April 23, 2025

"By dint of his down-home edginess and comfort with slick filth, Von somewhat overlaps with the rest of the manosphere."

"What sets him apart is that he is not particularly cowed by fame or wisdom or authority or aggression. He blends curiosity with humility, and treats his guests as conveyors of mystical information.... His naïveté is both honest and strategic, a carefully laid roadblock protecting Von and forcing everyone else to move at his unlikely rhythm.... In almost every episode, there comes a moment when Von’s guest stumps him. It’s never a gotcha, and the topic is rarely something terribly obscure.... Some recent examples: Mitchell-Lama housing, the Kurds, who wrote the song 'This Land Is Your Land,' misandry.... He can sometimes free-fall into inventive left-field phrasing that achieves a sort of bliss. He said he once saw the boxer Evander Holyfield eating, putting French fries in his 'Panamouth Canal.' Kissing someone with lip filler is 'like trying to eat two shrimps that won’t give up.' Nudity is 'the Lord’s matte finish.'"

From "Theo Von Dismantles the Interview Show/The comedian and podcaster is one of the defining conversationalists of media’s new MAGA-friendly mainstream. But he can be harder to pin down, politically and culturally, than his bro-cast peers" (NYT).

Something I learned: Theo Von's full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III.

18 comments:

Jupiter said...

Well, good. Now we know what the lying morons at the NYT think about the babbling fools on the internet. Never a dull moment!

Josephbleau said...

Who in the wide world of sports are these fu*king people anyway?

mccullough said...

The Polish Prince

Ice Nine said...

Saw this guy do stand-up - he's not funny. Hope he's better at podcasting.

JaimeRoberto said...

That description could fit Rogan pretty well too, but the NYT would never admit it.

Narr said...

The Kurnatowskis have really come down in the world.

john mosby said...

Slick Filth must already be a name for a punk band.

JSM

Josephbleau said...

“ Slick Filth must already be a name for a punk band.”

According to a regular blog meme I will have to say that I saw Slick Filth open for Motly Crue back in 1989.

boatbuilder said...

That (unidentified} NYT writer was doing really well for a while there. Then it dissolved into incomprehensible gibberish.

boatbuilder said...

Josephbleau--without the venue it doesn't count.

boatbuilder said...

Also points deducted for the lack of diacritics.

boatbuilder said...

Please don't ask me how to add diacritics to a post.

bagoh20 said...

Never saw his standup, but I find him hilarious during conversations, because he says the funniest shit so natural and spontaneous. It kind of misses the point to spell it out like the article did, but I think it's accurate. He's unique.

Howard said...

Theo's the least filtered guy. His schtick is he has no schtick.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

That's some name! Theo has an engaging personality and that makes it easy to like his podcasting style. And who the hell even CARES that his politics are "hard top pin down"? One of the delights of growing up in the '60s and '70s was MOST people didn't talk politics and so we were blissfully unaware of which -- if any -- way they "leaned."

I'm still at a loss to understand the writer's interest in how Theo leans "culturally." That's a nonsense sentence to a normal person. To watch Theo is to experience American culture. He leans toward humor.

rhhardin said...

The rest of the world that isn't manosphere is mammosphere.

Lazarus said...

I have no idea who this guy is, but the Kurnatowskis were a prominent family in Poland and Prussia. They have a coat of arms and the cool motto: "We swim in the blood of our enemies."

TML said...

No comment on the use of "garner" in the article?

Post a Comment

Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.