Category: Hindsight 2020

What The Fuck Is Going To Happen To SNL?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m no expert when it comes to SNL — I once totally screwed up when the 50th year of the show is — but I still am concerned about its fate. Saturday Night Live serves an important cultural purpose and it has so much love built in that I suspect that it will survive, even after Lorne Michaels retires.

I have heard a rumor that Netflix is interested in starting it’s own live sketch show. It could be that the stars might align in such a way that just as SNL is about to change in a big way that Netflix swoops in an buys the expensive franchise off of NBC.

Stranger things have happened.

I do think that next year is going to be very turbulent in more ways than one. It could be that we’re too busy dodging bullets to have a SNL 50th anniversary. Or maybe Tyrant Trump will arrest everyone at SNL before the 50th. Who the fuck knows.

But I do think it’s possible that there might be something of a panic in Hollywood if it seems as though when Michaels leaves that NBC will pull the plug on SNL. That could be the fixation of most of the pop entertainment news media for a few months while everything is unknown.

I honestly have no idea. I will note that maybe we’re in something of a vibe shift and, as such, it could be that the era of SNL is just about to end and Something New is about to take its place. It could be that some combination of immersive media, AI and the Apple Vision Pro will revolutionize media to the point all of this is very moot.

Anocracy In America

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though the United States has hit a political iceberg and it well on its way to sinking into the icy seas of fascism. But, at the same time, I just don’t know.

It could go either way.

It could be that some sort of off ramp happens because of an unexpected black swan event and America will just muddle through and all my dystopian hellscape scenarios will be seen as laughable. But there is a greater-than-zero chance that This Is It.

It could be that we’re very, very fucked and late 2024, early 2025 will see some unpreceded things happen one way or another. The spectrum ranges from civil war because Trump loses the 2024 president election to Trump winning in 2025, and being such an idiotic tyrannical madman in 2025 that he is somehow deposed and when that happens…there is a civil war.

But lulz, who knows.

I think there remains a really good chance that everything is going to work out fine. I definitely hope that is going to happen.

But things are still too far out at the moment. I can’t make any sort of prediction for sure one way or another. It could be that WW3 breaks out, or it could be that something akin to a civil war breaks out because of what’s going on at the Texas border.

Only time will tell.

Time To Nationalize The Texas National Guard

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

President Biden needs to nip this particular issue in the bud and nationalize the Texas National Guard. That would eliminate Texas’ ability to define SCOTUS and also kind of smoke out how serious Texas is at the moment about being dickheads to the Federal government.

The longer this festers, the worst it’s going to get.

There is a risk, of course, that America is so fucked that if Biden does national the Texas National Guard, that that, unto itself, will only cause the crisis to grow more severe because self-proclaimed “militias” will swarm to the site and then, lulz, we have another insurrection.

Is Pop Punk About To Break Again?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I remember the last time punk “broke.” It was the early 90s and I remember hearing Green Day on the radio and thinking, “punk is back.” The thing about punk is there are two clear versions of it.

Australia’s G-Flip

There is just regular old punk that you usually can only hear in dim, dank bars that are scary. And then there is what you might call “pop punk” or, in an earlier era, “New Wave.”

There are a number of bands floating around now that seem indicate there is at least a small possibility that some form of pop punk “breaking” again might happen. There are IDLES and So Good from Great Britain. There is G-Flip from Australia.

But I have my doubts.

I think all my talk about “pop punk” says more about me than any possibility of a vibe shift where, like, good music is pop again. I think we’re doomed to shitty music from here on out for technological reasons, if nothing else.

I will note, as an aside, that if Tik-Tok had some sort of “music” tab that that would be a great way for the audience to passively discover new music. I already do that with Tik-Tok as it is, but it would be nice if there was a specific area of Tik-Tok devoted to breaking new music.

What The Fuck Is Wrong With America?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I try to be as fact-based as possible. I like to think I calls’em like I sees’em. And, at the moment, in general, the U.S. economy SEEMS to be doing pretty well. And, yet, despite the cold hard facts that this is the case, I have conservatives very close to me who are so busy bitching about how the CDC should be arrested en mass that they totally refuse to admit that the Biden Economy is doing well.

It’s all very, very frustrating for a number of different reasons. It shouldn’t be like this. And, what’s more, conservatives shouldn’t be able to hate on Biden and his economy just because of “vibes” while at the same time being enraged at what the CDC did during the pandemic because of all this allegedly concrete “data” they feel they found “doing their own research.”

It’s shit like this that makes me think that we’re careening towards a very, very dark future starting in late 2024, early 2025. I would prefer not to become a domestic political refugee because of “vibes.”

And, yet, it definitely seems as though the United States has lost it’s mind. We’re now so divided — because of macro political and demographic issues — that we seem totally, and completely fucked going forward.

I Think About Women Readers A Lot As I Write This Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I do not purport to have any special insight into the female mind, but I do, at least, try to cater to that segment of the reading audience as I write this novel. I do this especially given the edgy, loaded nature of the novel.

I hope to write a novel that is as accessible as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

It’s not every day that your heroine is a part-time stripper.

Now, of course, if I was, say a transgender women writing this type of novel, then I probably be hailed as the second coming of Jesus Christ. But, alas, I’m just a smelly CIS white male — a middle aged one at that! — and, as such, slings and arrows and all that.

I have a vision for this novel and, as such, I’m prepared to take shit for what, of course, will be reduced down to “stripper solves a murder mystery.”

Ugh!

That’s not what’s going on! But no one is going to listen to me. Anything to do with sex and women — especially something out of the ordinary — is the thing that people will focus on. And that doesn’t even begin to address the issue of how Hollywood would market any adaptation of the novel should that miraculous thing somehow happen.

Anyway.

I’m really self conscious about how women readers might react to this novel to a fault. I have a few women “advisers” that help me when I feel a little bit nervous about this or that thing that I might broach in the novel while writing from a female POV.

But, like I said, I can only do so much. I’m a smelly CIS white middle aged male and a vocal minority of the reading audience will dismiss the novel the moment they see what I look like.

Give All The Russian Spies Who May Read This Blog, I Find Any Serious Homegrown ‘Secession’ Talk Dubious

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t KNOW that Russian — and Chinese — spies read this blog, but sometimes, some of the things I see in my Webstats make me scratch my head. Anyway, I suspect much of the “Texit” talk on social media at the moment is just talk on the part of Russian paid trolls.

We aren’t near the tipping point that will happen either in late 2024 when Trump loses or at some point after January 2025 if Trump wins and is deposed for being a bonkers MAGA tyrant.

Otherwise, I think we can just cool it with any sort of secession talk on the part of Texas — or anyone else.

How Seriously Should We Take ‘Texit?’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While we’re slowly reaching a tipping point whereby Texas may be the first to leave the Union, I have serious doubts about it happening, like, NOW.


So, as such, the timing isn’t right for Texit. We need the passions of the 2024 election to enter the “Silly Season” before such things might become a reality. At the moment, all this Texit talk is just that — talk.

Get back to me when there is suddenly a man rush between Texas and South Carolina to see which one can hold the first Secession Convention. If such a thing happens, it will either be in late 2024 after Trump loses, or sometime in 2025 – 2026 should Tyrant Red King Trump be deposed somehow.

A South Korea Tale: ‘I Was Almost The New Lead Singer of INXS’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m drunk, so I’ll tell all two or three of you stalkers a story that is very amusing.

The late, great lead singer of INXS.

Many, many moons ago, I was in Haebangchon when this guy in a band was so desperate for people to come to his gig that he was willing to pay ME $5. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I said, “Sure.”

Now, this rocker was bad news. I knew this when I accepted his $5, but I, dunno, had a lapse in judgement, I guess. And it was nice to have an extra $5.

Anyway, we got into a taxi and headed towards Itaewon where this guy’s gig was.

During the taxi ride to Itaewon, he told me that he was, at one point, allegedly, in the running to be the new lead singer of INXS. To this day, I think about this claim and wonder how possible it is that that doofus was, in fact, in the running to be the new leader singer of INXS.

I have my doubts. But….stranger things….

‘Done With You’ #lyrics to a #pop #rock song

Done With You
lyrics by @sheltgarner
please give credit if you produce or perform

doesn’t matter what it takes
I don’t care what’s at stake
I’m done with you
you’re the past
I’m the future
and now if you’ll excuse me
I’m going to get through you..

I’m done with you
I’m done with you
I’m done with you

things are collapsing around me
I hope I’ll find a truth
one that has nothing to do with you
but what can I say
much to my dismay
when you return time and again
when I’m done with you

I’m done with you
I’m done with you
I’m done with you

(bridge)
come to me close
let me tell you
about who I’ve become a ghost
they’re out of my life
much to my delight

I’m done with you
I’m done with you
I’m done with you