EPISODE 806 THE ONE WHERE CANADA RUINED MY CHILDHOOD
NO YOU DID IT ADAM DRIVER
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, that newsletter you get first thing Monday morning and you think Wait, what is this again?
Before you hit delete, let’s get into it!
THE WOW-ND UP (BECAUSE I’VE CALLED IT THIS LONG ENOUGH I CAN’T THINK OF ANOTHER NAME ANY MORE)
So this week Canada and the United States shot down not just one, but two UFOs, and maybe a third by the time you read this. To which I say, Has no one ever seen a science fiction movie? Like, these creatures have ships that can travel through the universe—how do you think they’re going to respond to a bunch of apes who haven’t left orbit in decades? I’m not saying it’s time to hide in our secret bunkers, but if you live in Canada I would start stockpiling Tim Horton’s right now.
Also, the Super Bowl is this weekend, and from what I understand the green team is playing the red team, and according to the waitress at the Irish pub that I talked to last night if you are in a pool the numbers 4 and 5 are not good. When I asked her, Who watches TV in New York in February in a pool, she double charged me for my molten lava mozza sticks.
I don’t really do American sportsball anymore, because I have been to Australia and therefore know what it’s like to watch games played without constant commercial interruptions. (Also at full speed and without pads, which I know should be horrifying but is just tremendous.) I have a good friend who likes the red ones and other friends who like the green ones, and I say everyone should be able to eat whatever M&Ms they want.
In movie news Harrison Ford did an interview this week with the Hollywood Reporter where the magazine talked about how he’s “weirdly busy,” which I’m going to just climb out on a limb and suggest is never a flattering way to describe the career of a working actor. They also titled the article, “Harrison Ford: I Know Who the #!% I Am,” which yes, he says in the interview, but not as a statement like this, truly a number of the Hollywood Reporter aspects of this interview are weird, but the Harrison Ford of it all is fantastic, he talks about acting, therapy, fishing, near death experiences, flops, Oscars, God, and how more than anything when he’s on a set he wants to be useful.
SPOILERS: HARRISON FORD IS MY DAD
I want to take a moment more to talk about Harrison Ford, because from time to time over the course of my life I’ve had one of those moments where you step back and say, Why am I always so ready for more of this one actor’s work? And at some point I realized with Harrison Ford it’s because he has always reminded me of my dad.
No, my dad is not an adventurer, though I feel confident he would even now at age 77 punch Nazis if the occasion presented itself. But he is a guy who made his living working with his hands, as a pipefitter, and from everything he’s ever told me in that job he very much did not suffer fools. (One of Harrison Ford’s best qualities, and also one of his scariest, is just how little he suffers fools. The reason the Hollywood Reporter could not help but get in a couple digs is absolutely because of how little Ford has entertained dumb or intrusive questions.)
My dad is also someone who has never taken himself very seriously, which has got to be one of Ford’s most winning qualities. Talking about his work in the new Indiana Jones movie, director James Mangold says Ford “looks for ways to make it more like life, mess up the false moments and to take the piss out of his own character. He’s got this great sense of how to be a hero and how to undermine the tropes of heroism at the same time.”
He also said Ford was incredibly willing to take the physical punishment of the role to get the take that Mangold wanted. But at one point he also said to Mangold, “That’s the last time I’m falling down for you!” And that line is so my dad that when I read that I heard it in my dad’s voice.
Ford is often described in ways that suggest he is not-so-secretly furious he has to be here talking to some 23-year-old white guy from an online fly by night pop culture site that was popular for one video one time but no one will remember in a year. But I think, while that may be true, the truth is that he sees that the entertainment world is made up of a thousand different versions of that ingratiating behavior, all of them trying to canonize him for acting when in fact he has a pretty clear sense of the kinds of self-sacrificing things people actually should be canonized for and the fact that these people would choose to think and live in this other way is so physically repellent to him he cannot help but display it.
Basically when Harrison Ford scowls and instinctively says a nasty comment, what we’re seeing is his version of skin crawling. He can’t help it, it’s a physical reaction.
My dad is more polite than that, but the instinctive distrust of fawning behavior runs deep in our family, too.
So yeah, I am here for 1923 and Shrinking and the new Indiana Jones movie and whatever else Harrison has got coming, which is really a way of saying I love my dad.
Here he is, giving the performance of his life as “Man who discovers his upper body has become the head of a monkey.”
Coming soon to a movie theater and/or nightmare near you.
THREE TWEETS
Twitter “went away for a while” this week, after users were told they had exceeded their number of tweets for the days. I don’t know about you but I definitely wondered if we were finally in the end times.
But like every good undead creature, it’s shambled back for now. In the meantime, there were jokes to be made.
Best use of pop culture references:
Most true fact:
And, my personal favorite:
I don’t know when David Lynch got on Twitter, or why he’s using the handle
, but I'm glad he's here.I’M THIS MANY EPISODES INTO SCHITT’S CREEK
I recently discovered Schitt’s Creek, which, if you’re the one other person who hasn’t already watched it, is the story of a rich New York family who lose everything and end up having to move into a motel in a small town with a funny name. The initial premise made it very much a “New Yorkers Just Can’t With Small Towns” show, which is fine but also a little soulless.
But in the second season creator and co-star Daniel Levy discovered what would make the show special was to lean the other way and make it a show about a bunch of narcissistic New Yorkers whose forced exile in a small town helps them find happiness, empathy and community. This moment at the end of season two is where that idea suddenly crystalizes, and it is beautiful.
THE BEST WAY TO HANDLE BEING ON HOLD
Real friends don’t let friends drink Budweiser, but this Super Bowl ad is good.
Also, this one, in which Adam Driver plays Keanu Reeves, is ridiculous.
AND FINALLY, HAPPY GALENTINE’S DAY!
By dint of its institution on that greatest of American TV shows Parks & Recreation, today is Galentine’s Day, a day in which friends celebrate one another and give the middle finger to all that commercially-created romance nonsense of the day that follows.
So today I raise a glass of non-alcoholic pink champagne to each of you—it’s early, I have to work—and wish you joy, life and great time with friends in the year to come.