THE CURIOUS ONLINE REALM OF POP CULTURE WRITER NATHAN RABIN.
Articles & features
Geraldo Rivera shared a story on Twitter designed to make Larry David and Barack Obama look bad. Instead, it made them seem awesome
The Banana Splits Movie ratchets up the creepiness of The Banana Splits Show to horrific extremes.
Dwayne Johnson is a fearless badass who can handle anything, except for one of his films flopping and Republicans being mad at him.
One of you kind souls paid me to see the bonkers martial arts Samourais. It was weird!
I’m taking a two-week break from publishing new content because I need one!
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Geraldo Rivera shared a story on Twitter designed to make Larry David and Barack Obama look bad. Instead, it made them seem awesome
Dwayne Johnson is a fearless badass who can handle anything, except for one of his films flopping and Republicans being mad at him.
I’m taking a two-week break from publishing new content because I need one!
Writing up new episodes of Saturday Night Live was one of my least favorite aspects of my job at The A.V. Club. So why did I vow to write up EVERY episode for my new Buttondown newsletter Every Episode Ever?
Sydney Sweeney just wants to live her life but the right keep nonsensically claiming her as their anti-Woke queen.
Joyce Carol Oates and Paul Schrader are doing their part to keep social media weird.
Does it matter that people are LYING on the internet?
Donald Trump could not be prouder of his mugshot. That is sad.
Hilarious Cyber-Satire That’s Easy to Misunderstand
A totally non-clickbait article on why everything you love and revere sucks shit.
We never should have even thought about writing this article.
Not all celebrities remain rich and famous forever. Here are five who went from wealth and fame to being homeless street trash.
We were going to share some neat trivia about actress Mena Suvari but since you don’t even know who she is we’re not even going to bother.
You’ve seen all the memes! Now see them all again, this time with punishingly literal commentary!
Whether you’re a small child or a punk hitting your bottom on heroin and cocaine in the late 1970s, Yo Gabba Gabba! is full of life lessons.
We know you remember and love all of these classic but we need clicks, baby! Sweet, sweet clicks!
FILM
The LEGENDARY column about failure at its most epic!
As a writer-director, Barry Levinson has made a lot of great movies. Unfortunately, he’s also made a lot of movies like the 1994 dud Jimmy Hollywood.
Clean cut fictional mouse Mickey Mouse released a Hip Hop album during the height of G-funk. It went so badly it somehow resulted in Tupac Shakur getting killed.
Saturday Night Live turned blue during a Dunn-less episode featuring the eternally controversial Andrew “Dice” Clay. It was UNBELIEVABLE! Oh!
A week devoted to terrible Saturday Night Live hosts kicks off with a mortified look at Milton Berle’s notorious episode.
I revisit the notorious Saturday Night Live episode that gave a grateful world the magical phrase, “Some of y’all are not washing your ass properly!”
Many Saturday Night Live hosts have sucked, but none more than Steven Seagal.
Gerald Ford press secretary Ron Nessen thought he could get Saturday Night Live by hosting the show. That is not how things played out.
Did Louise Lasser have a nervous breakdown while hosting Saturday Night Live or was it all part of the act? Regardless, the result was one of the most excruciatingly awkward episodes in the show’s history.
John Travolta and Nicolas Cage Face/Off in The Ultimate Acting Battle!
This Nicolas Cage vehicle is g-g-g-rounded until all of the g-g-g-ghosts!
Nicolas Cage has made a LOT of movies. Some of them are pretty crummy, like the overwrought 2019 Southern Gothic melodrama Grand Isle.
In a real change of pace, John Travolta, late in his career, that was not good.
Nicolas Cage. A jaguar and a killer on the loose. A boat. All the ingredients for a goofy good time.
Holy shit is the 2019 H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space a terrifying and terrific masterpiece of cosmic horror.
After making The Cotton Club and Rumble Fish early in their careers, a well-fed Nicolas Cage and Laurence Fishburne reunite for 2019’s pulpy, profoundly silly Running With the Devil.
Where YOU pay ME to SEE movies!
One of you kind souls paid me to see the bonkers martial arts Samourais. It was weird!
Stuart Gordon + SCTV? It happened, for a 1988 children’s instructional safety video, of all things.
No one asked for it, but in 1990, they made an It’s a Wonderful Life spin-off about Clarence’s further adventures.
It was not good.
You know who was great? Stuart Gordon. That man made a lot of good movies. Movies like 2007’s terrific and uncompromising Stuck.
We have reached the end.
What if I told you that there was a magical movie that combined mind-blowing stunts, rock and roll, wizards, the devil and Phil Hartman’s film debut? That might much too good to be true but it all came together in 1978’s Stunt Rock, possibly the greatest movie ever made.
I thought this was a movie about Jennifer Lopez fucking a sexy homeless ghost.
I was wrong.
Or was I?
We’re only an episode away from the finale of True Detective. Get ready for an anti-climax.
Cinema at its shittiest!
As part of my ongoing, obsessive coverage of Loqueesha filmmaker Jeremy Saville’s life and work, I unearth some of his early Youtube work, including such tellingly titled clips as “The Girlfriend Trainer” and “GayDate.” In a shocking, unexpected turn of events, they’re quite poor and also pretty offensive!
If you thought Vince Offer’s 2013 sketch comedy abomination inAPPropriate Comedy was an abomination, you’re right, but its Vince Offer-heavy prequel, 1999’s The Underground Comedy Movie, is somehow even worse! It’s an Offer you can, and most assuredly should, refuse.
It's a second rate The Godfather parody with Rodney as the Rodfather! Plus, it's a Kevin McDonald vehicle. What's not to love? (a lot, actually)
You know how everyone says Bright is total garbage? They're being overly generous.
John Candy Month kicks off with a fond look back at 1989’s Who’s Harry Crumb, a stupid movie for dumb babies.
It all comes down to this! Feld-Month covers Corey Feldman and his scantily clad all-female backing band Corey's Angels' shamelessly entertaining, as well as just plain shameless, Branson, variety-show-style two-hour-plus live extravaganza in Atlanta. It's uh, well, it's something. Just read!
Was making July Corey Feldman month a terrible mistake? Probably.
I’m sure this movie needed to be made.
Music
Let’s Get Weird!
Al gets meta and deconstructionist on this epic, almost eleven minute long parody of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”
It took me a solid week of furious effort and three viewings of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but I have written what I think is the definitive 5000 word manifesto about the Citizen Kane of “Weird Al” Yankovic-themed parody biopics.
“Weird Al” Yankovic stars in another movie debuting on streaming this month and it is VERY weird but in a decidedly different way than Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
With Al’s second film as a screenwriter on the way I figured it was the ideal time to rerun my 5000 word appreciation of UHF.
The hardcover, full-color version of The Weird A-Coloring to Al is out and, at the risk of being immodest, is literally the greatest book ever written.
You don’t have to be the world’s most prolific author of books about “Weird Al” Yankovic to be excited about his forthcoming "Weird Al" brings The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour but it certainly doesn’t hurt!
There is a lost generation of kids without a new “Weird Al” Yankovic album to call their own. Are they beyond help?
Here’s a hint: it has NOTHING to do with not being good enough and everything to do with the Rock Hall taking itself way too seriously.
Literature
The Very Finest in Flaming Literary Garbage!
Reality television villain turned Donald Trump advisor Omarosa is not here to make friends in her perversely unsatisfying “tell-all” Unhinged.
In this piece collected in The Joy of Trash, i eviscerate Doug Hutchinson’s appalling memoir, Flushing Hollywood.
The memoir of Rachel Dolezal is not convincing, at all. Batshit crazy, yes. Convincing? No.
In this piece from The Joy of Trash I write about Steven Seagal’s Q-infected Alt-Right novel Way of the Shadow Wolves, a book that’s even crazier and more fascist than a novel by Steven Seagal has any right to be.
Podcast producer needed!