The great thing about World Cup matches: They only take 90 minutes. OK, there’s a little extra time to make up for all that flopping (plus a quick halftime), but otherwise the clock’s ticking. Unlike American sports, there are no commercial breaks, timeouts, or halftime concerts turning the whole thing into a 3+ hour slog. It’s damn refreshing to watch something that leaves some content on the bone.

Meanwhile, I saw an ad for the new Shaq doc on HBO and eye rolled hard 🙄 when it told me to get ready for “episodes.” Episodes plural? Of Shaq? Dude was a great player no doubt, but I don’t need a deep dive on Kazaam or insight into how he managed to rap, “From high school to college, they gave me enough knowledge.” Um, I get it.

I blame that OJ doc, which was genuinely great and deserved its lengthy runtime. That set the stage for the Jordan doc, which aired during the height of lockdown so we ate up 10 parts of it; but c’mon, did we really need a whole ep on Rodman’s clown show? After that, it was open season for docinflation. That Jeter one (seven episodes!) should have been half as long. And sorry Shaq, but 90 minutes is more than enough to tell your tall tale.

It’s not just sports docs either. Everything’s grasping for maximum mindshare now. Curious about Nxium or those Wild Wild Country kooks? Well, you better get ready to be in the cult of watching 34 hours of people wearing those weird square glasses and talking about their “journey.”

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

❓How do I know if I've joined a sex cult? 🗯 First step: Ask yourself, "Do I own this pair of glasses?"

4:11 PM ∙ Nov 5, 2020

The sweet spot
Everything is stretched to its breaking point now, droning on and on until we’re forced to say uncle. I know, we live in the attention economy and the marching orders for all media entities now is to frack our brain stems for as long as possible. But in the process, we’ve lost sight of the notion of the sweet spot – y’know, not too little and not too much. Just an appropriate amount.

RIP always leave ‘em wanting more. Now it’s hold onto ‘em for as long as you can.

Take the latest Beatles reissue: Revolver (Super Deluxe). I’m a huge Beatles fan, but that doesn’t mean I’m some scavenger desperate for whatever crumbs were left on the Abbey Road studio floor. I don’t need to hear every single unearthed demo, false start, mono mix, and Ringo fart.

Gah, save me from having to endure “Eleanor Rigby - Second Version Paul Licks His Lips / Slowed Down For Master Tape” and “I Want To Tell You - John Tells Knock Knock Joke & Take 5.” Revolver was already a super album before it was “deluxified.” As the Far Four themselves once sang: Let. It. Be. 

That was the good thing about shelf space. People had to decide what was worth including. Actual inventory required making tradeoffs. But now that everything’s digital, there are no boundaries. There’s no bartender cutting us off before we get digitally hammered. So we infinite scroll and b-side ourselves into media gluttony, oversaturating our brains with mediocrity.

“Good on the poster, sucks in real life”
This kitchen sink mentality is spreading beyond the digital realm too. More and more, we’re seeing a “good on the poster, sucks in real life” approach to live events. Do whatever it takes to sell tickets, the actual quality of the experience on the backend be damned.

Check out the lineup for EEEEEATSCON, a food fest that took place at Forest Hills Stadium in NYC:

“And so much more”!? I get a gathering with a few food trucks. But hundreds of food vendors? Look, I only have one stomach. I’m going to eat lunch and then be done. Then what? No one needs this much optionality. They should have called it the “Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Stomach” fest.

Likewise, this was the lineup for Comedy Central’s Clusterfest:

Dozens of comics performing together might seem extra fun, but, in truth, it’s actually extra lame; no one wants to sit through hours upon hours of back-to-back comedians. Comedy requires paying close attention and that’s only doable for so long. There’s a reason comedy shows never last longer than two hours: It’s bad for the performers and bad for the crowd – but hey, it’s good for the flyer so…

And this throw-it-all-against-the-wall approach is de rigueur for music fests now:

It’s like a Spotify algorithm come to life. But who the hell wants to see all these acts? More ain’t always more. I’ll take one great band I want to see – in a venue that’s made for listening to music – over an avalanche of ordinariness in a field of porta potties any day. I mean, how many Woodstock docs do we need before we realize these gatherings aren’t actually for music lovers, they’re for mooks who wind up covered in mud, enduring bad trips, and paying $12 for a bottle of water. Guess you gotta get your selfies for the ‘gram somewhere though.

High end scenesters fall for it too. A bunch of ‘em are at Art Basel right now, attempting, in theory, to see art from 282 galleries (and there are hundreds more at the satellite shows). I’ve been before and one thing I learned is how little I enjoy wandering a convention center filled with millions of pieces of art for 5+ hours. It’s overwhelming and the antithesis to actually appreciating art. I want to visit a good museum for 90 minutes and then leave while my sanity’s still intact.

In fact, I’ve come to think the right answer to almost everything is 90 minutes. Is your movie The Godfather? If not, keep it at 90 minutes. I don’t want to spend all day climbing a mountain, I want a nice hike in the woods for, you guessed it, 90 minutes. And give me more 1.5 hour sporting events, concerts, comedy shows, documentaries, and well, everything else. Enough is enough. 90 minutes is the sweet spot.

Quickies

🎯 "Disco nap" is a great way to make depression sound sexy.

🎯 Believing in recycling is like believing in the tooth fairy. I’m sure my crap goes somewhere, I just don’t believe its really going where they tell me it’s going.

🎯 As a Judeo, I'd like to withdraw us from the phrase "Judeo-Christian." We did not agree to this partnership in perpetuity and things have gotten a bit unkempt on your side of the lawn.

🎯 Comedy is an exercise in fetishizing trauma.

🎯 Never refer to yourself as a "content creator." Say you're a filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, comedian, coach, or something else that explains what you actually do. "Content creator" devalues your work and makes it sound like you're a generic widget builder who merely obeys the algorithm.

🎯 CNN: “Two pro wrestlers developed ‘The Progressive Liberal’ to be the bad guy at matches.”

Me:

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

@CNN lol this was literally a Futurama episode

8:38 PM ∙ Nov 22, 2022

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Comedy

😈 I post clips of my standup at Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Recently:

😈 Recent posts at “Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian”…

• Going from "you suck" to "we suck."
  On turnarounds and the value of revealing your flaws.

• John Mulaney's advice for handling a big crowd: “Louder and faster.”
  And get ready for delayed reactions too.

• How (and why) to write new jokes onstage.
  Advice on "spontaneous combustion" from Dave Attell, Marc Maron, Chris Rock, and Louis CK.

Spotted

🗯 Memes, Puns and Blank Sheets of Paper: China’s Creative Acts of Protest. We’ve entered the age of the sarcastic revolution.

And on China’s suppressed internet, where positive messages abound and negative ones are scrubbed, protesters resorted to irony: They posted walls of text filled with the Chinese characters for “yes,” “good” and “correct” to signal their discontent while evading censors.

Sometimes words are unnecessary…

Some protesters told The New York Times that the white papers took inspiration from a Soviet-era joke, in which a dissident accosted by the police for distributing leaflets in a public square reveals the fliers to be blank. When asked, the dissident replies that there is no need for words because “everyone knows.”

…I wonder if that’s where Leonard Cohen got the inspiration for “Everybody Knows.” He’s legit the only musician I can think of that might have been inspired to write a song by Soviet dissident propaganda.

🗯 I Think Elon Musk Is Just...Dumb.

This is a guy who lashed out when his asinine plan to help children trapped in a mine was derided as impractical by calling his critic a child molester. This is a guy who sent a car into space. A guy who picks dumb fights with senators who don’t march in lockstep with him. A guy who describes Apple’s long-held and widely reported policies regarding how they take a cut from app store sales as “secret.” A guy who insists tiny little tunnels are the solution to mass transit…For me, the answer to all this is not that Musk is executing a 100-dimensional plan that mere mortals cannot comprehend, but that he is a big dumb fellow.

🗯 “It’s not a game anymore.” Ends vs. Means in the Post-Trump Era fromThe Loaf, with Tim Kreider.

We’re still plotting how to win elections while they’re plotting how to overturn them; we’re urging people to get out and vote while they’re installing apparatchiks to reject any outcomes they don’t like. When one side has abandoned the most fundamental rules, trying to enforce them starts to feel like a suckers’ game. We’re like a team in a huddle strategizing which play is gonna get past our opponents’ defense, not realizing that the other team has brought guns, and it’s not a game anymore.

Bonus Content

Up ahead for paid subscribers: A World Cupdate plus musings on Digital Fentanyl, weddings, eye contact, serial killer docs, the southern border, the ADL, NBA coaching, and more. Sign up to read it all, support me, and get extra stuff in the future too. ...