It’s kinda crazy that the best analysis of the entertainment business keeps coming from a show where people eat crazy spicy wings and slam gallons of milk while getting interrogated by a dude who looks like a meat-eating Moby.

Yet Matt Damon and Vince Vaughn have both gone viral recently for “what’s wrong with show biz” rants on Hot Ones. Here’s a taste:

Damon: “The DVD was a big part of our business, our revenue stream, and technology has just made that obsolete.”

Vaughn: “The people in charge don't want to get fired, more so than do something great.”

Both monologues spread far and wide as Righteous Indictments of What’s Wrong With Hollywood. OK, fine. But isn’t the fact that all this went down on a stunt show where celebs sweat and swear due to extreme spiciness…welll, isn’t that the problem?

Sure, more high-minded productions from executives who are willing to take risks sounds great. But the only way we can have thoughtful conversations about it is via this taste torture chamber? Ugh.

Or wait, maybe it’s perfect symmetry. Kinda like a huge swath of America getting medical information from a guy who used to host Fear Factor, a game show based around eating maggots and bobbing in cow blood.

Maybe it’s just time to admit it: This is who we are now.

Anyway, watching that Hot Ones show makes me wish Terry Gross mildly tortured her interview subjects too. Bet she coulda really gotten Robert Caro to open up with a lil’ NPR-flavored waterboarding. Imagine a Fresh Air ep like this: “Spill it, Caro! What else did Robert Moses know and when did he know it? Tell me or I’m turning up the avant garde jazz and pulling out the jumper cables.”

Vaguely related: This science explainer vid just popped up in my timeline…

…and, um, no. I refuse to take science advice from someone filming in their car. You can science at me from a lab or a classroom. But if you’re in the front seat of a Kia, you should really just be reviewing the Cheesy Gordita Crunch at Taco Bell.

Comedy

🃏 Get jokes on my social media: Instagram – TikTok – Threads – X – Substack.

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🃏 Watch my standup at YouTube.

🃏 8/15 in NYC: Substance screening + Q&A with director Matt Salacuse, editor Anthony Verderame, and me. Tickets/info.

What happens when a comedian performs on shrooms? And how does it compare to performances on weed, alcohol, and sobriety? "Substance" finds out! Join us for a special screening followed by a Q&A with Psychedelic Comedian Matt Ruby!

Quickies

🎯 You're a winemom? Amazing. Totally get that 'cuz I’m a fentanuncle.

🎯 Polyamorous couples always seem like the family in “Get Out.”

🎯 I like dad rock, but I don’t have kids. Feels like some weird musical version of stolen valor.

🎯 The biggest thing I’ve learned from meditation is how loud my refrigerator is.

🎯 Every woman in NYC now dresses like a lesbian from the waist down and a yoga instructor from the waist up. Fashion mullet!

🎯 Prediction: In a couple years, Cheryl Hines and Melania will star in a reboot of the “Ex-Wives Club.”

🎯 Smartphone life makes someone who is willing to sit in a coffeeshop, look out the window, and simply think seem like a completely insane person.

🎯 An intervention is a surprise party gone wrong. Basically, it’s a surprise party’s over.

🎯 I wish more conspiracy theories were true. If the government could hide aliens and JFK’s real killer from us, I’d actually trust the government more.

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🎯 Was the woke mind virus created in a DEI lab or at a drag story hour where it jumped from one of the queens to a Marxist TikToker?

🎯 I understand white privilege because it's the same way I feel about tall guys who think they're getting laid because of their personality. “I’ve got rizz.” Nah, you were just born lucky.

🎯 If they’re really what they claim, you’d think they’d realize how much it creeps the rest of us out when they call themselves “empaths.”

🎯 Boomers: They promised us Woodstock but left us Altamont.

🎯 That Aussie woman with a PhD in breakdancing is why people don’t trust the elites...