Glen Weldon

WILDWOOD is a classic film. You will watch it every year in the autumn for the rest of your hell damn ass life. It will enrich you. It will feed you. That movie with the prankster will win Oscars and disappear. It will Crash. It will Life is Beautiful. It will The Artist.

Y’all aren’t going to see WILDWOOD. Y’all are going to see a prankster getting duped by a crook. WILDWOOD deserves your eyeballs. Your asses in seats.

YOU: MYSTERIUM is a fun game but it requires ridiculous amounts of setup & the person setting it up can’t like hang out & chat before the game starts & once it starts he suddenly becomes the focus of the game because he has put in so much work like a good good boy & now his every whim is sacrosanct.

ME: You have described my ideal evening.

CLAYFACE is caught between two states of matter, genre-wise. Which is a shame. www.npr.org/2026/10/23/n...

So WILDWOOD is one of the best films of the year, is what. Gorgeous, exciting, with humor that emerges out of character and situation, not references. Plus, not for nothing, DARK. Goes HARD. Take your young kids of you think they can handle it. Or leave ‘em at home and see it your own damn self.

Every 30 seconds you will remember that it’s stop-motion animation, and the sheer amount of work involved will leave you exhausted by proxy. But see it anyway.

It’s been years since I’ve written about superhero comics. (Writing two exhaustively researched cultural histories of comic book characters tends to attenuate one’s passion for the subject.) A friend recently reminded me that I used to go hard, when writing about the Silver Age:

Taping a WICKER episode tomorrow. The notes I take while watching something often find their way into an episode. This time? I dunno.

So when we describe Jason Vorhees as wearing a hockey mask, we’re being imprecise. It’s a hockey goalie mask. Which suggests that he’s spent his days having pucks hurled at him, and he’s simply reacting. It’s like if Wooly Willy was like “please don’t don’t shove these metal shavings in my face.”

“Oh you choose not to? Well then I suppose the only rational reaction, given the social contract, is to stab the fuck out of you.”

npr.orgRollicking 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' scores a critical hitA game cast, solid jokes and a refreshingly light touch when it comes to adapting the deep lore of the beloved tabletop role-playing game make for a breezily fun film for Nerd and Normal alike.

Periodic reminder that the D&D movie was ery good, and that it got reviewed, in one case, by someone who knew what a rust monster is, and that displacer beasts are lousy against intelligence saving throws. www.npr.org/2023/03/31/1...

My Haunted House: Entryway: Clots of sullen teens stare at you and look like they’re juuust about to say something. Room 1: A ball lands at your feet. A man shouts, “Little help?” with an air of tetchy impatience. Room 2: Gay bar. Hot guy catches you looking at him, he and his friends guffaw.

Room 3: Mom asks you if you’ve heard of those GL3 drugs they have now? You might want to look into them? Room 4: Your phone is dead. Calculate the tip. Room 5: Drunk father of the bride asks which one of you guys is the woman. Room 6: Straights-Only Karaoke Night Room 7: Finance Bro Jump Scare

There’s an insufferableness to knowing OKGO when they were dancing in their backyard and inspiring hundreds of high school talent shows, long before the treadmills and Rube Goldberg stuff. I bask in that insufferabless.

I was bad at gym. That was it. Couldn’t catch or throw a ball. That’s all it took to be considered gay. My affect wasn’t particularly queeny. I didn’t lisp or have the self-confidence to do theater. Just couldn’t do sports. That was it. I mean, they were right, but still. Even so. NOT THE POINT.

Sometimes I imagine my life if I’e never come out. The self-hatred. The shame. The hooded, throttled sexuality. In exchange for universal acceptance. Fitting in. Lying to absolutely everyone, as a means of existence. I was lucky enough, safe enough, to take the step that ultimately saved my life.

Happy National Coming Out Day to those who celebrate. In our moment of triumph.

The 2XLs are headed to the donation bin. XLs, keep your heads on a swivel.

Halloween is the night that the veil ‘twixt the living and the dead thins to merest gossamer. But Mischief Night? That’s when my middle-school bullies roamed in packs through my cul-de-sac. I knew what I needed to fear. I could prioritize.

We’re gonna be talking CARRIE next week on PCHH (spoiler: dug it), but one thing I didn’t mention was how the show did such a great job instilling me with bloodlust, the prom scene left me unfulfilled. There were characters I wanted to see SUFFER who got taken out waaaay too quickly.

And with respect to the biggest kill (in terms of sheer numbers), I wanted carnage, and I got the Thriller video.

“Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent”

F said his shirts won’t fit me because “your back is too huge” & I had to explain to him that he can say “your shoulders are too broad” or “your lats are wide,” but not “your back is too huge.” So if you’re wondering if I’m an insufferable pedant in absolutely every facet of my life, there you go.

He tries to compliment me and I hear:

The fact that Schmitt’s team alerted the media to be ready for drama is the part that too few of you are focusing on. I did PR for years. It would have been a big deal, had it proceeded as planned. That it didn’t, for the precise reasons it didn’t, is revelatory. It speaks to incompetence.

Basic, low-level, elemental incompetence. Invalidating incompetence, in a just world.

open.spotify.comYou're a Gay GuyRyann Redmond, Jimin Moon, The Original Off-Broadway Heated Rivalry Unauthorized Musical Parody Cast · Heated Rivalry - The Unauthorized Musical Parody (Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording) · Song · ...

So in “You’re a Gay Guy,” from the off-broadway HEATED RIVALRY parody, when Shane responds to Rose saying “‘My ass was tea,” with, “It’s true. I meant that,” I am crushed both by its objective truth and the fact that it fits the rhyme scheme so perfectly. open.spotify.com/track/5mVWLS...

Also this song is healing. For some of us, this song works hard.

There’s a moment in the 1996 Jeff Bridges film WHITE SQUALL — which I saw with a friend who wasn’t out when we walked into the theater but the Bel Ami of it all broke him down and we had a talk on the drive home — where Bridges sees the storm coming and whispers, “White squall.” We cheered.

Anyway, take the Bridges delivery of “White Squall,” but make it “Whalefall,” and you have my brain for the last few months every SINGLE time that movie is referenced.

Settle a debate. Followed a local game shop owner on insta. He posted a video of himself by the river. “Just out here, celebrating this glory.” I think glory is a Jesus code word. F thinks I’m insane.

My oldest friend in the world just sent me a blistering, salt-the-earth, eye-wateringly vicious online takedown of me, and my entire deal, and I can only marvel at it. The specificity. The vehemence. Like, how I say certain words, etc. Does me finding it just hugely flattering make me a narcissist?

It does, right? I mean knowing I occupy that much random access memory of someone I’ve never met. It’s low key thrilling, but I couldn’t for the life of me explain why.

Also! I disagree with absolutely none of their well-articulated anti-me positions! That has to count for something! I have been found wanting, and I kind of find it vindicating! These thoughts in my head are all like that will smith meme, going like, “See? That. That’s what we’ve been SAYING.”

Watching TRAITORS just white-knuckling it until the episode with the roundtable where there are only eight contestants left so they can sit at exactly the eight lunar compass points. It can’t just be me.

Never forget that SEINFELD doggedly tried to make “mimbo” happen when “himbo” was already right there putting in the hard good linguisitc work without breaking a sweat

hachettebookgroup.comHeal Empower RestoreFrom Sue Weldon, founder and CEO of Unite for HER and the national nonprofit's team of expert advisors, this is the essential, whole-person care guide for al...

It’s Pub Day for this book by my sister-in-law Sue, whom I love just a whole lot. It’s a book to help people navigate the cancer process, from diagnosis throughout treatment and after. It’s everything she is: warm, smart, encouraging. Mostly? Of use. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sue-w...

It’s also about how her personal diagnosis changed her life and helped her change thousands and thousands of others. Proud of her, and her work, and this book. Thank you for humoring this distracting interlude of rank sincerity. We now return to our usual tiresome glibness.

I lost 75 goddamn pounds this year and nobody’s mentioning it because my friends are all “we don’t talk about anyone’s bodies” and I get it but for fuck’s sake I gave up peanut butter on toast a thing of joy and have been lifting weights like Arnold so you can be a person and say good job bro

My first car was a ‘57 Chevy. It wasn’t a sexy candle-apple-red coupe, it was a white four-door sedan. A barge. But it had the fins. My god, the fins. It cost 2,000 bucks. In 1985. My dad surprised me with it. He found it Hemming’s Motor News. His bible.

Driving to the mall, 20 minutes away, burned a half of a tank of gas. Its brakes were woefully insufficient to its bulk. I replaced the pads every 6 months. I was gangly, soft-bellied, pear-shaped, closeted. I never felt sexier.

RESOLVED: TRAITORS is a great show, but a bad game. It’s BLOOD ON THE CLOCKTOWER Day One, perpetually. There is no logic, no deductions, no data, only feelings. Feelings are great TV, but not satisfying gameplay.

It’s Batman Day. I looked forward to it every year, as a kid. Running down the steps first thing in the morning and finding mom and dad lying in pools of blood. Then a hearty breakfast of popcorn and pearls. Then scouring the streets for a random tween to come live with us. Happy Grim Vigil!

Today is Batman Day and also Talk Like a Pirate and both are fake and meaningless but there have been pirate versions of Batman over the years and when you squint at “Bat-Pirate” you get “butt pirate” which is a top-tier gay slur so I’m okay with it all.

npr.orgEditor Rose Friedman, who helped shape NPR's cultural coverage, dies at 38Friedman was in her early 20s when she landed her first position as an editorial assistant at NPR. She became an editor and reporter, and a co-creator of the annual Books We Love reading guide.

Rose was a union gal, bless her. She was instrumental in getting NPR to hire me full-time, after years of them trying not to. You didn’t hear her voice, but you did. This sucks a lot. She made NPR so much better. www.npr.org/2026/09/18/n...

They’re trying to shame a gay candidate for posing in a harness when he was a hot young muscle twink and looked great. A harness. There are photos of me in jorts and a goatee in the 90s that should and would pre-empt any political career. Let’s focus on what matters people.

Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD 2 is Taylor’s version.

18 Sept

I mean there’ll be a lot to dismantle in DC once he’s gone, but I say we start with what he’s done to the Capitol dome.