achieve all that she possibly can? And this in turn frees up Ellen to run for Senate in Texas as a Republican, and eventually become the Republican president of the United States? You’re probably asking yourself if the obvious tensions would be discussed on the show, and while it would be incorrect to say they go completely unmentioned, they are absolutely given short shrift and soft-pedaled. Does Ellen’s One True Love welcome her back once Ellen comes out (under pressure, because her husband was about to be outed)? Of course she does! Do Ellen or her husband have any thoughts about AIDS? Don’t be silly; of course they don’t. And neither does the One True Love, who is apparently a poet of some renown but happy to take back the Republican president who never said shit about gay rights until her power as president was threatened. In case you think AIDS didn’t exist in that reality, it becomes a whole thing in Season 3 — but involving totally separate characters.
I think the writers simply misstepped and didn’t think that aspect was important, but it also illustrates their lack of grasp on the story. My most generous interpretation is that they believed making Ellen a Republican president with this secret heightened her inner tension. But they never actually dramatized that tension! In fact, writing her as a Democrat would have been the more interesting move because it would have heightened the contradiction of Ellen not using her position to protect and lift up the gay community. Instead, the show we get is one in which Ellen, the closeted Republican, is simply a monster who puts personal ambition and power ahead of everything else, and then the show asks us to have sympathy for her after she acts almost entirely in service of self-preservation.
Finally Learned My Lesson on Stephen King
Stephen King’s non-fiction memoir, “On Writing,” is eminently re-readable and has excellent advice for approaching fiction writing. However, I’ve yet to read a novel of his that I consider great, or even entertaining straight through — I’ve finished the ones I’ve started, but not without stretches of questioning whether I should continue.
Most recently, I read “The Running Man” and it finally convinced me that I don’t need to try any more King novels. The upcoming movie looks like my bag, especially given it’s an Edgar Wright jam, but the book rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it was the meandering plot that stalled out somewhere around 60% of the way through, and a lot of it was the awful stereotyping of Black characters, with shitty attempts to write those characters’ voices. Some examples:
“Doan stick me wif it!” he screamed in a throat-closed whisper. “Doan stick me wif no fork, you sumbitch—”
“Thass prime dope,” he said. “That ol man Curry ast me where I got two dollars and semney-fi cents to buy prime dope an I tole him to go shit in his boot and eat it.”
“Doan swear or the devil will poke you,” Ma said. “Here’s dinner.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Jesus, there’s meat in it!”
“Naw, we jus shat in it to make it thicker,” Bradley said.“You look good,” Richards said admiringly. “In fact, it’s damn incredible.”
“Praise Gawd,” Ma said.
“I thought you’d enjoy the transformation, my good man,” Bradley said with quiet dignity. “I’m the district manager for Raygon Chemicals, you know. We do a thriving business in this area. Fine city, Boston. Immensely convivial.”
Stacey burst into giggles.
“You best shut up, nigger,” Bradley said. “Else I make you shit in yo boot an eat it.”
“You Tom so good, Bradley,” Stacey giggled, not intimidated in the least. “You really fuckin funky.”
Yeeeeeeeah, I don’t need to try any more King.
Don’t You Dare LOLMets
It’s very funny that the New York Mets didn’t make the playoffs this year, but I think even opposing fans should limit the LOLMets-ing we might do at them because they are run by people who are actually trying to win. Actively trying to win is preferable to preparing to try to win, or, in the case of teams like the Pirates, scrambling to get into position to prepare to win. Even the Cincinnati Reds, who backed into the playoffs thanks to the Mets’ slide, aren’t actually trying to win in the same way, as evidenced by the team president, and son of the CEO, essentially telling fans that they should be grateful for whatever team they put on the field. So, cheers to the Mets for trying to win, even if it didn’t work out for them this year. And yes, it was still really funny.
“The Compound Interest of Design”
I love the central metaphor of this essay about good design. The argument is that if you make something that is very good, eventually you will organically come to opportunities for expansion and diversification, and so you should resist forces that urge you to do so before that natural path plays out: “Most teams think compound interest means building features that stack on top of each other. But I’ve learned it actually means investing in the foundational details that make users want to return.”
* * *
Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime. And subscribe to the Kids Popcorn Podcast!
(Photo: "HMX_5897" by Web Summit Qatar. Used under CC BY 2.0 license.)