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First things first, this piece—or at least a version of it—was supposed to come out last week. Apologies loyal readers! I’m in a bit of a slump and a, como se dice, mental jam, and it’s not the kind of jam you can keep in a jar. I have not been feeling good, but hey, we move. Also, I’ve been taking very inconsistent Twitter breaks and I will be deactivating on and off for the next couple of weeks. Trust me, you’re not missing much. I rewatched Triple Frontier today, regularly scheduled programming.
Now, a few things:
The most pertinent piece of “popular culture” rattling around in my brain is that my Number One Boy (if you know you know), Will Poulter, was cast as Adam Warlock in Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3. I will ignore Chris Pratt and pretend he’s someone else like Jack Black or Holly Hunter and celebrate Poulter’s return to franchises. He’s done pretty well for himself over the years, but I fell really hard for him in 2014 when The Maze Runner first hit theatres. This is a win for the Hyperfixate community as a whole.
Also, my pal Fil Freitas of The Pod Charles Cinecast and every Tuesday shift I ever worked at the PCC is making a feature film! Based on his time at the PCC! It’s called The Regulars! It’s Clerks meets Keeping Up With The PCC (a finsta we started a long time ago) and it will be brilliant! I would love for you to check out his Indiegogo page and spare some cash dolla to help make it happen! (There are also very cute photos featuring yours truly circa 2019 to help capture the right ‘vibes’). If you need to be further convinced, here’s the sick ass fundraising video:
Next, it has been a good two weeks since Jon Bernthal was on Hot Ones and I think I’m finally ready to talk about it. I was going to launch into this meandering thing about the differences in my YouTube consumption from the beginning of YouTube to where we are now (and I’m sure I’ll get to that later) but I really, really, really just want to talk about Jon Bernthal for a bit. That’s what we’re all here for right? Fuck insightful, critical analysis, or some semblance of indication that I did stand-up comedy! The Punisher was getting punished by spicy wings! That was the actual title of the video! Whoever at Complex came up with Jon Bernthal Gets Punished By Spicy Wings and got away with it, I salute you. It’s hot, very apt, very of the occasion. Did anyone else kind of want to Animorph themselves into a chicken wing? No? Just me? Cool.
I’ve never seen Sean Evans choke on a wing before, let alone the first one. I got really nervous for Bernthal for a hot second (see what I did there), but naturally, Sean soldiered on in his usual considerate, well-researched way.
Bernthal admitted to not being the best with spicy food, and I found that incredibly endearing. The first of many endearing things we will come to learn about The Artist Formerly Known As Ted from Sicario over the course of this 28-minute YouTube video. Whether it was a question about his theatre roots at Saratoga Springs’ Caffe Lena, or the creeping heat of a ridiculously marketed hot sauce, Bernthal would launch into these very sweet exclamations of surprise. The likes of “Holy moly guacamole, dude” or “come on, bro!” Holy moly guacamole happens to be the exact phrase I say at any new images surfacing from a Jon Bernthal photoshoot.
Other gems you’ll learn upon watching Jon Bernthal Gets Punished by Spicy Wings:
He took a clowning class where you had to make people laugh without using any words. He put on tight sweatpants belonging to an old girlfriend and peed himself. He got the laugh.
As a D.C. Boy, he cites Joel Schumacher’s D.C. Cab as the only accurate portrayal of the real D.C. The film stars Mr. T and looks incredible.
His dogs are upstanding members of society.
And despite cursing like a sailor (holy guacamoles aside), he still asks: “Am I allowed to curse?” on the show.
The YouTube comments, for once, are delightful. There’s one that I found myself relating to:
And so did 7,200 other people. For people who are familiar with Bernthal’s oeuvre of emotionally vulnerable macho men or characters that show up to look sexy and subsequently die, this episode of Hot Ones will be a delightful introduction to a humble, wise, and adorable sweetheart.
In sitting on YouTube for 28 minutes watching a man my mother will always refer to as Shane from The Walking Dead run the Scoville Poultry gauntlet, I remembered a time when there weren’t any YouTube videos that were 28 minutes long. My earliest memories of YouTube were Crazy Frog’s Axel F, Naruto AMVs, or Ryan Higa’s How To Be videos. I also remember Annoying Orange. Eventually, 9GAG became a huge part of middle school life, and then Tumblr left a lasting and arguably irreversible impact on my psyche. Now, I use YouTube for cooking tutorials, wishful thinking fitness videos, and to fuel the fires of any impending hyperfixations on a middle-aged actor I think is hot.
Bo Burnham’s Welcome To The Internet aside, I think it’s really easy to forget how much information we consume every day. Hell, the sheer volume of information I’ve consumed in the last hour honestly drives me insane. But I feel like I need it as much as I’m aware of how much I hate it. I guess that’s why I’ve been feeling so weird about Twitter, my dumpster fire/thirst safe haven. There’s always too much going on. And we all know this. I wish I could go back to a place where I simply do not care about what I’m saying online. I wish I could care less about how I appear online because it really is not that deep because it isn’t real.
I guess my mental health has been in the dumpster because I just feel like a bit of a dumpster. Not a cool one that would guest star on SVU as a location, but the gross ones that occupy a bit too much space. I’m trying to be kinder to myself, trying being the operative word. If that means I have to rewatch a certain someone humble themselves in front of a row of hot sauces, so be it.
Re: Mercury Retrograde, I didn’t even know it was Mercury Retrograde until last week. I want to blame it for feeling out of my mind over the last month or so. I’m having a really hard time. But I’ve been rewatching Community and The Punisher to pass the time so, business as usual, I guess?
I don’t know how to end this. I missed posting last week because I needed the time off. I know I say that a lot but end up writing something anyway. I need a moment to re-evaluate my relationship to work, to art, to media—to everything, really. This is probably more 23-year-old bullshit, and I’m sure it is. I guess this is a really longwinded way of saying this might be the last Hyperfixate for a while. The last anything until I can regain whatever I felt I had lost. Or until I decide to just do whatever I want again.
In other news, I saw Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, Dune, and No Time To Die back to back in cinemas and have never felt more normal. I love #TheMovies.
Thank you for sticking with this silly little email experiment of mine. We’ll always have Triple Frontier. (I’ll probably be back next week with something about Dune.)
All my love,
Ari.