The ambiguous "drops."

Headline at Hollywood Reporter: "HBO Drops Pair of Mike Judge Comedy Series."

I know "drops" is supposed to sound cool, like when some pop star "drops" a new recording. But it's such a saggy, sad word, and sometimes — as in that headline — it sounds like the very thing they're trying to get us excited about just got cancelled. 

Oh, no! Wait. I'm reading this article now:

'QualityLand' and 'A5' will not move forward as the 'Silicon Valley' co-creator continues to juggle the new take on 'Beavis and Butt-Head' for Comedy Central.

These shows did get dropped in the old-timey sense of cancelled/rejected. The word has ambiguity whichever way you want to use it. 

And by the way, what does it say about America that something new called "QualityLand" is shunned and they're bringing back "Beavis and Butt-Head"? Personally, I loved "Beavis and Butt-Head" — as an MTV show in the early 1990s. It's a quarter century later, though, America. 

I thought I was a little childish watching that when I was in my 40s, but who would have thought that 20+ years later, a reboot of the thing would be what was happening on HBO? What was on HBO, 20+ years ago? Here's a list of the best of HBO in the 1990s, topped by "The Sopranos." 

Watching "The Sopranos" in the 1990s, I might have wondered, What would HBO be in the 2020s? If the only fact I had from the future was HBO will be generating new episodes of "Beavis and Butt-Head," I would have been terrified. What the hell will have happened to America?!

"Philosopher Theodore Sider used the characters [Goofus and Gallant] in an argument against the notion of a binary Heaven or Hell conception of the afterlife."

"Sider conceived of Goofus and Gallant as near-equals, with Gallant only marginally better than Goofus, in arguing that sending the former to Heaven and the latter to Hell is antithetical to God's justice."

For some reason, we're talking about Goofus and Gallant this morning. (Actually, I know the reason, but I'm too discreet to reveal it.)

The origin of Goofus:

"We couldn't have Gallant without Goofus," said Highlights Editor Kent Brown, a grandson of the founders and, he proudly claims, the inspiration for Goofus. "Without Goofus, Gallant would be bland and no one would pay attention. But kids see parts of themselves in both characters. No one is as good as Gallant, and no one is as bad as Goofus. But being more like Gallant is something to strive for."

But you could have Goofus without Gallant. That was "Beavis and Butt-Head." Mike Judge (the "he" in this paragraph) explains:

Does that give some insight into why Trump won the election? And why Mitt Romney did not?

The problem of using material from "Idiocracy" in an anti-Trump ad.

Yes, the Donald Trump phenomenon feels like "Idiocracy" to a lot of people, but who owns that material? Not Etan Cohen, who wrote it, or his collaborator Mike Judge, and not Terry Crews, the actor who plays the President in the movie, but 20th Century Fox.

If you were the decisionmaker at 20th Century Fox, would you agree to letting that material be used in a partisan political ad? Even if you were opposed to Trump, it's not a good idea. Who are the continuing fans of that movie? I'll bet a lot of them are Trump supporters. And the movie stands on its own as a timeless critique of American culture and politics. It's bad to capture that value and channel it into something transitory and partisan.

Anyway, The Daily Beast quotes Mike Judge complaining:

“It kind of fell apart.... It was announced that [the ads] were anti-Trump, and I would’ve preferred to make them and then have the people decide. Terry Crews had wanted to just make some funny Camacho ads, and Etan [Cohen] and I had written a few that I thought were pretty funny, and it just fell apart. I wanted to put them out a little more quietly and let them go viral, rather than people announcing we’re making anti-Trump ads. Just let them be funny first. Doing something satirical like that is better if you just don’t say, ‘Here we come with the anti-Trump ads!’ Also, when Terry heard that announcement he wasn’t happy about it."

Of course, talking to The Daily Beast is creating virality. This ad is available there. I've watched it.

By the way, the text at The Daily Beast does not support its headline: "‘Idiocracy’ Director Mike Judge: Fox Killed Our Anti-Trump Camacho Ads." Judge doesn't say that! And Fox — the movie division (not even Fox News) — didn't nix the ads.

Judge is only saying they gave up when the viral approach was blown by an open announcement that they are anti-Trump. I wonder what really happened. He seems to still be trying to get the ad in circulation, so respect for rights owned by 20th Century Fox doesn't seem to be such a big consideration. Talking about the rights may be a device to give 20th Century Fox separation from the ad project. And that announcement Judge purports to be upset about: Maybe he chose to do that to make sure no one would misread it as pro-Trump. Once that's nailed down, it's time to send this thing out into the world with Judge, Cohen, and Crews sort of posing as victims — or so I suspect.

The fact is that the ad isn't really that good. What does it really say about Trump? If you don't know the movie too well, the use of a very buffoonish black man to make a statement is open to all sorts of interpretation and the potential for offense is great. Are they trying to say Trump is bad because he reminds them of a clownish, hyper-masculine black man? And why is the black man getting used as a means to an end?

Here, HBO is letting you watch the whole first episode of Mike Judge's new series "Silicon Valley."

Via Metafilter, which says:

The AV club calls it "incisive satire" (while comparing it [favorably] to Entourage). Some people in the real Silicon Valley are not happy about it.