David Letterman was a genius for retiring when he did. Perfect timing.

great news! you're not actually seeing karl rove, john yoo, and david frum criticize the administration's lawlessness more stridently than dem leadership. you, reader, were infected with rabies by a brown bat 36 hours ago and this is all just the virus working its way through your nervous system

I won’t pretend to have any Big Thoughts about Robert Redford, but his last movie, The Old Man & The Gun, was really cute. I felt good when I left the theater, and that almost never happens. (Plus, Tom Waits in a supporting role.)

Most underrated Clash song? youtu.be/NrODxCsR4og?...

A moment of silence now to commemorate the tragic loss of John Ritter, who died this day in 2003 and should have won the Oscar for Sling Blade.

I’m almost positive that the new Spinal Tap will be terrible and it bums me out so bad. Reminds me of the Zoolander sequel that was just a string of celebrity cameos.

Sad and beautiful. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0Q...

The only movie I care about seeing. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Rewatched Sling Blade. What a picture. John Ritter and Dwight Yoakam are so damn good in it.

oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

Just learned that Jackie Robinson’s widow Rachel, founder of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, is somehow still kicking at 103.

Any woman who stays with me needs to know that I have Dick Cavett reruns on twenty. four. hours. a. day. And I'm gonna try and talk about every single episode, even if I was in the other room.

Hey, just to be clear, if anybody wants me to write something with them for money, I'm actually not bad at collaborating. I'm not some weird recluse.

I know this is old man stuff, but it's so funny that Robert Plant does one reunion show with Led Zeppelin, it works great, they threaten a tour that would make a billion dollars, he says nah, then he promptly runs away to make slowcore bluegrass for the rest of his life.

My review of the very good King of the Hill revival is that it needlessly makes me miss Tom Petty again. I was right there at the Hollywood Bowl and then snap. It was like ten minutes ago and it’s always gonna be ten minutes ago. Probably how people felt about Elvis. I get that now.

Game Boy Color Fridays

I know I’m the second or third person to say this, but the script to The Producers is one of the funniest I’ve ever seen, and it boggles the mind that it came out in the 60s, an unfunny decade.

Thinking about a dumb old thing I did. I can’t believe I didn’t get a copyright strike on this. youtu.be/xx9V-7TPW3U

Sky.

The great @kalebhorton.bsky.social wrote my favorite story from @essesmag.com Issue 02. It's online! And please watch the Instagram Reel in which noted GeorgeHead Kaleb correctly ID's "Faster" as "such a generic 1979 piece of cocaine Los Angeles session-guy pop." 👇 www.essesmag.com/articles/do-...

Need to cheer myself up so here's the best Twitter post ever. It spawned one billion bad ripoffs but it's a beautiful magic trick. You don't just read it in his voice: he said it now. This quote is real.

The founder of my favorite restaurant has died at 98. It sucks. kalebhorton.ghost.io/california-c...

Thanks again to musician/host extraordinaire Chris Slusarenko for asking me to talk about the late, great Townes Van Zandt and other stuff on his “Revolutions Per Movie” podcast. I had a great time. @revpermovie.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

This is a career-length fixation for me, because I want production to come back and because it’s awesome. Justified definitely did this if you pay attention but even that’s not egregious enough.

Finally ate some Pioneer Chicken and remembered the great @kalebhorton.bsky.social piece for the dearly departed The LAnd mag thelandmag.com/pioneer-frie...

Gonna write a Charles Bukowski poem. I call it "los angeles winter." whiskey, good women bad but maybe it's the other way around

Route 66.

My pal Dave with the best 4th of July song anyone will ever write: youtu.be/1BtzpaCZnjA?...

Huge get, here. I know a lot of people will tell you to "eat shit" and "get fucked" but I think it's a good lesson in why it's important for a science reporter to be sourced up in the Anonymous Twitter Eugenicist community. So you can write important stories like this in the New York Times.

Speaking as someone from California who has never been to any part of New York and probably never will, I hear way too much about the New York Times. It sounds like they’re run by fascist weirdos, but it shouldn’t be any of my business either.

Thank you, @kalebhorton.bsky.social, for reminding me of one of my favorite Swartzwelder gags.

Okay, enough moping. I'm back to the newsletter. It's about how great Army Man is. kalebhorton.ghost.io/army-man-ame...

Earnest post: I've been really ~going through it~ lately, lots of stress and upheaval, and I'm really thankful to everybody who's supported me here. Life is bewildering but other people help it almost make sense.

joe rogan of the left material

Beverly Hills, California.

Still on my Army Man bullshit. “Perhaps we’ve become inured to it” has been stuck in my head since before I was allowed to vote, and it’s still stuck there after.

When a drug-sniffing dog retires they should let the dog finally take drugs

I love reading this Swartzwelder joke aloud, but it helps to pronounce it “vahz.”

Tossing and turning through endless sleepless nights wondering what happened to the guy who made Space Moose and why I can't buy a physical copy of the strips.

Double-checked yesterday and Bill’s Burgers is still definitely the best burger in Los Angeles. I respect Apple Pan defenders but regrettably I have to dock it several points for being on the westside.

I don't like science fiction because why send a person into space when you can send computers that don't die, but the original Star Wars is like watching American Graffiti on the best drugs of all time. Every revision made that worse. What an awful headline. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

One of life’s simple pleasures: pouring a big glass of cool clean water and slamming the whole stupid thing in two seconds.

It’s always funny to look up any historical, whimsical American thing and find out it was from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. That’s where all of it happened.

Rewatching an SNL sketch that is, despite its popularity, somehow better than advertised. Perfect premise, perfect execution. youtu.be/rImxuuD_kwM?...

Politics Opinion: Los Angeles should have at least one convenient Arby’s location. I want those fries so bad but I am not driving to Ontario.

Damn it. youtu.be/oPEIFMSAkcQ?...

It’s *hilarious* how much work they put into this. They treated it like a lost Orson Welles film. youtu.be/neDdNOxjH7U?...

I know it's been contentious but I really like the plot decision in the King of the Hill reboot that the Hills move to Saudi Arabia for oil industry reasons non-Texans know nothing about.

The new Mission Impossible: a 100 minute movie that's three hours long and lousy with people just staring at each other, but good Lord the aerial stunts at the end are unbelievable. It's like Tom Cruise thinks he actually can't die. Worth the IMAX ticket just for airplane stuff.