a quote that lives in my brain

listen to raylan

Maybe this is a product of me having the kind of job where I have to watch a lot of TV shows and movies and take notes and sometimes make screencaps, but let’s let it fly anyway…

Do you guys have quotes from stuff you’ve watched burrowed into your brain, too? I don’t mean like quotes from Anchorman or The Office that have been memed to death, although at some point we need to have a discussion about how Anchorman and The Office are both awesome but had their reputations diluted by those memes over the last decade or two. I mean like actual, full-on quotes that have tweaked your worldview a little. Quotes so good that they kind of become part of your personality. 

I do. You probably guessed that from the title, though. And the intro paragraph. Although it would have been pretty funny if I led with all that and then was like “Well, I don’t. And you’re weird if you do. Later.” God, you guys would have been so mad. Dozens of unsubscriptions. All justified. 

Well, look at that. I used the word justified. And the quote I was rambling toward showing you is also from Justified, the juuuust about perfect FX series about a shoot-first US Marshal tangling with an array of eloquent hooligans in Kentucky. Weird how that worked out. Here it is. 

That’s so good, right? The context doesn’t even really matter, although the context is solid and February is as good a time as any to dive into another Justified binge. Read it out loud right now: “You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” Two sentences that put a lot of things into perspective. 

I love it for a few reasons. One is that it summarizes something we all kind of already know, which is that the kind of person who goes on and on and on about how everyone else is stupid and mean and being an unreasonable jerk to them specifically is just a massive bummer to be around. Yes, sure, maybe they did legitimately run into an asshole or two. But maybe it’s more that the common denominator in all these awful interactions is… them. God, it’s freeing to have that feeling and vibe put into words so succinctly. 

Another reason I love it is that it serves as a good self-check on your own behavior. Like, we’ve all had crappy days where a string of stuff ticks us off and our fuses are short and we’re hyper-aware of everyone else being a prick, but it’s also good to stop in the middle of it if you can and be like “hmm could some of those interactions have been better if I wasn’t being such a snot about everything?” Self-reflection sucks sometimes because the answer to questions like that might be “yup” and then you have to go ahead and do something about it. Blame Raylan Givens, not me. Be careful, though. He usually has a gun.

In conclusion:

• Yes, it’s funny to me that I’m suggesting we all take life advice from a fictional cowboy with a trainwreck personal life and a habit of murdering his enemies in public

• Another line from Justified that lives in my head is the one where Kentucky supervillain Boyd Crowder revealed his plan to go legit by saying “I want you to help me get a Dairy Queen franchise,” which isn’t as useful on a philosophical level but is really fun to think about

• I love Justified a lot

Thank you. 

STUFF I TYPED

— I turned on paid subscriptions as an option for this newsletter for reasons explained here — short version: a buck a week, half goes to spinal cord charities — but I want to add one thing: I didn’t think about it until the next day but I really should’ve given everyone who pledged a subscription months ago and forgot about it a few days notice before flipping the switch (sorry)

— they replaced the Jardiance lady and the new commercial is somehow more confusing than the old one, which sent me into another all-caps rageblog that the original Jardiance lady apparently saw and enjoyed (???) (!!!)

— my weekly Rundown column, which opens with a section about how Amazon’s Mr. And Mrs. Smith series is way too good to get lumped into the remake/reimagining slop heap

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— I decided recently that I’m going to watch Caitlin Clark play basketball as much as I can this winter and both Jason Gay and my colleague Robby Kalland wrote very good blogs about why you should consider it too

— Louisa Thomas wrote about how good Nikola Jokic is at basketball, so there’s another good hoops blog for you

— Jackson McHenry is correct: Put Maya Erskine in everything

— it is settled, we are stealing the final cut of Coyote vs. Acme before Warner Bros deletes it

— Every Best Picture Winner Ranked by How Good a Muppets Version Would Be

— Tina Fey went on Las Culturistas to goof around and talk a little shit — you probably saw a few context-free clips floating around but the whole chat is great — and she told Bowen Yang that “authenticity is dangerous and expensive” and that is a phrase that is gonna stick with me a longgggg time

— “He’s all about football and cheeseburgers”

— Casey Newton wrote an interesting thing about Bluesky, which is open to the public and still has kinks to work out but is reasonably fun overall and where I’m spending more of my time (hi) now that Twitter has become a place where corny losers pay $8 a month to shout slurs at pornbots

— 9-1-1 is back next month and they’re flipping a cruise ship upside down, which I’m actually kind of shocked they haven’t done already

— a good show had some good guest stars

— learned a lot about volcano snails this week

— the ITYSL stage show is hitting the road and is basically already sold out, which is somehow both awesome and infuriating 

— I love the sleepy polar bear

— Quiz With Balls

— I covered this in my Rundown column but still: I must see the octopus documentary narrated by Paul Rudd

Okay, that’s enough for this week. Please subscribe and tell a stranger you meet on the street to subscribe, too.