This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
- Ben Whishaw, always great!
- Exploding penises, always a surprise!
- Kate Bush ran up that hill, always an athlete!
- Anthony Hopkins likes NFTs, always baffling!
- Video stores, always nostalgic!
I Can’t Believe This Scene Is Real
Every once in a while, I dabble in a little Boys. The Boys.
A superhero series isn’t ordinarily something I’d be into, but I like to be a generalist when it comes to pop culture and sample the series that other demographics (the straights) are into.
Little did I know that this series was apparently made exactly for me.
This is a series that features hot superheroes making fun of the idea of superheroes (but while still being hot and superheroic) and also a massive penis set piece and a tiny naked man scaling mountains of cocaine.
No, a bot that was meant to mimic the content of Gay Twitter didn’t write that. It’s an actual plot description of the first episode of The Boys Season 3, which is easily the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on TV.
I recognize that I’m prone to hyperbole and slapping superlatives on mediocre entertainment for the sake of… fun. But this is the one case that it’s true. This is actually the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on TV. And just months ago, Tommy Lee’s penis came to life and began talking to him.
Here, I will write a very plain description of what happens in the premiere of The Boys Season 3.
Termite is a superhero whose powers are much like Ant-Man in the Marvel universe, which is to say he shrinks down to insect-size when strategic. During a drug-fueled celebration, his partner says what are familiar words in a sexual come-on: “I want you inside me.” Termite does a line of cocaine as his partner pulls down his pants and jumps onto the table.
He shrinks down to a size so small that he has to leap over the lines of coke. His partner’s comparatively massive penis sits on the ends of the table, the hole at the end of it resembling a monstrous cavern. “No, this isn’t where this is going…” you think, as it goes exactly there.
Termite leaps into the hole and climbs into his partner’s urethra, spelunking for his prostate.
As he traverses the, uh, tunnel, his partner starts writhing with pleasure. But then, oh no, Termite sneezes. He comes back to human size… inside the urethra. His partner explodes into blood and guts.
I have, out of journalistic curiosity and no other motive whatsoever, watched this screen roughly 75 times this week. I have Googled every article about it. I learned important things, for example that The Boys actually built a usable giant penis that actor Brett Geddes could climb into for the scene. It was 11 feet high and 30 feet long, so it would appear to scale. Believability is important.
This is all to say that The Boys is clearly the best show on television.
How Big Was Kate Bush’s Hill?
I, like any cool elder millennial, have loved these past weeks of pretending I have forever and always been Kate Bush’s biggest fan and definitely listen to her music all the time and am a ride-hard longtime obsessive who can definitely name other songs she’s sang besides that one in Stranger Things.
Our generation is finally having its moment! I laugh at you, younger Gen Z children and youths who are pitifully only finding out about her now. I scoff!
The news that “Running Up That Hill” went to No. 1 on iTunes thanks to its prime placement in Stranger Things has been really fun. Snark aside, I love this for Kate Bush. You ran up that hill, girlie!
It also made this piece by Rich Juzwiak at Jezebel all the more interesting. In “Going to No. 1 on iTunes Isn’t the Big Achievement It Sounds Like,” he explains using data why, well, going to number one on iTunes isn’t the big achievement it sounds like. It’s a really interesting glimpse into what the music business has morphed into and how wild—and easy—spin has become. I recommend reading it!
Anthony Hopkins Is Into NFTs Now
I like to imagine a world where Anthony Hopkins—excuse me, Sir Anthony Hopkins, a Commander of the British Empire knighted by Queen Elizabeth II—sent this tweet (any tweet, really) with his own two thumbs.
“I’m astonished by all the great NFT artists,” he wrote. “Jumping in to acquire my first piece, any recommendations?” He then tagged the unholy trinity of Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Fallon, and Reese Witherspoon, the celebrity terrorists who have inexplicably been pimping NFTs any chance they get. It is all accompanied by a photo of his character in Westworld, surrounded by faceless, skinless androids waiting to be anthropomorphized—as on-the-nose a metaphor for a celebrity promoting an NFT scam to the masses as there possibly could be.
I don’t love the fact that some member of Hopkins’ team accepted some sort of deal to promote NFTs, easily the stupidest thing to have become a capitalist phenomenon in a very long time. It’s possibly the worst celebrity branding that there has ever been. “We want to prove how hip and cool NFTs are, kids, so here is Sir Anthony Hopkins to tell you all about it.”
That said, I would pay more than I would pay for an NFT to hear Hopkins stopped on the street, caught off guard, and asked to explain what, pray tell, an NFT actually is. I feel like it’s been ages of this nonsense and I really, truly still do not know.
I Love This Video So Much
My 10-year-old ass going to Blockbuster Video every Friday to rent The Big Green for the 13th time and, I hate to say it, forcing my poor father to agree to own Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants when I was in high school because I kept telling him I was going to return it and never did and the late fees passed the purchase price might have cried while watching this montage of scenes at video stores from movies.
The supercut was made by Don McHoull and it’s really good!
What to watch this week:
Queer as Folk: It’s Pride Month. You’re forced to. (Now on Peacock)
For All Mankind: Guys, this show is really good. Get on it. (Fri. on Apple TV+)
Evil: The most delightfully weird show on TV. (Sun. on Paramount+)
What to skip this week:
Jurassic World: Dominion: My apologies to Laura Dern. (Fri. in theaters)
The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.