By Josh Gondelman — 14 Jul 2025

#140. Superman Haters and You

Man of Steely Blue Eyes am I right? (Official Warner Bros. Image)

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for weathering the newsletter's shift to Ghost! I think...we did it! And we're even back on schedule this week. Wow. Who'd have thought?

I always appreciate the warm and enthusiastic That's Marvelous readership, and I'm super grateful to the folks who were able to chip in a few dollars for paid subscriptions. If you have the inclination to kick in a few bucks to keep this puppy running, it's much appreciated, and I'm going to use the incoming subscription cash to spruce up the place (hire an artist to design a little header) before I buy a Lamborghini (is that a nice car?) and a summer house (Newsletterer's note: I do even own the house I live in currently during all four seasons). If you are a regular reader and don't have the funds for a paid subscription, no problem! This one (and every one in the future) is on the house. But if you're looking for a way to pitch in, I would love for you to post on your social media about That's Marvelous or even send it to a friend. Okay that's all the business for now!

I spent last week in Los Angeles for a trip scheduled around Maris's book launch at Skylight Books. Jamie Loftus (who is a truly brilliant writer and broadcaster--check out her book Raw Dog, which is about the history of hot dogs, or any of her podcasts) was an incredible conversation partner, and soooooo many friends came out to support. LA, for all it's beautiful qualities, can be a tough place to draw a crowd, and it speaks to the quality of Maris's writing and how much people love her as a person that her event was standing room only. Since I Want to Burn This Place Down came out almost two weeks ago, I've felt so lucky to see people fall in love with Maris's writing without having any of the anxiety attached to actually writing and publishing a book myself. The dream!

Monday was also the day when ICE sent a bunch of dickheads in full combat gear to Los Angeles to march menacingly around MacArthur Park where many people I know (and many people I don't know!) run a mutual aid operation to provide food and other resources for unhoused people nearby. Literally no one is made safer by these ICE actions (one of which somewhere else killed a farm worker late last week). The way communities take care of each other when the government is hostile or even indifferent (as seems to be the case with the tragic flooding in Texas) has been on my mind lately. Take care of your people, people, and organize those people to take care of the people around them when you can.

It's against that backdrop that I, an idiot, was zipping around town recording podcasts. I think I did nine recordings in four days, and I probably spoke every thought I've ever had out loud in the 14ish hours I was on mic. But I absolutely cannot complain about taking Ubers back and forth across a city for a few days because Maris traversed the entire country in that span for book events ranging from San Francisco to Washington DC. I was at her first three events, and I think I'm going to see one more (in the Catskills next Wednesday) but I wish I could have been at all of them. (Although I don't regret making the tradeoff of staying in one place for an extra three days to do promo for my standup special and see pals. Sorry to any pals I missed! I was running around for promo stuff and not thinking straight while jet lagged!)

Of the nine (9!!!) podcast episodes I recorded, I think two are out now! I'll keep you posted on the other ones as they come out WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT! After a few years of the schedule not working out, I returned to Never Not Funny with Jimmy Pardo, who is as fast and in command of a comedic perspective as anyone I know. I love recording with Jimmy, Matt, Eliot, and Garon anytime I can, and this was no exception. Honestly, we talked a LOT about the new season (sorry...series) of Taskmaster, which I think I got Maris into!

I am smiling and waving to the camera while wearing a Shop Indie Shop Local t-shirt designed by Adrian Tomine. — Jimmy Pardo is just out of frame laughing and smiling too.

I'm also on today's episode of Comedy Bang Bang. Thank you to Scott Aukerman for welcoming me into the illustrious one-timers club. We do a straight interview at the beginning and I stick around and do a character at the end, which I'm TERRIFIED will bomb with their audience, especially after Zach Reino and Vic Michaelis (who are SO SO SO funny and nice my goodness) CRUSHED with their characters. Fingers crossed that the CBB fans do not hate me!!!!

[I had intended to post a photo here, but I don't have the one I wanted yet.]

Oh also before our LA trip, Maris and I recorded an episode of Past Due with Ana Marie Cox and Open Mike Eagle (whose new album RULES by the way) to talk about being a married couple where both people work in creative fields. It was a great talk! About a subject I think about often for obvious reasons!

And damn the episode of Doug Loves Movies that I recorded yesterday is out now!

And I'm a guest on a special in-depth interview episode of Welcome To Talk Town where instead of doing completely unhinged riffs with the gang, I have a long and beautiful conversation with my friend Greg Stone about creativity.

Next week I'm co-hosting Frankenstein's Baby (on Monday 7/21) and Robert Dean's Birthday Show (on Sunday 7/27) at Union Hall! And in between I'll be up in the Catskills headlining one night (Saturday 7/26) of the Borscht Belt Comedy Festival!

Then the first weekend in August I'll be up in Toronto at Comedy Bar (Danforth Location) headlining a bunch of shows! I love the people of Toronto and I can't wait to see you and tell jokes to you all!!!

Damn! There was a lot to catch up on! But we've done it. We've done it again. Who would have thought?

PEP TALK FOR SUPERMAN HATERS

Same picture from above. Superman looking off superly into the sky. — He's so wistful! He's like: "Anyway...here's 'Champagne Super(man)nova'..."

I know I am sucker for wading into this conversation at all, and yet I can't resist. "Superman is woke now!" is maybe the goofiest and most disingenuous complaint I've heard since the manosphere guys put their heads fully up their own asses and started saying things like: A man being attracted to women is gay! or wherever they ended up on their particular rhetorical horseshoe. We are living in a golden age of having to ask the question "Is this guy stupid or does he think that I am stupid?" and the answer is often both. The dumbest shitheads on this planet have spent so long in a circle jerk of the mind with one another that they've started saying things that no person who has been alive for long enough to have both inhaled and exhaled at least once should be expected to believe.

Superman, as many have pointed out before me, has always been woke. He's an antifascist immigrant created by Jews (who are not always "woke" per se but who are hated by many in the anti-woke camp because "anti-woke" is often fancy slang for "Nazi"). By perverting the term "woke" to mean "anything I don't like, but especially anything that people of color do" and putting immigrants under that banner, these absolute clowns have painted themselves into the corner where they are turning on a character that conveys American strength and supremacy which is IRONICALLY KIND OF A WOKE THING OF THEM TO DO, BUT THAT'S ANOTHER CONVERSATION ENTIRELY.

What does an anti-woke Superman even look like? (George Wallace was musing on this at the same time I started to write this.) Does he use his x-ray vision to find pregnant women seeking abortions and force them to give birth? Does he use his super speed to create a one-man border wall to stop refugees from entering the country, forcing them back into violent situations at their points of origin? Does he use his super strength to beat up anyone who asks him not to use racial slurs? That's more like "Übermensch" stuff, and there's a reason we know that word in German, and it's not because it was Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki's nickname (to be clear, it was not).

To your credit, Superman haters, you are so close to a breakthrough. If you watch the new Star Wars and Superman and Men in Black movies and think: "Wow, these heroes seem to be against the kinds of things I'm into!" you're like...halfway there. You're a hair's breadth away from realizing that putting "woke" in scare quotes doesn't make progressive social values bad any more than saying "ice cream" with a sneer and a thumbs down turns a bowl of mocha chip into a pile of barf. You can make a jerk-off gesture while saying any word you want. That doesn't change the goodness of the thing. It just means your attitude to it is perverse. Especially now when people aren't just criticizing what they perceive to be new-school "PC" overreach (which in itself was basically always fine and not a problem in the first place). When Pete Hegseth (or whoever) uses the initials "DEI" to complain about any non-white non-straight non-(cisgender)man having any job at all, they're revealing that they really think anyone who doesn't share their demographic traits is inferior. Even in the 1950s that wasn't what Superman was about, and you were allowed to be SO racist and sexist back then and still be a hero ***Chuck D voice*** (to some).

When the whole world seems to woke for you, maybe you got caught napping and lost track of what's really going on. It's good to stand up for people being marginalized by powerful systems. And if seeing that makes you uncomfortable, you're free to shift positions.

And finally: It's fine to not like a movie on not-liking-a-movie grounds, just don't be a loser about it!

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I condensed this request just a little bit, but not too much.

I’m going to Las Vegas this weekend (first time, yay!) and need a pep talk on one super small thing. I’m going to see two shows and I’m very stressed about Covid so I know I should wear a mask. (Also the last time I got Covid I’m 99% sure was from being unmasked at an Usher concert.) This shouldn’t be a big deal. I still mask at indoor concerts in NYC. But for some reason the idea of doing it on this trip is stressing me out. I’m going with my friend and her friends so I guess I feel worried about them judging me. Do I make a joke over text now, to set the stage? If I let peer pressure win out and I don’t mask and catch Covid I will prob never forgive myself lol.
- Mask...On?

There’s a pervasive myth, perpetuated by the city itself, that Las Vegas is a consequence-free zone for indulgence and shoddy judgement. But even when the slogan debuted, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” was easily disproven by legally binding marriages, decimated bank accounts, and various rashes. You are not, in fact, Super Mario blasting through the world with the invincibility from a power-up star just because your visiting a city where you can pay for sex and drugs as casually as you might buy homemade maple syrup at a farmer’s market in Vermont.

Much like a debilitating hangover, the covid-19 virus doesn’t give up and impotently shake its fist at the Las Vegas city limits. So it makes sense that even though you are in Sin City (not to be confused with the City of Sin…Lynn, Massachusetts), you would not want to get sick.

I am not a public health official. I am barely qualified to manage my own private health. But it seems to me like wearing a mask in crowded public situations has real upside and zero downside. Personally, I am not quite as diligent as I was a few years ago, but I’m pretty consistent on planes and trains, and I’m a fairly regular masker at crowded public events too. If I see someone else in a mask, I usually put one on my out of courtesy, at a concert or movie theater or in a store.

But you weren’t asking about my level of covid caution! You were looking for a pep talk about how to approach your own sensible masking protocol on a girls trip. First of all, putting a thin piece of fabric over your mouth and nose is far from the most jarring thing a pal can do on a group vacation. It’s so much less intense than…I don’t know, puking in the sink or disappearing for three hours unannounced with an off-duty DJ who turns out to just be a guy with a terrible haircut and an accent.

Your unexpected caution may come as a surprise to your friend (and her friends), but it certainly won’t ruin their good time. And even if you’d rather not pump the brakes on the evening to explain that you’re still a little more careful than average in big groups but you’re not expecting them to do anything differently, it’s kind of all there is to do if you want to go out and still take precautions. There’s no less obtrusive, more subtle pullout method type half measure for disease control where you (I don’t know???) take a deep breath and then cough the air out at the last second. (Although I’m sure that’s coming the next time RFK Jr. suggests new guidelines to the FDA.) You’ve got to do the thing that makes you feel comfortable and they’ll get comfortable with it too before long.

Unless your friends are true MAHA kooks (“I can’t believe you wear a MASK to prevent covid. I already TOLD you I charged my crystals last night in the moonlight so we're FINE!”) they will hush up and let you have this. The absolute worst case scenario is that when you’re not around one will say to the other: “Oh I didn’t realize she was so careful.” And the other one will shrug and it will be none of your business and have no impact on your life.

You’re making a healthy choice for yourself and nobody will be weird about it, and it’ll turn out great. Because what doesn’t happen in Vegas actually doesn’t come home with you.

A CONVERSATION WITH FILMMAKER CHRISTIAN BANDA

My pal Christian Banda is in the midst of crowdfunding a new film project called The Decalogue, which my other friend Ashtyn is helping to produce. Ashtyn suggested that we have a little chat for this newsletter to spread the word, and I was like...oh yeah great idea! It's kind of a new feature for That's Marvelous, but I loved hearing what Christian had to say about his work in progress, and I think you will too!

Can you tell me a little bit about your hopes for The Decalogue? What is it, structurally?

I’ve always wanted to make something that’d merit appointment viewing, and I think what we wrote is worthy of that. If I were king, this would “air” each week at the same time. Ten, 10 minute episodes for everyone in my life to watch on their lunch breaks, when they wait for the train, while they get ready for a date, etc. I wanna lure you in with convenience and have the substance of the series stop you in your tracks.

Is The Decalogue also for people who aren't super well-versed (no pun intended) in the Bible?

100%. If anything, this series is for people who could care less about the Bible. If you laugh, if you’re angry, if you love, if you grieve, if you are questioning everything, this shit is for you.

The framework of the original Dekalog is what drew me to make this. There’s nothing holy about his interpretation of The Ten Commandments. As a Catholic, you’re brought up to view The Ten Commandments within a context of piety. Life is not pious. So how are you supposed to reconcile a holy contract with the reality of the world we live in? Kieslowki wasn’t religious. His war torn Polish upbringing made him a hardened skeptic. He’s reluctant, almost ardently so, in believing in God. But God seems to find Kieslowski anyway, and he shows that part of the divinity he experiences in the way humans coalesce with one another.

What made you decide to star in the Thou Shall Honor The Lord's Day chapter of the project?

Niles Abston, my creative partner in crime, was supposed to star in this episode. A month into writing The Decalogue, my college roommate died suddenly and abruptly. This was in March. Tom was one of my first friends in New York. Our whole freshman year suite was so close. 5 of us. Me, Graham, Joey, Tim, and Tom. We didn’t go anywhere on campus without one another. It felt like I had brothers for the first time.

So a couple days after Tom died, I asked Niles if I could rewrite our episode and star in it. Just so I can say bye to my boy. Niles, one of the most gracious people I know, let me do that. One day I drove to the library to write, opened the laptop, started sobbing at a blank page with a blinking cursor, closed my laptop, and drove home. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through that day on set, but I will.

Tom was also probably one of the first people I did acid with. He loved to trip. So writing an episode about me doing acid at his funeral seemed like the most genuine way to say goodbye to an old friend. I wanted to write something I knew he’d love, and I’m confident I did that.

Who else is involved in this so far, behind and in front of the camera? How did you put this team together?

When I lived in New York, my hobby was seeing comedy. I did it as much as I worked. I know y’all very well. So when my cinematographer Eric Schleicher, who I made ‘98 Honda with, suggested we do a comedy series, this whole idea kind of blurted itself out of my mouth. I had just watched Kieslowski’s filmography and I knew exactly who I wanted to do this with. The question was, for 4 months, would they want to write one on one with little ol’ me? I’d never completed a screenplay before. Abandoned pages and drafts littered my desktop. Yet before ‘98 Honda, I’d never directed before. So I took a leap of faith, and asked Jay Jurden, Shalewa Sharpe, Niles Abston, Alise Morales, Ashton Womack, Esther Fallick, Otto Fernandez, Ellory Smith, Sami Schwaeber, Maggie Crane, and Michael Terry to write about The Ten Commandments with me. The result is the most special thing I’ve ever spearheaded and we have an obligation to make it.

My production team of Eric Schleicher, Otto Fernandez, Eric Schleicher, and Ashtyn Butuso are a collection of people I’d go to war with and for. Because honestly that’s what this shit feels like sometimes. I trust them completely, and I love that it’s a majority black production team. That was important to me. I’ve never seen that in all my years working. So I made it happen.

You've worked for both legacy media properties and on independent projects! What is exciting to you about doing things through indie channels?

Excitement? Horror? Happiness? Dreading taxes? All of that in a stew is how I feel about starting ThatBoyBanda Productions L.L.C. I want to own my work. I look at Ryan Coogler’s back-end deal with Warner Brothers for Sinners and I’m inspired. It doesn’t matter how hard you work at Big Show™️ (I’ve worked at many), you’re really not a person to them. You’re a means to a creative end and everything you give them is theirs. With beloved shows being disappeared off streaming services, the whole thing drove me to want to protect The Decalogue and the folks who are making it happen. By the way, you can still stream Desus and Mero on Paramount+, I just checked. (Editor's note: Phew!)

Why is crowdfunding this project so important to you?

After spending half of my life in New York, the 2023 writer and actor strikes forced me out. In a year I went from going to the Emmys to living at home in Massachusetts with my mom. I still remember loading the U-Haul with my roommates in Bedstuy and just wondering how it got that bad.

But it was in my childhood home where I’ve started making my best work. I directed ‘98 Honda in my house, I’ve written The Decalogue in my house, I got sober in my house (16 months thank you), and my mom has been here the whole time cheering me on.

I quit two jobs in February to write this. I gave up a social life. I gave up plans to move to Chicago and start a new chapter. I want to make this for me, for these comedians who deserve their time to shine, and most importantly for my friends. They’ll see themselves in The Decalogue, I made sure of it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to chat, Christian! And here is that crowdfunding link once again if you'd like to contribute, readers!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Clipse feat. Ab-Liva – "Inglorious Bastards"

The Clipse having a successful reunion is a huge win for Generation X. Pusha T might be the best living rapper who’s older than a millennial (although he is on the cusp). Even if we weren’t disqualifying artists who were credibly implicated in outrageous sex crimes, Jay-Z seems artistically most interested in finding words that rhyme with art he owns and staying out of his wife’s way. Eminem still raps like an angry 24-year-old which is not a compliment for a 52-year-old man. And Kanye (Which Way) West(ern Man) is not exactly doing his finest work these days. (Obviously there are other Gen X legends still rapping at a high level; Black Thought from The Roots is my personal favorite.)

It is fun to hear Pusha T sounding ruthless and petty and locked in in his late 40s. And his brother No Malice (formerly Malice, but people change) is back in the group. Pharrell (I DARE you to Google his age) is hanging around too. He even produced this song, which makes me want to stomp through the pavement when I'm walking down the street. It is great feeling invincible music that doesn’t quite veer into starting fights territory. And the song’s title reminds us that there are rappers pushing fifty (Is that what Pusha T is short for? Pushing fifty?) who remember the right way to treat Nazis.

And they did a Tiny Desk Concert??? Big week for the Virginia Beach legends.