Media I’m Obsessed With 2024

I regret to inform you that YouTube and I are spending less time together.  My feed is a neverending hyperfocus on the drama of the moment, ranging from cringe interview moments to sexual assault.  Not to entirely blame YouTube for its recommendations; I watch a lot of video essay content and at some point it stopped serving me.  I’ve got enough on my plate that consumes my mental energy and I spent this past year trying to retrain the algorithm to suggest cozy camping content to give myself a break.  As a result, this 2024 listicle is going to focus on things that brought me actual joy – media that got me through another goddamn day on this planet.  While it will contain some content available on YouTube, those videos will be among a smattering of whatever I goddamn well please.

#10 Chants of Sennaar

I didn’t know I was searching for a cozy Tower of Babel story, but I found it in Chants of Sennaar.

As an indistinct robed character, you awaken in the basement of a large tower with no understanding of the place you are in or the languages written and spoken around you.  Eager to learn what your purpose is, you trek further up the building, observing as the language and the relative priorities of the society change.  From religion, to the army, arts, and science, the segregated populations have developed their own language with a select few understanding words from previous or future areas.  You learn the writing system through context clues obtained by reading signs or interacting with the citizens, with each language having its own unique sentence structure.  When you reach the top of the tower, the nature of the building and its people’s existence is revealed and as a player you get to make the ultimate decision on how to proceed with this knowledge.

Chants of Sennaar had a bit of a learning curve – It took me a moment to figure out how to obtain the information I needed to progress, but the longer I played what seemed like an impossible task in the beginning became engaging and fun.  I’m no stranger to puzzle games, but this felt like I was using an unexercised part of my brain because I’m very poor at learning languages, regardless of how earnestly I try.  Maybe if they were presented in the way Sennaar did I might actually retain them.

#9 Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical

When I went up to Traverse City in the offseason I tried to get a table at The Flying Noodle on a Wednesday and didn’t even consider the possibility I’d have to wait for it since everywhere I’d visited up until that point was one step above abandoned.  When I was informed it may be 40 minutes until I could sit at the bar I decided to wander down the road to a bookstore to kill some time and I didn’t plan on buying something, especially since my visit to a bookstore in Petoskey earlier that day had been lucrative.  While browsing the front racks I was somewhat shocked to discover someone named Anthony Bourdain had written a book about Typhoid Mary and had to pick up the book to read the author’s bio to confirm it was, in fact, the Anthony Bourdain who had penned it.  Once it was in my hands it was a done deal – I needed something to occupy my mind and the book was small enough to fit in my tiny purse.

I had never read Anthony Bourdain’s books, but if you’ve seen an episode of No Reservations or Parts Unknown you’ll be familiar with Bourdain’s tone.  What started as a casual read while waiting for my food quickly turned into a 2 day reading frenzy.  Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest choice to read while I was putting myself at the mercy of a line cook who didn’t feel like washing his hands after he used the bathroom, but Bourdain’s storytelling almost made me forget that fact, as strange as that may sound.  Instead of approaching the tale of Mary Mallon as if she were a diseased rat spreading plague throughout the city, he provides perspective based on his experience as a chef, trying to contextualize why she might have made the decision to seemingly disregard the safety of those around her.  While it’s not 100% historically accurate, and he’s really just guessing how Mary felt about her constant persecution by the city health department and subsequent exile, it’s a good reminder that those who tell history are the ones who win.  Mary was a person who happened to pass along a disease without exhibiting symptoms of that illness in a time where the science on such things was just emerging, and maybe she was stubborn and misguided instead of an outright callous monster.  Although I don’t want to give her too much credit since she knew about being an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid and lied about her identity to work at a maternity ward in a hospital, so… it’s a mixed bag.

#8 Ren

Each year I tend to get hyperfixated on one artist.  2019 was Billie, 2020 Ashnikko, 2021 Mothika, 2022 Scene Queen, 2023 Oliva Rodrigo and 2024… I thought it would be Chappell Roan, but then I heard “Animal Flow” back in September and I was kind of screwed.

The lead singer of The Darkness started a react channel, Justin Hawkins Rides Again, as a bit of a side project.  I dabble in every so often because Justin has great insights and is also incredibly endearing.  Usually he films in what I call “default streamer setup”, so I was particularly intrigued when I saw in my recommended videos a thumbnail of Justin in some random car talking about “The Ren Situation”.

It’s a long story and you can hear Ren talk about it himself, but essentially he licensed a sample off of BeatStars where the producer of the beat stole a sample of a Bulgarian choir and was then strong-arming Ren to get him to pay the royalties on the sample he stole.  Lawyers got involved, the producer and his girlfriend did some shadier stuff behind the scenes, and ultimately Ren decided to take his song down.  Needing a place to funnel the anger, Ren wrote a diss track against Kujo and uh… it sure is something.

I understand being angry about someone fucking with your livelihood, but where you lose me is stewing in it long enough to write and record a song where you get to cosplay as Eminem and reenact your violent fantasies over and over while filming the video.  The ‘just cause I said it doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it’ defense really irks me, and I side eye dudes who listen to songs detailing domestic abuse (or in Em’s case murder) without having some kind of negative reaction to it.  I get that it’s art and it’s cathartic, but it’s the audio equivalent of dudes that punch walls instead of women and think that won’t escalate to something else.  “KUJO BEAT DOWN” is not nearly as intense as “‘97 Bonnie and Clyde” or “Kim”, but it definitely made me sick to my stomach to watch him scream at Kujo’s girlfriend while tied up and gagged that he thought she liked it rough, like… oof, dude.  Maybe unpack that a bit.

Also, kind of silly to include a ‘I don’t condone bullying and harassment’ statement when you are literally pretending to physically hurt someone.  What do you think that kind of imagery will inspire in unhinged fans, y’know?  I wouldn’t put it out into the universe is what I’m saying.

I’m not in the camp that partaking in violent art causes violent people cause then I’d be more of a fucking hypocrite than I already am, but after I saw this response I was kinda like, eh, I think I’m good on this guy.  But I couldn’t ignore the fact Justin Hawkins was defending him, and so I decided to hunt down a copy of “Sick Boi” to see the origin story and then the lightbulb went off.  If I wrote a song where I detailed the pain of being consistently gaslit by doctors and someone else was trying to make money off of it?  I lived that shit and it fucking suuuuuuucks.  Maybe I wouldn’t have made a song where I beat the shit out of Kujo, but lord knows I would have made that shit public as hell and been as loud as I fucking possibly could be about it.

Ren’s history with chronic illness is unique, but also incredibly relatable.  His music is heavily inspired by it, and I will warn ahead of time, some of his songs can be intense – I can’t listen to a song like “Hi Ren” all that often because it’s emotionally draining.  But I kept digging and dug what I heard.  He wears his references on his sleeve, Em being the most obvious one, but I was reminded of Emilie Autumn quite a bit in the theater of addressing his mental illness.  His work is a remix of elements from Kendrick, Childish Gambino, Rage, his vocals are pure Sting…  My buddy even said Jaden Smith, and yeahhhh… That tracks.

I pretty much listened to the Sick Boi album on repeat, “Illest Of Our Time”, “Murderer”, “The Hunger”, and “Uninvited” being the tracks I gravitated to the most often.  The “Money Game” and “Love Music” series are also worth listening to.  I’m pretty sure it’s because of “Animal Flow” that I put myself in the top 2% of Ren listeners on YouTube music (which seems impossible considering I just heard about this guy in September, so I have some general questions about how that’s calculated).  What can I say?  I’m a sucker for an Animal Farm reference.

#7 Mafia Nanny

Over the years the pool of web comics I consume gets smaller and smaller (and I’ve been at this for a while).  Several years ago I pivoted to WebToon and uh… It kind of fell off, ngl.  When it recommended Mafia Nanny to me I was intrigued but I wasn’t really interested.  There are so many mafia boss romance stories out there, and this would be hosted on a platform that is very much PG rated, so I unfairly assumed it would be like its contemporaries and fail to engage me.  I was very, very wrong.  Not only do I look forward every Monday to the upload, I care deeply about these characters.

Davina works for ENA, an elite organization of trained professional nannies that go above and beyond to protect their wards from potentially violent situations.  Raised in a crime family herself, Davina understands the potential threats and wants to provide this protection to a child who similarly has a target on their back by way of their birthright.  Well, not just any child – she has a specific one in mind.  Davina suspects the Angelini family had a hand in the death of her own parents, and by being in charge of Mikey, the son of the underboss, may give her access to find out more information about her own tragic past.  What Davina didn’t expect, however, is how deeply she would grow to care about her charge Mikey and his incredibly attractive father Gabriel.

I started reading for the slow burn romance between Davina and Gabriel, but was instead captivated with Davina’s relationship with Mikey and the complicated situation of trying to separate Mikey from a path that would lead to his future life of crime.  Mikey is flippin’ adorable and it’s encouraging to watch him open up the more Davina exposes him to activities that channel his creativity and people who are uninterested in nurturing him into a mini Don.  All of the characters are well defined personalities with their own motivations, and there is a fair amount of comedy in the way they interact with each other.  The plot itself does more than provide filler between romantic encounters, and the pacing is fast enough that the comic continues to capture me. 

While Mafia Nanny doesn’t quite fill the deep hole left in my heart waiting for Purple Hyacinth to return, I am enjoying it immensely.  I want to give Mikey the world, he’s so stinkin’ cute.

Also, it’s not a 2024 recommendation since it’s been on hiatus since 2023, but read Purple Hyacinth.  It ends on a cliffhanger and it most likely won’t come back in 2025, but every moment of that comic is worth consuming, holy shit.

#6 Amelia Dimoldenberg

I’m kind of over Hot Ones.  Every once and a while you get a moment like Heidi Klum taking her shirt off or Alton Brown disregarding the premise and deciding to rate the taste of the sauces, but most of the time it’s someone like Ryan Reynolds overreacting to eating spice, being like Aw man, Sean, how did you find out about this thing I said in an interview once or this TV show cameo listed on my IMDB page? before downing a glass of milk and then hocking whatever project or product he’s selling now.

Plus I’ve tried those sauces and I’m not convinced these people aren’t acting.

The Sister City of Hot Ones is Chicken Shop Date, where Amelia Dimoldenberg takes a lucky person to the most unromantic of places in her endless quest to find true love.  Back when Billie came out with her new album, I was being recommended a ton of performances and interviews from the press cycle, and there was Amelia awkwardly telling Billie she’s captivated with her eyes before confessing she had another date planned after theirs.  Then I watched the next video of Amelia tricking Paul Mescal into telling her she’s gorgeous, or asking Cher if she believes in the Lock Ness Monster, aliens, or life after love.  Red carpet interviews, television appearances… it became the quickest obsession.

Her sense of humor is right up my alley – dry, smart, understated and disarming.  If comedy were a spectrum, with Jim Carey, Robin Williams and Mr. Bean on one end doing the absolute fucking most, she’s the exact opposite, among the likes of Flight of the Conchords and Richard Ayoade.  A lot has been said about manufactured authenticity and viewers having a hard time when the curtain has been pulled back and the movie magic is revealed.  Clearly Chicken Shop Date is a bit, but while you’re watching it you almost forget.  The Andrew Garfield episode flies so close to the sun because that man is good at being down bad for her, which led to a bit of an internet frenzy of speculation if they’re actually dating (they’re not).  Along with Ed Sheeran, Andrew tries to break the fourth wall and every plea he makes for Amelia to be earnest is immediately rebuffed, because it’s not the point, yeah?  These 10 years spent searching for love weren’t actually a plea for a relationship, but her audition into an industry that suits her well.  While she’s said in the past she’s a bit tired of the format, I can say I’ve loved the ride she’s been on up until now.

Amelia is leaps and bounds out of my league, but I can’t help but wish to have her treat me to some sad looking chicken nuggets while I try really hard to pretend I don’t find her attractive.

INTERMISSION BONUS ROUND: Top 10 ProZD Sketches

#5 Kentucky Route Zero

I think calling this a point and click adventure game isn’t quite accurate.  Kentucky Route Zero is a story rich metaphor about how a town adapts to the death of the industry driving it.  We first meet Conway delivering his last shipment of furniture before he retires, but he’s struggling to find the address written on the card.  He eventually meets Shannon, a TV repairwoman, who decides to assist him with his task after he sustains an injury.  Together they find their way onto the supernatural Route Zero, encountering several others on their own separate journeys – those who strive for more, those who are struggling to stick to the path they’ve always stuck to, and those who are studying and carrying on the legacy of those who lived before them.  It’s a surrealist experience that illustrates how addiction, poverty, capitalism and colonization have shaped the area, and how banding together helps everyone sustain.

I’m a fan of pixel/minimalistic art style (although Last Door was really pushing it with their depiction of Porriage, London).  The characters are faceless and a lot of the time only lit in shadow.  That doesn’t mean the style’s not impactful – if anything it makes it easier to connect with Conway and Shannon as you can place yourself in their shoes.  The color palette helps set the mood with its muted and muddy colors, along with the lighting; From the fluorescent bulbs brightly flooding the gas station in an otherwise pitch black area, to the flashlight sparingly guiding you down a river surrounded by bats, the setting feels unfamiliar and therefore uneasy.  Everything is slightly offkilter, where you’re only allowed to see that which is illuminated while the darkness obscures the actions happening in the background.  It’s like floating around in a dream.

The music is incredibly good; The atmospheric white-noise hypnotic nature of the scored parts integrate seamlessly with the overall tone of the game.  The songs performed by the characters in-game grinded my play to a halt as I sat to listen to them, and I’ve repeatedly listened to them multiple times since.  This past year I wanted to immerse myself in Appalachian-style folk music, which is probably why I listened to the Songbirds and Snakes soundtrack several times this year without actually enjoying the movie.  

I don’t want to give much of the plot away, but the story made me incredibly emotional.  I unfortunately streamed this game which forced me to hold myself together and pretend I didn’t want to sob my little heart out at the end.  I wanted to rescue these characters and provide them the happy ending they deserved, because although they might have not been saints, they persevered even when given very little options to move forward, or god forbid retire.  And Conway… he broke my heart in pieces.  We need to go back and save Conway.

#4 Lisa Frankenstein

I’ve had a hard time getting excited about any movies lately.  Back when I was a kid I would watch something and endlessly quote it – Wayne’s World, Austin Powers, Billy Madison, Vegas Vacation… they had lines that got stuck in your head.  But since Hot Rod I haven’t found a comedy I’ve been excited about on a level where I’ve remembered any of the dialogue or berated everyone I knew into watching it.  I thought maybe it was because I was old and incapable of absorbing new information, but then I watched Lisa Frankenstein and realized it wasn’t a brain problem, I was just watching the wrong stuff.

Lisa is a high school senior who, two years prior, watched an axe-wielding burglar murder her mother.  Now relocated to a new town, new school, and her father remarried to a tightly-wound woman named Janet, Lisa struggles to relate to anybody around her, least of all her cheerleader step-sister Taffy.  Finding comfort in a local abandoned cemetery, Lisa can escape to someplace peaceful and share her life with one gravestone in particular, that of an unmarried young man.  This proves to be awkward later when this young man is serendipitously resurrected and wanders over to Lisa’s house in order to be with her, which simultaneously horrifies and intrigues her.  Finally having a friend who listens without judgement and is physically incapable of telling her how she should feel, Lisa begins to open up again, empowered by the support The Creature gives her, until she begins to get carried away with this new found confidence by exploiting the means at which The Creature will go to win her affection and uh… hijinks ensue.

Everyone in this movie is amazing.  Kathrine Newton makes Lisa so relatable and endearing, even when she’s making incredibly questionable decisions.  My only real exposure to Cole Sprouse is tangentially through Alex Meyers’ Riverdale recaps and the endless search to find the people who won the Danimals sweepstakes, but he does an amazing job as an Ichabod Crane-looking silent Creature who has to express without words how much he adores Lisa.  I really loved Taffy, played by Liza Soberano, who is the type of character that would be a popular, snotty villain in other movies, but instead is an optimism bomb that allows Lisa to wave her freak flag and is constantly defending or protecting her because she’s family.  The movie is about a romance between a teenage girl and an undead boy, but the real love story was between the two sisters, leading to a very unhinged, but also incredibly sweet moment near the end of the movie where it’s like they finally understand each other for the first time.

Some people find Diablo Cody’s dialogue exasperating, but as a Juno and Jennifer’s Body defender, I find it charming.  My Top 5 favorite non-spoiler-y quotes:

“I’m really sorry you got electrocuted, Lisa,” delivered in the same tone as Lane Meyer consoling Ricky after his mom blew up.

“Your hair feels like easter grass.”

“I can always count on her to work on Saturdays cause she can’t get a date. It’s probably ‘cause she’s so flat chested.”

“You know, there’s this really attractive guy on Days of our Lives who has to wear an eyepatch.  He’s a very popular character and his patch doesn’t define him.  What’s his name?  Patch.  …His name is Patch.”

“When you cry it smells like a hot toilet at a carnival!”

Lisa Frankenstein is silly, campy, and colorful, carrying on the best parts of the 80s teen movies.  I initially checked it out from the library, watched it twice in 2 days, bought it on bluray, then watched it on repeat several times since then.  Please, please, watch it.  They don’t make comedies like this one anymore.

#3 Interview with the Vampire

AMC makes the best television about the worst people and I am living for it.  Not since Mad Men have I been so excited to see the next episode that I watch it on cable.

During summer vacation between my junior and senior year of college I read Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice and was intrigued by Louis and deeply, deeply hated Lestat.  My boyfriend at the time had the subsequent Vampire Chronicles novels, so the next summer after graduation I read The Vampire Lestat in the hope that Louis would return and instead watched as Anne Rice tried to rehabilitate a character that had absolutely no redeeming qualities in the previous novel.  This was also true of Queen of the Damned and I was so tired and gave up on the series.  Several years later when I bought my house I was looking for an audio book to entertain me while I spent copious amounts of time in my backyard pulling ivy.  I remembered loving Interview with the Vampire and decided to then revisit the previous novels and continue on through to the rest of The Vampire Chronicles since there was a lot of meat there and I was doomed to weed a seemingly endless amount of unkempt flower beds until my fingers were nubs.

This, in retrospect, was a mistake.  I white knuckled it up until Blackwood Farm until I finally said oh fuck this shit and swore off the rest of the series.  In the 1970s I think incest romance like Flowers in the Attic might have been a popular, taboo trope, but this book was written in 2002 and it was not my thing.  Paired with the strange way Anne Rice wrote about promiscuous underage girls who get abortions as weak wombed… I was done, thanks for all the fish.

When I heard AMC was working on a television series based on Interview I was suuuuuper ambivalent.  I still had fond memories of that novel because it was way before I was forced to read about Goblin jerking off Quinn in the shower, but I was confused how it would be adapted into a series, when, y’know, Louis and Lestat were slave owners that killed their workers and tortured a 5-year-old by turning her into a vampire.  I cautiously tuned in and was pleasantly surprised by the updates they made.

In present day, Daniel Molloy, now sober, older, and with decades of journalistic experience under his belt, is lured to Dubai to reconduct his interview of the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac and chronicle what is essentially his and Lestat’s love story.  The time period was post slavery, Louis was a creole black man, and the story explicitly stated the relationship between Louis and Lestat was romantic.  It added a ton of layers to a story that admittedly was pretty one-sided and flat.  The cassette tapes of the first interview performed in the 1970s, the story we’re all familiar with, are literally thrown into the garbage during the third episode – a somewhat corny but symbolic gesture to note this is not your mother’s Interview, allow yourself to experience it as its own thing.  And as someone with complicated feelings with the source material, I was all in.

Mr. Molloy has more of a personality in this story, giving off BBE – Big Bourdain Energy, a former junkie who is now coasting on his journalistic reputation and after writing a memoir, making money by peddling online classes.  With more time to tell the story, everybody gets the opportunity to have a personality in this adaptation.  But the series doesn’t suffer from High Fidelity syndrome where you feel like it’s spinning its wheels to justify its existence; every story tells the tale of these 3 vampires, coping with creation and struggling to coexist with each other when they all have wildly different views of life and the purpose of The Dark Gift.  The show also doesn’t use the extra time to bolster up Lestat like Anne Rice did in her subsequent novels, thank Christ.

The side effect of this robust backstory, however, was pivoting my mindset for how I perceived these characters.  Louis is no longer a lonely, lamenting sad boy, who tells this particular story and is graciously sent off into the night ushering in Lestat as the primary narrator for the series going forward.  He is burdened by responsibility in the beginning, having to keep his family afloat after his father dies, pivoting to less… honorable means of income to keep them in a cushy house.  He is already living in the world as a minority, but additionally he’s tasked with keeping his sexual predilections under wraps as being gay isn’t acceptable during the time period either.  

Lestat remains a fucking bastard, hunting down Louis, separating him from his support system and turning him into a vampire when he was the most vulnerable, understanding Louis only wants to be loved, understood, and accepted.  He thought he saw something inside Louis that would make him a great killer, someone who would be willing to cut his brother just to keep his business going, but that assumption was completely misguided.  Louis rebelled against the need to feed on humans which caused Lestat to continually judge and torture him for not living up to his violent standards.  He refuses to allow Louis to grieve anything for any reason and continually parades him around like a lap dog while trying to distract him from contemplating anything except how good he now has it being blessed with Lestat and The Dark Gift.  Lestat is the sun, cruelly blinding and burning all around him for any offence or petty reason because he’s petrified of being left alone.  While Louis is selfish, angry and vengeful, I have much kinder views on the frustrating decisions he makes. At least hating Lestat is fun now since Sam Reid is so charming and we’re not burdened by Lestat’s constant self-aggrandizing inner monologue (yet, that is).  

Approaching Claudia’s creation like a baby to save the marriage was a genius addition.  A perpetually 14-year-old uncontrollable force of nature born out of a misguided attempt at redemption, forever stunted and used as a pawn.  Every adaptation of Interview has aged up Claudia because her age in the book is so fucking abhorant.  I understand making the choice of turning Claudia so young was Anne Rice’s way of processing her own daughter’s death and what must have been the uncontrollable urge to prevent that loss regardless of the consequences.  However, having the novel versions of Lestat and Louis do this was very, very strange, and Claudia’s young age limits her ability to have her own story separate from the two of them.  Claudia has much more agency in the show, and I love how they used her diaries as a point-of-view narrative device to understand her messy experience as a young vampire.

Claudia’s creation is the catalyst of the end of Lestat and Louis, and watching her pivot from acting out in response for being so sheltered to starting to gain her own independence and focus on trying to find belonging and purpose is a captivating story to follow.  The second season of Interview with the Vampire focuses on Louis and Claudia’s trip to Europe sans Lestat to find other vampires and encountering Armand and the rest of the Théâtre des Vampires in Paris.  The translation of the coven to the show is a master class – the aesthetic of the plays and how Claudia tries to fit in with the misfit bunch is pure theater kid drama, but ramped up to 11 since they’re, y’know, vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires that kill audience members on stage.  If you’ve read the books you know how it ends, but I encourage you to experience the show for yourself to see how it all goes down.  It’s somehow even more heartbreaking, I can’t even get into it, you guys.

I’m curious how the tone of the show changes in the 3rd season where it looks like we’re time jumping to The Queen of the Damned.  Lestat is such a fucking narsisist so it makes all the sense in the world his arrogant ass would become a rock star.  I’m a little confused why we’re sticking with 70s rock since the timeline has been updated and the revival of glam rock died in the 2000s after nobody could do it better than “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”.  The series does have its moments of humor, surprisingly, and Lestat’s quippy comebacks are as entertaining as they are egregious, so I’m bracing myself for a lot more of that.  At least we can all agree he’s better than Armand.

#2 Staged Reading of The Prequel Trilogy

This rabbit hole starts with a series of eulogies and ends in a trilogy.

Back in 2015 I was mindlessly flipping channels searching for something to distract myself and stumbled upon a call-in show where participants could ask a panel of comedians to predict their future, and even in my state of dissociation I was pretty sure Amy Poehler happened to be there operating an 8 Ball.  I stuck around, perplexed as to what I was watching, and pieced together it was The Chris Gethard Show – a public access talk show hosted by Gethard where he would invite comedians to come on and participate in the thinnest of premises while taking calls from the audience.  Fusion was going to be the home of its transition to cable, and in preparation they were airing a bunch of older episodes to lure in viewers I guess?  Well, it worked on me and suddenly I was mildly obsessed with the weirdest fucking thing I’d seen on television.  It had a Pee Wee’s Playhouse vibe where Chris and his co-host Shannon would invite a guest onto their wacky little set and a series of characters would drop in to contribute to the chaos.  There was a human fish who was a dude wearing a swimsuit, flippers and goggles that would ask a random question of the guest, some lady hula hooping the entire time, Vacation Jason wandering in wearing a lei and sunscreen indoors to chastise Chris and talk about how he’s always on vacation… just bits on bits on bits.  And the theme of each show was loose as it was unhinged.  They once recreated Duck Hunt in real life so callers could shoot plastic balls at Gethard and Wyatt Cenac.  Vacation Jason once kidnapped the human fish and Gethard’s crew had to wrestle Jon Hamm in a sumo suit to win him back (although Hamm didn’t put up much of a fight, to be fair).  The best episode of TCGS, maybe the best episode ever on television, was when Paul Sheer and Jason Mantzoukas dropped by to guess what was in a random dumpster.  It doesn’t sound like anything exciting, but I promise you it is a captivating 43 minutes that ends in a truly shocking way.  TCGS ran for two seasons on Fusion, then one season on TruTV before the show was ultimately cancelled.  I was pretty sad because there wasn’t anything like it then or since – just a bunch of weird comedians hanging out and asking viewers to contribute to their nonsense.  The community felt very cozy and even parasocially it felt nice to be a part of it.

The Chris Gethard Show used to host a sandwich night the day before Thanksgiving, where people could experience some community if they didn’t have someplace else to be.  Even after TCGS dissolved in 2018, sandwich night continued its legacy, hosted remotely during Covid.  See, back in 2020 the UCB theater closed, and clearly there weren’t other spaces open for comedians to perform, which, y’know, cut into a lot of people’s livelihood.  Since streaming was really the only way to garner a live audience, Chris Gethard decided to rebrand Chris Gethard Presents to Planet Scum, a twitch channel that hosted a different show each night.  Sandwich night 2020 was the first time I tuned in, and digging the vibe I continued to tune in multiple nights a week to have some place to hang out when most of us weren’t leaving our houses.

The flagship show, What’s in the Box?, was hosted by Gethard, a few of his buds, and random guests that decided to pop by.  I can’t even begin to unpack What’s in the Box? mythos because it would take up thousands of words (AND I DON’T HAVE TO since it turns out that Erik Germ just created a video about the history of the show, god bless him), but I will say this – There initially was a singular box that held one item you could call into the show and guess what it was, similar to the legendary dumpster episode of TCGS.  If you guessed what was in the box, you won it, along with a cash prize.  This simple concept snowballed to a substantial amount of prize money funded by a secret benefactor, 70+ items spread amongst multiple boxes homed by Christi Chiello, Improv God Will Hines, and Jason Mantzoukas, a committee to approve/reject new rules to the game that sometimes an Australian man wearing a full green body suit named Gorb The Destroyer would run, AND an anthropomorphic Pickle (hello baybeeee), a Canadian legend who kept a google document of all the guessed box items.  This new version of the game lasted 15 months before anybody won, and it just so happened that The Pickle was the one to guess all the items and win the ultimate What’s in the Box? prize.

Turns out Geth didn’t consider the fact that having a Canadian win this prize money would mean he’d have to pay taxes on the winnings, making Planet Scum, a channel already running on fumes, to now be hideously unprofitable.  That was when it was announced that on May 25th, 2022, Planet Scum would make its last broadcast.  There were a litany of previous guests to help send the channel off, but the most earth shattering moment was when The Pickle revealed they’ve been using their winnings to travel to the US to eat at Olive Garden and that, oh by the way, they had edited the google doc to put wrong answers in it so The Pickle could be the only one with the real answers to all the items making it impossible for anybody else to win.  That is some long con 3D chess bullshit right there.

One of What’s in the Box?’s frequent guests was producer Patrick Cotnoir, who additionally appeared on The George Lucas Talk Show, a UCB staple that was also forced to migrate online.  I had seen the main Star Wars movies but I had little opinion on them other than Carrie Fisher was a badass and being generally disappointed in myself because my desire to fuck Adam Driver directly influenced my opinion on Kylo Ren.  But I cannot stress to you enough how little you need to know about Star Wars to enjoy watching GLTS.  At the beginning of each show, in THE SAFEST OF SPACES, “Watto” asks a random audience member who has no experience with GLTS what they think the evening has in store and there are NO wrong answers.  In the razorist thin of premises GLTS is exactly what it promises to be – George Lucas in all his personable charisma hosts his own talk show.  Producer Patrick, “Watto” and “George Lucas” invite guests on to be interviewed by a CGI slave owner and a retired filmmaker, and everyone is on board and doesn’t really question it.  It is, without exaggeration, the most bizarre and simultaneously best thing I’ve ever seen. 

During the pandemic they would stream GLTS once a week, most of the time for an Irishman+, unless it was a charity stream, then they’d go for like… anywhere from 12 to 36 hours.  They would watch every Star Wars movie, or every Air Bud movie, or an entire series of television while inviting guests on, meeting ridiculous stretch goals like throwing a sandwich out a window, all while raising money for a good cause.  I don’t want to pick favorite guests (I totally do), but Rachel Zegler, D’Arcy Carden, Paul F. Thompkins, X Mayo, and Rich Sommer Steven Charleston have had truly iconic moments on the show.  But independently George kicks down the door and this OUT OF POCKET GLTS moment might be my two favorites, hooooly shit.

The amount of canon they’ve built up in that time (they joke it’s somewhere close to 500 hours, but like.. it’s probably not that far off) is just absolutely massive.  Watching the show is like hearing people speak a foreign language at first, but the longer you immerse yourself the easier it gets to speak it.  You’ll know when you’ve become a Gerogie Porgie when you understand that grabbing an item close to you for show and tell is called a Little Ricci, that the butter bell announces new Butter Boy and Butter Girl (and tangentially Butterbear) items, that you’re not allowed to make fan art of Gizmo, or Grogu, or god forbid Grogizmo and sell it on a T-shirt, and you mourn the Bumper Factory’s closure.  When the world opened back up a few years ago they stopped streaming online at any amount of regularity, but they have the occasional live events to carry on the show.  They’re broadcast on YouTube afterward so you can experience them in all their glory.

SO YEAH, in summary, The Chris Gethard Show lead me to Planet Scum, What’s in the Box?, The George Lucas Talk Show and finally to this list item – the staged readings of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.  The most random group of actors and comedians gathered over 3 glorious nights to chaotically reenact the movies.  Haley Joel Osment plays Anakin and Vic Michaelis plays Obi-Wan and it’s honestly perfect casting.  The character choices by everyone is unexpected and hilarious, with several cameos from people/things you may recognize but do not expect to be in the Star Wars universe.  I guarantee watching these will cure whatever ails you.

#1 Pat Finnerty

Every app on the planet does a yearly wrapped except YouTube, which is a kindness I don’t deserve because I think I would die knowing how many hours I spent on that site.  The only thing I’d be curious about is the percentage of watch time spent in the Pat Finnerty What Makes This Song Stink universe, because good god, I’m embarrassed to even admit how many times I’ve rewatched those videos.

Pat didn’t make the cut for last year’s list by one day – Todd in the Shadows tweeted about finally watching the WMTSS of “Try That in a Small Town”, and curious as to what that possibly could be about, I clicked on through and opened myself up to a very, very niche part of the internet.  It seems like Pat takes egregious songs personally, breaking apart (in detail, sometimes with Beato Burners) what makes them the absolute worst.  In the case of Train the video addressed a long standing feud, or in the case of Lenny Kravitz, an earnest attempt to identify if “American Woman” or “Fly Away” is worse since they’re terrible in completely different ways.  Zach was the one who fucked him by bringing “Try That in a Small Town” to Pat’s attention, but we all benefitted from the resulting odyssey.

Pat doesn’t just rip on these songs, but is a masterful storyteller, walking us through his thoughts on music, life, and why people sit in front of the board for no reason during documentary interviews.  His video on Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” starts by analyzing the musical trajectory of a once critically acclaimed band, and leads us into a retrospective on youth, what was actually good or what is good by nature of being connected to a simpler time (AKA The Weezer Conversation).  I got strangely emotional watching him and his cousin Mike listening to an album they loved in high school as they drove to B-Mart to pick up some dry-ass chickens.

While Pat only has a handful of videos, seemingly inconsequential tangents become integral parts of the vast and expansive lore.  I now know more about Kid Rock, Pat Moynihan and Nickelback than I ever wanted to, but if it means I get to hear the origin story of Tommy Turtle I’m in.  I’m taking all my musical and culinary opinions from the Blinds To Go Guy.  Lloyd the Landlord might not have great takes on the feasibility of taking a bath as a tall dude, but he’s got some really interesting opinions on how MGK snagged Megan Fox.  

Similar to Planet Scum, the viewers became a somewhat integral part of the WMTSS canon – whether they attend a Stop The Train rally, can hit a perfect Deez Nuts only seconds after waking to prove Jason Aldeen can’t sing, or be the one to tell Pat he just needs to put something in the Dunkin cup so the pedal mobile can operate while displaying The Thing.  Game for anything, they’ll champion any random cause, like buying guitars signed by Pat Moynihan and Brad Arnold or Pat’s dream to sell out and buy a hot tub.  As someone whose happy place is sitting on a deck in an HT downing several cans of moonshine cocktail, I appreciate the quest, but it was what was created to meet the end goal that was truly special.

Justin Hawkins is tangentially involved in two things on my list this year, which speaks to how great his taste is.  

I cannot possibly recommend watching Pat’s channel enough.  The uploads aren’t frequent, but they’re bangers every time they drop.  I suggest starting from the beginning with 3 Doors Down’s “Kryptonite” and watching the format evolve and the universe expand, but if you only want to invest time in one video, it’s “Try That in a Small Town”.  WMTSS #8 is the culmination of every single song Pat’s ripped on, reminiscing on his back catalog of videos to prove definitively that this rage bait masquerading as a country hit is the worst thing any of us have ever listened to.

Honorable Mentions:

I can’t believe I thought covering traditional media this year would make this post shorter.  Jesus Christ.