The Grouchy Editor

Netflix Updates

My, those Scandinavians are dark. I watched the first season of Katla (above), an eight-part fantasy-drama, and it confirms what anyone who’s watched much Nordic noir already knows: Life, as experienced by these northern Europeans, is not exactly Disney World. In fact, it’s so pointless and sad that the best way to live one’s life is to simply accept the hopelessness and then wallow in it.

And yet, these dour dramas are often absorbing.

In Katla, gifted to the world by Iceland, an erupting volcano somehow results in an ashy resurrection of the dead. Oh, and sometimes these off-putting clones don’t wait for you to die; they appear at your doorstep, like a naked and spooky Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap.

The downside of Katla is the pace. Sometimes the slowness of it all adds to the eerie existential dread. At other times, the show simply drags. Too many moping, confused Icelanders, not enough action.

Black Summer (above), on the other hand, has the opposite problem: not enough character development, too much action. Season two of this post-apocalyptic zombie show is much like season one, in which human survivors find themselves endlessly battling each other and relentless killer zombies.

But the nonlinear storytelling and a lack of clear protagonists can prove tiresome if you are binge-watching. The constant attacks are exciting, but the show never stops long enough to let us catch our breath and get our bearings. Zombie attack. Zombie attack. Zombie attack!

That’s fun for a while, but I’d recommend watching just one or two episodes at a time.

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So, I guess that hoping (not really) that someone gets her brains blown out is OK, but don’t even think about stripper poles up a pooper.

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Badge of Honor

Not so many years ago, on the (rare) occasions when we would get blocked or banned by Twitter, it was a bit shameful. We must have done something bad.

Not anymore. Twitter itself has been exposed as a shameful, but necessary, evil. If you get banned or blocked by Twitter, you must be doing something right.

So what led Rip to make such mean-spirited posts about City Pages editor Emily Cassel and then former Trump lover Stormy Daniels?

Here is a bit of what Cassel had to say when Trump got COVID:

And here is what Daniels recently said about testifying against Trump:

Rip plans to delete his retaliatory tweets about Cassel and Daniels because a) the tweets are old and no one follows him, anyway, and b) like we said, if you want to promote something, Twitter is a necessary evil. For now.

But there is great consolation. Shortly after Cassel’s juvenile missives, City Pages — and Cassel herself — went poof! Cancelled!

As for Daniels, well, her punishment is that she is still Stormy Daniels.

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Conservative politicians and outlets like Fox News keep making the same mistake: They allow the left to frame controversial issues, and therefore the right keeps losing battles.

I am thinking of illegal immigration. Conservatives now act as if their overriding concern is the welfare of poor immigrants, who make dangerous journeys to the border, are exploited by drug cartels, and are merely seeking a better life. All of that is true.

But illegal aliens are also willfully breaking American law. And they are not in the least concerned that their self-interest effectively lowers wages for working-class Americans.

If we are primarily concerned about the welfare of the world’s poor, why don’t we just open the borders completely and begin importing the poor from Asia and Africa? And then secretly bus them into Beverly Hills?

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Something wrong in the head with this woman. She keeps laughing at inappropriate moments, and her giggle/cackle is the most disturbing I’ve heard since, well, Hillary.

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I rushed through the first five seasons of Peaky Blinders so that I would be all caught up in time for the sixth and final season on Netflix. Then I read that season six recently wrapped shooting and will be in editing for at least six more months.

What the hell am I supposed to do for the next six months?

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I, too, used to laugh at so-called “conspiracy theories.” Not anymore. Not this year.

My apologies to all of those old post-apocalyptic, dystopian, and/or science-fiction shows that I used to chuckle at. Because just about anything seems possible these days. The world has gone nuts.

As an example of what I’m talking about, here’s a partial list of once-venerable U.S. institutions I used to (sort of) trust: the ACLU, the Supreme Court, pharmaceutical companies, sports teams, schools, movies, television, Coca Cola, Tom Hanks, and (sigh) the news.

OK, well I haven’t really trusted the news in quite some time, but now it’s beyond ridiculous.

If the Davos elites or the space aliens or Nancy Pelosi or A.O.C. are behind this “great reset,” they are doing a mighty fine job of messing up America. So fine, in fact, that I don’t see how they can possibly put it back together again — socialist or not.

And what is the deal with this upcoming UFO report, which seems to be eliciting a collective yawn from the world?

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The girl pictured above apparently upset her TikTok applecart by a) professing a love for Bernie Sanders and his socialist agenda, but then b) making a video that shows off her new, non-socialist, very expensive apartment.

I had never heard of her — Wikipedia describes Nicole Sanchez as “a Twitch streamer and TikTok personality” — and I don’t really give a rat’s ass about what she does or says. But it was an opportunity to run this picture of her in a bikini. So here you go:

(I’ve been fooled before by the Internet, so if it turns out that the girl pictured above is not, in fact, the girl I am writing about, well … you really shouldn’t be looking at it, anyway.)

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The Dunderhead

When you’re betrayed by someone who already has the scent of a scoundrel, well, what did you expect? But when you are betrayed by Marcus Welby (look it up, kids), it stings.

Here is what I wrote about Anthony Fauci in March 2020:

On the other hand, this is what I wrote about Fauci when I first saw him on TV in August 2014:

Certain idioms come to mind: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Trust your first impression.

I, like most people, was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the scientists, doctors, and even politicians dealing with the COVID outbreak a year ago. I thought the virus was a complete surprise to just about everyone — with the glaring exception of China — and that all of us were justifiably scrambling.

That benefit of the doubt certainly extended to Fauci, who was made for TV and whom I once praised. But now it appears that Fauci knew a lot about the origins of this virus and chose to lie about it. And to bask in the glow of a fawning media.

Fauci is almost certainly responsible in part for millions of deaths. And yet the leftist media continues to kiss his wrinkled ass.

The “good doctor” probably belongs in prison. Or we could turn him over to the relatives of COVID victims and let them do what they please with him.

And Brad Pitt, wherever he’s hiding, needs to issue an apology.

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Author Shelby Steele Thursday night on Fox: Critical Race Theory advocates seek to “capture white guilt” and are making this demand: “Give things to blacks.” 

Problem is, in practice that means the middle class is expected to “give things to blacks.” Certainly not the elite or the upper class.

That’s a diversion and a good recipe for what Charlie Manson (below) allegedly pined for: race war.

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