by John Walters
You Had Me At “Every F*ck*n Studio”*
*The judges will also accept “Maskin’ Impossible”
If you have not yet listened to Tom Cruise going off on his Mission Impossible: 7 crew for not wearing masks, it’s a delight. Some of his best work since Jerry Maguire. Although it also sounds as if Shia LeBoeuf’s “Just DO IT” rant only with more F’s given.
As many have pointed out, Tom’s not wrong here.
This may be a good time to point out that Cruise has never won an Oscar in a career that has spanned nearly 40 years.
Green Light District
The two best reasons to have returned to Twitter, besides Rex Chapman, are Annie Agar (we’ve featured her work) and Joey Mulinaro. The latter first came to our attention with his wonderful Nick Saban impersonations, but this one of Matthew McConaughey might just land him a Lincoln Continental deal.
You know who was a big fan of this one? Rust Cohle himself. Click the hyperlink. That’s why I went through all the arduous work of including it.
Kayakabunga!
What in the wide world of sports is going on here? My guess is that this is the Daintree River in Queensland, where we once went white water rafting. Then again, it’s a rather large country with many rivers. Either way, I think they’ve each earned a VB or two.
Lawyer Laughs
We came upon this clip from our old high school friend, Sorp, the other day (who has totally gone Lt. Col. Markinson on us the past year and we’re pretty sure his birthday was just last week). We have played his, um, idiosyncratic music stylings here before, but this bit, from his one-man show “Why You Should Not Go To Law School,” is indeed brilliant.
See if you don’t agree.*
*As far as we know, Sorp no longer practices law. A shame.
Great Scott!
So MacKenzie Scott is already kind of a smokeshow—someone’s Pilates instructor charges a hefty hourly rate—and perhaps the wealthiest woman on the planet (as the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, who has been cropped out of this photo), so what could possibly making the billionairess even more appealing?
Well, yesterday it was announced that Scott is donating $4.2 BILLION to 384 charities. Wow. Merry Christmas!
You gotta imagine that Scott has some very intelligent people running her money and she’s probably made at least that just off her PENN stock this year (sorry, Jacob/Jason), still, that is saintly munificence, no? God bless her.
******
Extra Points (we’ll post these in a bit)
Grass Ceiling
The College Football Playoff selection committee released its rankings last night and now it’s all but official: the Group of Five is both separate AND unequal.
Past the obvious first four, here are the rankings:
5. Texas A&M (7-2)
6. Iowas State (8-2)
7. Florida (8-2)
8. Georgia (7-2)
9. Cincinnati (8-0)
10. Oklahoma (7-2)
11. Indiana (6-1)
12. Coastal Carolina (11-0)
13. USC (5-0)
The obvious inference here? Group of 5 schools need not apply. As Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic asked Gary Barta, the SelCom’s bullet-taker with the media, “When Iowa State loses to Louisiana and Florida loses to Louisiana State and those don’t play a role in the rankings, what’s the point of playing games?”
Elf On A Carpool
We love that the dad did this. And love almost as much that his daughter didn’t go full Bailey Gismert on him.
By the way, here’s our favorite SNL addition of the past five years, Heidi Gardner, expanding on how she came up with the Bailey Gismert character (and has Conan gone full sea captain on us, by the way?). Notice that Gardner is doing this interview with her cat in her lap.
So here’s what we don’t understand: Are there really not 10 young people in the USA who are this talented that SNL cannot find to put on its show (I mean, Katie McCollow is this talented, but she’s old…). It may be worth noting, so we will, that Gardner is from the Kansas City area and Bill Hader was from Oklahoma and each was only “discovered” after moving to LA. It seems to me that SNL needs to do better at recruiting because while performers such as Gardner and Kate McKinnon belong on that stage, some of their castmates (most of the dudes) do not.