Rodent Household

I have assorted bits and bobs consumed over the last week or so, and they might as well go in one post, since I've got a bunch of RL to catch up on that I haven't even started writing up yet... (nothing bad, just work and moving pieces with family).

17. Adam Mansbach, The Golem of Brooklyn -- I saw someone on I think friendfriends posting about this book, and it sounded potentially very fun -- the opening sentence is "Len Bronstein was not so much in need of a golem as he was in possession of a large quantity of clay, and very stoned" -- and was available at the library, so I checked it out. And read the first half of it (almost) in like one day -- it's a short book, and flows easily, and I was having great fun. Then at 48% I hit Spoilers from here the chapter written from the POV of neonazis and then wandered away from the book for the next ~3 weeks, until getting a "your Kindle loan is expiring soon" email. I don't usually have a problem with "villain" POVs. I can't be sure if I've read chapters from the POVs of, like, not a single terrible individual -- serial killer or tyrant or general sociopath or whatever, which I definitely have done -- but, like, omniscient where everyone on page is terrible, and terrible in a RL setting and sort of RL-plausible way, although they did feel totally over the top to me, so that part was maybe new. But Mansbach also makes the very odd choice of having most of the "dialogue" in this chapter be 4Chan exchanges, complete with netspeak, typoes, and described emojis, and, just, why would you do that? I mean, it did make me absolutely hate all these people, but I think I and anyone else halfway into this book probably would've hated them anyway, you know? Anyway, it's a fairly short chapter, and then the book returns to being fairly fun; there is another chapter from a troubling POV, but that one didn't bother me as much, and I finished the rest of the book in another day. So I think that chapter should've just been skipped, honestly.

The book starts like one of those zany reads that combine the real world with either outright unreality or just highly implausible things -- it was giving me vibes of both Christopher Moore's Lamb and Dave Barry's Big Trouble -- and I say that as a fan of both. But then the zany initial premise -- Len Bronstein, a Brooklyn art teacher, randomly makes a golem, while stoned, out of 400 pounds of clay he stole from his school, then enlists Miri who works at the corner bodega to translate the Golem's Yiddish, and off it goes from there. They end up visiting the Hasidic sect community Miri left (because she is a lesbian), embroiled in local politics, then embroiled in non-local politics (this is where the neo-nazis come in), and in between all this there is more roadtrip shenanigans, and stories of the Golem's past manifestations, and stories Miri and Len's cousin/uncle and the Golem tell each other and other people. After the initial silliness of the Golem's creation, things get darker, and the central... I don't want to say conflict, because the conflict is with the neo-Nazis, but the central debate that emerges is that the Golem sees himself as a "crisis monster", his role being to kill "Jew-haters" and protect the Jews (towards the end of the book, the Golem comes to realize that he is also dealing with the effects of trauma, because the last time he was resurrected, he was blown apart by machine guns in Babyn Yar (and let me tell you, that was an odd thing to run into early in the book; this is a place I've been to, the memorial in Kyiv, a place where two great-grandfathers, possibly three, were murdered), helpless but not unmade and thus aware. So, yeah, there's that. The practical issue for the debate is whether (and if so, how) to stop the Golem from going to a neo-nazi march in Kentucky, and once Len, Miri, and the Golem end up there anyway, what to do about that. And it's interesting to me the while Len is stalwartly insisting that they should do everything possible to keep the Golem from killing -- including after he and Miri are threatened by a mob -- he is the only one who seems to believe that. The cameo of Larry David (which I kind of wonder about the inclusion of; the copyright page includes this: "Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used facetiously" -- I'm not sure I've come across that before, but then I also don't usually read the copyright page...) seems to have no problem with the Golem killing some neo-Nazis; Miri originally wants him just to scare them, like a mysterious vigilante, but after being faced with the mob, changes that stance to "kill them all". Well, I was rapidly approaching the end of the book and wondering how this debate was going to be resolved, and feeling iffy about the conclusion in either case... and then the book ends (after Len de-animates the Golem) with this:

Len (articulating Miri's argument to argue with it): "And if we kill everybody who hates us, we'll be safe. [...] But we'll no longer be Jews. We'll be something else."
Miri: "Bullshit. We've always defended ourselves."
Len: "Defending ourselves is different than killing every Jew-hater."
Miri: "You sound like a fucking idiot."
Len: "We're supposed to reapir the world, Miri. Tikkun olam."
Miri: "Dickhead," she said lovingly, "has it ever occurred to you that maybe this is how we repair the world?"
"They stared at each other in silence, out of words and a long way from home."

And that's perfect. Both because it's not a philosophical issue that can be resolved in a short breezy book, and there isn't a satisfying neat solution to the problem of neo-nazis or centuries of oppression, but also because of the "two Jews, three opinions" thing -- it's really the only fitting ending.

There is a lot of random stuff in this book, some of which worked better for me than others. I enjoyed the plot of Len's unwritten book of spec-fic about being able to diagnose and transplant generational trauma -- I would actually read that novel, and actually what we get here would probably qualify as a short story in Chinese sci-fi :P -- and I think it fits the overall theme well, and I thought the Golem's interaction with Lena and her father worked well too, and the interlude at the lake also cohered with the rest, but the stuff about the dolphin experiments, the chapter from the POV of the bodega cat, and the chapter where Len gets VRBO scammed were just kind of there, entertaining enough but neither super interesting on their own nor particularly resonant with the rest, I thought. I suppose the VRBO scam chapter is making a point about violence-as-justice in the abstract vs when faced with actual people, but if that's the point, it doesn't make it very well, in part because it's apples and oranges and in part because none of the antagonists in the neo-nazis chapter feel like people, and also this might be giving the book too much credit for forward planning... Oh! and there's a chapter that is in its entirety a poem which in the text is identified as by Brodsky, and which the Kirkus review seems to assume is by the actual Brodsky, but as near as I can tell is by a character from Mansbach's other novel (or a family member thereof). That is... a choice, and I'm not sure that was really necessary either, but the Kirkus reviewer might've done a little bit more thinking. *eyeroll*

I enjoyed the stories of the Golem through history and diaspora, the apocryphal-even-in-universe ones and the ones that are supposed to be true or true-and-embellished in the context of the book. I'm not sure how many of these Mansbach researched vs made up, but it was an enjoyable mix. I also didn't know about Hillel the Elder and the "Golden Rule" (in the Golem's rendition: "What is hateful to you, don't do to your neighbor. That the Torah. The rest just commentary.") OR about sandwiches (I don't think of the seder thing as a sandwich, but I guess it is...)

Quotes:

"What was Judaism if not an exacting, totalized system of laws handed down by the divine, then kitted out with redundancies and fail-safes by the scholars to eliminated any chance of an infraction -- [...] then, finally, poked full of loopholes so the devaout might obediently circumvent those laws."

(Miri's POV) "Did the existence of a golem imply the existence of God? || One hundred percent. But this was an easy answer, as the existence of bees also implied the existence of God. The existence of existence of existence implied the existence of God."

"These were unpredictable centuries for the diasporic Jews of Europe; one moment you were simply a regular citizen who paid higher taxes and was not allowed to own land or weapons or ride a horse, and the next a mob was coursing through the capillaries of the village, burning down your home and murdering your children in the street."

"'I said what I said,' Miri told him. It was a phrase she'd picked up at the bodega. She liked it because it sounded like something God would say."

Miri's POV: "Adina the second girl Miri had ever dated, who could not believe all that Miri did not know, Miri both grateful to learn and worried that she would not be able to tell if Adina misinformed her, that she would go around thinking some random thing was a canonical part of American culture when it was just grbage Adina happened to like or be nostalgic for. Those Transformers movies, for example. Those were clearly terrible."

"It had never before occurred to Miri that one might invent a ritual rather than merely inheriting it, enacting it." (And then she figures out the lake is basically a mikveh.)

Miri and Len trying to talk the Golem out of crashing the march:
"The Golem snorted in derision. 'You real student of history.'
'She doesn't have to be,' said Len. 'She's telling you about the world right now. Because you're only three days old." [...]
'World is world,' The Golem said. He pointed at Miri. 'Besides, you not from right now. You from play-acting like it eighteenth-century Ukrainian shtetl.'"

Lilith to the Golem: "I am a being of pure spirit and pure disobedience. We are opposites, you and I."

I also really liked the use of the word "surrect(ed)" for animating the golem -- it feels perfect! ("He tried [...] every permutation of the spells and holy words that had surrected [the golem]")

Did I like it, on the whole? I did, although less than I was hoping to. It was a bit too scattered for my taste, and some of the scatteriness was productive but not all of it, for my enjoyment. But I'm definitely glad I read it, and pleased it exists.

*

The rodents and I went to watch Inside Out 2 (in an actual movie theater! I haven't been to a movie theater since Encanto with L over Christmas 2021), and other than the fact that people have lost what little grasp they had on movie theater etiquette, it was fun! The three of us had watched Inside out at home, because we'd been skeptical about the premise, but we loved it a lot, and so upgraded the sequel to a theater experience, since the timing worked out. In retrospect, I would've been fine watching it on Disney Plus -- not because I didn't think the movie was good -- I thought the movie was very good! -- but I don't feel like I got anything "extra" out of watching it in a theater (besides annoyance from the baby who cried for the last half hour and the guys to my right who kept talking and giggling and the women on O's left who were probably the ones to spill their popcorn in front of his seat and something sticky on it), and I don't think I would've missed out on the zeitgeist that much if I waited a couple of months to watch. But I don't regret going either, and I did think the movie itself was good.

The previews we got with it were numerous but SO lackluster... Moana 2 at least looked pretty, but I didn't get much sense of a story it was trying to tell, and since it seems to be an "ascended" TV show, I suspect there just isn't that much to the story. What else did we get? Borderlands looks so dumb, although I did a double-take at Cate Blanchet and Jamie Lee Curtis being involved gave me pause (although top talent being involved in nonsense is not exactly uncommon these days, so...) We got a trailer for Harold and the Purple Crayon (which just seems silly and not interesting) and Mufasa: The Lion King, which, oh boy. I actually don't mind the animation this time, but "the lions are benevolent monarchs over all the animals on the savannah" is one of those things that doesn't really stand up to examination, so I feel like making a movie about a "common" lion rising to become king just does not seem like something you should hang a sequel on, but whatever. And also we got Piece by Piece, which Wikipedia describes as "animated biographical musical comedy drama" about Pharrell Williams, which still does not get the whole WTF of it across, because the "animated" part is done with Lego pieces (thus the title, I guess). I mean, the Lego part makes me neither less nor more likely to watch this movie, which I have zero interest in, but I guess more power to him for trying something unusual? Oh, and a Beetlejuice teaser, which actually did look decent (I watched the 1988 movie as a kid -- I'm just of the right generation, so even though I wasn't really into it, I had a friend who was a big fan, and we watched it at a sleepover at hers -- but I have no nostalgia for it or the franchise, unlike, e.g. The Addams Family movies from around the same time. But the remake is looking pretty good in the teaser.)

OK, as for the actual movie: Spoilers! I think my favorite part in it was when Riley, having been hit by puberty overnight, snaps at her mother, and you get to see the mother's emotions at the console reacting -- that was extremely relatable XD I noticed and sort of went "hmm" at the fact that Riley's parents only had the five original emotions at their consoles (with Anxiety popping in for a bit) and briefly wondered if that was an inconsistency/plot hole, but L pointed out that it actually makes sense with the worldbuilding -- the rather teenage emotions of Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment settling down as the person grows up so they're no longer constantly at the controls.

I do think picking puberty as the inflection point at which to tell the next story about emotions is brilliant, and the introduction of new emotions also worked really well for me. Anxiety was A Lot, but in a very fitting way. In the middle of the movie, when Anxiety was projecting assorted worst-case scenarios, O leaned over to L and asked her if she was receiving royalties for appearing in this movie, which we all thought was very funny. L also thought Riley's panic/anxiety attack in penalty box was very well done, how it was shown externally and what it looked like with Anxiety frozen at the controls with the ring of "fire" around the control board -- it almost reminded me of someone who's been electrocuted by grabbing a live wire, the way you can't let go (because your muscles contract) and need a buddy to rescue you. My favorite of the new emotions was actually Embarrassment. His design was so great! and the way he'd hide in his hoodie, and also it felt fitting that he was the one of the new emotions who was most willing to help Sadness/the old emotions -- I think because Embarrassment is the most about empathy, of those four. I also thought Ennui was great, the perfect addition to teenagerhood, with their phone and lounging. (L and I both wondered what gender Ennui was supposed to be; I thought male and L thought female, and we looked it up and saw that the voice actor was female, and that officially Ennui is female.) I was the least impressed by Envy among the new emotions, although she was cute. L was wondering why she was so small and the most child-like, and I guess being too small to reach where the others go sort of fits with FOMO/envy? I felt like she added the least/was the least interesting of the new additions.

I liked the expansion of the worldbuilding to show how memories grow into beliefs and those twine into a sense of self. In particular, I liked that Joy's approach of shoving unpleasant things in the back of mind so they couldn't be integrated was ultimately wrong and it was the aalanche of the pushed back/repressed memories that allowed the old emotions to complete their quest. And that the old sense of self, the "I'm a good person" one, can't just be plopped back in place, but a more complex sense of self has to emerge organically out of all the memories, good and bad. I was thinking that the combination of the old "I'm a good person" and the Anxiety-induced "I'm not good enough" senses of self would end up being something like "I try to be a better person even if I sometimes fall short" (only, you know, more pithy than that), and so was surprised that the final sense of continued to be shifting and sort of unstable -- but in retrospect that makes perfect sense for someone who has just started going through puberty -- that sort of stuff definitely takes a while!

Aside from the emotions and the building up to the sense of self, there was some fun stuff. Riley's video game crush with the "armadillo" attack (as L put it) was pretty funny, and we all laughed a lot at Pouchy (I think that was the funniest bit by far). L whispered "sar-chasm" and "brain storm" when those things appeared, before they were named in the movie. Oh, and the dark secret the emotions meet back there in the vault -- that's the sequel hook I'm guessing?

Leading up to the movie's release, I saw a bunch of YouTube videos analyzing the trailer and positing that the sequel would reveal Riley to be bi because she had a crush on a girl. It was interesting to see what reality was like: it is very much like a crush, but it's a friend-crush and admiration of someone Riley wants to be like as she heads into high school, and I think that works better/more interestingly than just a hormonally driven crush.

There's one more thing with Inside Out for us: the San Francisco setting. When Riley made her middle school friends, L whispered, "Diverse San Francisco friends group." The least realistic thing about the whole movie is the idea that public high schools in SF have hockey teams XD The high school Riley ends up at is very clearly Lincoln High School (the facade is identical) -- which was not surprising, because her middle school was James Lick, which a couple of L's high school friends had come from. Which raised the question for L of what school Riley's friends got assigned to (this business of ending up in a different high school than your middle school friends through random chance is a very true-to-SF experience, btw). L's random conjecture was Washington, but there's also Mission and Balboa and Galileo, plenty of other things it could be. But anyway, "Foghorns" is a cute name for a San Francisco team.

*

Taskmaster Oz s2e06 -- this series continues to be so much fun! I can't tell if I'm enjoying it more than TM UK s17 because it's a more fun series or if it's just that it's less stressful to watch because I'm not invested in who wins / am not strongly identifying with the contestant who is riding the edge of a heart attack, but regardless, I'm having a lot of fun with these episodes, and some of the tasks attempts continue to be amazingly fun. Spoilers from here

Prize task -- other than Anne and Lloyd bringing in cutouts of each other for "would most want to marry", this was pretty lackluster. And the funniest thing about that was G.Tom pointing out that nothing was preventing the two of them from actually marrying each other -- but he still gave them 5 points despite that. (Like some commenters on Reddit, I was wondering if this was building up to an actual proposal, but apparently not.) G.Tom: "Lloyd, what have YOU brought in for the prize?" (after Anne went first) Lloyd: "I actually might need to talk to one of the producers..." The most interesting of these I found to be Wil's wedding cake with a topper depicting him marrying cake, which was pleasingly meta, but Tom keeps underscoring Wil (although I guess, based on Reddit comments, Wil's love for cake really is well known?) This is the second time someone's brought in water for a prize task this series, but it scored less well this time (for Josh). And Jenny's ramen was also not super interesting, but I did enjoy her selling of it as something that's been there for her at the lowest points in her life and also has a little bit of spice. But the funniest bit was Josh talking about how he finds the idea of marriage terrifying and cloying, and Anne throwing up her hands and going, "Well, I voted 'yes' for nothing!" -- nicely played.

Senses task -- this was the most forgettable one for me on this episode, and the highlight of it was defintiely the studio argument between Jenny and Josh (who both did taste) arguing over whose attempt was better, Josh making the case that his was harder because it wasn't from among pre-prepared tastes, and Jenny arguing that hers was the purer experiment because she had to decide from among things of the same texture, so she was only changing one variable, and Anne yelling that they were both nerds. Josh guessing very close (32 vs 31) on the number of things he tried, the crowd cheering, and G.Tom reminding everyone that wasn't the task was also pretty funny. Anne's was very silly, and the scoring of it was kind of arbitrary. Lloyd's was funny in the failure of misidentifying the mandarin as a banana (by sound), even though IT ROLLED and also TOUCHED HIM. I often feel like G.Tom is overly harsh on Wil's sketch attempts, but I do think that 1 point was deserved here. Choosing to turn that into a green screen task was pretty meh, and I was very amused that the Toms figured out how to turn Wil's "touching the hand of god" into a quantitative task to match the others' quantitative approaches, by capitalizing on his own statement that there are multiple gods. Oh, also, it's quite mean to have five contestants have to pick from five senses but gen penalized two points if they pick the same sense as someone else.

Duck, duck, goose task -- when L.Tom first introduced the task, I thought it was one of those tasks with an overly complicated setup that ends up being kind of boring. How wrong I was! The saving grace, of course, proved to be the variety of responses to it from the different contestants. So first you have Lloyd, who nailed it and was so happy with himself, and Wil who did a fairly decent job with a similar but less efficient approach. (This got lost for me in the chaos that followed, but as I was G.tom's "So some male comedians got to make some accusations for a change" after Wil and Lloyd had gone was quite amusing.) But then you have Josh, who completely missed the dictionary and so, as he said, spent the first half of his attempt "learning Duck", and still managed to do pretty well. And then you have Anne, who seemed to just not be getting this task at all? like, she seemed to have no understanding at all of how to use any of the information she was given or was gathering from the ducks. I had in fact forgotten that the first question she asks, drawing a gasp from Wil, is asking duck #8 (who is the secret goose) whether it's something that starts with G, and then doing NOTHING with this information. Complete chaos. And then there was Jenny. Jenny with her matrices, and her 86 minute attempt, and complete failure at the end. Like, you know something extraordinary (to quote John Robins) is coming when you have someone left for last by themselves after another attempt that's already a pretty epic fail. Normally I would think that the person left for last in this situation had found the shortcut that reveals the answer with no questions at all, but from Jenny's expression throughout the studio bits it was pretty clear that she had not nailed this task. I was still not prepared for the actual level of failure here: SO MUCH EFFORT! so much time! and to have it end in failure anyway. (Josh: "It's so weird, because it's so much smarter than me--" Jenny: "Yes!" Josh: --but it's SO DUMB." Jenny: "YES!") I know Danielle's password/roses task in Oz s1 took longer, but she finished, and because of a DQ got 2 points. The only thing you can compare Jenny's to, I think, is Ed Gamble's nightmare in Coc II, and in fact I feel that Jenny and Ed need to start a support group for Taskmaster contestants victimized at length by ducks. AND THEN!

Fluke task -- where Jenny takes up L. Tom on the idea to use accusing the goose as something she's bad at that she can then do well as a fluke, and tries it again (more matrices XD), and STILL FAILS. Earning 0 points out of 10 by attempting this same task twice, which I suspect is an unbeatable record XD This was definitely the highlight of this task, and I wonder if it would've made the show otherwise, because the other attempts were pretty lackluster. Josh's was very scattered, although his attempt to argue that because the zebra throw made the credits, that proves it was entertaining, which proves it was a fluke, made it somewhat interesting (Reddit pointed out that maybe this is why the music cuts out when Josh throws the zebra, to show it was not exciting at all.) Lloyd's attempt was only entertaining to me for his apology to the circus folk, although I do think him pointing out that he was getting worse rather than improving with practice does strengthen the argument that this should count as a fluke. Wil's was scattered and not very interesting, although I'm not sure what G.Tom's scoring was based on there; I couldn't follow his logic. And I didn't think Anne's was either entertaining or much of a fluke. But Jenny vs the ducks: the rematch completely justified the inclusion of this task.

Live task -- this was also an interesting one, because it was structured in many ways like a timed task -- a sequence of complicated things to complete -- but the contestants being scored on the number of sprinkles (I'm just gonna call them sprinkles) rather than on time makes a difference for sure. So, Wil choosing to sacrifice one of his two jars meant that he finished with more time to spare, but came in last of those who finished. If his goal was to get SOME points, then well done, but I bet he could've gotten more if he hadn't just poured out all those sprinkles.

With Lloyd's decisive victory in this episode (he nailed the ducks, the live task, was handed the co-victory on the prize task, and did pretty well on the fluke, I guess), Lloyd retakes the series lead from Wil, and in a way that I'm not sure is likely to be beatable, given that G.Tom tends to score Wil quite badly on subjective tasks, and both Wil and Lloyd tend to be good on objective ones. The other "upset" is that, with her double cuck failure, Jenny is now last in the series, having fallen behind Josh. It's also fairly amazing that Anne is third, and even a fairly close third at this point, because she's had so many bad tasks/DQs, but her subjective scores tend to be really high.

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Further Elis James and/or John Robins content:

Valenvibes Day, 14 Feb 2022 -- The last of the Elis & John livestreams I hadn't watched yet (since I had started with the Dec 2022 and Dec 2023 livestreams). I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, considering I'd found the Dec 2021 one fairly bleak, and on the one hand this was farther from John's break-up, but on the other hand the Valentine's theme seemed... fraught. But I actually really enjoyed this one. John has some cider in him at the start, but at least things start off cheerfully. They start off with the guys joking around and taking turns saying "sexy" words, then with their first guest (Nina Conti, whom I don't know) it segues into school-age Valentine's Day trauma. I've heard John's before (buying chocolates and teddy bear for a girl he liked, who ate the chocolates and gave the teddy bear back -- "That was pretty much my last real Valentine's Day effort" (I guess not considering his proposal, which IIRC was on Valentine's Day, but I am also not surprised that he'd not be talking about that relationship yet); sending two dozen roses to a girl at school who he knew had a boyfriend when he was about 15 -- "that's one of the worst memories I have in my life", and recounting it does make him shut his eyes and chant "it's the worst it's the worst it's the worst" and "oh god god god god", so I can certainly believe that). Around the same age John also smoked a skinny cigar to impress a girl at a Pizza Hut (she was not impressed). Elis shares he once got a sarcastic Valentine's Day card, and also that he was dumped by the same girl on successive Valentine's Days (age 19 and 20). John says he and Nina "bonded after heartbreak some years ago" -- I assume when his relationship with Sara Pascoe ended and *looks up Nina on Wikipedia* when she separated from her huband? After Nina shares a romantic treasure hunt a boyfriend had put on for her and Elis talks about how Isy puts on treasure hunts for the kids but he doesn't see the point, John: "What does-- Said with love, Elis, what does Isy see in you?" The second guest is Paul Sinha (and it's nice to see him looking pretty well!), who gives a Valentine's themed quiz which I found very hard, but reassuringly so did the boys (John got 4 and was very proud of himself for getting the Shakespeare play, and Elis got 1.5 -- a sports-related question and Pi Day with some prompting/coaching from John). The third guest is also someone I don't know, Alison Spittle, but she talks about not drinking, and she and Elis chat about that while John is vaping quietly. Elis talks about a party with celebrities he didn't know where he was glad that he was sober, because he might've made an ass of himself otherwise. John cuts into the conversation to complain that Elis did not invite him to this party, which Elis says he had no power to do. John: "That's what everyone says. A lot of people have been saying that recently [...] 'John, I didn't actually have the power to invite you to that party', so I don't go to any parties, even though I'm a superb drunk, who would've told all of those celebrities exactly what I thought of them and their projects."

My favorite parts of this livestream were the bits that just had Elis and John in them, by themselves. John: "In order to illustrate that [being single on Valentine's Day can be a good thing], I'd like you to list the 50 worst things about your relationship." Elis (after laughing), contemplatively: "Fifty?" John (laughing): "Oh wow, you're actually going [?for it]... That was a joke. OK, five." Elis: "Well, obviously this is tricky..." John says again he doesn't have to do this, and Elis ends up, quite elegantly, turning it into talking about things Isy dislikes about him, like the way he sighs whenever she starts talking about emotions. John: "We are SO different. Tell Isy to just give me a call -- I'll talk to her about emotions for a DAY." Elis's technique of listing things that make him annoying to live with actually cheers John up as he originally intended, so, excellent job! In the next no-guests part, John: "Elis, I want you to tell everyone watching, while I go for a wee, your ten favorite things about me that make you love me so much." *runs off giggling* The result is mostly ribbing, with some actual admiration thrown in (his extraordinary memory for poetry, his "tremendous kindness"), but in particular I was glad to hear Elis say that the curry John made him on New Year's Eve, which he'd been practicing for in the previous livestream, was the best curry he'd ever had in his life -- I'm glad the three trial curries paid off XD John's challenge was to have the two of them write love sonnets to each other. Elis "adapted" his, "14 lines, 10 syllables each, I did not mess about with iambic pentameter--" John: "WHAT?!" -- it's the same outraged "WHAT?!" that Alex & Greg managed to elicit from him on Taskmaster several times. Elis: "Let's just read out our lovely poems." The poem Elis adapted is "As an unperfect actor on the stage", which really is a pretty good pick, with some fun lines being "Whose strength is keeping tax stuff in a chart" (John liked that one too; it gets an "ooh, nice!" from him) and (talking about himself) "Overcharged with burden of getting Queen right" (poor traumatized Elis XD). And here's John's sonnet, that he wrote from scratch "in 2 or 3 hours" (guessing at the punctuation):

How does he walk with thighs so big and proud?
How does he talk with voice so wide and varied?
It must be 'cos he's Welsh, and well-endowed.
So, my El, to you I must be married.

Your eyes, like farthngs newly minted shine,
Your cycling chat I can withstand for lust,
Your voiceovers are well-paid and broadly fine.
So give your heart to me I say you must.

Ignore the talk of you betrothed to Isy,
Swoop down just like the pheasant on my lawn.
Help me out -- you know I'm not that busy! --
And hold me in the hours before the dawn.

Your kindess to your friend has long been noted*.
Even when I'm grumpy, I'm devoted.

*John points out that's an intentionally 11 syllable line, "as if to suggest that your kindness cannot be contianed".

Elis, who had been hiding his face for part of that (most of the second stanza, starting with "lust"), shoulders shaking, says, "It's quite confronting to have a love sonnet read to you." John: "You should've tried being in the same sixth form as me." [note to self, because I can never keep track of the British school years -- that's the equivalent of high school upperclassmen, i.e. age 16-18].

(Also, about a week after listening to the livestream, I discovered that I was periodically thinking of lines from it, and had basically accidentally leanred it by heart XD I did listen to it several of times, while transcribing it and also because I wanted to watch Elis's reactions and John's facial expression separately, and transcription is a good memory aide for me, and I do have a pretty good memory for poetry in general, so this is not the first time I've been essentially "earwormed" by a poem, but generally that happens with profound works of poetry, not a joke love sonnet someone wrote to their mate for a radio show-adjacent livestream XD Though I assume John would be proud to find himself in the same category with Blake ("Ah! Sun-flower") and Auden ("Domesday Song") and Yeats (various).)

Somewhere in there, while Paul was the guest, before the quiz, Paul teased them that their opening banter "romantic lingo that you were sharing at the beginning of the show was very much not like any gay men have ever spoken in their lives. It was kind of hot", and John says that he and Elis "have an intense love. It is a sensual love, but I don't know if it's a sexual love, it's just sensual" and Paul says it's very cute that they don't want to alienate any of their fanbase.

Anyway, this was great! One of my favorite of the livestreams, along with "How's Yer Welsh".

Then I went and poked some more at their solo stuff:

John on Hypothetical (the Josh Widdicombe and James Acaster-hosted show) in March 2019, where he's on a team with Katherine Ryan against a team of Ivo Graham and Cariad Lloyd (whom I think I've seen on QI? 8oo10C? I've seen her on something, at any rate). I feel like the format was more fun as an idea than how it came across (though maybe it's because it's the first series). I didn't find the scenarios that interesting, and the only "solution" I found genuinely entertaining was Cariad's dance peformance. John really lucked out in having an actual Kardashian expert on his team, and I always find Ivo fun to watch (and I like Katherine, too), but IDK, I felt like all of them together were less funny than I would find them on their own, which was quite disappointing. I am 0% surprised that out of the four contestants John is the cheapest date Milky Bar Kid (whatever the hell that is), and that he would be able to convince them that he would indeed follow through on it for a year. My main takeaway from this experience is that John owns a non-band T-shirt (that's also not a solid color) and someone forced him to wear it instead of his usual sort of thing.

John on Jon Richardson's Ultimate Worrier in Aug 2019, where he's part of a panel with Josh W and Holly Walsh. I think John is wearing the same sort of faded denim-y shirt/light jacket that he was wearing on Hypothetical, only buttoned all the way up rather than unbuttoned, and I think that's probably because he has a T-shirt on underneath that the wardrobe department deemed too logo-y, since he makes a crack about them defacing his New Balance shoes with a little piece of white tape. But maybe it's just colder on this set, since everyone looks sort of bundled up. Holly started talking about greetings being complicated, and after talking about handshakes, Josh says, "Oh, I just remembered the first time I met John Robins", to which John goes, "Oh, this story never ends well for me" -- in 2008, in Edinburgh, outside a pub -- where John apparently extended his hand to be kissed and Josh followed through. As he demonstrates again when the show invites them to demonstrate a Philippines greeting (fist to forehead), whish Josh turns into a hand kiss, and then they attempt an Inuit greeting (their difference in heights leading to a fairly humorous tableau), and then mess around taking socks and shoes off for an Indian one, much to Jon Richardson's dismay. John's worry is more existential than Holly's greetings or Josh's awkward WhatsApp groups -- all his heroes are dead, and he's too old to make new ones. Of course Freddie is first on the list, and Jon pops up a photo of John in the yellow jacket (open over his bare chest). Holly: "Is that a straitjacket?" Jon: "I think it's the opposite of that" (which is a pretty great line). John quotes LotR ("It comes in pints?!" at a pint making Jon Richardson look small), and I was reasonably entertained, but John absolutely does look bored/checked out when he's not actively doing stuff, which I can see would not be helpful in getting TV work on panel shows... In the new podcast-first radio show setup (or, IDK, maybe even the old one), they film them and release clips on YouTube and shorts on instagram, and watching those, I've noticed again how fidgety John is when talking and especially listening -- I forget which clip this was, but at one point on the podcast vid, you can see him drummin a plastic fork on his thigh under the table (but because of the camera angle, you see John side-on, so this is very visible). And I've already mentioned that he fiddles with his rings when he doesn't have anything else in his hands, and of course on livestreams he can just vape or sip his drink. But on a TV panel show, I guess he can't fiddle, and I wonder if that's part of why he looks semi-checked out (I say as a person who has to doodle or take notes or do something else tactile in meetings/lectures to keep paying attention).

I then watched a bunch of Josh, which doesn't have John in it (famously; he bitched about it a lot), but does have Elis in one of the three starring roles, alongside Josh Widdicombe (the titular Josh and also one of the co-writers) and the girl who plays their flatmate Kate (the actress is the daughter of Jane Saunders and Ade Admondson, whom I encountered via ROHOG). And their weird landlord is apparently Jack Dee, so now I have more Taskmaster s18 reference points for him, beyond the Mock the Week appearance I caught because thisbluespirit pointed out to me that Alex Horne was guest hosting. John kept bitching that all of Josh and Elis's shared friends except him got cameo appearances, and I already got to Mike Wozniak as Owen's (Elis's character's) weird cousin; I recognized him by his voice, because the first time you see him he's got a full beard, which threw me off (but actually it was even weirder seeing him in the second episode, when he had just a mustache but wasn't wearing a suit. He's surprisingly built!), and a baby James Acaster as Josh's friend Mike. And eventually in s3 I got to Mike Bubbins, who is on Elis's other podcast/the other of the "rutting stags" from the Elis & John livestream. And there's also Romesh Ranganathan as an amusement park guy and Lolly Adefope as Kate's ex's new girlfriend and Tom Allen as Josh's agent, I guess. Also, the horrible HOA guy looked so familiar! but I couldn't place him until I went through the IMDB cast list -- it's Miles Jupp (whom I know from WILTY and ROHOG), but with facial hair, which I find very confusing. As a sitcom it's not that amazing -- fairly run-of-the-mill, with only a few things that really amused me -- Owen's horrible friend Teabag, and the sex blogger episode. Josh's character in particular is sort of sad-sack and pathetic in a way that feels like it's amplifying all of Josh-the-actor's least charming aspects and not highlighting the things I actually liked about Josh on Taskmaster. I like Josh Widdicombe, but I found Josh-the-character rather annoying. But it is quite interesting to see Elis playing a role, and a role that's pretty far removed from his personality (as it comes across on the radio show). Like, I feel like in a reverse of what's happening with Josh, Owen's best traits are reminiscent of Elis, while all the ways in which he's annoying are just a contrast to how lovely Elis is. In the second half of series 2, I got to the episode that has the one still from Josh that I had seen previosly -- Elis shirtless in bed, which had caused some anxiety about how widely spaced his nipples are on the radio show, with the other guys getting in on nipples spacing measurements and callers weighing in on normal range and so on. What I had not realized was that in that shot Elis was shirtless in bed with an equally shirtless Josh (helping him practice for a date, essentially). That whole arc was quite fun; I guessed before the reveal that it was the other comedian, not Josh, who was with the real sex blogger, but had not guessed that Owen would find out in time to tell Josh and then not tell him anyway. And then in s3 I got to the nude/shower scene I had listened to Elis talking about filming. One thing I noticed in s3 is that Owen actually gets some episodes where he has a problem, rather than just being the happy-go-lucky foil to Josh and Kate's problems -- and I actually find myself rooting for him/sort of sad when things don't work out for him, with the driving test, or relationships, even though his problems are by and large self-inflicted. Oh, and I think the credits feature the actors' actual baby pictures, so it was fun to see baby Elis and baby Josh, who looks like an appropriately Hobbit-y toddler. I also enjoy Kate's clothing choices, and fox and owl motifs in particular, and also those adorable little bee clips she wears at one point. The show also taught me the phrase "custard cousins" (EW).

I then tried the very beginning of the first episode of Crims, the show where Elis plays a guy who ends up in a young offenders detention facility because his girlfriend's brother used him as his getaway driver without his knowledge, but both the quality of the video and the quality of the show were pretty bad, so I stopped after like 5-10 minutes.