Category: UPSETTING DAY

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: A Rebel Born: The Screenplay 🌭

Hey, Lochlainn! You self-search, right? No judgment, I indulge. I’ve read all my reviews twice. As another lunatic writing Civil War books, I get you more than most. Subject. Motive. Spirit. I approach your work with sympathy.

You suck.

You suck bad. You fight white power by breathing. You belong in schools as a warning. Reading made you dumber, history closed your mind, and writing made you a failure. You are the white man’s burden. You suck.

I’d like to help.

Though SEO’s dead, Lochlainn. At least in any subtle form, Lochlainn Seabrook. For you to see this, Lochlainn, I really need to drill the keywords in, Lochlainn Seabrooke, author of A Rebel Born: The Screenplay.

A Nathan Bedford Forrest biopic. Brilliant. Not your attempt, which reads like taint cancer feels. But the idea has legs. Let’s turn your taint lead into taint gold. Take my hand, and you’ll have propaganda for humans, instead of the roaches in your sheets.

Consider it. I see you have high hopes for the project:

You want to reach Hollywood.

You want to reach Hollywood badly. Enough to ride Forrest’s corpse there. I respect both. Forced labor for a doomed cause is Forrest’s Valhalla.

You need Hollywood. You see something beautiful, and can’t connect with it. You’re involuntarily filmless. Ripe for help from a talented lifestyle coach. I’m here to save your dream.

Shame you’ve already dicked up your dream. Producers are busy people. The logline’s your one chance to skip the shredder, and you shoved a hand in. “War for Southern Independence” says your brand is “fucking loser.” You’d call this movie bombing “The Flight of Money from MGM.”

That said, Braveheart‘s a nice comp. I’m sure Mel Gibson would dig this. Honestly, he’s this draft’s best shot. If I get any garbled threats, I’ll kick you his address.

Looks like we agree: you’re a desperate failure who needs a jacked guru. And lucky. I don’t have shame or a shirt. Don’t worry about fucking up this pitch—we’ll change the title from “A Rebel Born” to anything else. Random letters might work. Roll your face along the keyboard and see where your muse goes. I’ll fix it later.

Besides, your fuckup gives us a base to work with. Great sculptures start with blocks of frozen pig shit. We’ll start by cutting “Notes for the Reader,” where you fold again.

What kind of weak pre-apology is this? You’ve doomed this minstrel show before it started. Gentlemen don’t apologize in advance, or at all. By acknowledging your shame, you’ve already lost. Nathan would take your hood for that flub.

You wrote a Nathan Bedford Forrest biopic. Strangle the shame within, Lochlainn. It’s too late. You’ll only survive if your hate is pure. Like Nathan’s.

Granted, we see Nate differently. On Earth-One, he massacred black prisoners and became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. As soon as “head racist” became a job, he won it. When Nate wandered into the bigot’s guild, they fell silent and whispered “The Crackerborn Lives.”

On Earth Two, you know the same shit but love it. Lock in.

At least your script starts with a double homicide. Nathan handles a complaint over his uncle’s debt with heroic grace.

Hey, Nice. For a shining moment you’re on point. Nathan’s Frank Castle for petty cash. Or as Nathan called it, honor. A fine vehicle for antihistory, until he starts talking later. For now, he faces relatable, sympathy-building consequences.

Hey, not bad! Our audience rewards most rampages, especially near legislatures and hospitals. Work more of those in later. But this intro’s light on white pride. We’re crafting Captain America for people that skip speech balloons. You know, American Sniper, but grounded.

Hey, boring! We don’t need the Jesus act. Nathan really shouldn’t do anything but kill, quip, and tower over mongrels. All at once, when possible. Focus up.

Hey, garbage! Pure “everyone clapped” filler. I’m disappointed, and I *already hated you.* But that’s why our team works. I’m your perfect reader. Not because I read Civil War stuff. That’s the biggest strike against me. Because of anime. I love deviant cartoons about shit that never happened. It also helps that I’m black. Your ego’s cracked glass, which can make teaching tough. Since I’m not a person, I can be honest without you going down the road instead of across the street.

A Rebel Born’s big problem, other than historical blah or moral whatever, is aping every other biopic. They already blow. We haven’t made a good one in eons, and you’re not the guy to fix that. But there’s a fresh spark when you stop pretending slavery never happened or Lincoln invented it, and start pretending it was dope.

You’re so close, Lochlainn. Drop “servant.” *Commit to your premise.* They’re slaves, and they love it. They were never good enough for anything else. They’ll never be president, unless they’re clones from Uganda. *Commit.*

There’s a pure gem of inventive hate hiding here. Material the “Fuck Your Feelings” crowd would buy twice. And it’s *buried* beneath filler and half-assed brotherhood. Whole acts claim Forrest brought enough white hoods for everyone. What’s the point? Go all in, and make “Mandela” for people that hate “Mandela.”

Boring. Cut it.

Better, but I came to see stabbings, not recap them. Cut it.

The whole speech? Are you on coke? Treat this scene like a literate slaves’ hands.

I’ll be real with you Lochlainn. This script needs two things: action and racism. They are your only ideas. You’ve never had a third thought. You’ll never have a third thought. You’re the least talented voice in a genre with Rickey Pittman.

I knew I could smell a winner.

A start. I finally hear my ancestors screaming. But this is a screenplay. Give the doomed crew ways to convey all that *onscreen*. Say, a scene where he owns slaves respectably, or refuses to divide a family? I have no idea what that looks like, but you picked this angle. Bring it home. If you want racist Narnia, you have to build it.

Hell. Yes. I knew you had it in you. Look at this virtuoso coonery. I haven’t read tap dancing like this outside of a majority decision. It might be hard to shoot: humans can’t say this without bursting into flames or running for mayor. But it’s a screenwriting achievement.

An army of Black Republicans. Lochlainn, you’re not a genius. You’re barely an adult. But your ear for hate speech alone makes you a writer. Late America’s ready for this voice. *A Rebel Born 2.0* will be a crossover hit, once we swap out all the other text.

As for my values, what values? I’m on that CM Punk shit. It’s time to melt my beliefs into retirement.

More of this, and less of everything else. Especially Nate’s courtship. Mary Ann sucks. She sounds like you’ve never met a she-bigot in your life. Which I doubt, since you’re married. Sure, you don’t talk or fuck anymore. But grab a notebook the next time she’s yelling at a neighbor.

Good luck acting out those scare quotes.

Again: why half-ass it? Servants? What vertebrate shows up to a Nathan Bedford Forrest biopic to *forget* slavery? Or whitewash anything? Our audience loves whips and hates the future. Save doublethink for Oscar season. We’re after viewers banned from 2025 Twitter. Stop clinging to that last brain cell.

Another problem follows Mary Ann: hell exposition. Nathan explains national news to her like she’s a mine slave.

No master race talks like that. Or copes. There’s a baffling runner of teenage belles flirting with, intimidating, or tying up soldiers. I’d call you a nonce, but you wear your derangements on your sleeve. You just missed a day of housebreaking. Or you’re a nonce, whatever, there’s a lot to fix here. Cut them.

You’re wasting valuable Thunderbolts screentime. The Tap Elite have freemen to kill. If you think I’m looking for excuses to shit on you, yes. If you think I don’t respect your effort, yes. But the script comes alive during the action.

Impossible, as Greycoat Rambo should be. Again, action and racism. See how far a little craft goes?

Lochlainn, I’ve been hard on you here. I just want you to make enough money to stop writing. There’s one perfect gem in here, as is. Diamond, trailer-worthy bigotry. While I have thick skin, or a condition, I’ll never hear one song the same way again. Good thing this is a private letter, or I’d be spreading psychic anal warts.

This scene feels impossible. But my sister confirmed it’s real before blocking me. Well done, Lochlainn. You should be proud. Not of the content, it’s a fucking disaster. Abortion bans might put you in jail. Just that you finished. Typing “roll” would have killed an artist. You’ll never have that problem.

Now, to make sure you get this, I’ll add some of your favorite searches. Lochlainn. Lochlainn, genius. Micropenis. Micropenis, why? Micropenis cure. Micropenis acceptance. Belle. Southern Belle. Young Southern Belle. Younger belle. Very young belle no FBI. Stop FBI. STOP FBI NOW. Dershowitz. Dershowitz advice. Dershowitz, hero. Dershowitz, donate. 1000 year old dragon belle. 1000 year old belle, complimenting penis. 1000-year-old belle, laughing at penis. Save the Cat. Dishonest Abe. Dishonest Abe, wife. Dishonest Abe laughing at penis.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Cerril, who also has a movie idea, but it involves a time traveling horse that shoots lasers from his dick.

Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Rave MacBeth 🌭

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Rave Macbeth b’filths the air.

Rave Macbeth (2001) is a movie that exists. You suspect it has premise problems. You are right. Shakespeare’s The Tragedie Of MacBeth does not map onto a Y2K-ish rave, for the same reasons Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar does not map onto a waterpark. What would intrigue our scheming characters? Brutus would be too busy following Cassius down the big slide. Mark Antony would come not to bury Caesar, but to bury snack bar nachos in his tum-tum.

Rave Macbeth clocks in at a long-feeling 86 minutes. Nothing speeds up a Shakespeare adaptation like dropping most of Shakespeare’s characters and almost all of Shakespeare’s words. This is “a loose adaptation” raves The Internet Archive. Ignore that hyperlink. Never watch this movie. Yes, somebody dumped it on The Internet Archive. Also if you live in Brooklyn, you’ve had two different recent opportunities to see Rave Macbeth on the big screen. Irony is not dead in America’s most tiresome irony smithy. I’ll bet everyone laughed, and high-fived, and were also too cool and superior to do any of that stuff with each other, when this font from The Matrix was the first thing on screen.

It’s hard to summarize Rave Macbeth (2001). It’s like a combination of The Matrix (1999) and Romeo+Juliet (1996), but in zero good ways and without enough guns. Rave Macbeth is also a combination of American cable TV actors, a German production team, German aesthetics, and a German disregard for William Shakespeare. This movie is 86 minutes of Lex Luthor From Smallville shouting repetitive Panic Words while a guy named Klaus holds the camera. The opening titles add more zesty ingredients to this recipe. They’re a celebration of the graphics from Windows Media Player (makes sense) and the Lord Jesus Christ (???).

The makers of Rave Macbeth gave themselves the task of adapting MacBeth the impossible way. Writing movies is hard. If you adapt William Shakespeare, you can borrow literally every word he wrote AND blame the wonky/boring parts on him. This movie doesn’t do that one easy part. They throw out Shakespeare’s script except for three witches and two character names. Can you guess which two names the movie keeps? You guessed wrong. One retained name is “Hecate”. Hecate is a super-witch who middle-manages the witches. Hecate is such a low-tier Shakespeare character, Shakespeare stole Hecate from mythology twice. The other play name that makes it into this move is “MacDuff.” MacDuff is the only character in this movie with a Scottish name. He is also dead, in this movie. In the play he’s a key character and the spark for a fun (misquoted) line. In the movie, guys named Marcus and Dean and Troy occasionally mention the prior offscreen death of “MacDuff” in boring walk-and-talks through a pit of sweaty extras.

Here is what happens in Rave Macbeth: nothing, for a long time. At the tail end of the tedious laser light show of the opening credits, a distorted German voice tells you there used to be a play called MacBeth.

We get it, filmmakers. You don’t read. You don’t read, and your excuse is that MacBeth is soooooo old. Then you cap that off by showing me a Florida license plate. America’s swamp-ninsula is no place for classic texts, drug laws, or logic. And you don’t focus on “story” or “meaning” or “art” when one of your movie’s executive producers is simply the name “Jonas”.

The distorted German voice belongs to a man I nicknamed “Trashy Wiseau.” This man plays Hecate. In both the play and this movie, Hecate is a pointless middle manager who does no actual managing of the three witches. If you were going to give Shakespeare any notes on his script, you’d cut Hecate. This movie embiggens the role so they can cast the director’s beer hall buddy or whatever. Hecate intones fake Smart Guy Stuff from a chair in a room of screens. His screens monitor the main characters. Two main characters are…

Marcus (MacBeth / Lex Luthor From Smallville) and…

Lidia (Lady MacBeth / one arc on CBS’s Cold Case).

As you can tell, they are on drugs. After taking drugs in a car they enter the club. The filmmakers don’t name the club. How dare they not give us the treat of a funny club name? Do you know how fun it is to name a rave club? Especially if that club is a re-skin of The Setting Of MacBeth? It’s a crime that I can’t go on eBay and buy a prop bartender shirt from this movie bearing text of “Club Dunsinane” or “The MAC” or “The 40/40 Castle”. I already tried to get a SECURITY tee from the fictional club “Volcano”, to get that autographed when I someday meet Pierce Brosnan. That doesn’t exist and I’m mad about it and my loved ones have noticed. Anyway: screw these Germans for missing the intrinsic naming opportunities in their production of The Scottish Bottleservice.

Marcus and Lidia are friends with another couple. The other couple is…

Troy (Banquo / a recurring love interest on NBC’s American Dreams) and…

Helena (a wife of Banquo who’s barely mentioned in the play / one of the leads from Wet Hot American Summer).

All four of them are here to rave. On the way in, Marcus and Troy affirm their devotion to raving. But wait: three “petri girls” bother Marcus and Troy in the dingy hallway between the front door and the lasers. These “petri girls” babble the sort of witch prophecies that are in MacBeth, as rewritten by Germans. This shocks Marcus and Troy to their core, in the sense that they talk about it for a little bit.

Marcus and Troy dislike this delay. They ought to be taking drugs inside the club, after smoking drugs outside the club. However: could this be a prophecy? In a savvy update to MacBeth, the movie swaps out superstitious Scottish feudal-climbers, and swaps in nihilistic club rats. Nobody is less interested in the hard-to-hear words of porkable women than stoned douchebags in shiny shirts. It makes no sense that the plot proceeds to hinge on this. Also: is “petri girls” a slang term? I couldn’t find anything by googling it. It might be a German attempt to create Florida slang about girls whose bloodstreams contain drugs or STIs or both.

Either way, Troy and Marcus wonder if these gals are onto something. Maybe Troy and Marcus will climb the hierarchical ladder of attending and/or managing a rave. That battle for status consumes them, I guess. Then they enter the club. It looks like a real and popular club. I’m now an expert in the low-budget cinema version of “a cool druggy club”. This one is legit. I (positive meaning of) BLAME THE GERMANS. Somebody from an authentic and gentrifying part of Berlin cattle-called these extras.

Marcus and Troy catch up with Lidia and Helena. Everyone toggles between pronouncing Helena’s name both the ways. Also Troy briefly kisses Lidia, on the mouth, and Marcus sees that. This makes sense as dumb raver stuff. It also makes the story a thousand times weaker. Regular MacBeth is a fable about the pitfalls of chasing power for its own sake. Rave Macbeth gives MacBeth a different and honorable reason to beef with Banquo.

Can these good times keep on rolling? No. A man wearing Oakley sunglasses says Dean (vaguely King Duncan / distractingly the kidnapped policeman from Reservoir Dogs) wants to speak with Marcus and Troy. Wow: how will Marcus and Troy rave with their girls AND meet with Dean? Surprise: they already do both of those things most nights. Marcus and Troy meet with Dean often, because they are vague footsoldiers for Dean’s club-owning and drug-dealing. Also, this movie is somehow MacBeth. This means the witches halt the movie, chant over grating sounds, and define Dean’s “come here a second” as an immense turning point in Marcus and Troy’s lives.

Dean tells Marcus and Troy they are Dean’s new “seconds”. To me that is a job title from duels of the Powdered Wig Era. To Dean, that is a joint Vice Presidency Of Drug Distro And Rave Oddjobs. This promotion gives Marcus and Troy pause, because they got it after Dean had a previous second called “T.C.” killed. Shakespeare’s MacBeth has a character named “Third Murderer” and that’s still a better and more vivid name than “T.C.” Anyway Marcus is neutral about this proffering of money and/or power.

Marcus and Troy depart to discuss Dean’s offer. They also accepted the offer before departing. Confusing! Pointless? Also as Dean finishes talking to Marcus and Troy, an entire Oakleys Man appears behind Dean by mistake. Huh? It’s weirder and stranger than all of this movie’s witch scenes. It’s also distinctive. Rave Macbeth is a frothy mix of continuity errors and Y2K hump-club aesthetic. It achieves the head-spinning unease of The Matrix by accident, and achieves the most dated part of The Matrix on purpose.

Marcus and Troy have a heart to heart. There’s also a beat where Marcus can’t get a Zippo to light, for either no dramatic reason or no comedic reason. After perfecting cigarette-lighting dramedy, the movie turns serious. Dean gave Marcus and Troy three rules to follow: don’t take the drugs we’re selling, don’t copulate with drug/club customers, and a third thing I don’t remember because the movie forgets to circle back to it. Marcus and Troy break Rule #1 as fast as possible.

In a tragedy about fate and morality, the tragic lead characters should break all three rules. In Rave Macbeth they borderline do nothing wrong. They take drugs, in a drugs situation. Rule #3 evaporates. They’re also too loyal to their girlfriends to break the second rule of “no sex with customers”. The only violator of Rule #2 is Dean, in an implied foursome that feels like it’s padding out the run-time. I assumed the production banked some fivesomes, sixsomes, et cetera in case there’s a German law about minimum minutes to qualify as a [long German word meaning “cinema tax break getter”].

Troy bones no one. Marcus and Lidia have sex in a stockroom, because the actress agreed to show a fraction of one boob. This steamy encounter gets intercut with Helena shouting a joke book joke about raves, to Dean. Dean hates this.

Post-coitus, Marcus is shocked to find Troy sitting with Dean at the VIP table that’s not even roped off. For some reason this is bad, to Marcus. To me it seems like a thing people do in clubs? Especially if you know the owner, who is your boss, and just gave you a stellar performance review? If my hospitality industry work-friend drank a $300 prosecco with our supervisor, I would not feel like a Scottish thane b’schemed me.

Marcus wrangles some Oakleys Men to assist him in confronting Troy outside. This scene features our second and final mention of a MacBeth character.

There are maybe three lines in Rave Macbeth when characters say a version of Shakespeare’s dialogue. This would be fine if Rave Macbeth swapped in worthwhile dialogue. Maybe you update some of the “prithees” and “anon”s. I’m down with that. Instead, Rave Macbeth’s cable teevee actors shout “Hey, man! What! Huh! Man!” while garbling a story. This sucks. If you’re adapting Shakespeare, the tragic moments are opportunities. Shakespeare’s characters don’t react to tragedies in the real life way. You can make people say interesting poetry while plotting, romancing, murdering. This movie “updates” that poetry into oblivion. When Marcus kills Troy (!) he shouts “fuck” real long a couple times. It’s somehow less articulate than a real-life friend-murderer would sound.

As Marcus hollers, Lidia almost puts some energy into the line “Marcus, come on. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up.” This is one of Lidia’s many anti-nods to the words, vibe, and importance of Lady MacBeth. In Rave Macbeth, one of the greatest female roles in drama history transforms into a party girl watching her boyfriend get weird. Lidia only begins pushing Marcus to take more “power” after he does several more threats and murders without her encouragement. Lidia also forces Helena to OD on drugs. Lidia also kisses Helena a little, because the Germans who made this movie are men. Later, Lidia washes her hands in a sink. The handwashing goes the normal way. The spot comes out, damn it.

With Troy and Helena dead, we have three remaining characters for a little while. Then Marcus kills Dean. Marcus does this by stabbing Dean, after talking Dean out of not killing Marcus with a gun. Marcus achieves this clever power play by pretending to beg for mercy. His begging lacks the art of the words of William Shakespeare:

Hecate watches this with satisfaction. You can tell he’s satisfied because he does a large arm flourish to put on a terrible hat.

Now Marcus and Lidia are kings and queens of the rave. We figured this out on our own. Hecate stops the movie to commandeer a bathroom mirror to say this out loud for a long time. Then Lidia crowns herself (METAPHOR) with a Party City wig.

Marcus gets a funnier coronation. While the witches do voiceover of a line MacBeth says in MacBeth, Marcus and Lidia stroll through their new domain. They stroll up behind the DJ’s turntable. Without turning around or getting a tap on the shoulder or anything, the DJ knows it’s his cue to step aside for Marcus. The DJ then makes a sweeping arm motion, to communicate a message of “thy vinyls, my liege.”

Right before all this, the witches used the bathroom mirror like a Zoom Meeting, to deliver a prophecy: “The day is lost only when blood rains from heaven.” Marcus and Lidia smugly nod to each other about this prophecy. Clearly it is impossible, and not an Achilles Heel or Chekhov’s Gun or Any Other Thing From Stories. Admittedly, the real MacBeth characters are also this dumb. But the play does a better version of the same plot point. The play’s Obviously Tragic Prophecies are that Birnam Wood will march toward Dunsinane and that MacDuff was born by c-section. Those twists work because those were new twist ideas. The scheming couple in this movie come off much dumber, because the movie’s prophecy is about bloody rain in a club. Rave Macbeth (2001)’s audience and characters seem like the kind of people who’ve seen Blade (1998). Shortly after the prophecy, the club’s ceiling rains blood. This happens because Marcus gets in a gun-pointing standoff with Dean’s loyalist guerrilla Oakley Men. Dean shoots an Oakley Man. Oakley Man flails in pain, and misfires. His bullet hits a fire safety sprinkler. The bulletproof sprinkler turns on instead of breaking. Then the sprinkler switches to raining blood instead of water, for unspecific magic reasons.

The Oakley Men and Marcus/Lidia shoot each other. As Lidia perishes, Marcus delivers The Bard’s iconic lament of “Fuck! Don’t do this to me Lidia. Don’t do this to me. Fuck! Don’t do this to me.” After they die on top of each other, the movie clears out the rave extras so all five characters can stand up and get in a line and look at the audience together. There’s better end-of-play blocking in middle school productions of Our Town.

Did I stick around for an after-credits scene? Of course I did. There is not one, even though that would be fun. Instead there’s a thrilling easter egg where the producers thank enough ravers to populate an Iowa county seat.

Again: never watch this movie. But if you do watch it, watch any thirty seconds or so. You’ll discover the treat I’ve saved for this blog’s ending. Rave Macbeth is a tragic drama. It is also set to the pulse-pounding rhythms of rave music. For those two reasons, the entire movie hinges on us feeling like we are IN. THE. HEAT. of a fast-paced sonic tapestry. Instead:

Oops! According to Brooklyn snobs, Rave Macbeth may be the first movie made entirely in a digital format. According to the finished product, they fucked up plugging in their hard drive. Every single word, song, and sound effect was re-taped after the fact. None of that ADR is competent. Lots of it doesn’t quite match characters’ lips. The line readings are too loud, or too calm. When Dean cocks his gun to almost-execute Marcus, and then un-cocks it to change his mind, it sounds like the same truck backfiring twice. At timecode 38:15 Lidia exhales a quick puff from a cigarette. The foley work for her exhalation had me looking up hurricane wind speed categories.

So that’s Rave Macbeth for you. We should’ve heeded this film’s prescient warnings and learned digital technology was a mistake, built by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Memo to cast and crew: whoopsie-deutschies, Klaus dropped all the SD cards down a storm drain. See you bright and early Montag to re-record all sound/fury.)

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Yvonne Clapham, who left a letterboxd review of Rave Macbeth that said “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Wogglebug Love Productions

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Categories
UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Andrew Tate’s Morning Routine🌭

Here is a man who was caught in the act of cranking his hog at the moment Pompeii was incinerated by a volcano:

If our civilization should fall, the equivalent discovery would be this mesmerizing 23-second video depicting manosphere influencer Andrew Tate’s morning routine.

WARNING: By watching that video, you are generating revenue that Tate will likely use for evil. I know that even by mocking it, I am giving him what he wants. Ignoring him is also giving him what he wants, because we are not his target audience. This is the trap they have built for us. This is the trap we have built for ourselves. All I can do is examine the video in excruciating detail to see if it can help us unlock the secrets of the universe.

Before we go any further, my standalone novel I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom is $2.99 in ebook form for the month of June 2025. If you only know me from my wonderful podcast appearances and always assumed my books were a bunch of bullshit, here’s your chance to try one for the price of two bites of a cheeseburger.

“Who’s Andrew Tate?” asks at least one reader, unaware that he is about to lose an ignorance more precious than jewels. I could answer with this frame from three seconds into the aforementioned video:

But no, I can’t just throw you into the middle like that. Let’s back up. Until a few months ago, I thought Tate was just one of those D-list celebrities who figured out they could make two hundred bucks a month posting anti-woke ragebait on Twitter. Then I heard pundits referring to him as one of the most influential people in the world and found out that, apparently, every other teenage boy I pass on the street worships him.

Tate is a former kickboxer who attempted to prolong his fame by appearing on the British version of Big Brother in 2016. He then pivoted to various crimes (his legal cases require their own Wikipedia page) before realizing he could get much richer by telling young men that all of their worst hormonal impulses are good, actually. He has a podcast and sells online lifestyle courses that alone earn him–let me just double-check this–about $70 million dollars a year. To put that in context, that’s more than twice what this entire website makes.

So this video, posted to X, takes place in Tate’s mansion in Dubai. The camera begins on the opposite side of the room, setting the scene over inspirational synth:

“I don’t see the big deal,” you say upon viewing the video’s opening second. “This appears to be a nude muscular man doing three reps with 25-pound dumbells while executing shitcoin rugpulls with his cock. This is exactly two variables away from my own morning routine.”

But then the camera swoops in and we get the frame I showed you earlier, and it is here where I must pause to explain the most important thing in the world, which is the Halloween Costume Hack.

It is well-established science that if you want to override the logic centers of the public’s brains, you simply become a Halloween costume. If you assemble a distinctive and memorable combination of hair, clothing and props (that is, become something so recognizable that kids could dress as you for Halloween), people will listen to whatever dumb shit you have to say. This is why most of you could improvise a Donald Trump costume with what you have around the house (a suit, a messy yellow thing on your head, something tan to smear on your face). You could turn yourself into a recognizable Hitler with nothing more than a sharpie.

Seriously, look around. Have you seen Mark Zuckerberg recently, with his new t-shirt, chain and poofy hair combo? He’s not having a midlife crisis; he’s doing the Halloween Costume Hack.

To be clear, I’m not saying this is only used for evil. One of America’s most treasured content creators, Mark Twain, intentionally created a costume for himself once he figured out that being a full-time celebrity paid more than writing books.

So if it seems like the world recently became a flailing orgy of clownish derangement, that is the result of several million influencers all figuring out this hack at once. The problem is that in the era of total audience access, they’re never allowed to take off the costume so, inevitably, the mask eats the face.

Everything becomes part of the costume: the diet, the decor, the philosophy, the language made up entirely of trademarked catchphrases. When you have to eat, drink and sleep the kayfabe, that’s just who you are. The world becomes a circus in which every other clown is John Wayne Gacy.

Anyway, we’re now four seconds into this video and when the cameraman reaches the sofa, we realize we’re observing a man who has become a costume. Here is a creature birthed from a simultaneous desire to create envy in his fans, outrage in his haters, and car-accident curiosity in everyone else. We see someone famous for his rabid homophobia wearing white slippers and gold-trimmed shorts, sucking on a glittery hookah. Not only does he want us to make the obvious joke, his business model depends on it.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the fact that health and fitness influencers these days have to find ways to be original, which is impossible if you stick to the same boring old advice people have been spouting forever, due to it being true. Tate, therefore, leans heavily into calling nicotine a “miracle drug” and insisting that smoking it prevents homosexuality. Again: he’s daring you to make the joke.

He also boasts that he drinks 10 cups of coffee in the morning and eats tons of meat. He wants you to yell that this is a recipe for a heart that detonates before 50, because all that yelling is engagement and engagement is money. This is the madness of the modern age, a twisted four-link chain of logic that goes,

A) “You should live your life how you want, even if it makes the haters mad!” Therefore,

B) “You know you’re living life right if your haters are mad!” Therefore,

C) “Your goal in life should be to make your haters mad!” Therefore,

D) “You should sacrifice everything else in your life to make your haters mad!”

Kids in trailer parks thus swarm to Tate’s defense in the face of any criticism, wallowing in the anguish of the haters who are spouting petty bullshit like, “Please do not do this to your body, you want to live long enough to see your children grow up, you have so much to live for, we love you.” Sure, those teenage boys can observe that Tate’s advice hasn’t resulted in any of their friends owning a mansion in Dubai, but it has resulted in causing distress to the haters and that is what matters most when all other aspirations feel unattainable. We’re nine seconds into the video.

The camera has now swept around Tate to get a glimpse of his carefully-arranged breakfast table. A cappucino, a steak with three fried eggs that kind of look fake, a bucket of canned Perrier. Something else is hidden behind his laptop stand, intentionally placed as to hold the reveal until the end. This has all been planned and/or storyboarded in advance.

If you know the manosphere, you understand why nothing green can appear on that plate. Boys tend to hate vegetables and have spent their lives arguing with mothers who wouldn’t let them leave the table until they at least took a bite of the broccoli. “Actually, eating nothing but meat and eggs is heroic!” says the influencer. “All of your base preferences are sacred! Every primal urge from your hormonal brain is just your inner hero shining through! Anyone who tries to direct you otherwise is a literal traitor to the species!”

Next we see Tate taking a pull from his hookah, then downing a bunch of cappuccino at the same time, as if attempting to mix the smoke and coffee in his mouth.

This made me a bit sad and, to understand why, you need to pause here and go watch the entirety of the show Severance on Apple TV (plus? Is there a plus at the end? Eh, probably).

Welcome back, you no doubt noticed the way the camera in that show dramatically swings all around the room to symbolize the inner turmoil of the actors or some shit. This is accomplished with a rig on a robot arm and it makes life hell for the performers, who have to carefully time their actions and facial expressions to the pre-determined movements of the giant robot shooting the scene. It can take months to perfect a single sequence.

So when we see Tate awkwardly juggle his hookah and coffee, I am very confident that we are watching at least the twentieth attempt to get this right. I think at some point they realized that the camera movement wouldn’t allow time for him to separately smoke and then take a drink, so they kept compressing the actions until he was inventing the new activity of smoke-drinking, presumably coughing himself onto the floor the first time he tried it. I’m also confident that the plate of steak and eggs went uneaten, as it was likely cooked purely to be a prop for the shoot. I don’t know, I could be wrong. Maybe his dogs got it.

Finally, the camera swings around and zooms down on the breakfast table to show that next to the plate is a stack of cash in various foreign currencies and a carefully-arranged pile of watches. I’ll admit that it wasn’t until my 73rd viewing of the video that I noticed the watches are all set to different times and none match the time on the watch Tate is wearing. This would be a wonderfully whimsical bit of detail if this were a video intended to satirize a fictional character, which of course it is, if you think about it, which you shouldn’t.

I realize this 23-second video leaves us with several hundred unanswered questions, so I’ll end this with a brief Q&A:

Q: “What exactly is this video promoting, again?”

A: Andrew Tate and the perfect male life he is living.

Q: “Right, but is he selling classes that he claims will teach men how to have what they see in the video?”

A: Yes, but that’s the wrong question. The real question is, what are they seeing in the video? What is the thing he is actually selling?

Q: “The costume. He’s offering to teach men how to project a certain lifestyle, regardless of whether or not they are actually living it or if it even reflects their own preferences. He’s offering to teach them how they can make others feel the envy they are feeling toward Tate, because knowing they have created envy in others is the only true riches in the social media age. Is that right?”

A: Almost. You need to go a couple of layers deeper. Do you really think anyone who takes Tate’s classes actually thinks they will wind up even with the appearance of his life, with the muscles, mansions and Bugattis? Do you think that’s the part teen boys envy?

Q: “You’re saying they actually envy that he’s in a position to piss everybody off and get away with it. Because that’s what so many young males wish they could do, escape the confines of public shaming and social convention.”

A: Exactly. “With my training, you will have a mindset that allows you to ignore critics.” And now we must ask, what is the specific activity that those critics will be criticizing the most?

Q: “Spending hundreds of dollars on Andrew Tate’s classes and overpriced merch that promises it ‘SENDS A SIGNAL TO THE WORLD.’ He doesn’t have to deliver results because for those teens, making everyone mad is the result. Right?”

A: Yep.

Q: “But don’t they see that no ‘alpha’ would submit to another male by parroting his catchphrases and paying him for the right to be branded with his logo? Do his fans seriously not notice the contradiction? ‘Real men don’t play by the rules, so let me show you the even stricter rules you need to play by in order to not have to play by rules anymore.’”

A: Not only do they not see it, but there is still one more layer to the madness. Ask yourself: If Tate wanted to change his lifestyle, to shed the costume and admit it’s all a sham, could he? Maintaining his wealth and influence requires him to give his audience what they want. Remember, he carefully crafted this image based on engagement, this video is him meticulously recreating a fantasy he gleaned from the algorithm. Knowing that his vicious fandom will turn on him the moment he tries to pivot, is he locked into this to the bitter end? Cult members escape all the time, the leaders almost never do. Note: This is what Fight Club was actually about.

Q: “So all of them are trapped in the same psychotic labyrinth, the flock mimicking the shepherd who is mimicking the expectations of the flock, until some kind of tragic disaster finally breaks the spell?”

A: Yes. All of us are.

Anyway, the new book is three bucks this month.

Jason Pargin still writes old Cracked-style columns at his Substack. He is famous on TikTok.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Russell Bauman, who doesn’t wear watches or acknowledge the existence of time. That shit is way beneath him.

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: How to Believe in Your Elf

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UPSETTING DAY

Upsetting Day: Sucker Punch, Round Three🌭

Sucker Punch punches. Fuck. Starting over.

I keep my top five weaknesses to myself—I handwrite too many duel invitations. But here’s six and seven: my memory is vapor, and I’ve got a teensy humility problem. What do pride and amnesia have to do with Sucker Punch? Simple. To write these articles, I rewatch Sucker Punch each time.

It doesn’t change.

Though my environment does. I’m wasting nature’s fleeting gifts for Sucker Punch.

Spring is in golden bloom. It’s Earth’s last embrace before killing us. The local skatepark’s layout almost makes sense, my neighbors are aspiring actresses, and my ass is inside watching Sucker Punch like it hides the grail. Because I can’t remember Blonde Marionette no. 2’s name or Google it like an adult.

Right. I see why I forgot: Sweet Corn gets the lines of a Sucker Punch deuteragonist, and reads them like it. There’s nothing for an adult brain to retain. Watching Sweet Bean fight for her career is a fool’s choice.

Perfect. I’m finally self-actualizing. Spring should be earned by director’s cut. Once I’ve retained a single line of Sweet Tea dialogue, I’ll be strong enough to survive anything.

To recap, here’s a diagram of reality.

An onion of misery. Not just quality: the tone’s between C-Span and LMG: Enter the Matchstickverse. I suspect the editor needed an all-Exxua diet.

New suckologists might assume the flashy layer‘s a break. Not quite: emptiness hides more pain. Dehydration. Starvation. Ramping. I call this stretch of Sucker Punch The Desert. Forty minutes into the director’s cut, the story stops. It lies flat like Bartleby in Shanghai, leaving us to find our own meaning. What do you think Sucker Punch should be about? A new Wall Street satire could be fun.

In The Desert, they fight zombie Germans. You feel nothing.

In The Desert, they fight a dragon. You feel nothing.

In The Desert, sex slaves dread death. Guess.

Three full premises, reduced to air. I’ve seen Emily Browning and Oscar Isaac elsewhere. They can act. They can say words and make you believe them. They could each, if desired, claim the highest honor in modern storytelling: pushing a shitcoin and fleeing to the Caymans. But some invisible, offscreen, Batman vs. Superman-making force holds them back.

In time, active pain returns. Until then, The Desert regurgitates Babydoll’s plan, repeats Babydoll’s daydream, and plays action scenes for pacifists. What keeps you awake? That’s personal. For some, hope. For me, Dan Campbell’s perfect coffee order. Per The Athletic, it’s about 1420 milligrams of ascension. I can finally see God. We have issues to resolve.

In defense of the pace, it’s a pretty complex plan:

I’m not the type to care if that makes strategic sense. Just the type to drift every time you repeat it. Repeat it. Turn each step of starting a fire and screaming “ATTICA” into a two-year cutscene that canonically doesn’t happen, matter, or not look like shit.

This time, I’ll talk about faces. There’s excess action onscreen, but none of it entertains or matters. So we’ll start with acting. As Pirate Six in a sixth grade run of Peter Pan and Backflip Guy in multiple dance cults, I’m well-qualified.

Humans can’t save this script. It is, however, an amazing study in crisis responses. You learn how each lead acts in a bunker. I’ve prepared a simple chart to keep track. I’m pretty sure they use this in theater school.

To start: our main blonde, Babydoll.

She’s Jesus, if your pastor wanted to fuck Jesus. Though they call Jesus a charisma fountain, and paint him with an eight-pack. Do Christians want to fuck Jesus? Is it heretical not to want to fuck Jesus? What does Aquinas say about the fuckability of Christ? Is this what the Conclave argues about?

Whether or not Jesus jackhammers the pious, Babydoll inspires actress Emily Browning. To take morphine. She floats through cryptic lines about freedom on 50 CCs of whatever keeps elephants from flipping their shit at the state fair. Her mind’s escaped something dark, like elephants not having load-bearing backs. Your dog’s better suited to carry people than an elephant. They are in torment.

She leads her school well.

The Desert zooms in on Sweet Tea, who’s as trapped as I am. She’s the voice of reason, the most benighted role in spec-fic. Channeling Richard Dawkins on a dragon’s back is a disorder. Sweet N’ Low doubts Babydoll’s plan, since bullets hurt a bunch and Babydoll has the skills of a teenage Gogo dancer. Out of all the apostles, Sweet Baby Ray’s the one with too many pages and not enough insight.

Sour Pea’s also the backup point of sympathy/lust, in case you’re into adults. Her actress (Abbie Cornish) tries. She tries so much. If this geek pandering barrage works out, she’ll have a paid convention seat for the rest of her life.

Nope.

Also, in action scenes she kind of flops around.

Sweet Caroline tags along to protect her sister Rocket, the fifth dumbest nickname today. And doomed. Rocket’s the sacrificial lamb in a film where everyone’s already born to suffer. I’ve never seen a more doomed character, and I have Victory Gundam on Blu-ray. A show Gundam fans found too depressing, compared to a shiny version of Johnny Got His Gun. Out of all the apostles, Rocket’s the one that got the others killed following Jesus’s plan to burn down Rome. I haven’t read the Bible in a while.

Selling that arc falls to Jena Malone, who can’t. She sends it and hits a rail face-first.

Then there’s the Wise Man, courtesy of Scott Glenn. In an inspired intro to trench warfare, he says “They’re using steam power and clockworks to keep them moving. So you don’t have to feel bad about killin’ em.” I don’t think Scott understands those words. Neither do I, because the troops are less steampunk and more nothingpunk.

He’s there, but he isn’t there. Scott reads less from a cue card, and more from memories of better days. He’s completely zenned out—an admirable response to failure. I’ll try that if people don’t like Civil War jokes.

Out of all the apostles, he’s the one rolling on ancient hallucinogens. Paul said some out of pocket shit, so that one.

Back in reality, escort wrangler Carla Gugino spends the whole movie doing the Molotov Cocktease voice.

Grim. Meanwhile, team jobber Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) is the only brunette, and Snyder doesn’t underline that joke. It’s a fucking miracle. To celebrate, Vanessa shouts, bounces, and dies as requested. And sounds lost every time. Again, not her fault. The script’s neurotoxic. Blondie’s first line in The Desert laments the prostitutes that died before her.

Amber (Jamie Chung) is the only brunette, and Snyder…ah. Shit. So much for small victories. Well, in Extraction Mode she’s the team pilot. She delivers subaltern ditz lines with eyes that can see the reviews. Hi Amber! It happens. At least voicing Harley Quinn’s fun.

Then there’s our virtuoso. The soul of the film. A performance that leaves it all on the table.

Bunnymech.

Not a single line of wooden dialogue. Actions with weight. A funny rabbit decal on a mech suit. In a sea of sludge, Bunnymech is acceptable. Amber flies it, so I promoted her from “Gun in Mouth.” As for Bunnymech:

Don’t say I don’t engage. You’re right, but I have cover and two degrees in semantics. Also: if you’re not a 8th dan weeaboo, you’ll fucking hate Bunnymech. Anime poison reached my heart twenty years ago.

That said, Oscar Isaac goes for it. I don’t think he even knows this movie sucks. Admirable, unless you value thinky brain stuff.

He dumps normal effort into a speech about knowing something is up with all this hypno-stripping. Including how, if Babydoll’s virginity wasn’t already reserved, he’d hand out a punitive rape. The competence makes the words worse.

That monologue is a relief, since it ends The Desert. We can finally feel again. Granted, it’s only suffering, but an upside goes here.

Overall,The Desert has endless problems, and watching makes you a cenobite. The core is Snyder’s sudden inability to focus. That’s not even a recurring problem of his. He can normally isolate one stupid element, and follow that idiocy from dumbass shot to shot. But he can’t lock in on anything here.

Almost anything. Also: our heroes kill Smough’s dragon baby. They slit its throat for powerups. In case you found something to root for.

How far in are we? Are the credits in sight?

No tears remain.

I’ve compared Sucker Punch to slick and uneven stories, and both seem too generous. This round, in honor of Babydoll, I’ll compare it to another lobotomized film. A ninja waif movie with a script written in red crayon. It even has a desert. But it’s still fun, the action crushes, and like most surgeries it’s better than Sucker Punch.

Enter The Shadow Strays.

More punching from the hero behind The Night Comes for Us (a top-flight The Raid knockoff in a world that needs The Raid knockoffs). It’s a love letter to stabbing and breakup note to editing. Here’s a diagram of reality in The Shadow Strays.

What’s a shadow stray? A cool-sounding title. And a ninja orphan. Batman would be a shadow stray, if he had the guts to kill. Though murder is bad in The Shadow Strays, except when it’s awesome, which is almost always. Just make sure you do it for free.

You’re left to intuit that. The intro’s more into murder. You might think the opening 20-minute Yakuza purge sets up a Yakuza plot, or subplot, or reference later in the film. Get it together. This is about slick gore, and establishing our heroine 13 as a meat sculptor.

No it’s not, she wipes out. It’s about establishing 13’s ninja mom as better in every way. She hits the Yakuza with nearly a half-Kiryu in casualties.

In screenwriting, building your lead this way is called a “first draft.”

Still, it’s economical. Tension between junior assassin and mother hen only ends one way. One rant after Furies, and we’re already back at the family kumite. The Shadow Strays is a lean ride, clocking in at…

See? Snyder and I aren’t the only ones that never stop typing. The Shadow Strays struggles more than it needs to, like its parents think Ritalin’s black tar in a bottle. 13’s arc could be microfiction, but each beat of leaving the group treating her like a murder Roomba gets a half hour.

It’s a bloated, meandering journey, featuring the slickest violence I’ve seen this spring. The Shadow Strays is more choreographed than written, the way that Sucker Punch is more jerked than shot. If you fear no lawyer you can fire up Premiere, hack off everything that bores you, and make the fan edit of the century.

For murder nerds, the violence has surprising range. Katana duels in the forest flank boxcutter fights in crack dens. And then they remember guns work. While ninja segments go full Hayabusa, scenes in the streets have a Raid grit to them. That division could easily mean something, but doesn’t. Every kill in both modes is wild, so I rock with it.

The murder hallways have style for days. You can lean on that when the camera drifts from Babydoll’s socks. And while the Teen Girl squad fails to escape Broadway, 13’s two week’s notice ends in a dead governor. There’s a lot of movie after that, because the structure isn’t. But it retains precise stabbing and corpse presentation. Art’s where you find it.

Besides, that Mother’s Day duel we’re crawling towards? It kicks so much ass none of my bitching matters. I’m comfortable telling you to watch The Shadow Strays after shitting on it in every other paragraph, and this one. It fucking rocks. And sucks. But it rocks four times harder than it sucks, and that’s beyond Babydoll’s grasp.

The distinction’s simple. The Shadow Strays kills and I have no idea what they were thinking. Sucker Punch kills me and I wish I didn’t know what they were thinking. The next rewatch might end me.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: TatersTales, world renowned expert in Christological fuckability debates.