The Uffda Times-Picayune

The year is 2009. The first decade of the new millennium is coming to an end. The economy is in shambles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is released to great acclaim. I am in 7th grade, and Facebook just arrived in my middle school.

I was an active internet user from a young age. I regularly used the “kitchen computer” for Wikipedia wormhole dives, YouTube videos, and online games like Runescape. I’ve had consistent, pretty much unfiltered access to the internet since I was probably 11 or 12.

I remember bits and pieces of early Facebook. The girl I had a crush on (and our whole friend group) had all made Facebook accounts around the same time. It wasn’t MySpace, and the part that worried me the most was using your real name and likeness.

While the internet was largely unblocked and my site visits largely unmonitored, I was only allowed on Facebook if I didn’t use my full name, so I used my then online alias Yankeefanboy123, stylized “Yankeefanboy Onetwothree.” No, I do not like the Yankees anymore, and yes, I have always been an obnoxious contrarian. I was also very worried because I thought they (Facebook) would find out (classic Noah) I was under the age requirement.

Welcome to Please Don’t Add My Mom Back on Facebook: An Oral History of a Social Network. Growing up online at the blooming stages of social media was complicated, but I think a lot of my peers have reverence for the early days of Being Online.

Reflecting on Facebook’s influence on my life is also complicated; it’s the easiest way for me to revisit memories, both good and bad, of my late mother, whose descent into addiction and isolation is laid fully bare on her still archived and technically active Facebook page.

This week, we’re going to cover those formative years, which for me coincided with being in middle school. What a fucking nightmare.

Thanks for reading and listening. And why didn’t you poke me back?

Dude, did you see Stanford is on theutpbook.com now, too? That’s crazy. I think we’ll get it pretty soon. Give me your email and I’ll let you know.

Part 1: Parent Permission Required (2009-2011)

I was on Facebook doing Facebook things probably every day, once I had access to my own computer. My dad would buy extremely-cheap, used business laptops from his work, which was how I had my “own” laptop.

I didn’t have a cell phone, so Facebook messages were the only way I could message people. This was before most kids had smartphones, and Facebook had a text-to-message feature, same with text-to-post. There was an incredible crossover era where people had online forum-esque signatures for SMS messages, so every Facebook message would have a My Chemical Romance quote or something at the end of it. Incredible stuff~~xxX Welcom 2 Tha Black Parade MCR4EVA Xxx~~

Facebook was liberating. It was the first time I was somewhere online where I was interacting with people I actually knew in real life. MySpace was already falling out of fashion, and Facebook was also seen as being more “private,” which is hilarious in retrospective. This wasn’t Runescape or Xbox Live, but something totally different to me.

Despite being 11 or 12 years-old, I was legitimately using Facebook to “catch up” with people, the timeless marketing gimmick used for Facebook once it outpaced its original market of current college students. I had a pretty major move in 3rd grade, and my now 6th/7th grade-self used Facebook to re-connect with my neighbors and school friends who I had drifted from, and even a few who had moved to other parts of the country.

For me, the best and cringiest part about going back to old Facebook posts is without a doubt how earnest I was in sharing basically everything I was doing.

Of course, everyone I know wants to see pictures of me in front of the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. Of course, everyone wants to know how long it took me to read John Green’s Looking for Alaska. There’s an excitement to the novelty of writing out these silly UTP articles and essays for my friends that takes me back to a different internet that was optimistic and exciting. It’s fun to reminded that it’s cool to be earnest, actually.

I also want to be up-front that, as the title suggests, a significant part of my early Facebook memories are of my late mother, who, like all good suburban moms that are also children of the 80’s, used Facebook to reconnect with friends, share life updates, and play games. Nothing had her in a vice-grip quite like fucking Bejeweled Blitz. She was putting up World of Warcraft playtime numbers in a Facebook match the colors game.

This was also around the time her addiction began to consume her life. She was ostensibly more connected with friends than ever, even as she began to isolate herself.

I have many, many memories of being in the kitchen talking to my mom while she played Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook on the Kitchen Computer, which typically transitioned into a frenzy of YouTube viewings, where my mom showed me all the things people always say they wanna show their kids. This is how I saw famous scenes from The Brady Bunch, cheesy 70s kid’s shows, and whatever nostalgia trip my mom was currently on. My parents always treated “showing me things for grown-ups” as a rite of passage, especially movies; I was a Quentin Tarantino fanatic at age 12.

My mom loved to laugh. She introduced me to sketch comedy, stand-up, and was almost always trying to crack jokes. If she wasn’t using Facebook to try to catch up with you, she was trying to get you to laugh, her posts, comments, and messages full of bad one-liners and cheap punchlines.

Linda was an avid prankster, frequently in trouble at her Catholic high school, and later on crank calling people when she was probably a little too old to be doing that (read: 40s). She enjoyed chatting with old friends and making new ones. She had a network of mutual friends that were all prolifically active on Facebook, including a few she never knew IRL.

I have my suspicions about the real intentions of befriending men across the country on Facebook but she did make a lot of interesting connections, including a guitar player who played in The Meat Puppets for a short period of time in the early 90s. This man was in attendance at the infamous Nirvana MTV Unplugged Live in New York recording, which to me was tantamount to being present for Christ’s crucifixion. I have old messages begging for information about Kurt Cobain or what it was like to be there. He was clearly drunk while messaging me.

I had a smaller, but just as active cohort of the other 12-year-olds I knew that had Facebook. It was well before my grandparents were on, or even my dad and siblings. I was documenting everything I did, and complaining a lot. As I mentioned earlier, ever the contrarian, I used Facebook to remind everyone just how special I was because I was a fervent Yankees fan, triggered by 2009 playoffs fever and a few years of baseball card collecting.

I was also unusually upset about the Minnesota Vikings bringing Brett Favre in, and certainly didn’t like his wavering commitment to the team I barely understood. I wasn’t a football fan in any way, but caught the bandwagon spirit of 2009, what with Adrian Peterson and all. I made a litany of memes mocking Favre and Vikings management, despite having no investment before that football season. But, this was a big time for the Vikings, and my getting caught up in the excitement would lead me to play my sole season of youth football, which, like all efforts of mine, was an attempt to get girls to like me. Today, I am a loyal prisoner of the Vikings fandom, and it does not make me more attractive. And it all started with me making crass Brett Favre memes to share on Facebook.

My mom was a common guest in the comment sections on my Facebook posts, which was unspeakably horrifying for a teenager.

My mom always befriended my friends and we would spend time hanging out with her in the late hours of the night, like always at the kitchen computer, which was usually fun because she’d show us stand-up clips, iconic sketches, and whatever racist jokes were fashionable at the time; my mom did think Jeff Dunham was funny and MadTV was just as likely as SNL to be what we were shown, and a lot of those sketches have aged like milk. I’d protest to my friends, but my friends actually liked being treated like adults, and my mom loved cracking jokes and laughing.

On utpbook, the one true social network, I felt 2009 was a good year to feature posts from. I credit high school speech team with socializing me, so my 12-year-old lack of awareness and unbridled online enthusiasm is really fun to look back on. I’ve peppered a number from that venerable first year on Facebook throughout the piece and plan to throughout this series.

Part of what spurred the idea to talk about Facebook is because doing this newsletter and accompanying podcast feels like early Facebook to me. It’s the one place online I actually enjoy being, and sharing art/things I’ve made with people, even my faceless Substack subscribers, takes me back to a time shortly before my mom’s alcoholism became fully apparent and the beginning of The Bad Times (8th Grade-ehh present).

Buuuuut this newsletter gives me the creative joy that I felt in the pre-The Bad Times times. This is a new kind of Times: Picayune. Uffda!

I shared creative writing samples, of which I can no longer access because Zuck and his ghouls disabled the Notes feature on Facebook and now my anti-Twilight fanfictions from ‘09 are gone. Let me just say this: Jesus blows up Edward, Bella, and Ugly Betty with a rocket launcher. Just burn down the Library of Alexandria, why don’t you.

In the years since moving back to Minnesota, where I’ve had my own office/studio/rehearsal space, I think about early Facebook because, in those 2009 days of old, I often posted about my guitar, wanting to play guitar, wanting to buy a guitar, post pictures of my guitar, and so on. Once again, this was an effort to get girls to like me, and like nearly all others, did not work.

In a similar, yet less desperate, sense, I talk about banjo class a lot in my newsletter/podcast because it was the first organized music activity I’ve been in since I stopped marching drum corps in 2017. My therapist has made it very clear that my positive mental health improvements over the last year are directly correlated with banjo class.

I regularly posted the exact models of guitars I wanted, in the vain hope that some non-existent wealthy relative will break the bank for me out of the blue; this did not happen. Though I would be remiss not to mention that I am beyond lucky that both of my grandfathers are guitar-players and at one point were professional musicians, and I have been blessed to receive multiple instruments from each of them, from my first 3/4-size guitar I got when I was 9, to my beloved banjo that sits out for me to play every day.

That 3/4-size guitar was a piece of junk, but a great starter guitar for a little kid, and was paramount in learning musical skills outside of band class at school. One of the last truly kind things my mom did was facilitating repairing the guitar, and then giving it to a nurse who was taking care of her during one of her last hospital stays, so her daughter could learn how to play the guitar.

My parents were also extremely supportive and paid/took me to guitar lessons (when I was in 6th grade) and I did have a nice electric guitar and amplifier, and went on to play in the school jazz band. I won’t lie, though, I’m pretty sure my incessant Facebook posting had something to do that. I am pleased to say I still play both that guitar and with that amplifier to this day because my parents believed in me and that’s one hell of an investment to have made in you.

Despite the best efforts of Anoka-Hennepin public schools telling us to watch what we do online, I still posted literally every thought with no impunity, a practice that lasted until I abandoned Twitter in 2024. This was painfully apparent throughout 2010.

If there are “inside thoughts,” I certainly needed a concept of “inside posts,” because I documented everything from my mothers hospital stays, my opinions on movies, and definitely one-sentence inside jokes that basically only meant anything to my mom, and maybe my dad.

I definitely had an emo kid era that was more like an “Adolescent Reads Too Much About Kurt Cobain’s Drug Problems” era. I loved grunge music. I’d credit this in large part because it was what my parents listened to, but also because many grunge songs (or their riffs, anyway) are really easy to play on the guitar.

Moving past 2009, we entered a new decade in 2010, and at age 13, in full emo mode, I regularly made Facebook posts that included either lyrics, references, or an actual video of songs that I guarantee I listened to while my Major Depressive Disorder was still in its infancy. Here’s a breakdown of the music I posted about:

* “Bleed it Out” by Linkin Park (three times)

* “Capital G” by Nine Inch Nails (twice)

* Rage Against the Machine: “︻┳═一 Arm The Homeless 一═┳︻”

* “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails

* “No Excuses” by Alice in Chains (woof—twice)

* “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers (three times; 7th grade heartbreak is the same as a debilitating heroin addiction)

* “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers

* “Blurry” by Puddle of Mudd (twice—one of my go-to “she doesn’t like me and it hurts” songs)

* “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson

* “Weapon of Choice” by Fatboy Slim

* “Lithium” by Nirvana (twice—I really liked “all my friends are in my head”)

* “Freak on a Leash” by Korn (twice on my golden birthday?)

* “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana

* “No More Tears” by Ozzy Osbourne (three times)

* “Mountain Man” by Crash Kings (this song still slaps)

* Green Day (I hated American Idiot)

* “Spoonman” by Soundgarden (twice)

* “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant

* “Dragula” by Rob Zombie

* “The Crow and the Butterfly” by Shinedown (this song sucks ass but it made me cry all the time so I posted about it three times)

* “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns ‘n’ Roses

* “Jesus Built My Hotrod” by Ministry (twice—you can thank my dad buying it on Rock Band)

* “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers

* “Boonville Stomp” by Les Claypool (lmao what—twice)

* “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails (hmm)

* “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam (Major Wee-Woo-Wee-Woo Alarm Bells Red Flag—twice)

* “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins

* “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots

* “Sex Type Thing” by Stone Temple Pilots

Here’s what I posted about in 2010:

* New York Yankees: 8 times

* Brett Favre and Minnesota Vikings Mentions: 10 times

* Guitar (playing, buying, wanting to play, etc.): 16 times

* Movies: 24 times

* Being Sad: 13 times

* Being Happy: 9 times

* Being Sick 8: times

* Being Bored/Tired: 6 times

* Texas Roadhouse: 3 times

* Cryptic Post About Crush: 4 times, although if you count song mentions it’s likely 20-25.

* Kurt Cobain and Layne Stayley: 5 times (I got really fixated on Kurt’s suicide)

So yeah, I was definitely a moody teenager. A therapist I saw at age 14 wanted to medicate me ASAP so I was not permitted visits to additional mental health professionals (although it was mostly because I was afraid of them, not that I was prevented from doing so).

I was a quirky kid: this was shortly before my regrettable but definitely canon Brony phase (Fluttershy is best pony, FYI). I shaved my moppy hair into a mohawk (the mop would never truly return). I “arranged” the Super Mario Bros theme song for band class, a lifetime achievement of an 8th grade bando. I was desperate for everyone to know I could play the guitar. I tried really hard to do a lot of voices (Josh Robert Thompson and Frank Caliendo were my heroes) and be funny. Can you tell I really wanted attention?

Anecdotally, this time of my life is particularly memorable. I remember this time of my life as a time where my mother was extremely active in my life. Looking back on early Facebook posts of mine confirms this much. She did appear in my comment sections quite often, including to defend me from peers trying to bully me (mortifying).

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, at this same time, my mom’s drinking problem became Everyone’s Problem instead of just something she dealt with privately. In fact, I blocked out most of this part of my life, at least timing-wise. In researching for this article noticed things started to change at the beginning of 2011.

Facebook’s historical timeline starts from Dec 31 and works backwards, so I noticed immediately that the archived posts from 2011 didn’t appear to be as “good” or amusing as past years. But a post from earlier in the year, the last trimester of 8th grade, hit me like a ton of bricks.

I shared a link to a CaringBridge site. If you’re not familiar, the site is a proto-GoFundMe-type site meant to share updates to people undergoing great crisis, usually serious medical issues or other situations so friends and family can follow along from home and offer support. I think the existence of the site is a good thing, but I have some reservations about putting someone’s personal medical situation on blast because an incapacitated person cannot consent to that. I digress.

Anyway, the link was to a CaringBridge site for my mom. The post was dated March 26th, 2011 and said:

“For my mom, for she is in the hospital and has been for almost 4 weeks.”

About a week later on April 3rd, I posted about being part of my school district’s 8th grade honor band. I posted:

Honor band was well, honoring, and now I'm at the hospital seeing my mom. Wonderful.

In a wider context, we’re about two year’s past my “emergecy” room post, after my mom was hospitalized for falling down the stairs of our house in the middle of the night while she was walking, drunk, in the dark. We’re about one year away from my grandmother’s passing, but she is presently in chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer. Her passing would signal a point of no return for my mother’s struggle with alcoholism.

I talked about this in therapy while writing this piece and remarked that I wasn’t sure what I was emo about before my mom’s extended hospitalization and then I remembered: normal people don’t end up in the hospital for months at a time from drinking. I just didn’t have any context or know any better as a kid. I just thought they were having grown-up drinks that smelled terrible (my parents were Rum and Coke-heads, my mom obviously went with Rum and Diet).

It takes a few months, but my mom eventually does return to my replies, but not as often. Knowing what I know now, it is obvious from a very early point in the research of this article that my mom loved to drunk post. Later in the year she would incorrectly attribute a guitar I received as a gift to be from the wrong grandparent, something that really pisses me off even now. I was undergoing both dealing with an alcoholic mother and being a teenager, and from freshman year onwards would fill every moment of my life with activities so as to stay the fuck away from my house.

For the rest of her life, she would be in-and-out of 30-day rehab programs so often that she should have had a punch card. Between these, and far more often, she would spend a night or two in the drunk tank, or the hospital. She had several DWIs, had so-called “whiskey plates” and ignition interlock on the family minivan, and would serve about a year in jail, as well as multiple stints in the workhouse.

I also think it’s valuable to mention that those four weeks my mom was hospitalized were not in Minnesota—she suffered multiple seizures in Arizona while she was solo-tripping a family funeral. She was visibly drunk around distant relatives and, once hospitalized, would be diagnosed with jaundice and was intubated. My dad left me and my siblings in Minnesota where a revolving door of family members and family friends watched me and my siblings, which is also memorialized in Facebook posts.

As an adult I have deeply complicated feelings about this time of my life, but the context is impossible to ignore when I saw the totality of the posts, and how stark the change in tone became. Was I growing up? Sure. But pretty damn fast, and without any mental health intervention aside from what would become weekly-or-more-frequent visits with the school guidance counselor.

There are still a lot of silly posts in 2011, but more importantly, my freshman year of high school was truly one of the most formative periods of my life—and I documented it all on Facebook.

I would choose to skip joining football in high school and follow my band friends, including my crush, by joining marching band instead. This would be one of the most consequential decisions in my life; the butterfly effect of this decision directly leads to me meeting my fiancee. I started posting about current events and providing commentary, including the disgraceful rash of suicides by queer students in my school district that made national news and resulted in a federal civil rights investigation into the deeply conservative school district.

This part of my life is crucial canon to the Noah lore. I went through the aforementioned Brony phase at the same time I had a mohawk I never put up. That same school year I was diagnosed with a hernia (I know), and the school absences from the surgery permanently stunted my ability to learn math (I’m not kidding) and put me behind a full year of my peers. Buuut, if I hadn’t failed math, I’d never taken Graphic Design, a class that was the single most useful elective I took in perhaps all of my secondary and post-secondary educations.

I posted about most of this stuff on Facebook, but in high school, Facebook became something else. Especially after I befriended numerous adults in drum corps, I posted achievements, almost always in extra-curriculars. Speech and debate trophies, marching band photos, drum corps competitions, swim team, Boy’s State, you name it.

I’m proud to say that while my parents did shuttle me to and from practices and shows, I am forever grateful for the adults in my life who invested in me: coaches, teachers, fellow drum corps members, school counselors, and my family. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without these people who believed in me, and made sure I knew that I was worth believing in, because the world, especially at home, felt so cold and lonely—and in 2011, the worst of it was just getting started.

I didn’t get many likes on my posts on Facebook, I was insecure about the amount friends I had. I loved adding random people, especially local news personalities on Facebook, particularly before minor public figures had their own pages—before you “liked” pages and instead “became a fan.” My personal favorite random friend is The Social Network composer and one-half of the modern Nine Inch Nails, Atticus Ross. I’m not sure why he added me back, but it is a fun fact, especially in the context of this series.

How I used Facebook socially would change drastically with the changes Facebook made in general.

Early Facebook was ruthlessly social and today is a ragebait farm of bot comments on news articles.

We have come a long way, and Facebook has taken a nosedive from grace to a shell of what it used to be.

Dead internet came for Facebook a long time ago. Long before AI bots permeated every part of the internet, Facebook chipped away at the inherently social aspects of Facebook and continued to add algorithms, suggested posts, videos, Reels, and other features nobody wants. Before long, and really even as early as like 2013, Facebook had lost much of the personality it had when using it meant communicating with people you immediately knew (at least if you were like, 12). Facebook hit me at the beginning of my socialization and peak puberty, and I have great (and horrible) memories, regrets and triumphs, and 17 years of memory lane to stroll down. We’re just getting started.

In this series (and boy am I sorry this is going to be a series), we’re gonna talk about the eras of Facebook from the perspective of someone who grew up there.

I would consider myself a Facebook ex-power user and have a long, and often intense, relationship with using the service. At my peak usage, I used it to connect with friends, engage in political activism, find the best memes online (what an era!), and connect with wider circles of people during those last few years (leading to 2019) where Facebook Was Good, Sort Of.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I ain’t writing The Social Network. Aaron Sorkin already did that once, and God forbid he do it again. An aside about The Social Network is that it’s (predictably) one of my favorite movies of all time. We’ll do a review of it, as well as a review of the soundtrack, one of the greatest of all time.

I’m also reading a book called Facebook: The Inside Story by WIRED journalist Steven Levy. While it’s safe to say that 2020 is a lifetime ago in tech world dystopia, especially as we’ve entered the latter-half of the decade, I’m reading it anyway because I ran into Steven at a DC-ass event about free speech when I was an intern and he needed someone to help him get to Union Station because there were no cabs and he refused to use an Uber. We rode the train together for 20 minutes as I asked about what he was doing and about his life. He told me he was working on a book about Facebook. Well, now I’m gonna read it and review it. Hopefully my review is as good as my Metro wayfinding directions.

I want to spend more time talking about Facebook Games in the early era, the Candy Crushes and FarmVilles of yore. We’re going to talk about the meteoric rise of Facebook Groups as the heir apparent of the niche forums of the early internet, which also brings us the death of anonymity. And we’re going to talk about the giant that is Meta Inc., Instagram, their failures in AI, VR, and The Social Network. And maybe The Social Network 2. God I hope that isn’t fucking happening,

So get your password book out, we’re logging on to the hottest place online in 2009: Facebook dot com. And for the love of God, please don’t add my mom back.

Facebook is only fun if your friends use it, just like UTP! Poke your friends, write on their wall, stalk their pics, do whatever you need to do to get this newsletter in their hands.

Alright. Alright, alright, alright. The b***h is back. Sound the trumpets. Lay down the red carpet. Bring out your offerings. UTP is back for 2026.

Originally, I had written a whimsical intro about the razzmatazz and pizzazz of welcoming the new year and my overcoming a writer’s block that has afflicted me for the better part of two months.

I was actually finalizing the edits to this very edition while sitting in a Powderhorn, Minneapolis coffee shop the morning of January 7th, when Renee Good was murdered just over a mile away as the crow flies. I had actually taken that as a mental health day, if you can believe it.

I can’t emphasize enough how much worse things have gotten in the last few weeks. I’ve actually been paranoid to write anything about this but I just don’t give a s**t anymore—Minneapolis did nothing to deserve this and the constant trauma and grief of everyone has so successfully been channelled into productive anger by people who are far braver than me.

There is no figurehead making the media rounds. It is so decentralized it’s almost baffling that anything is coordinated. People act on good faith. Minnesota’s unique culture of civic participation, one that’s been stamped out in neighboring Wisconsin—which by definition is not a democracy, prepares a variety of responses. It is the most inspiring thing I have ever experienced.

Believe it or not, living in a total police state is actually Not Great. South Minneapolis, particularly, is now teeming with SUVs with license plates from far-away lands, if they have any at all, filled with masked, armed goons who will turn any bystander—observer or otherwise—into a prop for their twisted fascist marketing campaign for a worse world.

I mean, s**t, I’ve gone to mass twice this month. Thank God for Father RJ at St. Thomas More in Saint Paul.

When I was revising this to write about the ongoing conflict in Minneapolis, I originally started writing about schools; the highly public assault of Roosevelt High School students on the same afternoon Renee Good was murdered was the high school the kids on my street attend. I was aghast at the cruelty of the decision to do that, and there was no naivete in my thinking that this was just the beginning. This is going to get worse. And it did. So here we are, weeks later.

I can’t and won’t recount more of the events for you: I know you are paying attention. Don’t look away.

I have an idea for a Minneapolis-centric gonzo piece about being a Regular Person In All This B******t, but that’s not what we’re doing today.

Instead, I still want to share what I wrote, and maybe provide a little friendly humor in these trying times. They want you to be afraid. They don’t want you to enjoy jokes that made my Greatest Generation grandfather nearly faint. “I wasn’t expecting so many four-letter-words,” was his review of Putting the Moron in Moroni. They don’t want you to read UTP.

The original bout of writer’s block was broken by a guest appearance at a local wrestling show, so I’ve got some of that below. Emily and I watched a dating show about virgins on Hulu and I have some things to say about it. And finally, I saw and am here to report on my Official Opinions of Wicked: For Good. Sorry ahead of time.

Hang in there. Stay safe. Minneapolis is the greatest city on the planet and it’s not even close.

RINGSIDE WITH UTP

BREAKING: EDDIE KINGSTON SHOWED UP AT NIGHT ONE OF WREMIX AND IT WAS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE

January means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for local wrestling fans, we know it as the first of local wrestling promotion F1RST Wrestling’s shows of the year, Wremix, one of their signature flagship events that combines burlesque dancing, pro wrestling, and music into a damn fun few hours of entertainment where the bar has no line, and getting ringside is achievable without shoving and pushing people out of the way.

The show was re-branded from “WrestlePalooza” after WWE shamelessly ripped the name away from them to counter-program AEW’s September pay-per-view, All Out. Sure, it was an old ECW PPV brand name, but really? You gotta f**k over F1RST and AEW? F**k off.

These shows usually have surprises—it is a wrestling/rock concert/burlesque variety show at the Twin Cities’ best “danceteria,” First Avenue, that venerable bus-station-turned-nightclub of old. This night was no exception, and my God what a treat.

This was our first time attending both nights of this event. We had done much hand-wringing over whether we were actually going to go to the first night, but we decided a day or two beforehand that it was going to be worth the feet pain, little sleep, and extra cost and got tickets.

F1RST has been host to stars from across the wrestling world in the past, and it’s not unheard of for stars like Swerve Strickland, Orange Cassidy, and Danhausen to make appearances at shows. My review of Saturday Night Nitro in September has many examples, like Ultimo Dragon, Shotzi, and Priscilla Kelly.

We arrived early and stood in the same spot we always stand. The show started a little late and after the video hype package and following promo monologue by F1RST Wrestling’s own blue-haired host we love to hate, John Maddening.

The first match begins with the walk-out of current Uptown VFW Champion Jordan, the toothless all-arounder billed by his full home address, who is also my coworker’s friend’s ex-boyfriend. He walks out to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” which always come back when he positions his opponent on the ropes and asks the crowd “Can I kick it?" with the required “Yes you can!” cheer in response.

The match was billed as having a surprise opponent. “Can I Kick It?” starts to fade out and the lights go out. After a few beats of silence, the distinctive Phantom of the Opera-esque organ of the fake-DMX theme song of only one wrestler in the world: god damned f*****g Eddie Kingston.

EDDIE KINGSTON? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The same Eddie Kingston I’ve been writing about for the past months since his triumphant, if disappointing AEW return late last year? The same Eddie Kingston of whom I have a magnet of a chibi version of on a filing cabinet at my desk at work? The same Eddie Kingston who had to fight for everything he had?

Yes. It was.

Eddie came out and didn’t say much. Billed as “The Mad King” Eddie Kingston, he and Jordan had a well-matched bout until the match was rudely interrupted by the perennial F1RST Midwest indie circuit darlings None More Violent, which features “The Freakshow” Cho (who threatened to murder me at the 2024 Doobie Dabbler) and the extremely scary and equally pretty Jinn Hallows, who is always killing it in a crop top.

Eddie and Jordan teamed up (twist!) and fought None More Violent, but not before Eddie cut a little promo (thank God! Give this man the microphone!). The match featured an amazing moment where the crowd grew quiet and Eddie shouted “F**k you, you m***********g c********r.” Incredible to hear in person, literally 10 feet away.

I didn’t mention that Eddie Kingston did make eye contact with me. We usually stand within eyeshot of the front right ring post on the ground level. Between the two shows, I:

* Made eye contact with Eddie Kingston,

* Drunkenly called for Jordan’s attention (on night 2) and, when I had his attention, I screamed “I saw you walking around at the state fair last year!” Emily hid her face in shame like Marge Simpson,

* Double main-eventer and man whose career I thought we watched end at MOA, Gringo Loco, was given superpowers by me pointing at him and screaming as we made eye contact twice,

* We also saw local music stars The Gully Boys hanging out at the Depot Tavern attached to First Ave before night 2.

If I reviewed every match, it’d be the whole damn newsletter/podcast and I also don’t remember them all, but my favorite wrestler I had never seen before was Effy, the TNA legend (who is strangely anti-AEW) whose whole gimmick is that he is gay. He was begging Shane Black, whose gimmick is that he’s a lifeguard, not to take his clothes off. He apparently has a kayfabe gimmick of targeting twinks, so that also came up. He fought both nights and they were both amazing.

F1RST Wrestling more than delivered with Wremix. Carrying the torch of the One True WrestlePalooza, Wremix featured excellent burlesque performances, including an outstanding “omelette du fromage” Dexter’s Laboratory cosplay. Music was awesome both nights, and the Gully Boys were a treat as it was their last local show for a while.

Wrestling evangelists will tell you that if the campiness and pageantry of wrestling is even a little interesting-sounding to you, go to a local wrestling show. Wremix will likely happen twice yearly, once in January, and once in June for Pride. Let me know if you wanna go, I’m always down.

WHAT’S ON THE IDIOT BOX?

HULU’S VIRGINS AND THE BANALITY OF CULTURAL REGRESSION

Ah yes, a 6-episode limited reality series about awkward grown adults seeking love and connection is actually about the slow cultural regression we’ve been speedrunning since the COVID-19 pandemic. Hear me out (or don’t, you don’t get a choice).

The premise of Virgins is extremely simple: four adults who consider their lack of intimacy core to their identity struggle and flounder as they try (and fail) to get laid. We watched the spiritual prequel earlier last year (also on Hulu), Are You My First?, whose premise was far more competition-esque. Love Island but nobody has any game.

Why anyone would sign up to be on this show is beyond me, but they found four wannabe reality stars who must have a thing for public humiliation rituals because I don’t understand how anyone would think this is a good idea.

I want to point out, as r/polyamory users will do about the existence of the concept of “jealousy,” that the conflicts these people have with being virgins are entirely self-created and self-reinforced. You actually don’t have to tell people that? You actually don’t have to make a big deal about this fabricated social construction of your identity? Who knew hitching people with miscalculated values of self-worth (too high and too low) to the wagon of a social identity associated with naivete and inexperience on a TV show that doesn’t care about their well-being might come off a little, I don’t know…distasteful?

Anyway, the first virgin we meet is Alex, a lovable loser who lives in the attic of his parents house in Reading, PA, a personal hell of his own design.

He is a hairy man (no hate) with unkempt balding hair and a disheveled beard. He laments how difficult it is for him to get laid and date as we get a tour of his bedroom, which he does point is not his childhood bedroom. He has a crappy guitar that appears to be missing strings “on display” leaning against a wall, an out-of-date bikini swimsuit calendar, and most horrendously, a TJ Maxx generic video game controller throw pillow prominently placed in the center of his bed, where he says the action “doesn’t happen.”

Alex’s wingmen for the show are his two older sisters, who are thoroughbred Rust Belt girlies who don’t mind putting down beers at the bar as they observe their brother fail miserably at interacting with women. They also love to put him down, frequently mock his appearance and demeanor, and only talk highly of him when he isn’t present. They push him to his limit as he fumbles his way through “tantric speed dating,” just one of multiple instances of the show appropriating various Southeast Asian cultural traditions. He connects with a woman who is verrry into him, and you just want to root for the guy.

They have another date which he gets his chest waxed beforehand (coward) and gets an admittedly very good haircut and beard trim. Things go south for Alex when he makes what is either a) a bafflingly terrible romantic miscalculation or b) cruel set-up by producers he is too naive to push back against. Either way, after their second date, he brings her back to his parents house and shows him his bedroom, a proposition that is usually associated with intimacy. However, he gives her a literal tour and we see her excitement and adoration for our endearing loser turn to horror in real time as she sees the most personal space of this manchild with no social or emotional skills.

The pièce de résistance of this disastrous date was when Alex sat her down on the bed and confessed that he was a virgin in an extraordinarily awkward and embarrassing way. She clearly dissociates as she plans her next moves. She says she had a good time with him and does really like him, but when he (again, EXTREMELY awkwardly) goes in for a kiss, she brutally rejects him because it’s “too early” for that. Getting rejected by the woman you met at a tantric speed dating class must be devastating. She leaves, and we later watch them Skype, where she proceeds to friendzone him. Incredible stuff.

I’d be remiss not to mention the second primary woman he dates, who is a pretty, agreeable, put-together 30-something with a career, goals, and knows what she wants. She, again, finds Alex to be a lovable loser who is naive, but he does not reveal that he’s a virgin until their third date. Which is a weekend getaway at a couples sex retreat resort, one of the ones you see on architecture Twitter accounts because of the giant champagne glass hot tub and heart-shaped swimming pool: both in the room.

What I also didn’t mention is that they had not even kissed before he took her to the resort. She put two-and-two together, but didn’t get a full picture of the situation until he confessed his virginity over dinner at the on-property romance-themed restaurant. They go back to the hotel room, he wants to try out the pool, so he strips and gets in. She takes her shoes off and sits on the side, only dipping her feet in. She reveals in an interview with producers that she is deeply uncomfortable and that she will be getting her own hotel room that night, LMAO.

We do get an incredible sequence where he is trying the champagne glass hot tub…by himself. He’s a good sport, and you really hope this was just cruel planning by the producers, because it really does feel like he was the victim in a plot, not a dumb man with no emotional intelligence. It goes without saying, he does not get any action in the six-episode season of this show.

Sonali is a 37-year-old Indian-American woman who has allowed her conservative upbringing and religious/cultural trauma to completely define her life (a personal hell of her own design) even when she admits her family mostly lives in India.

I know a thing or two about concealing who you are for norms that exist entirely in my own head, but my God this woman takes it to another level. She has an extraordinarily embarrassing virginity mood board in her room, which has a giant sheet of paper with cute letters that reads simply “DEMI-SEXUAL” in her bedroom. She also laments that she can fall in love with someone with “just one kiss” and that she only calls having sex “making love,” much to the horror of the man she is dating at the beginning (they do not go another date).

She is just…a lot. It’s hard to be mean to this woman because 90% of her problems could be solved if she had a team of mental health experts to help her manage her symptoms, ideally not filming and airing their sessions on national television. She is the most obviously exploited person on this show. She has an intense demeanor, doesn’t handle advice or help from experts well, and has extremely unrealistic expectations for what intimacy is and how to get it.

I’ll spare the details but she sees a series of experts, each more dubious than the last, including a final “womb healing” from a white lady with dreads named Nicki Jean who is a self-proclaimed “priestess healer" who details on her website that she was inspired to become a tantric priestess after a visit to Magdala, Israel.

At the recommendation of a certified sex therapist, she struggles with a “sex surrogate,” an extraordinarily kind and professional man with whom she gets very testy over his insistence she do literally any of the things he or the other sexual health professionals recommend she do to overcome her purely psychological barriers to intimacy.

She is literally told it’s all psychological and she immediately says “there is something physically wrong with me.” None of her dates on the show lead to second dates or a change in her virgin-status, but she does make progress with Nicki Jean and the surrogate, which I guess is something.

Jacksonville, FL-resident Rhasha is the oldest participant on the show at 42 years-old, and also clearly the most desperate to actually resolve her situation. At least she is seriously attempting to leave the personal hell of her own design.

She is ruthlessly normal and suffered an incredible amount of emotional trauma from a scam marriage she was part of after a man in the US on a visa started a long-distance relationship with her with the goal of marriage. They got married, he got citizenship, and divorced after a year. He was never attracted to her and they never so much as kissed in the year they lived together. Talk about ego-destruction. Wheesh.

This has also led to an extremely humorous relationship between her, her sister who looks exactly like her but with piercings and tattoos, and her mom. She is far too open about her (lack of) sex life with her mom and sister, much to their chagrin. Her sister mocks her and her mom is prudish but is the show’s closest thing to comic relief because her reactions to her daughter’s increasingly transparent and unhinged sharing of her kinks with her family are truly some of the best scenes of the whole show.

Again I will spare details about her dating life but she gets does the best of all of the show’s competitors for willingly leaving her comfort zone to see what she likes, but not before doing, what I believe, is the most unhinged s**t I’ve seen on the show. She AirPlays her iPad to the TV in the living room to look at dating sites with her mom and sister, presumably just for the TV show segment. But this woman is using Bumble, which, sure, but in f*****g Safari. Who is using Bumble from a web browser??? I didn’t even know that was possible!

Her unhinged run as the most desperate virgin ends as she books a weekend at a swinger’s resort with a friend of hers. She is propositioned multiple times but instead decides to invite the quiet, reserved man she’s gone on like four dates with to show up and go to the sex resort night club with her. She gets wayyy too drunk and despite a cliche closing of the hotel room’s door and blinds, they more than likely just went to bed as the show tells us she is still a virgin by the end.

Deanne is the final and most unlikable person on this show, whose high standards and over-inflated dating market self-worth have built her an intimacy-less personal hell that she takes out on her friends.

The 35-year-old LA resident is (shocker) a wannabe actor who admits her standards are too high. Multiple eligible (hot!) men proposition her for a date or two but she just dismisses everyone.

The mark of any good reality show is deducing whether a star’s neuroticism is indicative of their mental health, an exaggeration for the camera/tryout for further reality TV opportunities, or a construction of the show’s producers and editors. With Deanne, I’m fairly confident she really is just this shallow.

Instead of going to therapy, Deanne frequently visits a professional matchmaker (I hate LA) who is highly critical of Deanne’s standards and narcissism. She frequently remarks that she needs to be with someone who “looks like a celebrity.” I guess she’s pretty, but she does just look like a million other WASPs from Connecticut who moved to LA after the holiday visits home during her years at USC became too unbearable and that a return to New England will never be an option.

Thankfully, we benefit from her unhinged narcissism as the matchmaker flatly calls her shallow, and we do watch multiple first dates with Deanne fail miserably as she so obviously has no emotional maturity. Unfortunately she doubles down and takes no opportunity for self-reflection.

The banner segment for Deanne, however, is when her matchmaker signed her up for a live dating podcast show (I hate LA) where local comedians will do blind dating or something on stage, which is part fun variety show, part stand-up, part game show.

The comedians roast her incessantly, and the beauty is that Up-Dated!, the live show, is a true blind date: she is literally blindfolded. Her vapid obsession with superficiality is put on ice as an extremely kind pick-me guy waxes poetically about how much he would do for the right girl, etc, etc. Thankfully, the comedians use every opportunity to poke digs at her inexperience and narcissism whenever she says something to signal her interest in him.

Unfortunately for us, it goes really well! She actually sets up a real second date with the guy, which is at his house. He hires a private chef (I hate LA) and they dine al fresco with wine on his back patio. For literally no reason though, she gets ‘the ick’ and when he wants to kiss her at the end of the date, she denies him.

Okay, Noah, what’s your point? What does this have to do with cultural regression?

I’m sure true Reality TV foamers will be happy to tell me all of the similar terrible shows from the many years, but as someone who has watched a lot of novel dating reality shows made in the past couple of years, this one was a real throwback to the era where TLC went from an educational non-profit funded in-part by NASA to air educational shows in Appalachia to the human zoo nightmare that an average day of TLC programming since 1998 could be characterized as.

This was the most Nathan for You-esque dating show I’ve maybe ever seen. At least Are You My First? was virgins with other virgins, and in a Big Brother-esque compound. This show is all about humiliating the stars in their day-to-day life. The show’s handling of Sonali is absolutely baffling and exploitative—she’s clearly very traumatized by her conservative upbringing, and instead of taking her to the appropriate professionals where she is able to actually heal, she’s given televised appointments with new professionals where she is prodded on things to intentionally antagonize her. She is always extremely uncomfortable on camera and gets in verbal confrontations with multiple people, including the producers.

More importantly, this show lays bare that the social construction of virginity is very much alive and well. If these people, especially Sonali and Alex, just got out of their own way and would accept that intimacy is going to be messy, occasionally unpleasant, and rarely ideal for your first time, and that that isn’t a big deal, maybe they wouldn’t be on this show.

The urgent surge of virgin-focused content merges pretty well with a subjective trend anyone who makes the mistake of using social media has seen, where incel-adjacent manosphere language and ideas are now part of the general American lexicon. Maybe it’s a stretch, but purity and sex culture in America are absolutely fucked and perceived wildly differently from person to person.

It’s not a new trend either. I’ve bemoaned the Mormon cultural hegemony that the trad wife trend (another example of incel-adjacent manosphere garbage becoming mainstream) has co-opted. I’d argue shows like Virgins are meeting the same end, with far more banality.

This show was made at the expense of four people who, despite their worst efforts, cannot get laid. It is not uplifting, it does not inspire hope, it does not have a real point. But the producers excelled at the Fielder Method because I was physically cringing, laughing out loud, and hooting and hollering at dozens of scenes across just six episodes.

This show takes an uncritical look at the concept of virginity. Not a single person on the show suggests that “hey, maybe this social construction isn’t really that important?” For those on the show, the construction is a number of things: unjustifiably high standards, extreme discomfort with intimacy, lacking self-worth, having too much self-worth, bad luck, etc.

The producers knew what they were doing when they make every star on the show awkwardly share with a date that they are a virgin in dramatic “coming out” type conversations where people are being subjected to serious and uncomfortable discussions rather early for a casual romantic or sexual relationship. In what world are any of these middle-aged suitors not going to run for the hills when they learn the uncomfortable and awkward person they are on a date with for a TV show has next to zero experience with intimacy or navigating the emotional challenges of a committed relationship, let alone having a history of dating literally anybody?

Watch it if you want. It sucks and I basically told you everything that happens. Let me know if you think my takes are wrong. Is it really that deep? Probably not. But like classic episodes of Catfish, the misguided pursuit of lust, love, and longing delivers schadenfreude unlike anything a Mark Burnett show is able to do in 2026.

UTP AT THE MOVIES AT HOME IN THE BASEMENT

NOBODY LEARNED ANYTHING AND THE STRUCTURAL CONFLICTS AND POWER STRUCTURES OF THE STATUS QUO WERE MAINTAINED: YES, I WATCHED WICKED: FOR GOOD

Just in time for the holiday season, I watched the much-anticipated 2025 film sequel to the 2024 film adaptation of the first half of a 2003 Broadway musical based on a 1995 gritty fanfiction based on a 1939 film adaptation of the 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

When I watched Wicked 1: Even Less Wicked, it was my first time engaging with the Wicked version of the land of Oz. I had obviously seen the 1939 classic, erroneously believing for years that it was the “first color movie,” but the closest I got to Wicked was when I was in high school and one of my band teachers bragged about seeing Wicked on Broadway during the school band trip to New York a couple of years earlier. This did not sell me on going on the New York trip in band class. We almost played a Wicked medley, but the senior band director had us do a Wizard of Oz one instead. The “If I Only Had A Brain” tuba solo was very funny, I’ll admit.

I enjoyed Wicked: The Movie, although I had a lot to say about its themes, the fact that it’s a commercial for toys and brand tie-ins, and its missing-of-the-point about facades and the message of the movie. It was compelling enough that I was hesitantly excited for the squeakquel, even if I didn’t know any of the songs or story aside from the fact that Act II ties in The Wizard of Oz more than the first half.

I won’t go as in-depth as the first one because I think a lot of my critiques are the same, while the praise is in far shorter supply.

Wicked 2: 2 Fast 2 Wicked picks up one year after the events of the first one. Elphaba has retreated to a magic treehouse somewhere outside of the Emerald City. Glinda has been installed as a useful idiot/puppet of the anti-animal regime. Glinda is set to wed the guy from Bridgerton, who is actually in love with Elphaba. Tragedy!

Wicked Episode II: Attack of the Clones takes the big picture of its predecessor and throws it out the window. The large-scale social upheaval of the anti-animal pogrom is heavily diminished and appears largely reduced to simply the Emerald City and Munchkinland. The widespread instances of violence and subjugation from the first movie are replaced with incidental moments, like the animals leaving Oz while Elphaba begs them to stay, which just happens to feature an aninal from the first movie, the bear who raised Elphaba, or when Elphaba discovers animals in cages in a windowless storage room accessed through a secret passage in the Wizard’s infamous room. An addition (according to Emily) to this movie that did show new subjugation was a passing scene where Broadway’s SpongeBob is unable to board a train to leave Munchkinland due to new policies of the Wizard and his regime.

This movie was, to me, just a combo of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Hunger Games. Far less Harry Potter this time because the gals aren’t in school anymore.

Star Wars visual motifs are everywhere in this movie, especially Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith. The forest chase scene with Elphaba and the flying monkeys is eerily reminiscent of the Endor speeder chases. Throne rooms for the Wizard, the Rowling-ass-named Mrs. Morrible, and Elphaba’s sister Nessarose, the new de jure governor of Munchkinland, all feature geometric window patterns that evoke the Emperor’s throne room(s) featured throughout the Star Wars franchise. Elphaba’s black attire and green accents are evocative of the final form of Luke in the original series, who is grizzled and experienced, sporting a new green lightsaber. Glinda is (begrudgingly) the Anakin character—she’s smart enough to know the regime is evil but will never sacrifice her own comfort in the status quo for people she cares about. She will, however, cry a lot.

My favorite is the new “Bubble” song that Grande sings in a setpiece not featured in the original musical. Comedian Chris Fleming called this set “Ariana Grande’s Room at the Marriott Bonvoy” but to me it is strikingly similar to Anakin and Padme’s apartment on Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith.

I think in terms of creating an action movie geared towards a wide family audience that is dystopian beneath the veneer of Oz, this movie benefits from the groundwork that The Hunger Games’ depiction of “The Capitol” gave us. Both cities feature futuristic and fantastical cities, whose main connection to the outside world is a fancy yet impractical train. Citizens in both cities are easily persuaded with propaganda and choose to ignore realities they aren’t personally persecuted under. The Hunger Games cultural aesthetics in the Capitol are laughably gaudy and decadent—many people look like they belong in Whoville, and Wicked is, well, exactly the same way.

Let’s talk about those aesthetics.

The story of Wicked (not any specific adaptation) is more than just giving dark backstories to the ostensibly cheery and reductive 1939 story by making you think about the characters another way. It’s also meant to make it very very very obvious that the glamor and glitz of Oz is a facade that requires intentional and nefarious actions by those in power to maintain, hence the literal scapegoating of animals and by extension Elphaba in order to create a common enemy for Ozians.

The aesthetics and facade of Oz are critical to the theme and message. We get a drawn-out sequence where Morrible gives Glinda her famous bubble, which is revealed to be mechanical, not a function of her magic. Glinda’s entire character in this movie is built around her being a total facade and that she is not magical; her entire identity is a construction of powerful leaders in Oz needing a universal good guy and useful idiot to keep the masses from getting too self-aware. Glinda, much like her fellow Ozians, is shown to be stupid, shallow, and somehow still a f*****g good guy by the end of it, only after anyone with any real stakes has already given everything they can to fight evildoers.

She’s the epitome of a Counter-Strike player who hears that you’re rushing B on Dust II, but decides to walk behind the whole team and wait until the whole team is dead before actually pushing to nab a couple of stolen kills before losing the round for the whole team. The “America declaring unilateral victory in World War II after the Soviet campaign on the Eastern Front” of Oz.

At every turn in this movie, in stark contrast to the first, nearly every person in this movie acts in their self-interest. Glinda has to be hit in the face with The Message at least a dozen times before she finally decides with Elphaba that, actually, we have to maintain the status quo. Elphaba should quietly leave with Bridgerton Man and Glinda will replace the Wizard and try to reform the system from within. Elphaba literally wants to avoid bursting Glinda’s bubble.

Once again, however, where Wicked: The Way of Water misses the mark in its biggest sense is once again missing the whole point. Wicked as a marketing product cashes in extensively on superficial veneer of The Wizard of Oz. Wicked can only exist as a product if the iconic images of Munchkinland, the Yellow Brick Road, the Witch’s Tower, the Wizard’s room, the Emerald City. The movie unironically shows you these Things You Know to give you that serotonin boost from a feeling of nostalgia, that gets carried on to branded hairbrushes at Great Clips.

The facade of Oz in the movie is literally the exact facade Wicked gets to hide behind in the real world to avoid telling an interesting story. We ignore the genocide, we do not really reform any institutions, and the movie still ends the way the first one started, with the burning of an effigy of Elphaba. As far as I’m concerned, this is just Reconstruction, everything stays basically the same even if the people are different and things are called something different.

I Still Know What You Did Last Wicked misses mark in the most guilty way possible, however: the music. Holy s**t the book is weaaaaak. They already established they’re willing to add new music, why oh f*****g why is there not a Wicked: The Pre-Sequel medley reprise somewhere in the final act? Like what the hell? Why, oh f*****g, why do I not get to hear “Defying Gravity” and “Popular” one last time? Are you f*****g kidding me?

Here, I’ll fantasy book it.

When Glinda and Elphaba are in the Emperor’s throne room from Star Wars shortly before (spoiler) Elphaba fakes her death, we get a dramatic Frozen esque scene where both Elphaba and Glinda are on opposite sides of door so Glinda can hide while Elphaba is “killed.” They’re singing whatever song they’re singing, but imagine if they did just a few lines of somber reprisal from “Popular,” perhaps Elphaba realizing that, while Glinda did make her popular, the flying monkey’s paw dilemma has also made her a pariah. Then have Glinda sing about how proud she is of Elphaba for doing the right thing while she sings a few lines from “Defying Gravity.” The duet could last one minute or less and I would’ve been happy. But no. That never happens.

Hey this is Noah Hansen saying howdy to all the girls out there in Radioland. Or Newsletterland if you’re reading this instead. Hey listening audience, did you know this is also written down on Substack? You don’t just have to read the auto-generated “show notes” on Spotify.

Anyway, it’s been a long week. Eddie Kingston tried to “do it the right way” and lost to Samoa Joe, but not before Joe could make a salute to John Cena as Cena nears the end of his retirement run. Cena acknowledged him on Instagram.

I had to miss banjo class because of the snow, so that’s been a thing (if you’re reading this I’m soooooo sorry Julie) that ruined my week. Thankfully I’m still riding the high of the Minnesota Vikings shutting out the Washington Commanders a week after being shut out for the first time in two decades by the Seattle Seahawks.

In today’s edition of UTP, we’re highlighting the heroic comeback and meteoric rise of the Bang Bang Gang before they take on FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championship in Cardiff, Wales on Saturday. We’re also looking at the mechanical keyboard I got at the Goodwill on Black Friday—a first-ever thrift find even if I am finding the keyboard impossible to type on. …And another thing, I’m really annoyed that Warner Brothers has two potential buyers.

Every link is a gift link if I call it that. Send this “gift link” to your friends because even if they don’t care what I’m writing about, maybe they’ll think I’m funny. You will tell them I’m funny, right?

RINGSIDE WITH UTP

THE JUICE IS WORTH THE SQUEEZE: THE BANG BANG GANG IS STRONGER THAN EVER (EVEN IF 2/5THS OF THEM ARE OUT INJURED)

Throughout the history of independent wrestling (that is to say, not WWE), promotions have struggled to break through the Fed noise and make a cultural impact outside of the niche world of dorks fighting online about simulated combat interrupted by poorly written, acted, and directed soap opera scenes.

World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the only true pre-AEW competitor to what was then called the WWF, did do so in the 1990s with perhaps the most commercially successful non-WWF wrestling brand, the New World Order (nWo), a villainous wrestling stable whose t-shirts you have almost certainly seen over the many years. Though, it should be said that a) the entire gimmick was former WWF Superstars teaming up to take over the competitor during the peak of the so-called Monday Night Wars, and b) basically every star, including the kayfabe leader of WCW, Eric Bsichoff, would end up as part of nWo. Are they really rebels if the entire establishment belongs to them?

Across the Pacific, New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW or just New Japan), had success with a legally-distinguishable but extremely similar gimmick, Bullet Club, a stable primarily made up of foreign-born wrestlers in Japan, which debuted in 2013. I am not a wrestling historian by any means, but the Bullet Club logo and accompanying brand is still wildly popular with wrestling fans stateside. If you go to any wrestling show, there’s a damn good chance you’ll see a handful of people wearing Bullet Club shirts. Twin Cities hip-hop-person-turned-pro-wrestler Nur-D sells shirts with a modified version of the Bullet Club logo.

Bullet Club’s popularity led to multiple sub-factions/spin-offs, perhaps most notably, The Elite, the wrestling stable that is the namesake of All Elite Wrestling. The Elite were the primary driving force behind the early success of AEW; the 2018 All In pay-per-view (organized by The Elite) was the watershed moment that proved there was a market for large WWE competitor in the US, and this was primarily boosted by the wildly popular YouTube vlog series Being the Elite (BTE), which follows the lives of the members behind the scenes.

Today, only three groups of the original Bullet Club exist: the Bullet Club War Dogs, The Elite (which hasn’t been considered a Bullet Club faction since 2018), and Bullet Club Gold, also known as the Bang Bang Gang.

The War Dogs almost exclusively exist in New Japan, and I’d recommend watching the 2025 match-of-the-year contender from Wrestle Dynasty back in January where Kenny Omega fought War Dogs leader Gabe Kidd in a nearly hour-long bout that was largely driven by Kidd’s hatred for the “traitor” Kenny Omega. The fight is easily in my top three of the year and famously left NJPW legend Hiroshi Tanahashi in tears.

So that just leaves Bullet Club Gold, also known as the Bang Bang Gang. When I started watching in 2023, they were still billed as Bullet Club Gold, and even wore Bullet Club-branded apparel, albeit modified. The Bang Bang Gang debuted a few months before then, when “The Switchblade” Jay White (who led Bullet Club in Japan after The Elite left) made his debut in AEW saving fellow Bullet Club alum “Rock Hard” Juice Robinson (not to be confused by “Freshley Squeezed” Orange Cassidy).

Within a few months, they were joined by Austin and Colten Gunn, the twin sons of wrestling legend Billy Gunn. Together, they put the Bullet Club name to the side and called themselves “The Bang Bang Gang.”

Jay White, Juice Robinson, and the Gunns were immediately fan favorites. The Gunns had been stuck in the shadow of their dad for a pretty mid trio storyline, but they fit right in alongside Jay and Juice. Their signature intro has them standing in a circle facing out, with the lights out, with one lone spotlight directly above. As the fog machine blows into the beam, we can only make out a bit of each member’s face. Austin Gunn will say in a sorta bad guy (?) voice “By the order of the Bang Bang Gang.” Juice Robinson has long been the Charlie Kelly-esque “wild card” and would do what I could only describe as a crazy Street Fighter character’s idle animation, sporting a long, scraggly beard, and wild untamed curly hair.

Picking up off our discussion of The Acclaimed at the end of last week’s UTP, there was a very amusing time after the Bang Bang Gang turned face in 2024 where the Acclaimed and the Bang Bang Gang joined forces in a supergroup they called the Bang Bang Scissor Gang. Billy Gunn was reunited with his sons and everyone got to scissor all the time. It didn’t last, of course, but it was an incredible few months before Jay White and Juice Robinson were both injured.

In fact, in the two short years I’ve been a viewer, either Juice or Jay have been injured pretty much the entire time. There was a roughly year-ish long gimmick where they used a cardboard cut-out of Jay White called “Card-blade,” and would do the same for Juice as well in 2025 when both Jay and Juice were injured. This summer, the Bang Bang Gang announced a new member, Ace Austin (who was in the original Bullet Club), would debut in AEW as part of the stable.

On July 12 at All In: Texas, Juice Robinson made his triumphant return from injury as part of the Casino Gauntlet match, AEW’s response to the Royal Rumble. He had a new look: no more trunks, he had a black and gold one-piece. He’s clean shaven and not acting like a monkey man. He doesn’t do well, but does get a nice pop when he comes out.

A few days later, AEW releases a dramatic sit-down interview between backstage presenter Renee Paquette and Juice where he candidly says he is tired of being a punchline, and that he wants to do something different with his character. We don’t get much development until an episode of Collision before Full Gear, where the Bang Bang Gang are given the opportunity to win $200,000 in a match on pay-per-view. Uncharacteristically, Juice is the voice of reason between himself, Austin Gunn, and Ace Austin (confusing, I know), and proclaims the funniest line he’s said in a promo in recent memory: that they plan to save the money they win and invest wisely using deferred savings accounts, including a 401(k). Extremely funny stuff.

They did win, and since then, Accountant Juice is mostly gone, but this past Saturday (December 6) on Collision, something magical happened. Austin Gunn and Juice Robinson came out to harass current Tag Team champs FTR while they were grandstanding a promo shitting on some other tag team. They come out, and it’s f*****g insane.

Instead of the typically silly or humorous take on a wrestling promo, Austin and Juice deliver on building some massive hype for this Saturday’s Winter is Coming: AEW Collision, which will be from Cardiff, Wales. Cash Wheeler says Austin Gunn will never be more than Billy’s son, and Juice will never be more than “Mr. Toni Storm” (Juice Robinson and Toni Storm are married).

The Bang Bang Gang takes the mic and cranks things up a notch. Austin says he’s the son of a wrestling legend and that Juice is the son of a carpenter, while Cash Wheeler is the “son of his first cousin” and Dax is “just a son of a b***h.”

Juice takes the mic and delivers more verbal abuse about how they’re going to be the next AEW World Tag Team champions. Juice delivers the classic Bang Bang Gang catchphrase.

“And if you don’t like that, then we’ve got two words for you:” Juice pauses. We hear a loud “Guns Up!” from the crowd before Juice moves in closer to Dax Harwood, grits his teeth, and says “And New,” which is the phrase used in wrestling (particularly AEW marketing) to introduce the new champions. The crowd Ooos and Aaahs because this was…shockingly good and has me pumped for the future of the Bang Bang Gang.

Juice Robinson and Austin Gunn of the Bang Bang Gang will be taking on Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler, FTR this Saturday on AEW Collision on TNT at 3:30 Central.

UTP THRIFTS

AFTER A DISAPPOINTING BLACK FRIDAY CLOSURE, THE SAVAGE GOODWILL RISES LIKE A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES

On Thanksgiving, Emily and I were doing our once weekly or so tradition of “TikTok Time,” where we watch the TikToks Emily had sent me over the week (I used to be a TikTok-er but stopped using it earlier this year). She had shared a video about a thrift store in Shakopee that was located in an old big box store shell.

The finds in the video were incredible, and looked to be closer to how I remember Savers being in the golden age of thrifting (pre-Macklemore), so I was sold. We made plans to go on Black Friday after we got breakfast with some friends.

We made the trip down only to find it was closed for the holiday, which was fitting, considering it was a partially government-operated thrift store. So it goes.

All hope felt lost. But then I remembered something: I grew up around here, and there’s a Goodwill about a 3-minute drive from my very first childhood home, and while I have had mixed experience there, it was better than going home with my tail between my legs.

So we went. I pulled into the Savage, MN Goodwill, and I as I got out of the car, I muttered “I can’t wait to be disappointed.” Emily didn’t think that was very funny.

We went inside and I was immediately disarmed by the presence of a pair of tables up front with what I like to call “corporate merchandise,” the mass-produced, brand-less tat that is Amazon alphabet-soup-drop-ship garbage-level quality. Except in this case, it appeared to be surplus TJ Maxx or Marshall’s “gift” section products.

Never mind that, I’ve got to get to the glorious left wall, which houses everything from kitchen goods, to tech items, and usually some part of the ever-changing “media” section.

Congestion was out of control. A family of 3 chose to look at every damn mug and glass and took up the whole damn aisle with their cart. There wasn’t much that was catching my eye until we got to the electronics.

Then I saw it.

After years of clicking the keys on random keyboards and typewriters at Goodwill, I spotted a goofy-looking keyboard with typerwriter-like keycaps. I picked it up and saw on the back that it was a 60%-sized mechanical keyboard.

Finally! For years, a mechanical keyboard has been on my list of Goodwill white whales, alongside steeply discounted high-quality furniture, designer clothes, or shockingly nice electronics. I’ve found Patagonia jackets, brand-new pair of suede Pumas, a Samsung Bluetooth soundbar with wireless subwoofer, but never a mechanical keyboard, or at least at an affordable price.

If you don’t know, mechanical keyboards are keyboards for your computer where under each key is a physical switch that gets clicked to register your press, as opposed to “rubber domes” which provide a mushy level of resistance where your pressing connects a circuit rather quickly. People who use them prefer mechanical keyboards for their satisfying clicking, customization, and features like RGB lighting, macros to automate tasks, and as a status symbol to their plebian peers.

Mechanical keyboards used to be the norm way back when; the IBM Model M from the 1980s is such a classic, that a company bought the patent and the molds and produces these old-ass keyboards to this day (I have one). However, in the late 90s, the manufacturing tech for rubber dome keyboards became remarkably cheap and relegated mechanical keyboards to the way of the dodo, except for tech enthusiasts, primarily in the US and east Asia.

I bought my first in 2015, a little Ducky Mini with Cherry MX Blue switches. I also have a Unicomp Model M, a random 60% with Gateron Brown switches, and a Topre-clone I use at work. Don’t worry if this is all gibberish to you, it barely means anything to me anymore.

All of my keyboards pre-dated today’s much larger and far-less sketchy DIY market, where enthusiasts can easily buy all of the parts online far cheaper and faster than “back in my days.” Because of this, keyboards have also gotten much cheaper.

Within this context I find the black keyboard with a $10.99 price tag. A bit steep for a keyboard I don’t need, but the fact the model said “mechanical keyboard” was enough for me to not think twice.

When I got back to my car, I googled the model and was disappointed to learn that I had…not really gotten a good deal. Brand-new, this keyboard cost about $20.

This keyboard was just another alphabet-soup-brand-less drop-shipped AliExpress garbage (from brand I’ve never heard of called “E-YOOSO”), but still technically a working mechanical keyboard with generic “brown” switches. They have Cherry MX stems, meaning I can add new keycaps if I don’t like these fake-ass typewriter ones, but there’s a big problem: the right shift key is too small, meaning standard keycap sets won’t work and I also am constantly hitting the up arrow key instead of shift. The design is very human.

It is RGB, which is shocking to me. My Ducky Mini only has the red and blue LEDs, which is great for bisexual lighting but less helpful if you want to go full gamer mode. I’m shocked it works at all, but the cable has a short in it or something; not to worry, it’s just a generic Micro USB port with a nice storage space so any cable will look natural. Believe it or not, when I got my Ducky, the removable cable was a feature you got as part of the justification for the $130 I paid for it or whatever.

While I wrote most of this newsletter on a MacBook, I did as much writing and editing with the E-YOOSO as I could, only after I realized that is an actually useful angle to review a keyboard like this. It really does f*****g suck. The brown switches feel the same as my other knock-off brown-switched 60% keyboard I have.

Buuuuut, I also have no sentimental attachment to this keyboard and will have no problem taking it apart and goofing around with it, because arguably the coolest part about this board is that the case is some metal, but there’s still a perfectly good PCB that can be repurposed for some DIY monstrosity. And supposedly (I haven’t taken it apart yet but reddit sources claim it’s a marketing lie) with the switches being hot-swappabl, Stay tuned.

This wasn’t even the only solid find at this Goodwill. I got a working Blu-Ray player for a whopping $5. I almost bought a set of two IKEA LACK shelving units for like $1/piece, but they were just a little nicked on the side that stuck out, so I didn’t bother.

The media section was enormous and featured one of the rarest sights for Twin Cities-area Goodwill locations in 2025: a VHS tape section. I should know; I’ve looked for tapes at Goodwill every time I’ve gone since my dad gave me our old family kitchen CRT tv and a working VCR and have amassed a good collection so far. But that’s a story for another day.

This was my best Goodwill run in a while, and even though I didn’t get a good deal on it, and I hate using it, I still managed to find a working mechanical keyboard at Goodwill: a life-long goal.

…AND ANOTHER THING

NETFLIX CAN TA-DUM RIGHT OFF, AND TAKE PARAMOUNT WITH THEM

This past week has been a firestorm of corporate conglomerations (and the ghouls that run them) making some the most brazen examples of open corruption in recent memory, as both Netflix and Paramount are chomping at the bits to pick apart the Warner Brothers media empire and further consolidate the already monopolistic media industry.

There’s a lot to be annoyed about, but if you know me, the one thing that I am most annoyed about is how this will affect pro wrestling. You can also probably imagine the same thing for whatever Warner Brothers/DC/HBO/TBS/TNT property you like, if for some reason you’ve had it to here with wrestling content in this publication.

Currently, there are three companies with regular wrestling programming on cable television:

* The WWE has been airing NXT on the CW for a while now, but RAW is now exclusively on Netflix. SmackDown is presently on the USA network and Peacock but that’s almost certainly changing soon.

* TNA will leave AXStv and be on AMC in the new year.

* And my beloved AEW airs Collision on Saturdays on TNT and Dynamite on Wednesdays on TBS.

This is not a serious or informed view of the modern media landscape; I am just griping. But the rumor was that WB-Discovery owns a share of AEW as part of their massive TV deal they inked earlier this year.

If Netflix somehow got the programming power to decide if AEW airs or not, what would that mean for AEW? Could be bad!

Could be worse with Paramount in charge. The talk is that Jared Kushner and the Saudis are trying to organize that, and we’ve already detailed much of the extremely fucked up and growing business relationship that TKO (parent company of UFC and WWE) has with the Saudis and the American government.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven. Don’t take wrestling from me. The one good thing about living in times where things we enjoy continually are ruined by massive corporations, is that there’s a whole else lot you could be doing. I’d probably go to indie wrestling shows more frequently than I do now and probably buy AEW+ or whatever the f**k they’re gonna call it. I’m just really annoyed.

Welcome back, friend, to the newsletter and podcast that puts the UTP in perfect utopia: The Uffda Times-Picayune.

This one would be a good one to read and follow along with the voiceover, especially for the third article. I’m getting better at podcasting!

As our brave and noble movement of journalistic malpractice marches forward and onward to victory over the dreaded menace, truth, we’ve also picked up a number of new readers and listeners that must be reminded of just what the hell we’re all doing here, and who better to do it than the propaganda arm of UTP, the Ministry of What’s It To Ya and Nunya Business (WITY-NB):

NOAH THE EDITOR was born some time ago along the sacred mountainside of suburban Denver. The Glorious Editor was born of a sunbeam, carried by a flock of pigeons, before the infant Editor completed their first of sixty-seven most glorious perfect 300 games of bowling at the Bowling Alley of the Revolution.

So anyway. Welcome to my personal mouthpiece for infodumping (did you know I wrote nine newsletters about Mormons?), complaining, opining, trying creative writing, and really whatever I want. Don’t take it too seriously.

Hell has frozen over in Minneapolis. Ice is on the streets, despite the city’s promises to do what they can keep it out. It’s gotten mighty slippery out there. Keep an eye out for yourselves and others!

Not only does your face hurt if you walk outside, but we also have a development on the Eddie Kingston-Samoa Joe storyline in AEW. They had their big promo, which they had hyped up on Collision on Thanksgiving, on this week’s Dynamite, and I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Eddie needs to be going after the Death Riders, not wasting his time with The Opps and Hook. I know Hook betrayed him, but they also weren’t really friends? Like they were teammates for like a month and two TV appearances. Just really disappointing. At least we’ll probably get an MJF return in the next 1, 2, 3 weeks.

In this edition of UTP, I review the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera that stopped in Minneapolis, we give the green monster a run for their money as we do Noah’s iPod 2025 Wrapped, and I address the wrestling songs on my other wrapped top list. This is UTP Soundwaves, where we chat everything music. Thanks for reading (and listening!).

It’s not spam if you send it to your friends. Give them a phone call. Why don’t you call anymore? Should we be getting landlines?

UTP AT THE THEATRE

PHANTOMS AT THE OPERA

This past long weekend I had the privilege to attend the traveling production of perennial UTP person of interest Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1980’s 1890’s fever dreamThe Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom is my partner’s favorite musical. One of our first experiences with musicals together was when I showed her the theatrical Jesus Christ Superstar, and she showed me the 2012 Royal Albert Hall anniversary production of Phantom. We had the pleasure of seeing the 50th anniversary production of JCS at the Kennedy Center in 2022, and we saw the non-equity tour at the DECC in Duluth in February 2024. But we haven’t had the chance to see Phantom.

I’ve since seen the 2012 version of Phantom multiple times, the film version once, and shockingly good high school productions on YouTube. I’ve watched the horrific sequel Webber based on a 1999 Phantom fanfic, Love Never Dies, where the Phantom leaves the catacombs beneath the Parisian opera house and moves to, I shit you not, Coney Island.

I’m not going to re-litigate Phantom. The story is relatively simple (even though I probably had to see it like 5 times to fully grasp what the hell was going on). Two buffoons buy an opera house, with an established pair of stars, when a mysterious playwright who lives in the catacombs of the opera, known only as the Phantom of the Opera, uses written threats and dubiously supernatural techniques to frighten the owners into substituting another cast member, the soprano Christine Daaé, who had a young love fling with the opera’s newest patron the Vicomte de Chagny Raoul. Drama ensues.

Phantom is fun (and confusing if you are stupid, like me). This production was among the best of the best. In fact, Emily said that of the four times she’s seen it live, this was the best version.

I was not a theater kid; band was my jam. But I did play in pit orchestra, including the single worst pit of all time for The Music Man. People thought our playing was a joke. One instructor affiliated with the production famously called us (in retrospective) the “worst pit orchestra ever.” I did play a Phantom medley in concert orchestra, but that was my only experience prior to meeting Emily. That and the drum corps version (which was so popular they did it two years in a row).

But despite my lack of theater kid credentials, I can appreciate this production’s extraordinarily intricate tech. We got the full chandelier experience, explosions, swinging, and all. The Phantom’s eerie voice was piped in using surround sound speakers around us. The way the curtains were so intentionally used as set devices, both in diegetic (Phantom has multiple musicals-within-a-musical) and non-diegetic senses (dynamic curtain draws and lifts seamlessly took us from place to place) was truly enamoring. This production did NOT fuck around.

The cast was incredible. Isaiah Bailey delivers an all-time great performance as the titular Phantom, a character who is functionally an incel terrorist that does double-duty as an all-time favorite of the romance genre; he’s a misunderstood softie who is only evil because society forces him to be, secluded away hiding his talents and skills. Bailey is perfect opposite Jordan Lee Gibert’s Christine, and I would say that the casting is damn near perfect. You’d think Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the musical for these people.

“I don’t get it. Why am I supposed to care about him? He killed people!” - my brother after the conclusion of the 2012 version.

Our showing was marred by a technical issue, though. In the midst of the beginning of the final descent into the Phantom’s lair, I think the boat (an all-time silly Broadway prop) got its wheels jammed or something? They stopped the show and lifted the lights for about 8 minutes, but honestly, I don’t think a single person cared because the intricate production is worth the wait. No one wants to see half-assed Phantom of the Opera.

Less interestingly, an opp from my past sat down right in front of us. A ghost from my past. A phantom at the opera, if you can believe it. I don’t believe in real ghosts, but I sure as hell believe in metaphorical ones.

Anyway, the real Phantom of the Opera was fucking awesome. 5 stars. The only downer was that the production was priced appropriately… around $90/ticket. But if that’s what it takes to pay the high quality union crew, then that’s fine with me.

SHAMELESSLY RIPPING OFF THE GREEN MONSTER

NOAH’S IPOD WRAPPED 2025

I had a humorous idea on my personal Instagram story: what if I had a Spotify Wrapped, but for the music that’s just on my iPod? Well here you go.

My partner Emily got me a purple iPod Nano for my birthday earlier this year. When I was a kid, all I fucking wanted was an iPod, and finally, I had one.

The timing was nice—King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, my favorite band, left Spotify after widespread reporting about the CEO’s personal financial investments in drone warfare companies. So I loaded it up with a who’s who of music from my Spotify time, and also old music I’ve had in my personal data archive, which goes back to… 2010? 2009? Idk, but it’s been a while.

I want to point out something kind of funny in all this: my family never had any Apple products growing up (or today). I explored too many places I didn’t belong on the internet with old Windows XP business laptops my dad bought. My first smartphone was a then-seven-year-old Google G1, the first-ever Android phone, hacked of course.

So you’ll imagine my surprise when I use an old MacBook of Emily’s to start writing and doing *gestures to podcast and newsletter home studio*, plug the iPod in, and find out that actually, you can’t use an iPod on modern Apple hardware: iTunes no longer exists. It literally only exists on Windows in 2025.

I have an 8GB model, which fits roughly 1000 songs. I’ve filled the whole thing up, but have a “to-go” playlist of 16 songs I listen to most often. Consider this the definitive THE TOP 16 SONGS ON THE ONLY PLAYLIST ON MY IPOD, you won’t believe number 15!

In a humorous ironic twist revealing that I have no values, I’ve made this a Spotify playlist.

* “Phantom, Pt. II” by Justice from Cross (2007)

French electro duo Justice was the first grown-up music I really found on my own. I was on a certain website known for funneling young men into right-wing identity crises, which I thankfully never went down, but the song was featured in a meme on the /video games/ board of said website. Since that night in 2010, or whatever, I’ve loved this song and the band.

I love Phantom Pt. II because, despite having no words, it’s infectiously catchy and easy to dance to. Easy number one and keeps me checked in for the whole album. I was also supposed to see Justice live this year but had fucking shingles. Fuck you, 3rd Grade Noah, for getting chicken pox even though I was vaccinated.

* “Nouveau Americain” by Brazilian Girls from New York City (2008)

This song is a fucking banger. You may recall a while back I did a whole UTP Soundwaves article interrogating the presence of music from the Grand Theft Auto games on my various playlists. Well here’s another one.

It’s from the Grand Theft Auto IV expansion The Ballad of Gay Tony, which oddly had a very influential impact on me because I often think about the trailer for Gay Tony that featured Roxette’s “The Look,” one of many (un)ambiguously queer songs I can point that I enjoyed growing up.

I love this song’s fast drive, wub-wub-wub-bubba-bub bass, the ethereal piano, ambiguously foreign lyrics and vocalist. Just a banger all around.

* “Murder on the Dancefloor (Extended Album Version)” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor from Murder on the Dancefloor (2001)

Oh, you fuckin’ know I had to go for the extended version. I really enjoyed Saltburn (2023). It was gut-wrenching, identity-affirming, repulsively-erotic, and the iconic last sequence set to this song as Barry Keoghan flops and hangs around the Saltburn estate. I have cleaned my house dancing to this song so many times.

* “Cool as Kim Deal” and “Not If you Were The Last Junkie on Earth” by The Dandy Warhols from The Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997)

The next song(s) is actually a double feature from ‘97. “Cool as Kim Deal” is super catchy, with “bah-buh-ba-bahh” and “aaaahhhs” and a droning rock organ beyond an extraordinarily simple rhythm section. Who doesn’t want a cool girlfriend? I mean, come on. Have you heard The Breeders?

I think this song pairs well with another one on the album, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth,” which begins with “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé.” Gotta love Gen-Xers.

* “The Rockafeller Skank” by Fatboy Slim from You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (1998)

RIGHT ABOUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER. CHECK IT OUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER. RIGHT ABOUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER. CHECK IT OUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.RIGHT ABOUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER. CHECK IT OUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.RIGHT ABOUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER. CHECK IT OUT NOW, THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER.

For real, this is my favorite song to play in the now-dead 2021 DJ rhythm game FUSER, much to the chagrin of my loved ones who have had to endure one of my “sets.” I hope you’re ready for Ginuwine’s “Pony” mixed with Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby.”

I can’t find it, but there was a livestream a couple years ago where a guy was trying to recreate “The Rockafeller Skank” on a modern DAW and Norman Cook (AKA Fatboy Slim) was in the chat literally walking him through it. Crazy stuff.

* “Metal” and “M.E.” by Gary Numan from The Pleasure Principle (1979)

If Slint touched Apollo by inventing grunge and math rock in Louisville in the late 80’s, Gary Numan did the same with The Pleasure Principle by so naturally including the synthesizer as another instrument. It’s insane this was still the 70’s. I love both these songs because I discovered them from the Nine Inch Nails cover of “Metal” which includes both songs. They just go so hard.

* “von dutch” by Charli XCX from brat (2024)

For this humble music critic, Brat Summer never ended. “von dutch” topped my Wrapped for a second year, and it only makes sense that it’s here too. This song is perfect. It has no faults. It is just under three minutes of the greatest pop song ever.

I’d be remiss not to mention that I did mod this into my WWE 2K24 game and have a brat-themed wrestler who looks shockingly like me, aptly named “Noah XCX,” which the game announces exactly the way you’d expect.

* “6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps from Becoming X (1997)

The late-90s strikes again on this list with a certified platinum Noah favorite. A GTA V song that has somehow permeated nearly every playlist of mine is one of my favorite songs ever. I waxed poetic about it in the GTA article so go read that.

* “In Undertow” by Alvvays from Antisocialites (2017)

I got into Alvvays at a very important time. The first semesters I had at the U of M were liberating—I was finally out of Dodge. The bedroom pop band came to my attention when my good friend RD (hey, RD!) asked me to go to their concert at First Ave. It was really good.

I love this song because it’s a break-up song the lead singer wrote about the guitarist—although they aren’t breaking up. It's an exercise in simulated loss and grief, but the song feels like a breath of fresh air. A turning of the pages. The beach receding back to the ocean as another wave crashes against the shore.

* “Voodoo People” by The Prodigy from Music for the Jilted Generation (1994)

So there’s this movie called Hackers (1995) and it fucking rules. We get non-binary Matt Lillard, Hollywood-ass hacking scenes, and the raddest fucking rollerblading montage ever to “Voodoo People.” It’s the climax and our hacking heroes have to do the plot to make the movie end, which has to happen in phone booths at Grand Central Terminal for some reason.

I think about the shot in front of Grand Central and the MetLife Building every time I hear this song. Can you tell I really like the 90’s?

* “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots from Core (1992)

I love this song. Even though it’s so obviously trying to cash in on Eddie Vedder’s unintelligble singing throughout the legendary Ten (1991), infamous piece of shit (he still is, but he used to be, too) Scott Weiland. But ya know, I love this stupid song. Especially when I was like, 12.

* “The Concept of Love” by Hideki Naganuma from Jet Set Radio Future (2001)

UNDUHSTAH UNDUSTAH. UNDUHSTAH UNDUHSTAH. UNDUHSTAH UNDUHSTAH THE CON-CEPT OF LOVE!

Curveball! This is from a video game: the cult classic rollerblading (lmao two songs related to rollerblading) graffiti game Jet Set Radio Future. The Jet Set Radio games are infamous for their Naganuma-penned soundtracks, which frankly feature only fucking bangers. This was one of two games packaged with the original Xbox I had when I was like, 4?, so this one is really lodged in there.

* “Neverender” by Justice & Tame Impala from Hyperdrama (2024)

I didn’t mention it when I talked about “Phantom Pt. II,” but Justice has enjoyed a new mainstream level of success that would have floored 2013 Noah. I was desperate for anything new; they had only done Cross (2007) and Audio, Video, Disco (2011). I actually joined Spotify to hear their second live album Access All Arenas (2013) the moment it came out.

“Neverender” is catchy, has that warm Justice glow to it, and featuring everyone’s other favorite Australian psychedelic rock project Tame Impala is a treat in itself.

* “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” by Nirvana from MTV Unplugged in New York

My first unhealthy interest in the darker side of the 90’s started like any good Gen Z/elder millennial when I was going through puberty and was obsessed with Nirvana. I was learning guitar, and their riffs are infamously easy, catchy, and recognizable. There’s more to this story that’ll come in my oral history of Facebook, but I had a certain affinity for their edition of MTV Unplugged, probably thanks to my late mom, who always found an emotional outlet in latching on to celebrity tragedies, usually from addiction. Especially Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson.

If you haven’t watched this one, please do. It’s the last song and is a cover of a blues standard, but Rolling Stone has called it the greatest rock performance of all time, and I’m inclined to agree. The last chorus, when Kurt’s voice gets raspy, his eyes get wide, and he hits the “don’t lieeeeee to me” for the last time. He’s singing a song about someone’s concern about reckless behaviors, much in the same way people who surrounded Kurt were concerned for his health and safety in the months and weeks leading to his death.

Anyway, if I’m in the right mood this song will break me. I don’t usually listen to it, but we don’t have an algorithm or data that’s been harvested. Just vibes and a purple iPod Nano and the hope I’m not paying too much attention to the music when I’m iPod-ing it up. Wrap that in a box! Word to your mother.

ENDEARING OR EMBARASSING?

ADDRESSING THE WRESTLING THEME SONGS ON MY SPOTIFY WRAPPED

For a similar and much shorter last feature, I wanted to highlight and address something I observed when reading my 2025 Wrapped: three wrestler walk-out songs were in the top ten.

I wanted to talk about them individually and explain why they’re here. As we talked about in the past few weeks, wrestling rules because of the pageantry, and the walk-outs are, imo, like 90% of my favorite parts. The songs set the tone, the crowd pops fuel excitement. The announcers make stupid-ass comments. It’s high drama. It’s anime.

I’m also a dork who will listen to the music when I am doing something that isn’t watching wrestling, which isn’t that embarrassing except when the song has the wrestler’s name as a chant in the song itself. Anyway, let’s do this.

* “C.U.R.I.O.S.I.T.Y” by ONE OK ROCK ft. Paledusk, CHICO CARLITO, walk-out song of “The Rainmaker” Kazuchika Okada

47 listens and #8 most-listened song of 2025

Earlier this year, Japanese wrestling superstar “The Rainmaker” Kazuchika Okada came out to a different song. We heard his signature coin flip, but instead of the instrumental theme he’s had for at least a decade, a new, but somewhat similar-sounding song came on.

I liked that it was fast, dramatic, had words, and also featured a lot of my favorite nu metal tropes.

The words are…embarassing. The song is from ONE OK ROCK, an actual, successful Japanese metal band that Okada is apparently personal friends with. Okada is like, John Cena levels of celebrity in Japan, and he’s infamously the most expensive AEW wrestler, with a contract estimated at over $10 million.

It takes a minute or so to get into it to the chorus, which is just spelling the word “curiosity” out loud? But the chorus is when the pyro starts, so we do get an awkward 30-seconds where Okada just kinda stands there waiting for the song, which I think builds up the drama. I don’t really get what curiosity has to do with anything, but at least it’s kind of clever:

"C" everything that "U" really fucking "R,"

They don’t censor it though which is funny—if Okada is wrestling you’ll hear an F-bomb on live TV. Anyway, it’s a bona fide anime final battle song and Okada literally once played himself in a wrestling anime, so pretty apt, I’d say.

* “Elevated” by It Lives, It Breathes, walk-out song of Will Ospreay

55 listens, #6 most-listened song of 2025

I won’t spend time justifying this because if you’ve ever watched Will Ospreay come out, and then wrestle a full pay-per-view match, you’ll understand why he’s allowed to have a corny-ass song that has “Os-preay, Os-preay” chants built into it. He’s a real-life superhero and his song just brings me so much joy, in part because of the corniness, part because of more nu metal tropes, but in general it just gets me going.

* “Underground” by Jane’s Addiction, walk-out song of “The Pride of Pro Wrestling” “The Five Tool Player” Anthony Bowens

61 listens, #5 most-listened song of 2025

When Anthony Bowens returned during the Dynasty pre-show in April, it was honestly shocking.

Bowens was one-third of The Acclaimed, a stable with “Platinum” Max Caster and “Daddy Ass” Billy Gun. Their gimmick was that they wear pink, everyone loves them, and their signature taunt is “scissoring” where they take peace signs and slam them into each other. “Scissor me, Daddy Ass” is a phrase seriously spoken and subsequently cheered for by adult, American men. I have a t-shirt that says “Scissor Me” on the front.

Max and Anthony broke up a while back as Max was getting cockier and cockier, and his walk-out freestyle raps (as bad as it sounds, tbh) were getting worse and worse. Anthony was injured (?), I’m not sure, I’m not fact-checking this, and while he was gone Max had started the “Best Wrestler Alive” gimmick, where he trademarked that term and carries the patent around with him in a little frame. He made an awkward ass chant that was hated at first: “Let’s Go Max You’re The Best Wrestler Alive.”

I say at-first, because he started doing these segments on Collision: “Can You Survive Five With The Best Wrestler Alive?” where Max has a five-minute open challenge match that he literally always loses. The Max Caster Open Challenge segment became a highlight of the show, where random AEW stars from across the card, occasionally guest from Japan, Mexico, or the UK, or anyone would beat the shit out of Max Caster for a few minutes. The chant also got super over, and has even been used pejoratively against Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF), when he’s being a cowardly heel.

It’s in this context we get the announcement that during the Dynasty: Zero Hour pre-show, Max would have an open challenge. As the clip shows, the lights go out and the beginning of “Underground” starts playing—which we’ve never heard before. “Whose song is this?” remarks Bryan Danielson.

Out comes Anthony Bowens, the first time we’ve seen him in months, and he’s with Billy Gunn! The crowd is cheesing, he gets a massive pop. He kicks Max’s ass. We hear Jane’s Addiction again. Incredible.

We actually don’t see him too much for a while—his “superhero” gimmick didn’t work and he’s now several months into a fall from grace where he has stooped to Max’s level, carrying around magazine covers and awards he’s gotten. The booking moves have been to force The Acclaimed back together by booking them as a tag team, but it’s been tough. But I joked every time his song started that we had to “stand for the anthem” when we heard the first notes and “I TRIED TO FIND SOME LOVE FROM UP HIGH, THERE JUST AIN’T ENOUGH TO GO AROUND.” Goes hard as fuck.

The actual lyrics are corny and not cool at all (“How is New York bro? Is it holding you up, or bringing you down? We’re all hustlers, huslters. I never gave up the Underground”). Buuuut it’s on this list because it’s my morning alarm, lol. I just really wanted to tell that story.

Anyway, that’s our show. Don’t forget to tip your waitress. there’s a production of Jesus Christ Superstar opening in Saint Paul next week. Should I go? I probably should, right? Will you sponsor me? No? Well then we’ll just pull the plug on it—

If you want to give me money to see Jesus Christ Superstar, that’d be cool af, but you can also just consent to me sending you “the news” once a week to your inbox hole. Subscribe to UTP, now.

Happy Black Friday UTP’ers. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and made a point to bring up controversial topics and plug my newsletter to your coolest family members. I really appreciate it. I also hope you full-body-checked five dads for a good TV deal, but I know you didn’t, because that America we were promised is gone. RETVRN!

Actually, I thought people didn’t shop on Black Friday in-person, but I swear to God the traffic in and around both the Eagan outlet mall and the Mall of America was worse than I’ve ever seen it. Easily a thousand-plus cars between the two locations just trying to get in. At 3PM! Insanity.

I wanted to make a note that picks up off last week’s UTP. You may recall I published a diatribe about AEW CEO Tony Khan’s fumbling of Eddie Kingston’s return after a year-long injury. Well, Tony must have read my newsletter, because last night, on the Thanksgiving episode of AEW Collision, we were treated to three courses of whoop-ass as Eddie Kingston cut a self-described “shoot” promo, where everything was off the cuff. Unfortunately the YouTube video version cuts out a good minute or two of preamble, but this is the first promo since his return where Eddie is ruthlessly real. Please watch the 2-minute clip.

I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend are prepared for more snow if you live in da Great White North. Oh yeah, we’re on Instagram now. Thanks for reading.

COMING SOON TO YOUR INBOX HOLE AND SPOTIFY OR APPLE PODCASTS FEED:

Facebook had an outsized impact on my adolescence, as well as my late mother’s adulthood. Early Facebook signaled the final stages of transition from bulletin board systems and forums to multi-billion user websites and apps that define most people’s experiences online.

In this sentimental special (hopefully not a series, lol), I’ll reflect on Facebook’s power to connect yet isolate, its stupid f*****g games, and more on Zuckerberg’s zombie social network, from when I made my account at age 12 in 2009, to today’s malformed monster that is Meta.

Coming soon.

Thanks for reading The Uffda Times-Picayune! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

U(TP) DECIDE ‘26

THE DONALD TRUMP FACE TURN: THE (OTHER) SWERVE AMERICA NEEDS

This week we got the first piece of political news out of the White House this calendar year that brought me true joy: the bonkers, totally unexpected press conference Donald Trump held with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

There were conflicting reports. In the morning, there were rumors Trump had backed out of the meeting. I had seen a headline or two that it might be happening, but I was shocked when I saw the N** Y*** T***** email subject line that Trump was “heaping praise” on Mamdani. Excuse me?

In case you weren’t paying attention to the New York Mayor’s race, MAGA-land had come out in full force as anti-Mamdani. Although not in force enough to rally behind the endorsed Republican candidate and living Grand Theft Auto character Curtis Sliwa—Trump actually endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former Democratic Governor of New York who was making a pathetic attempt at keeping moneyed Democrats (read: Republicans) in power. Cuomo lost in a blowout.

The anti-Zohran campaign was heavily focused on Mamdani’s identity. Brown man, socialist, non-white name, baddie Hinge-wife. Crash-outs a-plenty across social media after Mamdani’s decisive win. There were even threats to deport him, despite his citizenship.

It’s been a couple of weeks since then, and a lot has happened, but MAGA-land has towed the party line, as everyone would expect them to when they spent the entire campaign regurgitating racist comments and seek to discredit then-Representative Mamdani’s reputation simply because he isn’t white.

In this context, we get the Oval Office meeting. It’s a press conference. The administration has not been afraid to use these exact opportunities to humiliate wavering allies at home and abroad, and to welcome some of the most evil warlords on the planet (an ex-Al Qaeda leader and MBS—in the same week). So we expected the worst. Only problem, Trump fuckng loves Zohran.

Even the Donald isn’t immune to Zohran’s infectious charm, positive attitude, and focus on getting things done, or at least that’s what he told us.

“He said some things that were very interesting and very interesting as to housing construction and he wants to see houses go up. He wants to see a lot of houses created and a lot of apartments built. We actually—people would be shocked. But I want to see the same thing.”

Pardon me what? When the f**k was the last time Donald Trump talked about the idea of “housing.” Like what?

I don’t have much more to say about this press conference except that it gave us a Trump we really haven’t seen in a minute. I saw a tweet remarking that he hasn’t looked this happy since the McDonald’s banquet lunch he held for the Crimson Tide during his first term.

He was genuinely happy to meet with Zohran. He took him on a tour of the White House, and most notably, took a photo together in front of a painting of FDR that Mamdani had said was one he liked. In the photo, Mamdani seems to struggle to even half-heartedly smile, while the President is beaming from ear-to-f*****g-ear.

We are way past due for a Donald Trump face turn.

Using wrestling parlance when talking about who is good and who is bad with Donald Trump are actually pretty apt, not just because I have no other frame of reference with culture other than wrestling. Did I mention I didn’t start watching wrestling until I was 26?

If you didn’t know, in the aughts, Donald Trump was a frequent guest star on WWE programming. Trump is famously friends with Vince McMahon (which makes a lot of sense knowing how they’re both pervert sex pests). I was never a WWE fan, so I can’t tell you many of the angles, but I know they ran an angle where Trump had “purchased” RAW, and was going to be making booking decisions. Another, and perhaps the most famous angle, was when Donald Trump and Vince McMahon had “their” respective wrestlers duke it out, and whoever lost, had to have their head shaved. Trump would go on to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013—our first WWE Hall of Fame President.

Trump’s appearances on WWE programming are sporadic over the years, but his friendship with McMahon goes deeper than just occasional attendance at WrestleMania. Vince’s kids were groomed much in the same way as Trump’s to be underlings for dad. Vince has appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice as a guest judge and “expert” promoter (read: carny).

The entire premise of a huge chunk of challenges on The Apprentice involve who can be the most obnoxious on the streets of New York for attention. Hillary Clinton was more right than anyone will give her credit for when she called Donald Trump a “carnival barker.” Like all her clunky, intellectualized insults, this one could have been refined to just “carny b*****d.”

My personal favorite intersection of prescient-politics-and-wrestling that was more foreboding than anyone could have expected was during an in-ring promo at WrestleMania XX in 2004. Former Minnesota Governor and WWE Hall of Famer Jesse Ventura conducted an in-ring interview with Donald Trump, who was running as the presidential candidate for Jesse’s Reform Party, a half-hearted publicity stunt that famously got Roger Stone connected with Trump. Ventura asks about the likelihood of a wrestler, suggesting himself.

As Ventura touched Apollo, the stage was set for Donald Trump to make himself the main storyline in American culture for the first quarter of the 21st century. If you watch old episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice particularly, you see a different kind of Trump. Trump’s not usually the one running the show in the board room (where deliberations happen before he fires someone on the losing team each episode), because he usually sics his kids or a powerful guest/friend (like McMahon) on people; Trump is really there to be the real-world Hedonism Bot from Futurama. How decadent, mmmm!

So now it’s been a week or so now and have we seen Trump turn face? No.

This wasn’t a face turn because I don’t think Donald Trump views Republicans as the ‘faces’ of American politics. He used to be a Democrat, after all, and has never really exemplified anything close to “statesman.” He has, however, been hyperfixated on whether he will go to heaven or hell when he dies, and he talks about it a lot. Supposedly, Pope Leo XIV told him he would not be saved simply because of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era peace agreement for the Middle East that famously precluded *gestures wildly at Palestine*.

The face turn can only happen if Trump believes that Democrats are actually good guys and that he might see some redemption as a universal good guy, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. Trump called Tim Walz a slur on Thanksgiving on Truth Social, so I don’t think he’s any different than he was before this.

Maybe Mamdani can leverage this relationship to be a more effective negotiator than any of DC’s Democratic leadership. Wild speculation on Xitter called for naming massive public investments in housing, transit, and health care after Trump, and that Mamdani might be the only lefty politico who is savvy an charismatic, and professional enough to trick Trump into doing good things only so he can take the glory.

Imagine the country if the cult of personality of Trump was able to steer his toxic fanbase towards being less evil? Mamdani’s visit all but showed that the posturing, insults, dehumanization, coded and overt racism, and much more are all exactly what everyone knows them to be: just another f*****g promo.

Instead of pay-per-views, we get elections. Instead of Bret Hart burying that piece of s**t Bill Goldberg, it’s Donald Trump literally burying his political rivals. Everything is done for the fan reactions, for the “pop.” It’s not a coincidence that Trump has held his signature rallies non-stop since before his first election in 2016. He’s a carny b*****d who has to do basically nothing to get a crowd wrapped around his fingers.

But he could have so much more. Imagine if he were actually celebrated? Imagine if he was agreeable enough to not get yelled at when he goes out to eat in DC. I’d put up with oversaturation of the Trump personality cult, if only meant the material conditions in America, what actually matters to 99% of people, actually improved.

Until then, I guess he’s gonna continue saying slurs online.

I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED…IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE SHEPHERD’S CROOK IN YOUR LIVING ROOM?

This is the first in a new series in our regular three-story UTP programming focused on highlighting the various eccentric and odd items I have around my house. These are conversation pieces that no is here to have a conversation about, and I wanna talk about them anyway.

So what’s the deal with the shepherd’s crook in your living room?

I’m so glad you asked…it’s kind of a funny story.

The dining room of my home is vaguely religious themed: a stylized Last Supper sits above the hi-fi and turntable opposite a framed copy of Minnesota’s state photograph Grace. But tucked in the corner is a roughly 6’ tall bamboo shepherd’s crook with a clear purple Goodwill tag still stuck to the top.

I bought this stupid decoration in December 2022, mere weeks before Emily and I would move back to Minnesota from Arlington, VA. I found it at the Arlington, VA Goodwill on Glebe Rd, perhaps the greatest single Goodwill location I’ve ever been to. This location is in a cute brick building in vernacular NoVA architecture and was probably a strip mall or auto shop or something in a past life. I was there with my friend Clare (hi Clare, if you’re reading this), who I have a long tradition of thrifting with.

This Goodwill rules for a number of reasons. This location has been aggressively resistant to the corporatization Goodwill has undergone since the 2010’s. I’m guessing this is simply my perception because Goodwill’s franchises are pretty funky in terms of regional management, and if I had to guess, I’d bet the Glebe Road one falls under a more independent franchisee. It uses old stickers and prices are fair. I’ve found incredible art and furniture, and my best thrifts include a somewhat-overpriced-but-still-fairly-priced Logitech G27 PC racing wheel in great condition and a brand-new pair of turquoise Puma suede sneakers.

My favorite part is it’s location: on one of the Arlington Transit (ART) bus routes. The ART system (at least how it was in 2022) is incredible. Arlington does have Metrobus routes and has four Metro lines running through it, but also operates its own network and fleet of buses, separate from the regional bus system. Buses only operate in Arlington County, which is the smallest county by area in the country. ART buses are infamously clean, rarely packed, and make getting around the county extremely easy without a car. I can’t say (aside from including wait times) I ever had a trip that went more than 10-15 minutes. I could count on one hand how many times I had to stand on one of them.

On the day I acquired my shepherd’s crook, Clare and I had taken the bus, which typically limits what you can purchase. I found the crook in the golf club section. It was listed for $10—too rich for my blood. I was enamored with it. It’s stupidly large, yet discreet, and would make a humorous conversation piece/possible Halloween costume.

We went shopping around the store and as we were getting ready to check out, I noticed a sign: purple tags are 50% off.

S**t. Gotta get the crook.

Without thinking, I grabbed the crook and made my dastardly purchase. The only problem is that I had to take it home on the bus. I figured I’d get stares, but we’re rolling with it.

The bus took longer than usual, I keenly remember. I had this stupid crook in my hand as we waited for the bus and I remember getting looks from people stopped at the light the bus stop was next to. At this point, I had figured out my favorite joke.

The bus rolls up, and I step forward. Before the bus driver has even fully engaged the brakes, I am in position. I slam the crook on the ground twice in rapid succession like Moses parting the Red Sea, and just like the great prophet of old, the door opens for me. The bus driver laughed.

Emily was baffled that I had bought such a large, useless item just weeks before we were set to have a cross-country move. But you know what? It made it here and fits in well with the Jesus vibes of the dining room. Let my people go!

So yeah. That’s my shepherd’s crook. It’s kind of a funny story!

UTP SOUNDWAVES

ROYEL OTIS’ “MOODY” IS AN ANTHEM FOR THE REGRESSIVE 20’S

Over the past year, YouTuber RegularCarReviews has included a phrase in multiple car reviews that I have latched onto as an explanation for the cultural zeitgeist we currently exist in: the Regressive 20’s.

Everyone knows about the Roaring Twenties, that decade inter-war period where America dramatically liberalized culturally. Women won their long-fought right to vote, the safety bicycle enabled women (and everyone else alike) to travel without a horse and carriage, and certainly without the need to be accompanied by a man. Flappers and jazz music were abound. A young Joe Piscopo taught us how to laugh.

100 years on, halfway through the Regressive 20s, and it feels decisively different.

Political correctness, at least in moderate (and white) spaces, has become passé. The R-word has made a roaring comeback while probably more contextually useful words like “suicide” are reduced to “unaliving” to avoid angering automatic censors or getting demonetized or whatever. Facebook explicitly allows bullying based on identity now. We’re basically due for a resurgence in new Jeff Dunham racist stereotype puppets.

I think that this regression is bad. More and more aspects of life will continue to be what 2017 college classmates of mine would call “problematic,” as horribly evil nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE work with American oligarchs to buy up media congloemerats across industries, like their purchase of Electronic Arts and speculation that a Saudi-led EA will either remove or otherwise censor content that doesn’t jive with the kingdom—take the LGBTQ inclusion of The Sims 4. One other example, is that WWE went from being condemned widely for a single PPV in Riyadh, to now rapidly expanding their presence, including announcing the next WrestleMania will be in Riyadh.

In this context, Emily and I were driving—I think it was heading out of town for the Missouri road trip—listening to Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current until we lose the signal in southern Minnesota.

I’ve largely stopped listening to this station. It was the main station I listened to throughout college, but the quality (in my opinion) has dipped significantly over the years. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that multiple personalities, mostly women, have left, and shared their deeply unpleasant experiences while working there—multiple women DJs were targets of violent threats and stalked by the same man. I also disagree with a number of aspects of American Public Media (APM), the Minnesota-based non-NPR affiliated organization which owns MPR and The Current.

Anyway, we’re listening to The Current when a mellow 4-chord pop song plays. I noticed I was enjoying it so I turned it up. Emily was also enjoying it. We listened to the song but were a little disarmed by the lyrics. Here’s the chorus:

She’s always giving it to me

Hmm. On one hand this is a new song (summer 2025) that both my partner and I really enjoyed hearing and discovering the song for the first time, together—that doesn’t happen very often. On the other hand, the song perpetuates the “my crazy b***h girlfriend” misogynistic trope.

The song is “moody” by Australian band Royel Otis. They sound like 19 year-olds and the song sounds very targeted towards hormonal, unmedicated, lovey-dovey teenagers in toxic relationships.

TangerineTop8507’s top comment on an r/RoyelOtis post about the song having its lyrics censored for the radio (instead of b***h, they say trick) sums up the position that I don’t necessarily agree with, but represents the nuance of navigating the Regressive 20’s as someone who reallllllly doesn’t agree with the premise of cultural regression:

I’m saying this as a woman in my 30’s - it is such a shame how people find these things offensive. If a girl was singing this it would be like GO GIRL and POWER TO THE WOMEN but because a guys says “b***h” it’s suddenly misogynistic and so offensive. I just don’t see it at all … people totally misunderstood the whole point behind the song - no matter what he still loves her and she’s his everything, like where is the misogyny?

Okay. So I can like the song even if it’s misogynistic?

Actually, no. The band apologized for being misogynistic, although it’s still a top song on their Spotify page, and undoubtedly their biggest hit.

I also learned, while writing this piece, that Royel Otis is a lot of things, but two 19 year-olds singing about their toxic ex is not one of them. Royel, whose real name is Leroy, is actually 37 years-old, and Otis is 24. They started the band when Otis was still a teenager. Weird!

Worst of all, beyond a man who is way too old to be singing like a teenage guy with a thing for crazy girl, there are (relatively unsubstantiated) rumors and accusations that Leroy had an inappropriate relationship with a minor student while he was an instructor at a music conservatory in New South Wales. Yikes!

It’s in this context that I say: “moody” is an anthem for the Regressive 20s. It’s got everything: problematic lyrics that are misogynistic, inappropriate age gaps aplenty, and the most unfortunately contemporary regression of excusing or dismissing pedophilia because the predator is a public figure, or because the victim is said to be near the age of consent.

Even if you can look past the misogyny (I love cognitive dissonance), it’s hard to justify liking a band that, in general, isn’t very good, and represents the cutting edge in groomer-core music.

And much like Saudi Arabia buying EA (and in turn the Sims) and the Spotify CEO’s significant investments in AI warfare, Royel Otis shows that there’s nothing good in the world that can’t be sullied by evil men. It’s an extremely catchy song, and an extremely 2025-ass song. I really’” wanted to be able to say “go ahead, enjoy the Regressive 20’s at your own peril” and add this earworm to your rotation. Separate art from artist, etc.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that Anthony Fantano, the internet’s busiest music nerd, gave the album a “Strong 1,” a decisive condemnation of the album.

Let your friends know how cancelled I am for wanting to wax poetic about a song like “moody.” I’m sure they’ll love that.

Welcome back to another edition of the world’s most recommended newsletter/podcast to my friends’ coworkers.

This week we’re back to normal after we wrapped up Putting the Moron in Moroni last week. I’m really proud of what I put together and I hope you’ll give it a read/listen if you haven’t already—start with episode 1 here.

Also: this newsletter is also a podcast, which you can now listen to on the Substack app/browser, or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. All 9 episodes of Putting the Moron in Moroni are on there.

Now, celebrate with me as we talk about more important things: banjos, wrasslin’, and transit-focused YouTubers.

Did you know? 100% of all Uffda Times-Picayune subscribers are extremely hot. You don’t want to be ugly, do you?

BOTCHED! GRIPES ABOUT GRAPS

EDDIE KINGSTON’S 2025 REBOOT

“I drink to drown my demons—but they know how to float.”

-Eddie Kingston

On May 11, 2024, around 3,000 people gathered at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, CA for the New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) Resurgence pay-per-view.

The second to last match was NJPW star (and terrifying person) Gabe Kidd vs. the 17-year indie wrestling legend Eddie Kingston.

Eddie is a beloved wrestler among the nerdiest wrestling fans because he never wrestled in WWE. AEW Founder (and head of booking) Tony Khan has tapped decades-old rivalries Eddie Kingston has with other indie veterans, particularly those in Ring of Honor. Eddie’s nickname is “The Mad King,” which was made a pejorative turned term of endearment: “The King of the Bums.” He loves to talk about being from New York, he wears untied, floppy-ass Timbs, and his favorite joke/catchphrase is “Deez Nuts.” Eddie Kingston’s favorite artist is DMX, and his AEW theme song is like a discount DMX song set to music from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Kingston loves to tell his story. He is well-known among wrestling fans for his tenacity on the microphone.

“Promos” make up roughly 20% of a good episode of wrestling TV, and it is shockingly difficult to be good at it. I happen to have a mutual friend who happens to be in an acting class with an active WWE Superstar in Orlando, and a former-WWE star took public speaking classes taught by a friend of mine at UMN. Based on his comments about the student’s performance in the class it’s not shocking to me he was let go by WWE.

Promos can be a lot of things. There are pre-recorded segments and backstage interviews. Many times, the wrestler will come out to the middle of the ring and rail on whatever they need to by hyping up for the next big show or pay-per-view or fight later that night or whatever. In some cases they might be plot-moving segments like MJF and Chris Jericho’s NYT award-winning performance in the Dinner Debonair Wrestling TV Show Broadway Musical Sketch. Promos are all about being good at extemporaneously speaking and improv.

Yes, and? The good promo makes the good show. I covered an amazing Swerve/Hangman promo earlier this year that I still recommend watching. I’m also proud of D.E.N.N.I.S.’ing Joe Goldberg. And the COVID/Second Gilded Age Airbnbs they seem to film at a lot now.

Eddie Kingston, whether because of his tough Yonkers upbringing, his time as a union ironworker, or something else entirely, can fucking go for it on the mic. I’ve linked a 2.5 hour compilation of his best promos on AEW. My favorite is the spring 2022 period where Chris Jericho attempted to seize AEW and make it more like the WWE—the full promo starts at 1:31:00.

Chris Jericho’s faction was called “The Jericho Appreciation Society” (incredible name) and featured wrestlers that used to wrestle at WWE. Their gimmick, was that AEW needed to embrace “sports entertainment,” which is the marketing speak Vince McMahon used to describe what professional wrestling is. Jericho amusingly refers to the AEW fanbase as the “AEW Galaxy,” parodying the absolutely real “WWE Universe.” The JAS even start calling themselves “Superstars,” which is the WWE marketing-speak name for wrestlers. One last WWE marketing-speak (because this one annoys me so much): pay-per-views are now "Premium Live Events (PLE).”

Eddie Kingston is the perfect foil: he never wrestled in WWE, and is perhaps one of the most committed wrestlers to maintaining kayfabe, the carny term for what is canon in the wrestling storyline. Eddie threatens to kill people. Eddie tells stories about his tough childhood, how he had to scrap and fight to stay alive.

“Do you know— SHUT UP, I swear on my mother, shut up. Do you know what a hit means? Do you know that Chris? Look into my eyes. LOOK IN MY EYES, I LIVE BEHIND THEM. When you say ‘a hit’ in my world, you end things…you need to be ready to put a person IN THE GROUND. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it to you—no hesitation.”

- Eddie Kingston in a face-to-face confrontation with the Jericho Appreciation Society

There’s so many others—the promo right after that one in the AEW Timelines video is another favorite, where Eddie Kingston calls into an episode of Dynamite and threatens to make Chris Jericho “feel the pain” his wife must feel as she “fears for his life” because he’s just that mad at Chris Jericho. I just really love the idea that a wrestler can just call in and threaten you. I love wrestling.

Anyway, back to NJPW Resurgence (2024). I couldn’t even tell you the storylines—I don’t watch New Japan—but I know that the match ended with a gnarly botch of a table spot that broke Eddie Kingston’s leg, and tore his ACL and his meniscus. He was the AEW Continental Champion, having literally just won the first Continental Classic. In the time since, Kazuchika Okada (the New York Yankees of Japanese wrestling) took his title and it was consolidated into the new AEW Unified Championship.

We got radio silence on Eddie. He is 42 years old, mind you, so there was speculation that he might be out for longer, or even that he might have to hang it up.

Wrestling dirt sheets had rumors throughout summer 2025 that Kingston was nearly cleared to wrestle, but AEW hadn’t said anything. That was until an early-August ’25 promo from Big Bill, the beloved 7 foot-something wrestler most recently aligned with “The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho, but that bit is gone (as is Jericho, probably). His promo was calling out an unnamed wrestler but ended saying it was addressing Eddie Kingston. The next episode of Collision featured a promo-of-few-words when we saw a remote segment of Eddie Kingston accepting Big Bill’s challenge, from his home in New York. We would not see a single promo from The Mad King before his return at All Out in September.

There’s not really a good reason for Big Bill and Eddie beefing. Why not have Eddie join in on the Death Riders storyline? He famously fucking hates Claudio Castagnoli in kayfabe, and one of his greatest rivalries in AEW was Jon Moxley?

We never find out and the Mad King’s entrance is largely unceremonious. He wore an orange t-shirt that says “CLAUDIO SUCKS EGGS,” as well as two rosaries—not much for da big pay-per-view. I think the orange shirt was a sub-textual preview of him entering “Team Taz,” the now-defunct faction of orange-wearing wrestlers associated with Taz and the “outlaw” FTW Championship, which Chris Jericho was the last fighting champion of.

He fights Big Bill and I’m gonna admit, he looks pretty rough. He’s still somewhat nimble but it’s clear this last injury did him real good. I’d compare the performance of his comeback to Jamie Hayter’s—underwhelming and a little scary…please don’t get injured again!

Eddie wins. It’s been a couple months so I don’t remember…really anything from the match, but I do know that after the match, Big Bill and Bryan Keith beat the absolute shit out of Eddie. And then—the signal! It’s HOOK!

Hook’s stupid new song is playing. He had a cool Westside Gunn song that was iconic and now he has this corny-ass “tell the girls I’m back in town” song that I really can’t stand. Hook runs out and saves the day—basically a return for Hook too after he left The Opps, and they’ve been a little tag team faction since.

The match was widely panned and really shouldn’t have been on the card. Dave Meltzer, if you care what he thinks, gave it one star. Ouch.

It’s not hard to see where TK went wrong on this one. Why is the greatest man on the mic not beefing with big enemies? I understand he’s a lone wolf, so it makes sense for him to pair up with Hook, but do we really need another faction? I guess it makes sense so that Eddie is only doing 50% of the wrestling.

I don’t blame Eddie, he’s not in charge of booking. I’m happy to have Eddie back, but he’s not being used to his full potential. We need Eddie promos. Eddie was the missing voice during the egregiously long reign of the Death Riders, and now that he’s back and paired up with one of weakest promo cutters in the locker room, we deserve the Eddie we love. Give Eddie 20 minutes to address his enemies. Do a shoot on Chris Jericho leaving AEW. Use his reverence for Ring of Honor to elevate that show. Beef with MJF for no reason (God where tf is MJF please come back). There’s probably way more lore connecting Eddie with the locker room I bet we’re just scratching the surface.

Eddie is a decent wrestler, but he’s an incredible performer. To Eddie, all of this is real. Eddie is so convincingly earnest, you believe everything he says. I genuinely believe he is trying to fight the other person in the ring. No one has told him anything is choreographed or staged—he’s just out here beating the shit out of people. Tony Khan: let’s get him doing what he does best.

UTP SOUNDWAVES

I’M LEARNING CLAWHAMMER BANJO AND CAN’T TAKE ANY OF THE SONGS SERIOUSLY

I mentioned very briefly in a June edition of this newsletter that I was taking a banjo class. I’m finally ready to talk about it.

I remember “community ed” classes held at my elementary and middle schools as I started staying after for various activities. Grown-ups would show up and go to my classroom to do…whatever it is they were doing.

I don’t know why, but I always stigmatized it in my mind. I actually really don’t know why. If I had to guess, I bet I was staying after with a teacher and we were booted from their classroom for the community ed class.

This summer, I finally got over my bizarre stigmatization of community education classes and signed up for a beginner’s clawhammer banjo class.

I didn’t always want to play the banjo. I took guitar lessons in elementary school and only in my adulthood did I ever take serious time to practice and improve. Years of concert band and drum corps kept me away from the guitar—why would I practice guitar when I have the new ballad to memorize?

In August 2020, the pivotal moment came. Emily and I, along with a group of friends, stayed at what I can only describe as a mountain-side estate in Warm Springs, VA, nestled in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was deep-ish in the woods, but the greatest feature of this luxurious Airbnb was the view from the upstairs porch, which overlooked a valley, and fuck if I didn’t wish I had a banjo.

I also got into bluegrass during COVID starting with Billy Strings’ “bluegrass Pantera” like “Turmoil and Tinfoil.” The whole week at Warm Springs I just wished I’d had a damn banjo. From then on, any opportunity I had I mentioned how badly I wanted one. I was blessed that Christmas when my grandfather gifted me his banjo, a gorgeous Fender that’s frankly nicer than any other instrument I own. He had said he never really learned and that he wanted me to have it if I was going to actually learn it. I panicked about getting it from MSP to DC, but it worked.

And then I never learned the banjo.

If you aren’t familiar, there are two kinds of playing styles. You are probably familiar with three-finger picking, “Scruggs”-style that most iconic banjo performances are. I tried to learn it from a book when I got the banjo but I hated it. Clawhammer, or “old time” banjo is more percussive and relies on a “bum-ditty” plucking/strumming pattern that is totally foreign to my guitar-playing self. Clawhammer banjos are open-backed and based on everyone in the class, typically one-off/handmade by banjo luthiers—I have a regular banjo and it’s…substantially louder than everyone else’s.

When I signed up for classes, I was put on the waitlist for the three-finger and clawhammer classes. A spot opened up for clawhammer so, I guess this is what I’m learning.

This was my first organized group musical experience since 2017 and my god was it refreshing to be playing music with other people, even if we were playing the banjo equivalents of “Hot Cross Buns.”

The class was incredibly frustrating at first. I understand (for the most part) how to play the guitar; where the notes line up, the patterns/positions for scales, etc. But banjo features one fewer string and the tuning is completely different. Instead of a low string, the fifth string is a high-pitched drone that is plucked as part of the “-itty” of the “bum-ditty” in clawhammer style.

I compare it most to when I learned to drive stick shift. I knew how to drive, but when my dad tried to teach me manual (in the stick shift car I had literally purchased minutes beforehand) it was as if I forgot everything. My wrong notes, constant frustration, and frequent crash-outs were evocative of the herky-jerky movement of the car, grinding of the clutch, and excessive use of profanities as I had to learn to drive again.

I wasn’t dissuaded, though, and stuck through it. I was pleased to see that for the first time the district was offering a second level, so I took that for this fall, and my god I’m having so much fun. The instructor is the sweetest woman, Julie, who played in an all-women’s punk band, the Pseudonymphs, in the late-80s and early-90s that wore lingerie on-stage and toured at least three times, and even played the infamous CBGB. Here’s an archived interview with the band from 1991. She’s also an accomplished visual artist.

Maybe my understanding of bluegrass culture is limited (it is), but I’m really amazed at how clawhammer manages to attract a diverse set of players, especially queer musicians. Compared to three-finger, clawhammer is far more anarchistic and functions closer to the percussive playing style of a mandolin than the twangy “Dueling Banjos” playing you probably know. The type of banjo is different, too. Keeping time is more important than hitting the exact notes—the fiddle player is gonna play the cooler part anyway.

The other funny part is that there aren’t like…pop songs with clawhammer? Like one of the only go-tos I’ve seen is “Country Roads, Take Me Home” by John Denver, and even that is basically just “here are the chords.” Because of this, if you go to a bluegrass jam, or take this banjo class, you’re gonna learn “old time” banjo songs. Songs like “Hog in the Woods” or “Old Tom Sutton,” all have these Americana-flavored esotericism that begs the question: hasn’t anyone written any new songs?

I was immersed in a whole banjo-themed world I had no idea existed. What the fuck is Banjo Hangout? Do you know how confused I was when I was asked if I’ve “been to Banjo Hangout?” People trade Patreon recommendations like they’re local coffeeshops. There’s a whole collection of bluegrass musicians making music across Minnesota.

For that last bit, I want to make a plug for the Clean Water Land and Legacy Amendment, a unique constitutional amendment in Minnesota that sets aside state sales and usage tax dollars to fund cultural organizations across the state, in addition to four other high-impact programs. Minnesota Brass, which I was a member for five years, is a recipient of these funds, and it’s not an exaggeration to say hundreds of performing arts organizations, like the Minnesota Bluegrass & Old Time Music Association, rely on these funds and would cease operation if not for the generous voters of Minnesota. It’s great to live somewhere where the arts are truly patronized and this amendment and the subsequent programs are among the best in the country. Good for us, Minnesota.

Try a community ed class and don’t give up on art if you haven’t played your instrument, or made any pottery, or done any drawings since high school—these classes are a great opportunity for a low-stress and no-judgement way to ease back into it.

WHAT’S ON THE IDIOT BOX

YOUTUBER SPOTLIGHT: MILES IN TRANSIT

Emily was out of town for a work trip this past week, and while I had a bunch of time, I watched a lot of YouTube. Shockingly, it was all good!

There was no one I watched more than Miles in Transit.

When I was still on Twitter, I followed him, and I’ve been an avid YouTube viewer for a while. He basically lives my dream: he gets paid to ride goofy-ass transit. I loved “The Trolleybus Video,” where Miles and his friend Jackson ride every single trolleybus route in America. There’s so much to love.

I had tried to watch his much older videos contemporaneously, but could not get past his, uh, personality. He was much younger and much more annoying. Now’s not the case. I love the foamer excitement these dorks get from things I also get excited about. They rode the same trolleybus route in Queen Anne in Seattle that Emily and I used almost exclusively to get around when we visited after our train trip in April, and it was like I was frozen into the Leo meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Miles has some fun companions. His partner, Alena, suffers alongside him for many of the trips, but usually it’s one-to-three people from a cast of characters who will join him in their respective cities, or travel alongside. The two most prevalent are Jackson and Jeremy. Jeremy is a train nerd I remember from Twitter, too, and his unabashed joy over all things public transit is just absolutely infectious. Only Jeremy Zorek can get so excited by something so asinine, like the inlays on a trolley pole attached to an old building or trolleybus poles in the middle of nowhere.

Jackson is his main partner, and he is, like Jeremy, infectiously joyful while doing experiential activities and learning things. I particularly love the passion and encyclopedic knowledge he has about the history of factory-manufactured diner cars, a level of obsession I had no idea was a thing. In a three-and-a-half-hour video (linked above) they use transit to go to every single diner in the city of Boston; in another two-hour video they visit all of the diners in Philadelphia, once again only traveling by transit.

The videos carry an almost Amazing Race feeling. If you are the kind of person who enjoys riding transit in new cities (my favorite way to get to know a new place), these videos are a treat. He’s been to pretty much every major city in the US and Canada, and made videos about them, highlighting the good and the bad.

I also love his videos because they show what real-world problems the American transportation system has for those who don’t drive. I am particularly fond of anytime he tries to use so-called “microtransit,” which is usually marketed as a door-to-door transit option, almost always emphasizing an app. The app is basically just Via, the Lyft/Uber competitor that exclusively does shared rides—most agencies partner with Via or a similar company.

The flaws of microtransit are laid bare when Miles and his friends are unable to book trips in the app, informed there’s only one bus on the whole service so the wait is hours, and are occasionally treated like a pariah for daring to use something totally underutilized.

They also endure long microtransit rides when the service is busy. In some cases, Miles compares microtransit to whatever suburban bus route it replaced, which will show how much unnecessary waiting and nonsensical extra stops they have to make now, with what is typically marketed as being “easier” to ride than regular transit. He demonstrates, on multiple occasions, the difficulty in scaling microtransit systems without having way more buses and operators than what is feasible—it effectively has to have no riders for it to be a better service. Why do you think Uber and Lyft make you own the car? The company assumes none of the mechanical/maintenance risk, making it easier to have a million cars available, as opposed to a finite number of buses and drivers.

I don’t think microtransit as an idea needs to be scrapped totally, but as Miles shows in many videos, transit riders are pretty much guaranteed to have unpredictable travel times.

So watch Miles do his goofy trips: he’s pretty funny, gives the most practical advice of any travel YouTuber I’ve ever seen, and if you are at all interested in transit, trains, or the transportation system, you’re in for a treat.

*Eddie Kingston Yonkers Accent* Hey. Listen— Shut up, I’m talking— Listen. There’s something we do here for those who don’t pay it forward. I had to fight tooth and nail because no one ever fought for me! And you. Everything handed to you, Mr. Sports Entertainah. Now it’s your turn. Share the article or else it’s your ass on the line at Full Gear! TEXAS DEATHMATCH!

“When you go home today, especially you young kids, I want you to write in your journal one thing you felt while you were here.” - Senior sister missionary to us following our tour of Carthage Jail

Note from the author: Welcome to the very last main edition in this godforsaken series. I’m going to do some kind of haul-type rundown of the books and other paraphernalia I got on this road trip and in the making of this newsletter. New around here? Start with Part 1 now.

This edition is longer than the rest and won’t fit entirely in an email. I recommend reading it on Substack, or listening to the podcast version of PtMiM:MM&MiM on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. All 8 episodes out now.

Don’t forget to follow UTP on Instagram @uffdatimes

At long last, this is the place: the timely and well-deserved passing of Joseph Smith, Jr., the highly influential and controversial inventor of Mormonism.

For 14 years, Joseph had constructed an absurdly successful fandom for his sloppily-retconned fanfiction of the New Testament, where America becomes the main setting and Jesus is no longer the main character. He also made a long, frequent habit of agitating those neutral or opposed to him and his cult.

Joseph Smith was the poster child for recidivists; since the first issue of this limited series, I’ve mocked his frequent interactions with the criminal justice system. The man committed crimes, sometimes minor like a bar fight or scuffle, then would tell his followers that Satan will work to prevent him from prophesying by jailing him for his crimes, and it would obviously happen, which only emboldened the faith of his followers. If you can downplay petty/misdemeanor charges as politically/religiously-motivated, no one will believe authorities when you commit far more serious crimes (read: sex crimes).

The legacy of the criminal prophet lives on in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), and their truly evil leader, Warren Jeffs, who continues to run his sex cult Mormon sect from prison following conviction for child sex abuse crimes in Utah and Arizona. They claim they are the only true successor to Joseph Smith’s church after the official church abandoned polygamy to curry favor with the US government in the late-19th century. This was just another in a long line of schisms after Joseph Smith left a power vacuum in 1844, with no heir apparent.

But this power vacuum had to be created, and last week we saw the beginning of the end for Smith as he focused the vast majority of his time to three pastimes, none of which were particularly helpful to the creation of Zion:

* Running for President on a platform of forcing the feds to dispatch troops to deal with “angry mobs” (curious…) and to abolish the carceral prison system (don’t ask why we toured not one but two jails on this trip),

* Using the uniquely-granted political power of the Nauvoo city government to punish political enemies and religious dissenters alike, while protecting himself, and;

* Being a philandering polygamist sex pest.

It’s only fitting that the founder of the most American religion ever would also become the first presidential candidate to be assassinated during a campaign.

This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons and Misery in Missouri. This week is our final regular edition: the dramatic conclusion to this several-month series about a three-day weekend road trip I did like four months ago.

We visit Carthage, IL, a small town about 25 minutes from Nauvoo and the location of Joseph Smith’s death. We’ll take a guided tour of a jail (talk about a fun vacation) and we see the ugliest summer outfits on poor Mormon women stuck wearing garments (read: at least three layers) in the 95-degree humid-corn-sweat summer.

Thanks for joining us.

Avoid the awkward situation where I demand the destruction of your printing press because you besmirched me. Subscribe for free to receive new posts, and follow UTP on Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Trust me, I’ll know if you don’t.

Before we can set out for Carthage and take the much-earned Dairy Queen lunch break around the corner from the jail, we have to catch up on what Joe’s been up to.

As you’ll remember from last week, Joseph was in the throes of a presidential campaign that turned Mormon proselytizers into politickers as the campaign supposedly had a presence in every state at the time. A robust committee was set up to serve as a political and ecclesiastical body in the so-called “Theodemocracy” the Mormons planned to create.

But at the same time, Smith made several significant revelations related to baptisms for the dead, making temple ceremonies more Freemason-like, and introducing polytheism, where faithful Mormon men will become gods themselves. As you might imagine in a world without widespread literacy but full of frontier justice and religious fervor, this was not well-received, especially as the details of Smith’s polygamy became harder for Mormons and outsiders alike to ignore.

In May 1844, the same month that Smith’s Reform Party nominated him for President, William Law, a prominent local disillusioned ex-Mormon leader, announced the creation of a new newspaper: The Nauvoo Expositor.

The Mormons’ usage of the press was the catalyst that enabled their sudden and astronomical growth. In fact, one of Smith’s first commands to the Mormons that arrived in Missouri was to set up a printing press and start publishing pro-Mormon propaganda. While he knew the pen is mightier than the sword, he also knew its power could be used against him.

In early May, Law circulated a notice in town that the Expositor would begin publishing scandalizing information about Joseph Smith, specifically publicly exposing his polygamy, which was still secret at this point. Joseph Smith was enraged, as was the county prosecutor, who indicted Joseph on charges of perjury and “fornication and adultery” based on sworn affadvits from multiple former members. Smith publicly proclaimed that it was ridiculous to believe he was a polygamist and that all of the accusers are liars.

On June 7, the Nauvoo Expositor published their only edition: a four-page paper featuring poetry and fiction stories, but also sworn testimony and statements from former Mormons putting it in the paper how mad they are at Joseph and Hyrum Smith for perpetrating and then lying about the Principle.

Smith convened the Nauvoo City Council—he was mayor at this point—and declared a trial would be held to address the Expositor. In a sham “trial” that lasted just 2 days, Smith’s Nauvoo declared the newspaper as a public nuisance and called for the destruction of the printing press on June 10.

An angry mob of over 100 men raided Expositor offices at Joseph Smith’s command, and destroyed the press. The backlash was immediate and intense. Local non-Mormons were incensed; this was a blatant attack on the First Amendment. TheWarsaw Signal and the Quincy Whig, two papers with a history of criticism of the Mormons called for the arrest of Smith and feared he would seek the same outcome for other critics.

An arrest warrant was issued, but Smith petitioned the Nauvoo City Court, which he effectively controlled, to dismiss the charges, which it did. The Signal was outraged and ramped up attacks and scandalous coverage of the Mormons. On June 13, citizens of Hancock County petitioned the governor for assistance. In return, Joseph Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and his 5,000-man strong force, preventing people from leaving or entering the area without approval from Smith’s effective theocracy.

The governor responded by showing up to Carthage on June 21 and the Illinois state government breached Nauvoo by June 23. Smith was nowhere to be found, but two days later, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in, along with dozens of other Mormons. The Mormons were all freed on bail except for a small handful, namely Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

An important caveat to everything, not that it changes anything in my eyes, is that Smith was not exactly totally innocent: he had a pepperbox handgun smuggled into the jail.

Joseph wrote up an order for the Nauvoo Legion to march from Nauvoo to Carthage and break him and his brother out of jail on June 27. Later in the day, a group of allegedly 200 or so men with their faces painted black approached the jail, allegedly incensed. Joseph Smith had assumed the Legion had heard his call. The Mormons had arrived.

Joseph Smith turned to a jailer, who had grabbed his weapon to confront the mob, and said “Don’t trouble yourself...they’ve come to rescue me.”

Before we even crossed into town, right next to the “Welcome to Carthage” sign, we saw a gun range, which was alarmingly close to to the highway and packed with hundreds of…uh…sportsmen firing guns without a care in the world. An apt welcome to the town that would murder Joseph Smith.

We knew it was going to be busy when we were at Dairy Queen beforehand, and multiple Mormon families were dining as well, including a mom wearing the ugliest summer fit, just like an Old Navy color block striped shirt that so obviously had garments underneath. The poor woman must have been dying in the brutal, humid July heatwave in the middle of Tornado Alley. Our friend brought their cat inside, and we got a lot of stares from patrons.

After enjoying God’s chosen frozen dessert, the Blizzard, headed across the street to the Carthage Jail.

Like the angry mob, we rolled up to Carthage Jail in Carthage, IL. It’s a well-preserved jailhouse, and is more faithful to the original structure than the Liberty Jail we visited a couple of days earlier. Next door is a funeral home-looking single-story building serving as a visitor’s center. The sidewalk leading to the building is lined with cast signs describing Mormon tenets of faith and other bullshit. I got the vibe they were ripping off of the Stations of the Cross. The whole site is fenced in with a 9’ security fence.

We were respectful as we entered and went into the lobby of the visitor’s center. I went to the waiting room, which featured typical Mormon art—the First Vision paintings, a statue of Joseph Smith, and curiously, a room with benches and a TV playing a dramatized movie version of Joseph’s death on loop, with about 5-7 young kids watching while waiting for our tour to start. You know, church!

The wait for the tour was agonizing. Between this and Liberty Jail I am convinced that if Nevermos are on the tour, they will make you wait as long as possible in hopes that you’ll leave. We probably should have.

I sat there waiting, probably for a good 10-15 minutes, observing the various Mormons in the room. Adults mingled in the lobby talking about Mormon things, while their kids were entranced by a re-enactment/dramatization film of a group of men violently raiding the small building outside, shooting at doors and walls and windows. The movie featured cutaways to grieving family members, presumably of Joseph Smith.

Finally, the tour begins. The tour guide, an oddly single senior sister missionary, did not chorale me into the orientation room despite knowing I was going on the tour. At Carthage Jail, missionaries actively avoided talking to me, let alone acknowledge my existence. Off to a great start.

We are ushered into a small, windowless room with pews and a projector screen on the wall. The pews are designed with space to store a box of tissues. There are tissues at every seat because people attending this…informational video (?) will be so moved they start sobbing? Uh, okay. After Liberty Jail nothing surprises me anymore.

She gave us a small itinerary and mentioned this was her first tour without her husband (seniors always serve missions with their spouses) as he was home sick. This would have a detrimental effect on our tour. This woman was completely lost without her 65-page laminated tour guide notes—she was rigorously and totally on-script, with the occasional interjection to spike fervor with Mormon bullshit.

The room was mostly full, probably 25 or so of us from 5-7 groups. Notably, a family with a young kid was present and we were actually extremely impressed that when the baby was screaming or upset, the dad was actually the one to get up and tend to the baby. Are Mormons woke now?

She warned us that it was about to get very dark in the room. She shut the lights off, and for a solid 5-10 seconds it was pitch black. The projector turns on and a video fades into view. You can watch the exact video in full below.

The video is a General Conference speech by one of the 21st century’s most important Mormon leaders, Jeffrey Holland. The gist of his speech, which is among the most frequently referenced in ex-Mormon spaces, is that the Book of Mormon is literally the keystone of the Mormon faith: if Joseph Smith didn’t translate the Golden Plates, then the Book of Mormon is not true. If the Book of Mormon is not true, then the church is not true. He famously uses Hyrum Smith’s copy of the Book of Mormon, and specifically a dog-eared page, as proof that even until the last breath, Joseph and Hyrum were faithfully serving God through the restored Gospel. Yawn.

The “keystone” idea is one of the great psy-ops of the religion, which implants in Mormons the idea that any alternative to the Book of Mormon narrative they’ve received since childhood is so ridiculous that the Book of Mormon must be a true, factual document. A natural thought spiral will lead to Mormons’ “turning it off,” just like in The Book of Mormon, self-reinforcing the legitimacy of the religion by totally dismissing an alternative.

It obviously worked because at least a few Mormons, including the tour guide, were crying when the lights came back on. We left the funeral home building and approached the two-story building. It physically resembles the Liberty Jail insofar as, it is an old, brick, two-story building with stone foundation and is from the bona fide olden days.

In front of the building is a small well. The ground around the building is baseball field dirt-esque, designed for large tour groups and frequent foot traffic shuffling faithful Mormons in and out of a stupid small building with nothing of value inside. We stood outside, in the heat, in the direct sun, for 10 full minutes as she parroted half-truthful “facts” that frame the raid on the jail as entirely unjustified—a work of satan, even.

She warns us not to touch anything; while little to nothing in the house is original, it is set up to appear “period correct.”

I’ve been to several places like this: the Lincoln Cottage in DC, the Confederate White House in Richmond, VA, the old barracks at Fort Snelling. This was the most half-hearted and uninformational example. Much like Nauvoo’s pathetic imitation of Colonial Williamsburg, the old-timeyness of the set dressing is half-assed and superficial. There’s a table, and rocking chair, and dining set, and bed, and chamber pot becuase that’s what’s in all these old places. A small child immediately begins touching the silverware on a dining table in the first room. No one says anything. Inside the ground floor, there is nothing Mormon, nothing uniquely associated with the Smiths, just old stuff. Only come here if you like Old Stuff.

We went upstairs where we were led into a room she warned us would be extremely dark, and maybe even a little scary! All 20-something of us filed into a cold room with unfinished wood plank floors and a bench alongside the exposed stone wall (the rest of the house was drywall). A jail cell took up most of the room stretching to the farthest corner. A ball-and-chains and shackles were on the ground.

She turns her phone’s flashlight off and begins asking rhetorical questions or musing about how the jail cell was “only for violent criminals” and that the Smiths “hadn’t done anything to deserve such cruel punishment.” She asks the youngest kids if they thought it was cold or scary. Our friends cat begins meowing every 15 seconds or so. No one acknowledges it. The guide turns her flashlight on; we’re finally leaving the scary dark jail cell. Surely that was where the Smiths were killed?

Wrong. She lets us know that the Smiths were only in that cell for “a couple of hours” on the first day they got there. This isn’t fucking Mandela’s cell and isn’t even Joseph Smith’s, so why even waste our time?

The jailhouse, much like in Liberty, was really just A House.The reason we went inside the cell was to set the mood. I’m sure faithful Mormons were already in shambles about the shackles their prophet never wore let alone saw.

The horrible conditions had to be hyped because the room the Smiths were actually held in was pretty nice. All accounts tell us that they had ample access to the outside world, were permitted to walk around the grounds, just like in Liberty.

We file down the hallway. Each floor of this house has four rooms, and we go to the one with the window facing out towards the gathering space and the well. My friends and I sit down close to the window on a small bench in front of a twin-sized bed, which was roped off. The room was cramped and had an unremarkable fireplace with a modest mantle, a table and desk. The cat continued meowing even as we sat in contemplative silence.

Meanwhile, in 1844, Joseph felt great relief as he saw the crowd roll up.

We don’t know what happened exactly, but one thing was fairly obvious: this was not a pro-Smith mob, but rather the last and most violent angry mob Joseph would interact with. The guards gave up—some Mormon sources alleged they may even have joined in on the raid—and men quickly raided the house.

The Mormon dramatization matches the story our missionary told. She described a scene where “hundreds” of men were in the house and fired “hundreds” of bullets throughout the jailhouse. The movie depicts drywall, splinters, and sawdust flying through the air as the Smith brothers, along with John Taylor, attempted to slam the door as the rifles were sticking through.

Supposedly at this point, a shot is fired through the door and nails Hyrum right in the head just below his eye. The hole left in the door is “still there” and the area around the hole is well-worn from decades of Mormons fingering it, as we were recommended to do by the tour guide.

I find the entire story suspicious; if there were hundreds of angry mob members all firing rounds at the prophet and his brother, it seems awfully convenient the door only has one hole, and that it happened to be the one that killed Joseph’s brother. So it goes.

In the chaos of the attack, Smith equipped his pepperbox pistol and shot three attackers. All would live. John Taylor, one of Smith’s cohorts, was shot in the chest, but a pocket watch supposedly minimized the wound, and he survived hiding under a bale of hay in the creepy-ass jail cell room.

But even being armed with the restored gospel and a pepperbox pistol wasn’t enough to save the prophet. Joseph was shot twice in the back. He ran towards the window and supposedly hung out the side where he was then shot by someone from below. He yelled out what some interpret to be a “Freemason help signal,” but as far as I can tell, it was just “Oh my God!”

He fell out of the window and onto the ground next to the well in front of the jail where he was found dead. The angry mob quickly dispersed. While there were injuries of mob members, only two were killed: Joseph and his brother Hyrum.

The prophet, and by extension the early Mormon church, was dead.

In July 2025, roughly 180ish years later, we are sitting in the upstairs room where the Smiths unknowingly awaited their fates.

We are told the story, and particularly the accounts of the three survivors. The room is quiet and stuffy. An impatient 3-year-old has his headphones on and is pacing around the room watching or playing something on his dad’s phone. A different dad, the same from the waiting room, is tending to his upset child. The cat continues to meow.

The guide asks more youth group-ass questions about what the characters of the story must have felt. Apparently, survivor John Taylor had been sharing a new hymn he wrote with the Smith boys, and they loved it, and is now permanently associated with the brothers’ deaths. The tour guide shocked us by saying “let’s listen.” She reached behind the clock on the mantle of the fireplace and a bluetooth speaker began blaring the hymn “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief,” which Taylor did not write lol.

We sat in total silence as we listened for the full 5-6 minutes of the crappy hymn. There were sniffles, particularly from the tour guide. The cat had continued to meow. The child never paid attention. Afterwards, the tour guide asked the young kids in the room if they knew who the “Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief Was,” reminding them that they definitely know the answer from Sunday school classes. I thought it was Joseph Smith. Turns out it was Jesus. How foolish of me.

We are finally given the last moments beat-by-beat. Her retelling was nearly identical to the movie and Holland’s speech. Joseph Smith was peaceful, did nothing wrong, and never did anything to piss anyone off. She points out that our group (the three of us actively hostile non-Mormons) were sitting right where the prophet was killed. She leads us in prayer and reminds us second only to Jesus, no one has done more for humanity than Joseph Smith.

Not once in the entire tour of the Carthage Jail did we hear about:

* The city of Nauvoo,

* The Nauvoo Expositor,

* The Nauvoo Legion,

* The Whigs or Democrats,

* The 1844 Presidential election,

* The Warsaw Signal,

* “The Principle,”

* Joseph’s mayoralty,

* The 1838 Mormon War,

* The state of Missouri,

* The 1843 assassination attempt on Smith’s enemy, the former Missouri Governor Lilliburn Boggs,

* or even why Joseph Smith was in jail in the first place, let alone any of his interactions with the criminal justice system.

As she wrapped up, she offered to stay for questions for a few minutes until the next tour group arrived, or we could pray with her. We did neither and bolted to the parking lot.

Before she dismisses the tour and lets us leave, she leaves us with one final thought:

“When you go home today, especially you young kids, I want you to write in your journal one thing you felt while you were here.”

Well I felt at least one thing, and it’s that I never need to visit a single fucking Mormon holy site, temple, church, Crumbl Cookie, Swig, BYU game, or anything ever again.

That is, of course, until I go to Utah.

From 1830 to 1844, Joseph Smith went from a treasure-hunting Upstate New York farm boy Tom Sawyer-type, to dubiously-earnest leader of what is undoubtedly the most successful Second Great Awakening religion, before he assumed his ultimate identity: a philandering sex pest who blatantly flaunted the rule of law at every turn, betrayed loved ones, allies, and friends, and played the victim wherever he went.

Joseph Smith’s Mormonism was plagued with problems. Far beyond infighting and theological differences, Smith’s hubris and effective exaltation as a cult leader was his ultimate undoing. Despite his paranoia, he allowed his unquestionable power, lust, and constant theological revisions to alienate powerful members, punish dissenters, and ultimately force their hands into one final angry mob. Those same dissenters would go on to set up centuries of splinter groups and schisms that continue to this day.

After Smith’s death, the Mormons were expelled from Illinois. A power vacuum formed and multiple people claimed succession: Brigham Young won out for power of the largest branch, today’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Other splinter groups exist, but the largest is Community of Christ, who felt Joseph’s son Joseph III was the true successor. Sidney Rigdon had his own sect, and there were many others.

Emma Smith would leave Mormonism and stayed in Nauvoo for the rest of her life. Brigham Young sought to leave the United States and the vast majority of Mormons soon followed. They would travel west until hitting the Salt Lake Valley in what was then-Mexico, where Young famously said “this is the place.” Shortly after, Brigham Young would make “The Principle” public, leading to decades of further toil and violence between the United States government and Mormons.

Today, the largest concentration of Mormons in the world is in Utah, although more Mormons live outside the US than in it. The Mormon church runs wildly successful missionary work across the globe, with particularly important presences in Polynesian countries.

The schisms of the mid-19th century have created a legacy of new, unauthorized prophets, seers, and revelators that continues today.

In some cases, as Jon Krakauer writes in Under the Banner of Heaven, a Mormon sect may just be the final word in hyperlocal patriarchy: confined to one home, where the father is literally a God while women are treated with the same respect one would expect in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Mormons are encouraged from a very young age to have religious/spiritual experiences. “Bearing testimony” every Sunday at church usually includes run-ins with God and the Holy Spirit. Alyssa Grenfell has talked extensively about how she was convinced after multiple conversations, prayers, and visits from the Holy Spirit that God would send her to Italy for her mission, only to be sent to Denver. The biggest fall off her “shelf” was being told her connection to God was mistaken or wrong.

When members are told from childhood that they can tap into a special connection with God, you will inevitably get members who are convinced that they are the true prophet. There are many instances, including in Under the Banner of Heaven, where people with violent tendencies latch onto the revelatory nature of Mormonism and create a cult in their home. This is how polygamist groups like the Fundamentalist LDS church (FLDS) near Short Creek on the Utah-Arizona border formed, and in turn, a 10,000+ member sex cult where the man at the top is “married” to over 150 different women.

I won’t be covering anymore Mormon history—I think I’ve infodumped enough.

If you’re interested in contemporary Mormonism practices, culture, and doctrine, I recommend ex-Mormon YouTuber Alyssa Grenfell, author of How to Leave the Mormon Church. She covers everything and offers valuable insights as someone who was extremely devout even into her 20s.

Mormon history really just gets started after Joseph’s death; I recommend you check out ex-Mormon YouTuber/journalist Johnny Harris’ deep dives. Like Alyssa, he’s a terrific primary source, and he specializes in comparative political analysis. Johnny’s “History of Utah” video is an incredible sequel to this series that picks up on Mormon history right from Smith’s death.

As I said in the first edition, Mormons are more culturally relevant than ever. I try to avoid supporting pro-Mormon or even Mormon-agnostic shows like Secret Lives of Mormon Wives because I think they’re duplicitous and even if the stars are far from “perfect” Mormons, they are still practicing Mormons nonetheless. Mormon cultural hegemony is very bad, and I strongly recommend you stay away from anything that might give them money or positive/neutral PR.

Here’s some other media I’ve enjoyed:

* Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven is an incredible non-fiction novel about the history of the church juxtaposed against its darkest moments,

* John Turner’s Joseph Smith was indispensable for this series and is great if you need to know more about his dumb ass,

* Brigham Young Money is an irreverent podcast series, whose guest feature on Lions Led By Donkeys’ episode on the Nauvoo Legion was largely responsible for my interest in this history,

* Missouri ex-Mormon hardcore band Missouri Executive Order 44 has amusing songs about Mormonism although I wouldn’t say it’s good music,

* As poorly as it has aged in general, South Park has incredible episodes about Mormonism. I’ve never seen The Book of Mormon, but it’s made by the same people.

* Any number of horrific true crime shows including:

* Under the Banner of Heaven (Hulu)

* Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey (Netflix)

* Murder Among the Mormons (Netflix)

As I wrap up the main articles of this series, I have some thank yous.

I thank you for sticking with me throughout these last three-ish months as I’ve slowly gotten a grasp on early Mormon history and combined it with on-site visits to the world’s most D-tier roadside attractions and F-tier religious holy sites.

Thank you to my partner Emily, our friend Mel, and Ducky the cat for being excellent companions and grounding us back in reality when we left the Mormon Black Hole of Cognitive Dissonance and Propaganda.

Thank you to the various Mormon missionaries for respecting my distance, not trying to convert me, and answering questions earnestly and eagerly whenever they arose.

Special thanks to:

* The older sister missionary at Liberty Jail for gassing up Emily’s style and her younger counterpart who so obviously wished she wasn’t in Liberty, Missouri,

* The Red Dead Redemption 2 NPC Mormon at the Country Store for giving us the detour directions for Adam-ondi-Ahman,

* The Depot Hotel in La Plata, MO for being the best hotel I’ve ever stayed at outside of a major city, and to Mel for picking it (not one, not two, but three TVs in the lobby showing live stream footage from RailFans.com—it’s a 100% train-themed hotel),

* The senior sister missionary at Carthage Jail who tried her best even if she was creepy as hell,

* The Nauvoo sister missionary who chose to not further confront Emily who was drinking coffee at holy sites,

* Every ex-Mormon who lives an authentic life after escaping the cult of Mormonism. I am so sorry you grew up in a cult.

* and Mel, again, for making this trip possible. They shared so much of their life and upbringing in Mormon culture with me, including lending me a copy of their mom’s Quad (the Bible, the Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrines and Covenants all rolled into one) and gifting me Mormon stuff like a children’s songbook and kids’ book on church history (after Smith), not to mention my endless questions considering they were the first ex-Mormon I’d ever met.

My last and most regrettable thank you is to the unwaveringly detail-oriented "academics” at Brigham Young University and The Joseph Smith Papers project.

Without unfettered, free access to primary and secondary sources, this series would not have been possible. I may not have cited many sources, but I can tell you that a good 60-80% of my research comes from these documents, which are meticulously documented and edited with annotations/hyperlinks for companion documents/scripture, preserved misspellings (Joseph Smith could not read), and contextual information that is still generally factual.

I think it’s really ballsy for a church to publish an extremely comprehensive catalogue of these unflattering letters, pamphlets, notes, minutes, revelations (many of which present contradictions to revelations before and since), and significant diversions from accepted Mormon theology/lore/history. I find it even more fascinating that all of this material can exist freely for anyone to find and yet Mormons will literally turn a blind eye to their darkest histories as contradictions, even when they’re presented to them by the church on a silver platter.

Mormonism is a cult through and through, and a historically dangerous one at that.

No group of people has effortlessly combined the libertarian fervor and violence of manifest destiny, the holier-than-though piousness of the Second Great Awakening, and the ironically very-American yet thoroughly anti-American streak of self-determined theocratic fascism quite like the Mormons. Not only that, but Mormons have (in their eyes) successfully rebranded as quirky, faithful Christians. Despite the rebrand, it’s become increasingly apparent since September that Mormons continue to be happily strung along by evangelicals despite being an out-group of today’s iteration of Christian nationalism. I guess you reap what you sow.

The religious sites we visited were occasionally tranquil, frequently smelly, and sparsely populated with visitors. At times they felt like cruel jokes played on earnest religious families to test what they will put up with and still affirm their faith. Most of the time it was just hot and fucking miserable.

So, don’t go to Nauvoo. Don’t go to Carthage. Don’t go to Far West. Don’t go to Independence or Jackson County, MO. Don’t go to Clay County, MO. Don’t go to Caldwell County, MO. Don’t go to Missouri. Don’t go to Illinois outside of Cook County. And stay the hell away from Iowa.

Whew! That’s over. If you bothered to read or listen to all 8 versions, I bet you have a friend who might like it too. Share Putting the Moron in Moroni with all the morons in your life.

When I was in high school, 10th grade was the year we took American History, and I opted to take the Advanced Placement version of the class, colloquially known as AP US History (APUSH).

If you don’t remember or your school declined to participate in the gifted kid industrial complex, these classes were billed as college-level courses and provided as a substitute for an honor’s class, but instead of providing college credit outright, you had to take a test and hope whatever college you go to will accept your score.

I got a 3 on the APUSH exam. My second trimester was a breeze, an easy-A learning about post-Civil War and 20th-century American history. No problems there. But the first trimester? My teacher was a football coach who started every single 54-minute class period with a 10-25 minute “Convo Question” that was literally just the teacher shooting the s**t with us. It was fun, but painfully obvious that we weren’t being set up for success.

I was never really required to learn much about pre-Civil War America. My PoliSci degree was largely focused on the modern era, and when I did learn history, it was almost always 20th century.

You’ll be surprised to learn that in my search for learning more about the early Mormon church that national politics were always at arm’s reach from Joseph Smith, and thus, I know now who the Know-Nothings are, and why the Whigs were important, and the steamroller on civic life that was the Jacksonian Democratic Party.

It’s really hard to overstate just how shockingly powerful Joseph Smith had become in the 14 years since publishing the Book of Mormon.

When the Mormons arrived in Illinois, they elected not to yoke themselves to the Whig or Democrat wagons, instead opting to stay “neutral,” and take advantage of Smith’s massive voter base to sway politicians towards his whims.

Nauvoo was the closest thing to the Kingdom of Zion that Joseph saw in his lifetime. Joseph Smith was the prophet, mayor, justice of the peace, and gave himself the title of Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, a militia with real legal authority with 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army.

At the same time, Joseph Smith was amassing a, for lack of a better word, harem of “plural wives,” he was marrying in secret. He had successfully, on multiple occasions, pressured and coerced dozens of women and girls (remember: he was a pedophile) to be “eternally sealed” to him, whether they were married already or not.

So what’s next for the Prophet? Running for President, obviously.

This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Mormons, Martyrs, and Misery in Missouri. This week we're celebrating election day in Minneapolis with a bonus edition to cover Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president of the United States, something that did, indeed, actually happen. We know why he did it (he was insane), but what did he believe? What kind of bonkers policies does a conman criminal with no real political experience put forward in a long-shot campaign for President? What did his friends and followers think? Did it get him killed?

Thanks for reading and listening.

I swear to God there’s only one more mainline article and one more bonus and then I’m done with the Mormons. Stick around for the funnier ones and subscribe now.

Joseph Smith had ambitions beyond his theocracy in Nauvoo: he wanted power, and he wanted power that was illusive.

One of Mormonism’s hallmarks is the secretive nature about what they “actually believe.” Depending on how out of the loop you are, you’ll be shocked learning about the various America-centric beliefs, like both reviling and worshipping Native Americans, or their unique eschatology and beliefs about the afterlife. Or maybe you’re just as surprised as most TBMs to learn just how terrible Joseph Smith was and that he claimed to translate the book (he couldn’t read) using “seeing stones” and looking into a hat.

The secretive nature lends itself to Mormonism’s cult-like tendencies, while also building fervor, zealotry, and a large in-group. I’d argue this is largely out of Joseph Smith’s obsession with Freemasonry, most of which can be traced to John C. Bennett’s brief time as Joseph Smith’s number one man. Bennett, a Mormon, urged Smith to join and by 1844, Nauvoo had not one, not two, but three Masonic lodges.

Many aspects of Mormon temple ceremonies, like secret “grips”/handshakes, passwords, special names, special clothes, are stolen one-for-one with Freemasonry with added Mormon flair.

However like the Mormons, Masons were the target of significant public ire throughout the first half of the 19th century. A shockingly powerful national anti-Mason movement began in the 1830s, who were courted away from their one-issue political party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and fell under the tutelage of the Whigs by 1838.

The most baffling way this connects with our Mormons is not necessarily that President Andrew Jackson was a Mason, or that the Mormons planned to usurp Democratic power by joining the Whigs. Instead, we have to turn our attention to William Morgan, a prominent upstate New York (of course) anti-Mason who was in the process of publishing a book revealing all of the scandalous secrets of Freemasonry. Morgan was arrested on trumped-up charges, and was disappeared and likely murdered in 1826 in an act widely believed to have been carried out by Masons trying to prevent his book from being published. His death bolstered national anti-Masonic views and led to the creation of the Anti-Masonic Party.

When William Morgan died in 1826, his wife Lucinda would remarry, and move to Missouri, where she converted to Mormonism. I don’t think it’s an accident, however, that Lucinda has been identified and is generally accepted to have been one of Joseph Smith’s first plural wives, because of course f*****g Joseph Smith would marry the widow of the most prominent and infamous Anti-Mason activist.

Joseph Smith’s obsession with (and frankly jealousy of) Freemasonry led to perhaps the biggest innovations in Mormonism; many of the “revelations” from this time took an already high-demand religion and made it more and more cult-like, with secret rituals and teachings, barring all non-members from Temples, and one-of-a-kind theology like baptisms for the dead. And it all came from the Freemasons. I’m sure no one will ever have an issue with this.

I bring this story up because it has multiple important intersections with Mormonism and the end of Smith’s life:

* Mormonism’s secretive ceremonies are a sham, and whatever supposed divine purpose they have is really just so he could copy Masons,

* Smith’s public support for Democrats in Illinois, on top of his private and public support for Freemasonry, pissed Whigs the f**k off,

* His affair with Lucinda Morgan shows his promiscuity and carelessness with “the Principle” at the time; it doesn’t matter how prominent a Mormon woman or girl is: if Joseph Smith is interested, he’ll stop at nothing to get his way.

You can probably imagine how a man as powerful and reckless as Smith would become paranoid. He feared and frequently risked his legal and physical safety, but also saw the fragility of his political and religious leadership.

The arrival, ascension, and excommunication of John C. Bennett was proof Smith saw his church’s leadership, members, and political allies as disposable. And while the Anti-Mason Whigs and the Mason-friendly Jacksonian Democrats welcomed the Mormons, that didn’t last long. An angry mob always seems to be around the corner, will Illinois protect the Mormons when the mobs inevitably come to Nauvoo?

Over the years since first arriving in Jackson County, Missouri, the Mormons had become intimately familiar with the legal system, even beyond Joseph Smith’s extensive arrest record. Mormons were frequently in DC advocating for protection from the angry mobs that always seemed to be wherever the Mormons went (weird how that works). They had earned and rightfully lost political protection in Missouri, but popular sympathy for fringe political groups during the Second Great Awakening meant the Mormons would find greater success in the years to come.

In 1842, after Bennett’s excommunication, prominent Illinois politician and infamous Abe Lincoln rival Stephen Douglas publicly acknowledged that, while the Mormons benefited from positive political optics due to their persecution at the hands of the Missouri government, the tide of public opinion had shifted after “two years of popular sympathy.” Douglas would protect Smith one final time, blocking extradition orders to Missouri, which drew ire from the Whigs in Springfield and put the long-term legal and political prospects of the Mormons in Illinois in jeopardy.

The Democrats abandoned Smith while the Whigs actively reviled him. He had demonstrated to his friends and followers that they were replaceable. But even if he had haters, he still had guns, a sham court, and the word of God.

In late 1843, Joseph Smith was recovering from being “poisioned” (he blamed his first wife, Emma), and wrote to political leaders requesting Nauvoo be given independence as a separate territory but retain the ability to call federal troops to their aid. This was unsuccessful.

Joseph Smith then wrote to five people who had announced their candidacies for the ‘44 election to see what protection/support the candidates would promise his 14,000 followers in Illinois. Only three replied and none of them made any promises to help the Mormons.

Unsatisfied and paranoid, Smith took action. In January ‘44, Church leaders met in Nauvoo and decided that Joseph Smith would throw his hat (unclear if its the same hat he stared into to “translate” the golden plates) in the ring. He would announce his candidacy in February.

His running mate (with Bennett now out of the picture) would obviously be longtime co-conspirator Sidney Rigdon, who many speculate was really the one pulling the strings of creating the more…religious Mormon doctrines, including probably writing the Book of Mormon.

They created a new political party they called the Reform Party, which nominated Smith and Rigdon in May ‘44.

Long before the IRS was sending nasty letters to politically active churches, the Mormons really wanted to tear down the wall between church and state and instead conjoin them at the hip. They established an official church council devoted to “electioneering,” and in the church’s own words, sent folks to “serve” on “electioneering missions.”

“Church leaders recognized the power of print media to spread their message through the country, so they printed and distributed thousands of copies of Joseph Smith’s campaign pamphlet. In New York City, Church leaders started a newspaper called the Prophet, which was dedicated to covering Joseph’s candidacy and compared his policy positions to the other candidates in the race. In addition to printed campaign messaging, over 300 Church members served electioneering missions throughout the country.”

We’ve got the rubes, time to put them to work. Supposedly, there were Reform Party political conferences organized in every state. They clearly had the manpower; church leaders were also sent to the national conventions of the Whigs and Democrats to unsuccessfully lobby for Smith-Rigdon ‘44.

I neglected to mention that the official political committee of the church, the so-called Council of Fifty (which is named like a bunch of other stupid church committees, like the Seventies, Quorum of the Twelve, etc.), was more than a committee to run a political campaign—they were laying the ground work to overthrow the existing political system to establish a theocratic monarchy with Joseph Smith squarely at the top.

The LDS church’s official apologist arm has this to say:

Just as the Church was to bring about religious changes in the world, the Council of Fifty was intended to bring a political transformation. It was therefore designed to serve as something of a preparatory legislature in the Kingdom of God. Joseph Smith ordained the council to be the governing body of the world, with himself as chairman, over the Council and the world (subject to Jesus Christ, who is “King of kings”).

19th century Mormon Christian Nationalism. Great.

But what was Joseph Smith actually running on? A bespoke political ideology conveniently combining American ideals with the theocracy of the world’s most American religion. He called it “Theodemocracy.”

Joseph Smith intentionally divorced himself with the Whigs and the Democrats by 1842, leaving him to take liberties on shaping his new political ideology and the campaign at large.

In a pamphlet conveniently titled General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, in classic prophetic form, Joseph Smith goes on a litany of political and ecclesiastical tirades. As someone who spent a lot of time and money in undergrad thinking about political views and systems comparatively, I’d say Joseph was pretty firmly a “populist” whose worldview was mostly “the government should leave me alone and let me be in charge.”

* He changed his tone from staunchly abolitionist to a kind of Republican Jesus view of slavery, where it should be abolished, but those who owned slaves must be compensated by the government. He felt that southern slave-owning whites were “hospitable and noble.” He claimed “they will help to rid so free a country of every vestige of slavery, whenever they are assured of an equivalent for their property.” D*****s.

* Unsurprisingly, he loved manifest destiny and wanted the US to expand by purchasing Texas, California, and Oregon. He wanted a central bank, advocated expanding immigration, and reduce the number of people in Congress, as well as reducing their pay.

* The most amusing ideas Smith put forward are those that seem like they suspiciously apply to him and his Mormon community in Nauvoo vs. everyday Americans. For instance, he wanted to abolish all prisons, especially debtor’s prisons.

* He believed in an idea of prison abolition where the government did as Jesus did in a bible story and say “go thy way and sin no more,” which means the ex-cons will not sin anymore. Trust me bro. I can’t possibly imagine why a man with an incredibly long rap sheet and arrest record would possibly be focused on abolishing the carceral part of the criminal justice system.

* More absurd and even more eyebrow-raising was Joseph’s insistence that local governments can demand the President mobilize federal troops to (get this) quell angry mobs. You read that right: the nation’s greatest magnet for angry mobs thinks that the President should have to help him and his cronies fight back against mobs and so-called “mobocracy.”

The truth is that we really don’t know how close Joseph Smith got to becoming President, because his hubris all came to a head after a group of church leaders declared independence from Joseph’s Church after his April 18 revelations and subsequent excommunications.

Smith’s followers were not as compliant in preparing for the new Kingdom of God as he would have liked. The inner circle of his supporters had been taught “The Principle” by Joseph, but it was still far from public knowledge, especially by TBMs, and the pill was tough to swallow for many Mormons.

In January 1844, he was caught sleeping with a follower’s wife (her husband wasn’t aware of The Principle), and another in the following months.

He also preached a new polytheistic doctrine and that God is an exalted man, and that Mormon men getting their own planets were indeed gods at the same level as the big man upstairs, which pissed off a decent chunk of his adherents. The same day (April 18, 1844), he declared himself Prophet, Priest, and King of the world to the Council of Fifty. He excommunicated dissenters on the spot.

Trouble was brewing within the flock while Smith’s attention was elsewhere, much like it had when the Mormons were split between Palmyra and Kirtland, then Kirtland and Jackson County, then Jackson County and Far West. But this time it was split between the faithful and the heretics.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Joseph Smith’s charismatic leadership and cult was largely based on tenuous b******t to begin with, and he managed to convince 12,000 or so people to giving up literally everything to be part of his personal kingdom. These people would probably not be too pleased with being kicked out now, all because Joseph came up with brand new views that were in contention with mainstream protestant beliefs.

The disillusioned Mormons created the “True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” which held that while the Book of Mormon was true, Joseph Smith had lost his way. Specifically, this group was pissed about the new polytheistic theology, how those outside his closest confidants were learning about “the Principle,” and irritation with his vain long-shot Presidential run.

Over the next two months, Joseph would make a series of illegal and criminal moves as leader of the city of Nauvoo against his hyperlocal political enemies that would ultimately lead to his final arrest and internment at Carthage Jail in Carthage, IL.

Next time, we visit the Carthage Jail and subject ourselves to the cultiest experience of our lives as we visit the death site of Joseph Smith Jr., prophet and founder of the Mormon church.

Congratulations, you have been called by the First Presidency of The UTP Church to serve on the first-ever Council of Fifty-ish. I am prophet, priest, and king—let your friends know.

Editor’s Note: You might have noticed I took September and almost all of October off. This was, in part, because Mormons have frequently been in the national news these past months, and almost entirely for bad reasons.

My thoughts are with the community in Grand Blanc, Michigan. To quote Alyssa Grenfell: “nothing can ever justify violence against people for what they believe,” and no one should be murdered at church.

Last time we checked in with Joseph Smith and his Saints, they were once again refugees. Joseph Smith was allowed to escape while in custody of the Missouri government and avoided justice for charges related to the 1838 Mormon War. Sidney Rigdon brought the flock to Quincy, Illinois, and a well-connected Mormon heard word of significant chunks of land for sale north of the city, along the Mississippi River in a relatively unpopulated community called Commerce. They got a good deal and the Mormons once again had a home.

Commerce, Illinois, where they settled, was a swamp. It was a floodplain on a bend of the Mississippi River. Disease ran rampant among the refugees arriving by the thousands.

In spring 1839, the Prophet arrived and declared that the city would be known as “Nauvoo,” which to his credit, is an actual word in Hebrew roughly meaning “they are beautiful.” I actually really admire Mormon place names, and Utah has more than anywhere else. Places like Provo, Orem, and Brigham City make me chuckle as uniquely Mormon places, and Nauvoo fits the bill all the same.

Nauvoo became the Mormons’ first fifth attempt at establishing “Zion.” Joseph Smith’s thirst for power and willingness to antagonize neighbors was largely responsible for the many moves his sect made from their humble beginnings in 1832. A lot had happened, since then, and one would hope Joseph learned his lesson and toned it down.

Well, he did not.

Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons and Misery in Missouri. This week, we’re done with Missouri! Welcome to God’s (one-time) promised land, Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith claims power to Illinois’ largest city, introduces scandal via a different politically-connected sex pest, and reveals a curious new “Principle,” polygamy. Oh yeah, and we visit Nauvoo, the Colonial Williamsburg of Mormonism.

Thanks for reading. (And listening!)

The only art project I’ve ever spent real money to make happen was this stupid road trip. At the very least you can give me your personal information (you can then tell me how funny I am)

Nauvoo was the largest and most politically influential city in Illinois during the 1840s.

The US census doesn’t capture this, though. Mormons arrived after the 1840 census, and with Smith’s death in 1844, they would leave before the 1850 one, but for a time, the Mormon church was centrally located in Nauvoo, with converts arriving in record numbers. By 1842, the town had a whopping estimated 14,000 residents, which eclipsed Chicago’s paltry 2,000 or so. Eat your heart out Cook County.

The history of Nauvoo makes one thing clear: everyone from rank-and-file Mormons, Church leaders, and Illinois political leaders largely looked past Smith and his followers’ indiscretions, fearing they’d suffer the same evisceration in the court of public opinion that Governor Boggs and the Missouri government had suffered after the 1838 Mormon War.

By overlooking the danger the Mormons’ posed to democracy in Illinois and the United States, the Illinois government allowed (and supported) important political power moves that would solidify Joseph Smith’s institutional power and effectively create a city-state theocracy in Nauvoo. This was thanks to the political capital and expertise of an LDS-convert named John C. Bennett, whose significance to Mormonism was as important as his tenure was short—he was a member for less than two years.

Bennett’s whirlwind time with the Mormons was Joseph Smith’s ticket to greater power…and his grave. Bennett was a confidant who was politically well-connected, had legitimacy as a military leader (he was quartermaster of the entire state militia), and was largely willing to be Joseph Smith’s fixer—and Mormonism’s chief lobbyist.

Bennett and Smith successfully lobbied the Illinois legislature for a Nauvoo City Charter in late-1840. It’s unclear to what degree the legacy of their political maneuvering is flattered by Mormon apologists, but supposedly an early-career Abe Lincoln, alongside his political rival Stephen Douglas, were both impressed with Bennett’s politicking.

The charter was undoubtedly a win for Joseph Smith and the Mormons. It was based on the charter for the capital, Springfield, and provided a number of unusual provisions, including chartering a University of Nauvoo, creating a municipal court system, and most consequentially, granting an official charter for a division of the Illinois state militia to be run by the Nauvoo government.

The first mistake Illinois made was to downplay the grievances the Mormons had incurred on their redneck neighbors in Missura’ and give Joseph and his crooks another chance. The second mistake was getting the Mormons an incredible deal on greenfield property along the Mississippi. The third and most consequential mistake they made was giving him guns and the legal authority to use them.

Ah. We’re back to talking about Joseph Smith’s obsession with playing army, and this time I don’t think it’s nearly as silly. Joseph took this official charter and f*****g ran with it. More than a militia, he called his troops “The Nauvoo Legion,” after the historical Roman Legions, a volunteer-ish based army that was officially affiliated with the Mormon church and the state government.

Joseph Smith appointed himself and Bennett as leaders, but gave himself, who had no actual military experience, the title of Lieutenant General. The only other member of the US military to ever hold that title before or since, was George Washington.

He had done it: Joseph Smith was judge, jury, and executioner in Nauvoo, Illinois. Far more than a mayor, Smith commanded actual troops which was extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of which because chartered militias are not typically a) associated with churches or b) confined to a single city. The Nauvoo Legion peaked at 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army.

Joseph Smith was de facto mayor (he’d take over formally in 1842), served as a judge/justice of the peace, and led a military that rivaled any on the American continent on manpower alone.

His crooked government regularly prevented Missouri agents from extraditing Smith and his accomplices for crimes related to the 1838 Mormon War. Smith was charged with assault in Carthage, IL on at least one occasion, which was dismissed through the Nauvoo courts. Smith was fundamentally immune to political, religious, and legal consequences for his actions, something really good for a sex pervert scam artist.

So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in April 1841, Joseph Smith f*****g ramped up his acquisitions of women for his celestial harem as he went from 4 wives and began his 3-year campaign to acquire 54 additional ones. Alyssa Grenfell has an incredible video covering the history from a variety of sources and does far more justice to the survivors and victims of Joseph Smith than I ever could. I also will add that calling these women and girls “wives” erroneously gives them agency over their situation.

When we acknowledge that these women and girls did not likely have the agency or understanding to decline or refuse sex and relationships withe the prophet, we may find it valuable to point out that Joseph used a few different stories to coerce and coax an estimated 59 total women and girls into courting, wedding, and consummating the taboo “plural marriage.”

* Often he claimed that God came to him in a vision declaring that he was to wed the victim.

* Sometimes he claimed it was a favor he was doing to guarantee the woman and her family go to the Celestial Kingdom

* Sometimes he claimed the women would go to hell if they didn’t, and they had to seal themselves to him to save their eternal self.

* Most alarmingly, if any of these didn’t work, he would claim an angel visited him in his sleep with a flaming sword and told him that the angel would murder him if he didn’t marry X or Y woman/girl. Man had no rizz in his Latter Days.

Joseph used “the Principle” to effectively make the inner ring of church leaders a kind of a wife-trading sex cult, where patriarchs took up multiple women, gave up daughters to other predators, and in general, create a further in-group bound by a shared expression of taboo, criminal, evil sexual exploitation. This, of course, included the newest member of church leadership, John C. Bennett.

This is total speculation, but I think Joseph and John had a…special relationship. He might have been a Friend of Nephi, if you will.

Just one excerpt from a July 1840 letter from Bennett to Smith helps paint the nature of their correspondence:

“My anxiety to be with you is daily increasing, and I shall wind up my professional business immediately, and proceed to your blissful abode, if you think it best. Look at all my letters and papers and write me forth with. You are aware that at the time of your most bitter persecution, I was with you in feeling & proffered you my military knowledge & prowess.”

I think this man was in love with Joseph Smith.

There’s not a lot of evidence to the contrary, aside from that I’ve heard Bennett referred to as “super weird” and “kind of a freak” from contemporary Mormon critics, and all signs point to the idea that, sometime before ‘43, when Smith made his formal declaration to church leaders about “the Principle,” Bennett was lured to Nauvoo in part to participate in the sort of underground sex trafficking cult that existed below the surface of the Mormon’s chipper, pious facade. His Wikipedia does a better job than I could summing it up:

Bennett left the church for adultery on May 11, 1842. Rumors of adultery, homosexuality, and unauthorized polygamy emerged. Contemporary sources indicate that Bennett used his trusted position as a doctor to allay fears of women he attempted to seduce by telling them that he could cause abortions by administering medicine if they became pregnant. While Bennett was mayor, he was caught in private sexual relations with women in the city. He told the women that the practice, which he termed “spiritual wifery,” was sanctioned by God and Smith and that Smith did the same. When discovered, he privately confessed his crimes, produced an affidavit that Smith had no part in his adultery, and was disciplined accordingly.

Bennett’s 1842 dismissal was a clear attempt at preventing a national sex scandal while making it clear to those in his inner circle who had learned “the Principle” that they were expendable, and that their sex trafficking ring needs to be kept a secret. The power vacuum left by Bennett was quickly filled by the far more influential (and more discrete polygamist) Brigham Young, and further allowed Smith to insulate himself with those willing to affirm and support his most outlandish and illegal schemes.

Today, Nauvoo, IL is a small town on the river surrounded by farmland and bluffs. It’s a shell of its former self: just 950 residents call Nauvoo home today.

Naurvoo is a hub of Mormon culture and attracts Mormon pilgrims from across the world. Nauvoo is one of many sights to see in Tornado Alley for faithful Mormons to enjoy, and you will no doubt find fleets of Utah and Idaho-licensed Jeep Grand Wagoneers, Range Rovers, and GMC Yukons full of delightsome Mormon families dragging their kids on a tour de farce of religious sites in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile, in the blue Honda Civic of righteousness, we apostates bemoaned the remoteness of Nauvoo. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere. The town’s roads along the river bluffs are lined with McMansions and fancy cabins, but soon enough you find yourself in town…which feels totally barren.

When we first rolled up, it was hard to believe this small town was once the largest city in Illinois. A spattering of buildings are located throughout the town, and it really appears only the historically significant (or tangentially related) buildings remain today.

The first stop we made was the “Red Brick Store,” where we had the GPS set to. The stately building is honestly the one I was most interested in. It’s a rebuilt structure from 1980s; the original was destroyed after being left in disrepair after Smith’s timely death in 1844 when most Mormons bailed on Nauvoo and followed Brigham Young west towards Mexico (present-day Utah).

The Red Brick Store was used a store, much like the “bishop’s storehouses” found in most Mormon communities at this time. It was a general store and office, where Mormons paid their tithing, held small meetings, and met in a a private quarters on the second floor.

Arguably most consequentially (at least materially), the Red Brick Store is best-known as where the Women’s Relief Society (or just “Relief Society”) was organized and headquartered. The Relief Society, which still exists today, is a somewhat generic mutual aid organization that has a history of Actually Being an Effective Charity, at least if you’re Mormon. It has historically been run by women of the church, who were barred from other official positions, and long used as an outlet for women to become leaders in the church, without getting real power, like the men. Its organization was also modeled after Freemasonry.

The store was also the location where Joseph Smith was made a Freemason, going from initiate to master in just 2 days, despite decrying and detesting the secret society at nearly every chance throughout his career as a religious leader. Stay tuned: we’ll have a lot more about Freemasonry next week.

Anyway, there were probably 4 or 5 sister missionaries dressed in pioneer garb sitting on a bench outside the Red Brick store, standing around, or sweeping. They were one of the few examples we saw of the Colonial Williamsburg-esque vibe the Mormons are trying to cheaply emulate with the volunteer labor of college-aged disciples of the Restored Gospel.

Before they could even ask if we wanted a tour, as if she was a suspicious guard NPC in Hitman, a sister missionary clocked Emily’s coconut coffee drink.

“What are you drinking?” she asked.

“Uh…a coconut drink!” Emily had concealed the coffee-naited nature of the bevvie. We went from being obviously curious non-Mormons to actively hostile apostates. Thankfully we were totally unbothered, and they left us alone in favor of other Mormon families visiting. Turns out humans are really good at blocking out what they deem to be antisocial behavior.

I want to point out that both Emily and I chose to dress far more conservatively than we had for the other holy sites; I wore a tucked-in polo with slacks and Emily wore a dress, but it didn’t matter. The Mormons could still tell we weren’t the faithful rubes they normally see, and that we were there to gawk without reverence or respect.

One other notable place is the home of John Browning of Gun Fame. Our ex-Mormon friend approached the LARP-ers hanging out outside and asked questions, specifically about a series of major purchases made by the Mormon church acquiring property in Nauvoo. They said the various purchases in 2024 amounted to “a lot of money,” but they weren’t sure how much, but they did reassure us that, thank GOD, they got the original door from Liberty Jail (recall from a few newsletters ago). I’m not even kidding.

Which brings me back to my favorite group of people when talking about Mormons and their culture, the Community of Christ, the OG splinter group that refused to follow Brigham Young to Utah.

But Nauvoo was their longtime homebase until non-Utah Mormons could comfortably return to Jackson County, and they owned nearly all of the property in Nauvoo up until 2024. Community of Christ rebuilt the Red Brick Store and restored most of the buildings, like the Smith family homestead, the Nauvoo House hotel, the Nauvoo Mansion (where Joe actually lived). The LDS church owned very little in town, but did finance and rebuild the Nauvoo Temple after it had been destroyed twice.

In 2012, Community of Christ sold off some important sites, like Hawn’s Mill, home to the deadliest attack on innocent Mormons during the 1838 Mormon War. But in 2024, to the publicly available tune of $192 million, the LDS Church in Utah made significant acquisitions from the Community of Christ, who had been stewards of the sites for well over 150 years, which included almost the entirety of the platted area of historic Nauvoo.

There were some things left out; while the Utah Mormons were able to buy the Smith Family Homestead and the Red Brick Store, they were unsuccessful in acquiring the plot between the two: the Smith family cemetery, where Joey and the gang are still buried to this day. It’s clearly not owned by the church, is notably fenced in and lacks any presence of Mormon missionaries. Frankly, it’s the only part of the core holy site where we were totally alone at for a little while.

I will say, that there is a creative solution where the headstones of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma are incorporated as part of the fence, so Mormon missionaries can point it out when you tour the Smith Family Homestead and Red Brick Store, but they are not permitted in the actual cemetery. Just absolutely delicious stuff from Mormonism’s #1 haters. And yes, we did drink coffee on Joseph Smith’s grave.

I’d be remiss not to mention the highlight of Nauvoo for faithful believers: The Nauvoo and British pageants.

These performative presentations of paltry piousness purport to preserve and protect their prophetic predecessors, but in practice, paint peachy pictures of perky pioneers, preachy prophets, and petty perditious pessimists persecuting the pleasant and pious populace. Pageant portrayals are predictably pedantic and purge the problems of the past, particularly the “Principle,” (parenthetically: polygamy) pedophilia, and the plate- and papyrus-peddling perverted Prophet, who is packaged as a pacified perfect person whose premiere patriarchy was peaceful and predominantly platonic. Pish-posh; pure propaganda.

The pageants are only for the most hardcore of Mormons, both actors and audience. While Mormons are famously huge Broadway fans, Mormonism lacks the cultural penetration to have financially successful religious works take off outside of the faith. Many Mormons are also predictably skeptical of places like New York, but famously have embraced the musical that bears the name of their foundational holy text. The pageants are effectively missionary callings you have to try out for, and just like church itself, they’re demanding, matter only to a small amount of people, and provide little to no cultural value to society. Yay!

Nauvoo, Illinois was where Joseph Smith finally became too intoxicated with power. Next time, we round out our time in Illinois with Joseph’s timely death and a visit to his death site, where we have our cultiest experiences yet. It’s also an election year in Minneapolis, so this edition will be an Election Day Special as we talk about Joseph Smith’s short-lived campaign for President of the United States in 1844.

I have secrets to share with you…God has revealed a…let’s say…”Principle” for us to follow. Give me 10% of your income and I’ll teach you how to sleep with your friends’ wives.

HEY YOU, YEAH YOU. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU LISTEN TO THE VOICEOVER COMPANION/PODCAST BY READING THIS IN THE SUBSTACK APP OR ON YOUR LAPTOP OR WHATEVER, JUST NOT IN AN EMAIL.

I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO IT AND I HAPPEN TO THINK IT’S PRETTY FUNNY TOO.

KTHXBAI xD

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Hello dear friend. I hope you are well. I am pleased to share the first newsletter in a little while. I took a break in September because writing wasn’t fun. Now it is again. Huzzah!

This week is a normal newsletter, a real return to form. I’m reviewing a wrestling show from a month plus ago, ranting about Microsoft Teams, and, in and Uffda Times-Picayune first, a work of fiction! Stick with this one to the very end, because, for fun, I wrote a very short screenplay inspired by my first visit to one of St. Paul’s first licensed dispensaries as a kind of creative writing exercise. Let me know what you think unless you don’t like it then please don’t tell me.

Thanks so much for reading, it really means a lot to me. It also doesn’t mean much to me if you don’t, because I write for myself because it’s fun and I like cracking jokes. Can’t we learn to laugh again?

Celebrate UTP’s triumphant return with a celebratory subscription. Go ahead, use a burner, I don’t care.

I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING PUT YOUR DAMN AIRPODS IN AND LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE EVEN IF YOU READ ALONG, AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.

I WON’T ASK AGAIN!

RINGSIDE WITH UTP

BRAWL AT THE MALL: LOCAL WRESTLING AT MALL OF AMERICA REVIEWED

September 4, 1995 started like any other day at the Mall of America. Minnesotans and tourists alike shopped ‘til they dropped. I’m sure the line for the Pepsi Ripsaw was longer than anyone would reasonably expect. We still called it Camp Snoopy, damnit.

That night, like many others, a crowd gathered in the Rotunda. This event space is rented for one-off spectacles or other carny-adjacent presentations. I’d argue the Rotunda’s most prominent tenant in recent years has been that waterskiing squirrel(s) that show up once every six months.

It’s 1995, and there’s not a squirrel in sight. Instead, hundreds of wrestling fans lined the ledges of the four levels of the megamall. It was the home of the taping of the first episode of Ted Turner’s WWF rival World Championship Wrestling’s (WCW) Monday Nitro, the first strike in the so-called “Monday Night Wars,” where Turner’s TNT aired WCW wrestling at the same time as WWF’s Monday Night Raw. This was the first viable competitor to Vince McMahon’s WWF, and at one point surpassed him in popularity. All Elite Wrestling (AEW), my beloved weekly wrestling show, is the spiritual successor, airing on the once-Turner-owned TBS and TNT, just like Nitro. AEW even calls their flagship show, which premiered on TNT Dynamite, a clear nod to Nitro.

That episode is legendary—the vibes in the Rotunda are palpable, and the show is well-known for the match between Ric Flair and Sting, two of the biggest stars in wrestling at the time. You can still watch this episode on Peacock if you have it. I did not.

30 years later, my partner and a friend joined hundreds of wrestling fans gathered in the Rotunda yet again. This wasn’t on TV, but was local wrestling promotion F1RST Wrestling’s Saturday Night Nitro, a spiritual successor that captures the same crazy energy only a public event in a giant megamall could do. The combination of paying marks like us with random tourists getting ushered away for standing around too long made for an extremely high-energy crowd, at least most of the time.

We were on the third floor, which IMO was the best spot to be for the money. We paid $30 for our tickets and we stood right on the railing for the whole show. We had a great view of the ring, the walkout tunnel, and opportunities to people watch mallgoers.

We got there pretty early and were lucky enough to see a match between fan-favorite Big O. Possum and Heavy Metal Lore during the pre-show. Big O. Possum is exactly what he sounds like: a big opossum. He has a pouch, as North America’s only native marsupial, and it holds Joey, a small opossum joey he occasionally throws at foes and he “bites” them. It’s a really funny bit.

The actual show was electric. I won’t review all of the matches but a few of the highlights.

We opened with Ryan Cruz taking on F1RST Wrestling Grand Champion Devon Monroe. The title used to be called the Wrestlepalooza Championship, after the semi-annual wrestling show they hold at First Avenue, typically in January and a special pride month-themed edition in June. Well now they can’t use it because those snakes at WWE decided AEW having a pay-per-view needed to have WWE counter-programming and sloppily announced they were reviving the WrestlePalooza branding for the first time since 2000. Thankfully the PPV was a total flop.

Ryan Cruz is a lot of fun; he’s a great wrestler, but the highlight of his matches are always his walkout, which he does as he leads a group sing-along of Creed’s hit “Higher.” Devon Monroe exudes what he calls “Black Sexellence,” and is known as the Twin City Twister. He’s a high flyer who has been a mainstay for wrestling promotions across the Midwest. Unfortunately, he didn’t hold out and Cruz became champion.

The women’s fatal-four-way featured three former WWE and TNA stars alongside F1RST mainstay and fan-favorite (particularly among my friends) Free Range Kara, the only wrestler certified by the USDA. She didn’t pull it off but the match was nuts.

Another fatal four-way featured national indie wrestling darling Danhausen, who has been described as “Conan O’Brien possessed by a demon,” juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust Jordan (I saw him at the state fair but didn’t say hi lmao), Houston-based women’s star and now former Uptown VFW champion Hyan, and perhaps the F1RST fan favorite Brandon Gore, whose gimmick is that he is a conspiracy theorist who wears a tinfoil hat. A F1RST staff member handed out tinfoil hats for everyone to wear. I wore mine the entire time. Big Wrestling is watching!

Jordan won, but not before such shocking moments as Danhausen dumping his signature jar of teeth on Hyan and Danhausen’s hexing powers being disabled by Brandon Gore’s tinfoil hat.

There was a definite low point, 58-year-old Ultimo Dragon was booked to wrestle Shane Black, whose gimmick is that he’s a lifeguard from the sandy shores of Edina (there are no bodies of water in Edina). Ultimo is a long-time favorite and staple of Japanese wrestling. He is in shape but God watching him wrestle was rough. He cut a promo after the fight, likely because the crowd was not popping for anything during that match. Even Shane’s loud whistles and sunblock-covered nose couldn’t save it. The promo was…not great, but I guess I’m glad to say I saw Ultimo wrestle.

Local hero Matt Honey was helped by Swoggle, known in WWE as Hornswoggle. Together they took down Heavy Metal Lore, a massive man.

My personal favorite wrestler is Mr. Williams, whose gimmick is that he’s a teacher. He is a teacher in real life, but his character is a heel, yelling at kids in the crowd, writing detention slips, and using his lanyard as a weapon. He comes out to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” and is an absolute riot. My favorite thing to yell at him is that “I bet you supervise unpopular extracurriculars!”

Mr. Williams took on local rapper Nur-D, who made his wrestling debut. It was a good showing, and he’s since been billed at another show, so his skills will only improve. I just think like 40% more people need to know who Nur-D is so that his pops will be huge. Nur-D won.

The final match was incredible. Two high flyers (they’re brothers) were part of a four-way with perennial national indie wrestling circuit mainstay Gringo Loco (he is a fat, middle-aged, white luchador and he is fucking incredible at wrestling), and a wrestler I wasn’t aware of, Kody Lane, whose gimmick is being a flamboyant cowboy, complete with black tasselled chaps witih pink accents, including flamingos and a matching jacket. Despite being like…7’ tall, Kody could do swanton bombs like you wouldn’t fucking believe. There were a lot of gnarly bumps too—the most memorable being when Gringo did an aerial move onto the other three, who were waiting on the floor (no mat or anything, just good old MOA tile floors) and my God I thought we watched someone’s career end. But JK! I got worked.

Great show as always. If you wanna tag along to a show, F1RST does them year-round and, in my opinion, they’re the least-carny promotion in the Twin Cities. If I’m available, I’m down to go.

…AND ANOTHER THING

WHY DOES MICROSOFT TEAMS NOT KNOW HOW TO OPEN FILES

I know it’s been a while, and this may seem like a trivial complaint in today’s tragedy-laden world, but my God, what is going on at Microsoft and why do they keep fucking with their GOAT-ed Office Suite.

I don’t know what it is about the AI bubble, but it’s made Microsoft forget that first and foremost, their main customer are businesses, governments, you know, people trying to get shit done. But hey, from the company that gave us Windows 8 and rapidly sunset Windows 10, causing countless numbers of perfectly good PCs to instantly become e-waste, what can you expect.

My specific gripe comes from the fact that Microsoft’s inability to figure out what the fuck the cloud is. At work, you usually have the following places you can store files:

* Your local PC, the easiest, internet-free way to save your stuff. It’s also discouraged because no one else can work on those files when not in use.

* Shared network drive, which in the olden days was used to share files on your work’s network, now you can usually access it with a VPN

Great—this is standard stuff for most office work environments. But on top of these two options, Microsoft has provided new ways to fuck up your workflow:

* Microsoft Teams, which brings you all of the worst parts of Slack with a watered-down version of Skype (God, remember Skype?), but also has a cloud file sharing environment that is redundant with the existing network drive system

* The “teams” in Microsoft Teams are horrible too, no main “Team” dashboard, accessing settings is a nightmare, and it seems like the organizational structure in the app is a total afterthought, just smash a little bit of every part of the Office Suite into one horrific application

* OneDrive, which works like a network drive but only for your Microsoft 365 account. It’s only accessible if you use a web browser or if you have the application open

Also, OneDrive and Teams don’t talk to each other.

So naturally, I am navigating to a variety of file types stored in a place I don’t usually use, which is where my frustrations boiled over.

Want to use a spreadsheet? Well you’d think it would make sense to simply…open in Excel, but that’s where you’re wrong. Does it open in Teams too? Nope. For some fucking reason spreadsheets only open in an Edge browser. If you are lucky enough to get the “open on Desktop” to work correctly, I always run into weird errors and doing things like saving and sharing doesn’t quite work right.

You see, collaboration in Excel is built around OneDrive, but saving to Teams is different than OneDrive. So Excel the application doesn’t talk to Teams and instead of Making Excel Better, we instead get a web-based Google Docs clone that is, FWIW, a much better user experience, but like what is the deal with the unnecessary redundancy?

Why the fuck do PDFs open in Teams? It’s clear it’s like a mini Edge environment, so why not just open it in Edge? Or my default PDF program? And why can’t I copy and paste text from a PDF in Teams? Surely Copilot could grab that for me, the AI companies already make you use it whether you like it or not, especially Google.

Obviously, much of this is customizable and I’m sure there are settings somewhere, but as an avid PC user for many years, settings and options are being taken away in Windows and the Microsoft Office suite as part of the further enshittification of, well, everything, especially the internet.

I will concede—that I did find use in the Edge “Workspaces” feature paired with the Excel web pages to quickly organize and bookmark multiple forms or to compare data without having a kabillion windows, and be able to quickly come back to it, but it’s also just a glorified bookmark bar.

Anyway, if Excel files are going to open in Edge, the PDFs should too, and frankly, I hate to say it, I like Edge.

THE UFFDA TIMES-PICAYUNE FILM JOURNAL

DANKRUPT ‘TIL DYNAMITE: A SHORT RADIO DRAMA

Now for something a bit different on my triumphant return to newslettering and a mini break from Mormons. You’re welcome.

The following is inspired by true events. Did you know that Lunds and Byerlys and Bakers Square do not, and have never had apostrophes? I think I’m going to be sick.

INT: HOME OFFICE IN MINNEAPOLIS. THE OFFICE IS CLUTTERED, WITH ECLECTIC DECORATIONS LIKE GUITARS AND AN 80'S BONA FIDE KITCHEN CRT TV ADORNED WITH WOOD GRAIN. IT'S A MESS, NOT ONE MEANT TO BE SEEN BY FRIENDS OR NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS, AND EVEN WORSE IF YOU'RE BOTH. THERE IS NO DOUBT, HOWEVER, THAT THIS IS THE OFFICE OF A HOT PERSON.

Hey, that was pretty funny. Send it to your friends so they know what it’s like buying legal cannabis right when everyone gets off work.