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The year was 2019, just a few months shy of a global pandemic that would delay the second season of Netflix’s monster-slaying mega-hit The Witcher by nearly a year. Despite Henry Cavill playing a beefed-up antihero who grunted his way through the show’s initial episodes, bathing and bedding women in equal measure, it was actor Joey Batey who went sort of viral on social media. Well, it was Batey’s character, a bubbly bard named Jaskier, that people couldn’t stop talking about.

No, that’s not right either. Jaskier is great (and so is Batey by the way) but it was the devilishly-charming troubadour’s hit single, a little earworm called “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher” that stole the spotlight. Youtube covers, Spotify rankings, memes, and coffee shops co-opting the song’s title for barista tip jars — “Toss A Coin” inspired them all, but every artist knows you’re only as good as your next song. That’s why, when season two of The Witcher drops this month, Batey is trading out Renaissance pop anthems for angst-heavy folk metal ballads, a melodic move that signals an evolution in his lovable sidekick and might hint at what’s to come for Geralt’s former best friend.

We chatted with Batey about the slog of filming season two, how artists can lead Continent-wide rebellions, and why Jaskier’s firmly in his break-up album era.

What did The Witcher quarantine bubble look like while shooting this season?

Well, I’m an old man and I don’t leave the house anyway. So not a lot of my life changed, that has to be said. [Laughs] Henry and I would just send each other dumb Simpsons memes every so often. Paul Bullion, who plays Lambert, we played poker online together. That connection, I think everyone experienced that. Suddenly you’ve got to make so much more of an effort to reach out and not only make friends but keep your friends and make sure everyone’s safe and well. I was very grateful that everyone around me was so fantastic and had such a strength of spirit throughout that shoot.

Thinking specifically of Jaskier’s journey in season two, what’s the vibe like for the bard right now?

Well, we left Jaskier on the top of a mountain in season one. [Laughs] But since then he’s been able to really work out who he is and go on a journey of self-discovery where he’s no longer defining himself by a friendship. The Continent is growing darker. There’s the storm of war that seems to be approaching in the distance. How does an artist exist in that universe? How does an artist survive? Usually, in war and turmoil, artists are the ones first to get the wall. And he’s aware that he has a voice. He’s now famous, he’s now rich, and he’s worked out that they’re the things that don’t matter to him. For the first time, he’s learning to be the protagonist of his own story, rather than tell the stories of others.

Jaskier was definitely the main source of comedic relief in season one. He goes a bit darker this season. Which is harder: comedy or angst?

If you ever meet someone who is funny in real life, standup comedians, and so forth, they’re not funny all the time. Naturally funny people are people and they have facets to them that are layered. That’s something that I was so excited to explore in Jaskier in season two, that, yes, he still has that light in him, he still has that joyous spark and the naivete that comes with the character. But also, there is a real human here, a human that hurts, a human that feels fear, that feels pain.

You’ve got to do some mental acrobatics in order to get to those dark places in a very real and truthful way, but I don’t think Jaskier is ever going to stop trying to make people laugh because that’s one of his superpowers. I think the challenge wasn’t necessarily going darker or going lighter or telling jokes. The challenge was making sure that the dichotomy wasn’t so different. That it didn’t feel like two different characters.

Music plays a huge role in the character’s journey and season two is definitely Jaskier’s break-up album era. How did working on the songs inform the character and vice versa? And, are you ready to have another banger on your hands?

[Laughs] Who knows? Joe Trapanese, our composer on season two, he and I wrote the songs for Jaskier together, over the pandemic actually. We worked really, really hard on trying to distance ourselves a little bit from the pop-ier aspect and explore a more emotionally raw human, who is doing his difficult second album. He is trying to find a new artistic direction because all the best artists do. In season one, we saw him tell the stories of other people and tell the stories of the Continent. The music was almost more world-building. For season two, we really tried to make sure that the music was character building and it was driving the narrative for this character and showing that he wasn’t just the guy with the lute, just trying to earn coin. Now he’s showing a side to him that I think all art should, which is a vulnerable side. Perhaps even a flawed side and a weaker side.

What were you listening to while working on the songs for season two?

I’m always influenced by trad folk and we wanted to bring something Celtic into it, as well as some slightly more musical theater crescendos. I’ll be listening to some death metal, and then the next song on my playlist will be some trad ditty from a million years ago. It all feeds its way in there.

Maybe next season we can slip in some techno then?

[Laughs] Some dance house beats, yeah.

Where’s the strangest place you’ve heard “Toss A Coin”?

I once heard it at an airport. That was the weirdest experience for me because I’ve had people hum it on the train or sing it in the shop. I’ve had one or two pubs put it on. But an airport? They definitely didn’t know I was there. It was just playing on the Tannoy and I thought I was going mad. I was just trying to get my luggage through customs. I was like, “I feel like I’m having a mental breakdown.”

The Witcherverse is expanding. Do you think Jaskier might get his own spinoff series at some point?

Why don’t you ask me that question after series seven has ended?

You can always put out a musical or a sing-along one-off in the meantime though.

Right? Maybe we’ll find time to put out a Christmas album.

‘The Witcher’ returns to Netflix on December 17.

To promote his upcoming role in The Tender Bar, Ben Affleck stopped by The Howard Stern Show this week for an over two hour interview where he opened up about everything from his marriage to Jennifer Garner (which did not sit well after he seemingly blamed her for his drinking problem) to his roller coaster ride of a career. As everyone knows, Affleck was a blockbuster star before a series of flops torpedoed his career in the mid-2000s. After fading into the background, Affleck began making waves as a writer/director with 2010’s The Town. That led to his next film, 2012’s Argo, which immediately became a critical darling and an Oscar contender.

However, Affleck couldn’t help but notice that while the film racked up nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and even Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin), the Academy specifically didn’t recognize his contributions as lead actor and director. What stung even more is Affleck candidly admits that he wanted the Oscar, and he did everything Warner Bros. instructed him to do to get the nom.

“It was the big snub, right? That really taught me a lot,” Affleck said. “I did everything they told me. They told me, ‘You got to kiss the babies.’ And I schmoozed everybody in the world, right?”

When the snub became clear on the morning of the Oscar announcements, Affleck reveals that he called up Warner Bros. and said he’s never doing an Oscar campaign again. Via IndieWire:

“We had Editing, Score, Picture. The only guy who f*cked up was the lead and the director? I can do the math on who the asshole is here. That day, I had to go to the f*cking Critics Choice Awards, which has, if my memory is correct, the single longest fucking red carpet in humanity. Every single stop, you don’t even have to say anything, they just hold the mic and they say ‘So, snubbed?’ You have to pretend that you’re OK, pretend it didn’t bother you, because god forbid something bothered you.

Affleck then admitted to getting “hammered” at the Critics Choice Awards and slamming the Academy at the podium under the impression that Argo was dead at the Oscars, which ended up not being the case.

“We never lost another award,” Affleck sheepishly revealed while clearly embarrassed with how he acted.

(Via IndieWire)

No matter who you are, nothing is easy in the NFL. That was on display in Week 14 with regard to the selections in this space, with a 1-4 record that easily could’ve finished 3-2 or even 4-1. Cleveland blew a 21-point lead, only to win by two points as a 2.5-point favorite. Buffalo lost as a 3.5-point underdog on a long touchdown in overtime. The first half under in Atlanta-Carolina broke on a pick-six that swung the total result. This stuff happens, to be sure, but the ball rolled in the wrong direction for us a week ago, and we’re always going to struggle during a week when favorites cover at an alarming rate.

This time around, we’ll have five more selections but, before we dive into an interesting Week 15 slate, let’s take stock.

• Last Week: 1-4
• 2021 Season: 38-31-1

Come get these winners.

Indianapolis Colts (-2.5) over New England Patriots

The Patriots haven’t lost since Oct. 17 and now they are getting points against the 7-6 Colts? The world is on the Patriots as a result? You had to know I’d have Indianapolis here.

New York Jets (+9.5) over Miami Dolphins

I realize Miami has been a lot better lately, but the Dolphins laying nearly double figures against anyone seems like a lot. Michael Carter projects to be back for the Jets, giving New York some more juice offensively, and this is a game with a total of 41 as this post arrives. That’s a big number for a grind-it-out game.

Jacksonville Jaguars (-4.5) over Houston Texans

Ding dong, Urban Meyer is gone. The Jags, despite their horrifying season, are more talented than the Texans, and Davis Mills is taking the ball for Houston on the road here. I’m expecting a refreshed effort from Jacksonville.

Atlanta Falcons (+9.5) over San Francisco 49ers

Against all odds, the Falcons are alive in the playoff chase. That isn’t why I’m taking them, but it’s funny to see it in print. At any rate, this should probably be 7 or 7.5 and the extra candy is enough to get us to the window, even if a backdoor is needed.

New Orleans Saints (+11) over Tampa Bay Buccaneers

This is a big number. The Bucs are soundly better than the Saints, but Tom Brady hasn’t exactly lit New Orleans ablaze in previous meetings. The Saints are frisky defensively and, while taking Taysom Hill in this matchup doesn’t give me a warm feeling, I will gleefully accept the double-digit spread.

Don’t Look Up, from Vice/The Big Short director Adam McKay, is a well-intended satire, about how American politicians and tech titans wouldn’t be able to stop being venal and self-interested long enough to save themselves, even if there was a comet heading straight for Earth. Think Armageddon in the style of Veep. It’s a great idea (with story credit to McKay and journalist David Sirota) whose execution doesn’t always live up to its premise, seemingly proving that accurate satire isn’t the same thing as a coherent story. Lots of the individual jokes work, but it seems to get caught up trying to make fun of so many different things that it neglects its own internal logic.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral student with severe art bangs who discovers a massive comet (a “planet killer,” as it’s described later) late one night while singing along to Wu-Tang during her shift manning the Suburu telescope. Dibiasky, who feels very much like a middle-aged white man’s idea of “cool hipster,” eventually alerts her advisor, Dr. Randall Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in a dowdy beard and enjoyably dorky Midwestern accent. Together they make the rounds, trying first to inform the public and then to get them to do something about it.

Their tour takes them first to Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe, head of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which a title card informs us is a real office that actually exists. Rob Morgan plays Oglethorpe, an enjoyably idiosyncratic character who probably deserved more screen time than he gets.

McKay pulled this same sort of fourth-wall-breaking shtick in Vice and The Big Short, and I do enjoy it, within reason. It makes sense to be clear that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is a real thing, because it sounds like something this kind of movie would invent. The bigger issue in Don’t Look Up is that there’s a dissonance between its almost painfully on-the-nose elements (aping the font and color schemes of MAGA hats and posters) and its unnecessarily fictionalized ones. In a scene in which a social media consultant discusses the engagement Mindy and Dibiaski received during a morning show segment, real social media platforms are all bowdlerized as “VroomVroom,” “Friendlink,” “Rabble,” and “Diddly,” in a way that feels both like a failed dad joke and almost deferentially courtly. Why not just say Facebook and Twitter? McKay doesn’t seem like a guy afraid of offending Mark Zuckerberg.

By contrast, the hosts of the morning show on which they appear are played brilliantly by Tyler Perry, who for all his corniness as a writer/director is still a pretty damned solid comedic actor, and Cate Blanchett, in a set of unnaturally white veneers and over-the-top TV makeup that somehow still make her look hot. Meryl Streep is similarly great as President Orlean (a callback to her playing Susan Orlean in Adaptation?), a sort of careerist hybrid Trump/Kamala more worried about the midterms than she is about the impending apocalypse, whose chief of staff is her dopey son, played wonderfully by Jonah Hill in what feels like a combination of his Inside SoCal character from SNL (“Dad, it’s just a kicker”) and his own “clean and rad and powerful” emails.

Just when it seems like Dibiasky and Dr. Mindy have finally gotten the president to act, she gets sidetracked by Peter Isherwell, a robotic tech tycoon played by Mark Rylance in another solid turn, as a character who’s clearly a riff on Jeff Bezos, with shades of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. The whole story turns on this shift, from the president’s decision to go with Isherwell’s pie-in-the-sky, enriching-the-rich plan to handle the comet, rather than follow the recommendations of scientists. It turns President Orlean into a pseudo-climate denier, with her new slogan, “Don’t Look Up” urging supporters to ignore the reality of the killer comet. On a satirical level, it’s easy to see what point McKay is trying to say here, about leaders putting profits ahead of saving the planet and treating a global crisis as just another geopolitical game.

But making a point and telling a story aren’t always the same thing, and it feels like McKay has cut some corners, giving the individual characters’ motivations and story arcs short shrift in favor of trying to lampoon as many things as possible. The classic Hollywood idea was that a global crisis would force an end to our petty squabblings, as seen in movies like Armageddon and Independence Day. This was probably based on the general cultural takeaway from World War II, that when the chips were down, we’d eventually come together and kill the fascists.

Now that we’ve seen firsthand that plenty of crises seem to have the opposite effect, factionalizing the populace, polarizing our experience of objective reality and seemingly driving everyone insane, it has manifested in our fiction. Children of Men and The Leftovers saw its characters slide into magical thinking, hostility, and cultism in response to societal upheaval, borne out in real life with things like QAnon and people getting really into crystals. Don’t Look Up clearly wants to be the comedic, more overtly satirical The Leftovers, but whereas The Leftovers was always character-first, Don’t Look Up feels more like a series of sketches. Which, while usually funny, don’t always maintain a consistent logic.

‘Don’t Look Up’ is available in select theaters December 10th, and hits Netflix December 24th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.

Last weekend saw Billie Eilish pull double duty as host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live. On the next episode, though, the show will return to its more common format of having a separate host and musician. Filling those roles this weekend are Paul Rudd and Charli XCX, who participated in the tradition of filming simple promo videos for the show. In one of them, Rudd plays off of Charli’s stage name, which he had a hard time pronouncing.

Rudd started, “Hi, I’m Paul Rudd and I’m hosting SNL with Charli…” He then trailed off as he tried to pronounce “XCX” by reading it like a word, apprehensively letting out some “x” and “c” sounds before Charli clarified by saying the individual letters, “X-C-X.” A still-confused Rudd gave an “oh” of slight realization before SNL‘s Ego Nwodim chimed in, “I got it: ‘XCX.’” Rudd concluded the bit by asking, “Is that Roman,” in reference to the letters looking like a Roman numeral.

This weekend will mark Rudd’s fifth time on the show, prompting a joke in another promo clip that he joined the “Five-Timer’s Club,” for him meaning his fifth arrest. As for Charli, this is her second time appearing on the program and her first in a while, as she was previously on the show in 2014.

Check out the SNL promos above.

Charli XCX is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Keanu, please keep going

Keanu Reeves is out doing press for the upcoming fourth Matrix movie, Matrix: Resurrections. This is good news. It’s good news because Keanu is a sweet man and a mystery and one of our last true “action stars,” in the sense that he’s the face of two massive franchises that were not based on pre-existing intellectual property (John Wick, The Matrix), and also in the sense that he starred in Speed, which rules, and was smart enough to pass on Speed 2: Cruise Control, which… did not rule.

He is everywhere, too. The last week or so has just been one beautiful little Keanu moment after another. It’s been lovely. We’ve seen and heard so many stories over the years about him being a righteous dude, but it’s been a while since we got that righteousness straight from the horse’s mouth. And I’ve been vacuuming all of it up. Every bit. I will click on anything. If it has the word “Keanu” in the headline, I will absolutely click on it. Please do not hack me.

Let’s start here at home. Our Mike Ryan spoke to Keanu this week, and while my initial reaction was to be too jealous to process any of it, I broke down and dove in. And I’m glad I did, because that’s where I saw this interaction about his character in The Matrix.

He is, but it’s a different kind of confusion. Because he sort of remembers what happened before, but now it’s like everything’s different again. And he doesn’t seem as confident at times, especially in the first half.

No, absolutely. I mean, I would pitch that Resurrections is a kind of dynamic inverse of the trilogy.

What do you mean by that?

[Laughs] Just that.

Okay.

Perfect. Beautiful. Like Mike, I do not know exactly what he means by that, but I’m sure it makes sense to people who are much more connected to the universe than I am. And I’m definitely going to start replying to “What do you mean by that?” with “Just that.” So that’s a new trick in my bag.

Moving on. You probably saw this clip floating around this week, but either way, please treat yourself to Keanu Reeves giggling with dismissive laughter at the entire concept of NFTs, which is somehow a more accurate description of them than I’ve heard anywhere else, from anyone.

And here he is on Colbert discussing the iconic Sad Keanu meme, where he was photographed on a bench eating a sandwich and the entire internet turned it into an avatar for being bummed out about anything.

On Monday’s episode of The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert brought out the photo, to which The Matrix Resurrections star replied, “I’m just eating a sandwich, man. I was thinking. I had some stuff going on. I was hungry.”

“I’m just eating a sandwich, man.”

I mean… he has a point.

Who among us, you know?

Or how about this, which is not technically Keanu himself but is a delightful story his John Wick co-star Lance Reddick told about him in an interview with Vulture this week, so let’s just go ahead and count it anyway.

How has your friendship changed after four movies?

We’ve gotten to know each other a little better. I hope I don’t get in trouble for telling this story: During John Wick: Chapter Four, my first day of filming happened to be Keanu’s birthday. But he wasn’t in the scene. He came to the set anyway at nine o’clock at night with his girlfriend who I had never met. And she is … can I say a bad word?

Go for it.

His girlfriend is cool as fuck. And she told me that she asked Keanu what he wanted to do for his birthday and he said, “I want to go see Lance.” He’d never done this before but he wrote me a note thanking me for what I brought to the character in these movies. And he wanted to give the note to me. I’ll never forget it. I’m going to cry now.

Well, great. I might cry now, too. The man showed up on his own birthday with a note for one of his co-stars. Imagine having one person in your life like this. Imagine if that one person was Keanu Reeves. Imagine if Keanu Reeves showed up at your job on his birthday and handed you a note he wrote to you personally about how cool you are. I don’t think I’d ever get over it.

This is too much emotion. Things have gone and gotten too sincere. I’m getting uncomfortable. Let’s pivot back to a silly story about a silly name, one he told on GMA and was transcribed by The AV Club.

“So, I’m 20 years old, I’m in my first car, I wanted to be in movies, I went to Hollywood,” Reeves says. “And I get there and they’re like, ‘we wanna change your name.’”

He remembers asking why, being told that maybe Keanu is “a little too exotic,” and then, after a sharp exhale, says “I did.” Strahan asks what kind of stage names he considered and Reeves immediately responds with, “Chuck Spadina. I just came up with ridiculous names.”

CHUCK SPADINA

Good lord, I love it so much. And him. It’s so cool that one of our biggest movie stars for going on 30 years now is just some cool dude who likes stuff and people. More people should try to be like Keanu Reeves. You, me, everyone. We should strive for it. Individually, yes, but also as a society.

Let’s close with my favorite Keanu story ever. It’s a few years old now, but who cares. It’s so good. It’s laid out in a Twitter thread that starts here…

… and takes us to a movie theater in Australia where a young man schemes to get Keanu’s autograph by having him sign a logbook, only to be rebuffed.

But then.

A knock on the door of the theater office.

And.

The best. Just the best. Part of me hopes this press tour never ends. Part of me hopes we get a Bourdain-style travel show starring Keanu, just him bouncing around the world meeting people and being awesome. But most of me just loves that he’s out there doing all this, just to be cool and fun, not for cameras or clout.

Keanu Reeves, man.

Solid dude.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Oh look, shows for Brian

This is the trailer for the second season of The Righteous Gemstones. I am posting it here for three main reasons:

• The first season whooped so much ass
• This means we are close to the show finally coming back
• Look at Walton Goggins

Actually, let’s expand on that third point with this GIF I just made, one I strongly suggest you click on at once and save somewhere you will not lose it. I mean…

It’s so good. I am thrilled it is coming back. It would honestly not be the worst idea to dive into a rewatch of season one over the holidays, in part because it’s been a while and in part because, like, the first episode opens with a mass baptism in a wave pool that goes wrong in exactly the way “a mass baptism in a wave pool” should go wrong. Eric Andre joins the show in season two, which is… perfect. The chaotic energy between him and Danny McBride is off the charts. My meters are all flashing and honking over here. Needles are way over into the red section marked “DANGER” and wobbling like they’re afraid. I’ve never been happier.

Speaking of Extremely Brian Shit…

This is the trailer for the upcoming television series The Afterparty. I am posting it here for three main reasons:

• It looks cool as hell
• It’s got a fun little gimmick, where a murder is investigated with each episode focusing on a different suspect
• The cast is littered with your favorite comedic actors — Ben Schwartz, Sam Richardson, who should be a much bigger star by now and, yes, I’m a little upset about it — like Lord and Miller (who produced the show, which is another plus) just woke up and said “Let’s do Knives Out but with Tiffany Haddish as Daniel Craig and all the people you love from your favorite show”

I support this. I also support, well, this, from Entertainment Weekly…

That seems like plenty to sustain eight episodes of television, but The Afterparty adds one extra twist: Each character’s account of the night is told through a different genre — an action movie, a musical, even animation — reflecting their different personalities and views of themselves.

“[Each episode] brings a new filmmaking style into it, and hopefully that helps you understand how everyone sees themselves, and not just what they think their story is, but how they tell it,” explains Miller’s creative partner Phil Lord, who’s an executive producer on the series.

This is good. I love cool and ambitious stuff. I love everyone involved in this project. Let’s all agree to watch it to encourage other people to make more cool and ambitious stuff. We are basically doing a public service here. Kind of.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — A Christmas tradition

Just two quick items of housecleaning here. There will be no Rundown next week on Christmas Eve, so this is my last opportunity to post the two Christmas-related things I post every year. So… here we are.

Up there, please find Steve Martin’s Christmas Wish monologue from SNL, which is funny every time you watch it and will be funny every time you watch it for the rest of your life. His delivery as he starts getting more and more passionate is comedic brilliance, objectively. This sucker is 35 years old, too. It aired in 1986. And he’s still out there killing it with fun/new projects like Only Murders in the Building. I guess what I’m saying here is that Steve Martin is good. Breaking news.

Here’s the second thing. It’s the song “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee. Please listen to it. It’s good.

Okay, now listen to it again, and when you get to the part of these lyrics where she says “pumpkin pie”…

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
At the Christmas party hop
Mistletoe hung where you can see
Every couple tries to stop

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
Let the Christmas spirit ring
Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie
And we’ll do some caroling

… tell me it doesn’t sound like she says “fuckin’ pie.” I heard it this way maybe 10-15 years ago and I’ve never heard it any other way since. I talk about it every year. I’ve ruined the song for so many people. I feel great about it.

Later we’ll have some fuckin’ pie. I mean, the vibes here are not entirely inaccurate.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — GIVE ME THE CAKE, TOM

Two things are important to know before we get into this, so let’s go back to the bullet points, for efficiency:

• Every year, Tom Cruise sends out dozens of these decadent chocolate coconut cake things to friends and acquaintances
• I want this cake

I want it so bad. I don’t want to buy it. I don’t even want to eat it that much because I’m not a huge coconut fan. I just want Tom Cruise to send me one of these cakes. I wrote about it in 2020, in a Christmas-themed Rundown that opened with a thing about how The Nice Guys is a Christmas movie. I did not get the cake. Which, like, fine. I get it. Tom Cruise is a busy man. I can deal.

Or rather, I could deal, until I saw this article in The Guardian by a man named Stuart Heritage who also wrote about wanting the cake.

Reader, I am here to inform you that dreams do come true. You really can have anything your heart desires, with the proviso that you’re prepared to aggressively and repeatedly abuse your position in order to get it. What I’m trying to say is this: my year-long campaign to get Tom Cruise to send me a cake has ended in success.

COME ON

TELL ME MORE

BUT I AM MAD

BUT TELL ME

Then, in April, Cruise went on record to announce that, as a young actor, he once spent three days eating so much chocolate cake that he threw up. Naturally, I responded by stating in print that I deserved a cake from Cruise, and that I was better at eating cake than he was – something I would prove by eating his cake on the toilet in one go.

COME ON

THE TOILET?

THIS IS A TRAVESTY

Anyway, Cruise sent me a cake this week.

SEND ME THE CAKE, TOM.

NEXT YEAR

THE CAKE

ME

SEND IT

The story goes that Cruise first encountered the cake when Diane Keaton and Katie Holmes had a competition to find the best cake. Cruise tried Keaton’s offering and was immediately transformed. “This miraculous cake must be shared,” he thought, and spent several years shipping hundreds of them to famous people all around the world. It’s true that his marriage to Holmes sadly ended in divorce. But, look, the main thing is that I got some cake out of it.

I’m so mad I could spit on the floor. Christmas is ruined.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Here’s a thing that made me laugh a lot…

I know I just wrote about Joe Pera Talks With You. I promise I’ll stop soon, mostly because the season finale aired this Sunday night and there won’t be new episodes to yell at you about. But it’s good. The finale was about him building a chair but also about, like, so much more. It’s so good. And it opened with this joke in the first few minutes. I shout-laughed a little.

I don’t know if you will like this show. Not for sure, at least. But if you’ve read this far into this post and are having a decent time, I like to think you will. This is the hardest sell I know how to make.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Mark:

I’m hoping you’ll use your considerable Hollywood clout to get my idea for a movie greenlit. It’s called Zoo: Face-Off (alternate title: Face-Off: Zoo). It seems the animals are still trying to take over the world (or whatever it was they were trying to do) and the only way to stop them is to use the Face-Off technology. Imagine Nicolas Cage’s head on a horse’s body. Put a snake’s head on James Wolk. Questions: what animal should we put John Travolta’s head on and what other animal/actor’s face combinations would you like to see? (Note: Kathryn Hahn should be in this movie). You can promise Hollywood that they would sell at least 200 tickets because I would pay to see this at least 100 times and I know you would too—after all, you and I—we’re not that different.

What I like about Mark’s email is that it is kind of like a Mad Libs of Things Brian Likes. I’m not being sarcastic here. It’s cool that all the dumb things I’ve typed into these boxes all these years are sticking with some people like this. It’s wild. The internet is weird and bad in many ways but sometimes, man, it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, to answer the question: John Travolta’s head should go on a panda. I say this because I want to see it, of course, but also because I have not been able to get this next thing out of my head since I saw it…

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Beijing!

A giant panda escaped from its enclosure at the Beijing Zoo…

PANDA ON THE RUN

YES

BE FREE

YESSSSSSS

… but was lured back to a secure area without coming into contact with the public, officials said.

NO

CRAP

DAMMIT

The zoo said in a post on Chinese microblogging site Weibo that a “naughty” male panda named Menglan climbed over a more than 6-foot-tall fence surrounding a panda breeding enclosure at the facility Wednesday.

Hmm. Three things jump out here, and we’ll go back to the bullet points to discuss them:

• I love him
• There is a big debate to be had somewhere about whether these animals should be in zoos or out in the wild in their natural habitat, but this column is so extremely not the place for that for so many reasons that we should just move on and leave it to people smarter than me
• I wish there was a video of my sweet prince scaling that fence

Wait a second…

What’s that?

There IS a video???!!!

SHOW ME THE VIDEO

YES

YES

YESSSSSSS

YESSSSSSSSS

LOOK AT THIS GUY

LOOK AT HIM

Menglan was lured back into the breeding enclosure by a zookeeper bearing food. The panda was not injured, and was observed “happily playing” after being returned to the enclosure.

The zoo said the enclosure’s security will be increased following the panda’s attempted escape.

Somewhere in this panda enclosure, two or more pandas are unrolling blueprints and holding small flashlights in their mouths and getting matching black turtlenecks and plotting their next escape. Maybe they’ve recruited a giraffe to be the lookout. The rhinos can clear a path.

I believe in them.

[WARNING: spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home]

This is a post about Spider-Man: No Way Home, but it’s also about Venom: Let There Be Carnage. If you’ve seen one but not the other, you should stop reading and go watch them both — beginning with Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the goofiest (and therefore, best) comic book movie of the year. Now that I’ve got the fine print out of the way…

In the Venom: Let There Be Carnage post-credits scene, Venom gives Eddie Brock a taste of his universe-spanning knowledge. Eddie is transported from his own universe to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Tom Hardy’s Eddie / Venom sees Tom Holland’s Peter Parker / Spider-Man in a Daily Bugle report. “That guy,” Venom says before licking Parker’s face on the TV. Yummy. That brings us to the Spider-Man: No Way Home mid-credits scene. Eddie is in Mexico getting drunk at a bar. He’s still in the MCU, and a bartender (played by Dani Rojas from Ted Lasso!) has just told him about Thanos and the blip. Unfortunately, before Venom can interact with Spider-Man, they’re transported back to their own timeline — although a little piece of the alien symbiote remains behind.

This is important for two reasons:

1. Spider-Man: No Way Home has Spider-Man facing five villains — Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro, Lizard, and Sandman — but the Sinister Six couldn’t be completed because Venom was drunk and couldn’t get to New York in time. Perfect.

2. That being said, the left-behind symbiote leaves open the possibility of two Venoms: one in the MCU, one in, ahem, Sony’s legally distinct Spider-Man Universe. Only one has a history of jumping into lobster tanks, however, and that’s the only Venom for me.

Marvel fans are torn on the mid-credits scene: it was exciting to see Tom Hardy, but it’s a shame that it’s likely his only cameo in the MCU.

LeVar Burton is on a hosting hot streak. The beloved Reading Rainbow and Star Trek: The Next Generation star has picked up another hosting gig following the Jeopardy! debacle that saw him passed over as a potential successor to Alex Trebek. (Executive Producer Mike Richards won the top position, only to be forced out after one day of taping following numerous allegations of racist and sexist remarks.) This time around, Burton has been scooped up as the new host of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and he couldn’t be more honored to be part of the rigorous academic event. Via Fox News:

Burton comes from a family of educators and said the bee represents “the inspirational, aspirational ideal of education.”

“I want to normalize the pursuit of knowledge in this culture. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?” Burton said. “Not just making stuff up and calling it a fact. Achievement through knowledge, scholarship, putting in the work to gain the reward.”

According to Scripps, Burton immediately said “yes” when offered the position, which is now his second hosting position since appearing on Jeopardy! over the summer. After that situation devolved into scandal, Burton realized it was a blessing in disguise and found a game show to call his own. Burton and Hasbro are currently working on a television version of Trivial Pursuit, which will feature the “iconic member of American pop culture” at the podium when it airs.

(Via Fox News)

Eric Clapton, despite being one of the all-time most revered guitarists and the man behind classic songs like “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight,” hasn’t earned a ton of goodwill for himself lately: The musician has refused to play venues with COVID vaccine mandates (but later did so anyway) and has given financial assistance to an anti-vax band.

Now, he finds himself in a situation that might rub some folks the wrong way: German publication DW notes that Clapton won a legal case against a 55-year-old German woman who was attempting to sell a CD featuring a bootleg recording of a Clapton concert from the ’80s, with the eBay price set at a lofty €9.95 (about $11.25). The decision was reached in a German court on Wednesday, December 15, and the injunction requires the defendant to pay the legal fees of both parties, which are approximately €3,400 (about $3,844) in total. If she continues to offer the CD for sale, she faces a fine of €250,000 (about $282,653) or six months in prison.

The defendant said she was unaware she was infringing copyright when putting the CD for sale and claimed that her late husband bought that CD from “a well-known department store” in 1987. The court ruled, though, that it didn’t matter that the defendant didn’t buy the CD herself and that she didn’t know the recording was made illegally.

It would seem this case was a matter of principal for Clapton, as a single bootleg sale likely wouldn’t put much of a dent in his bottom line: In the history of recorded music, only a few dozen artists have sold more albums than Clapton has.

Bernie “Senator Wingman” Sanders, who somehow helped Machine Gun Kelly score points with Megan Fox and lit up the 2016 campaign trail with the crowd’s “Feel The Bern” vibes, has had about enough of two Democrats acting like Democrats In Name only. That’s especially the case when it comes to the Build Back Better legislation that’s been slowly moving through Congress, back and forth, with no consensus in when this thing will happen.

Or if it will happen at all. There are 50 Republicans voting down party lines and 48 Democrats doing the same while Sinema and Manchin are essentially voting Republican. When it comes to the Build Back Better Act’s child tax credit extension, Manchin shut that down, which torpedoed the legislation at least until 2022. Via Mediaite, here’s what a fired-up Sanders said to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:

“You have 48 people in the Democratic caucus who are prepared, and a president of the United States prepared to think big. And you have two Democrats who, in my view, are kind of acting like Republicans. And to me, I respect other people’s points of view, but I do not respect the arrogance of any member of the senate who says, ‘You know what? I’m going to torpedo this entire bill, supported overwhelmingly by the American people.’

“You’ve got two people saying, “You know what? Hey, if you don’t do it my way – I don’t care what the president wants, I don’t care what 48 of my colleagues want – it’s my way or the highway.’ And that, I regard as arrogance. You can disagree. Look, I have disagreements, as you well know. You fight for your ideas but you don’t say, ‘My way or the highway.’ And that I feel very strongly about.”

It’s a real mess! Sinema and her Denim Vest have insisted that she’s not going Republican (although she sure thinks Mitch McConnell is hilarious) and Manchin has insisted the same, but they sure won’t budge on the Build Back Better legislation. Now, it won’t see the light of day this year. And who knows what will happen in 2022.

(Via Mediaite)