Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Not all heroes wear capes.

In my day, never was longer.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

So many bastards, so little time.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

We will not go back.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

You are here: Home / Medium Cool / Medium Cool – For Reasons I Can’t Explain

Medium Cool – For Reasons I Can’t Explain

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Betty Cracker used the phrase “for reasons I can’t explain” in one of her posts a few weeks ago, and it has really stuck with me.

So the theme for tonight’s Medium Cool is this:  For Reasons I Can’t Explain.

You can think of it like a culture-based Mad Lib, if you like.

For reasons I can’t explain,

I   [ like / don’t like / love / hate / etc  ]

this  [ movie, book, show, author, poem, song, play, musician, actor, actress, performer… ]

that  [ is trashy / is not my usual style / other people seem feel differently about / etc. ]

On your mark, get set, go!

 

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  1. 1.

    Suzanne

    For reasons I can(not) explain, I don’t like the Marvel movies. Fuck you, Cinematic Universe.

  2. 2.

    Craig

    I like Fast and Furious movies that are terrible and yet enjoyable because they have a logic of their own.

  3. 3.

    Chris

    For reasons I can’t explain, I can’t get into Babylon 5. On paper, it’s exactly my kind of show, space opera with lots of DS9 like galactic politics and a nineties product before everything went grimdark. But I just can’t get into it. I’ve tried; I’ve tried jumping in at various points in the show, at several stages in my life (twice as a teenager and once as a post college adult), and it just can’t hold my interest.

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    @Suzanne:

    For reasons I can(not) explain, I don’t like the Marvel movies. Fuck you, Cinematic Universe.

    I loved these movies, especially the Avengers films, and the movies focusing on Captain America and the Black Panther. Many of these films, particularly Captain America and the Winter Soldier, included elements of other genres and were not just superhero action movies.

    However, I am done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a simple reason that I can explain. Watching the various movies that made up the Avengers saga was fine for a one-time thing. But I don’t buy comic books every week anymore, and I have no interest in trying to watch every Marvel movie and TV show to keep up with every character and their storyline.

    I also feel sorry for DC, which seems to be stuck making bad superhero films.

    And for reasons I can easily explain, I think that Zack Snyder is a terrible, talentless director. He is not someone who should be emulated.

  6. 6.

    princess leia

    For reasons I can’t explain, I don’t like to watch movies, even when I have an interest in the story. My SO loves loves loves them. Thank god for streaming services so that he can watch to his heart’s content without trying to rope me in.

  7. 7.

    Chris

    @Suzanne:

    As someone who’s always liked it but never adored it, it’s been funny watching the air go out of the balloon in the last couple years, because not much has changed. It was just never that good. It’s always been the cinematic/superhero version of fast food, not a five star restaurant. What’s happening now feels like people who have been eating at McDonald’s several times a week for months finally getting tired of it. The food hasn’t changed, but the customer’s ready for something else.

  8. 8.

    Suzanne

    I have a potential topic for next week: what’s an offensive piece of art/media that you nevertheless love?

    Why did this spring to my mind? Because I was listening to Jimmy Soul’s “If You Want to Be Happy”. God, what a bop.

  9. 9.

    BellaPea

    For reasons I can’t explain, I cannot watch Succession. I’ve tried to binge-watch twice and just cannot do it. I guess if I really tried hard enough, I could say the total inhumanity of all of the characters, the cruelty and the nasty language. I know it’s won a boatload of awards, just can’t watch. And I love Brian Cox, especially when he’s appeared in Shakespeare productions.

  10. 10.

    Chris

    @Brachiator:

    I think Endgame just provided a nice narrative jumping off point, and the way it was immediately followed by Covid and the moratorium on theaters helped a lot of people lose the taste for it.

  11. 11.

    Nancy

    For reasons I can’t explain I love Daniel Lewis in Life a show that is not my usual style.

    Often devastating, distressing crimes but I still like the actors and the show.

  12. 12.

    Suzanne

    @Chris: I’m so fucking sick of action movies. And CGI. And weirdly de-wrinkled faces. And explosions.

    I think the last movie that I saw in a theater was “A Haunting in Venice”, which is pretty much everything I’m looking for in a movie these days: awesome scenery, creepy mood, locked-room mystery dumbness, human actors.

  13. 13.

    Chris

    @BellaPea:

    I’ve never been able to get into TV shows that are just about basking in the shittiness of their characters. That’s not a problem with movies; I’m fine with the Godfather trilogy, for example. But movies only take a few hours. If I’m going to sink dozens of hours into watching something and come back year after year for it, I need to have some investment in the story other than “will somebody shoot this fucking prick?”

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    For reasons I can’t explain I occasionally happily fall down a deep YouTube rabbit hole for videos about railroads. Or subways. Or sailing ships. Or ocean liners.

  17. 17.

    Craig

    @Chris: Endgame was perfect. I recommend Echo. It’s a really interesting 5 part miniseries about the consequences of ones actions.

  18. 18.

    Suzanne

    @Chris: That’s how I feel about plots that turn on a misunderstanding as a plot device. Like…. this entire dumb story could have been avoided if these characters had just had a mature conversation. But they didn’t. So now I hate them both and I hope they die alone.

  19. 19.

    wjca

    For reasons that I can’t explain, I’m enjoying a couple of YouTube channels my wife is hooked on.  All from guys in southern Utah, working on cars and towing folks who go off roading and shouldn’t have.  Just can’t figure out why, although the scenery when they’re out towing is certainly spectacular.

    Also, there’s an iRacing series based off of 24 Hours of Lemons.  Not a car guy, but somehow ….

  20. 20.

    Scout211

    For reasons I cannot explain* I really disliked Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead.  I was so looking forward to reading it and so many people I know loved it, but I really disliked it.

    *I really can explain why I disliked it but that’s not the assignment for tonight.  LOL.

    ETA:  Does the phrase “poverty porn”  sound descriptive enough?  I read a rare negative literary review of the book that used that phrase.

  24. 24.

    FelonyGovt

    For reasons I can(not) explain I hated and did not finish Lessons in Chemistry.  I get tired of reading fiction about the years of unreconstructed misogyny- I lived a lot of them and do not wish to make a return visit. And a particular scene early in the book was rather horrifying and the main character’s rather blasé reaction was (a) unrealistic and (b) rather unpalatable.

  25. 25.

    Chris

    @Suzanne:

    Depends how we define offensive?

    Something like the Lethal Weapon movies, for example, are offensive because one of the stars is a genuinely enormous turd in real life, not because of the fictional content itself. Something like Rambo, on the other hand, is offensive not just because of who made it, but because it’s actively pushing far-right conspiracy theories – about the stab in the back myth, about anti war protesters, or about POW-MIAs.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    @Nancy:

    For reasons I can’t explain I love Daniel Lewis in Life a show that is not my usual style.

    Isn’t that Damien Lewis? Only seen a few episodes of Life, but I like the actor.

    Recently ran across him doing part of the Mark Anthony funeral oration from Julius Caesar, which I think is fantastic.

  28. 28.

    Scout211

    @FelonyGovt: Oh no.  That’s another one of the books we are reading this year in my book group.  I already was not looking forward to it for reasons I cannot explain.  Ugh.

  29. 29.

    dexwood

    @Scout211: I mostly liked it. It could have been 100 pages shorter, though. It did give me the incentive to read David Copperfield, a book I’ve attempted to read a few times in the past, but always gave up on. I ended up loving it.

  31. 31.

    Phylllis

    For reasons I can’t explain, I love actor autobiographies. I know most of them are ghost-written, but when you get one where the ghost writer captures the actor’s voice and personality, they can be a lot of fun. I listen to them while I walk. Recent ones I’ve really enjoyed include Sharon Gless, Ed Begley Jr, and Henry Winkler.

  33. 33.

    Uncle Cosmo

    “For reasons I can’t explain”–? That mostly means “I know I feel this way about that but I am unable to articulate why off the top of my head and I am unwilling to put in the mental effort to examine those feelings and work out why.”

    That wouldn’t have gotten me more than a couple of months into the decade, half a century back, during which I was reviewing books for a once-significant news outlet.** There was an unwritten rule that beyond the plot summary, a reviewer was supposed to evaluate whether the book was worth reading, and by whom, and justify his judgment by citing things in the text he liked or did not like and offering reasons why.

    Normally I would read the book quickly to gain a first impression. Then I would reread it more slowly, both to confirm my opinion, look for things I might have missed (that might completely change my evaluation) and for passages that highlighted particular reasons I liked or disliked it. Until I (thought I) understood those reasons, I was not ready to write the review. Most times it took two readings, occasionally more, especially if I was taking especial care because the author was highly respected and/or the tome had some pretension to significance. Once I was ready, I would come up with a general theme for the piece, draft an opening paragraph, and we were off.

    Anyhow, I suggest yinz eschew “For reasons I can’t explain.” It’s a damsite more honest and straightforward to say instead, “For reasons I can’t articulate and am unwilling to put in the effort to clarify them to the point where I can.”

    ** FTR the pay was crap – it worked out to about $0,80 an hour – but I got to opine in public and to keep the book. I was even quoted (sometimes cherrypicked for a few encouraging words out of a generally negative judgment) on a few paperback editions and sequels – although the one time a publisher printed my name under the blurb it was misspelled. And I got into some pretty intense but productive discussions/arguments with some pretty significant authors over opinions; One author even accused me to my face of “taking food out of his childrens’ mouths” by panning his first novel. (I just said, “If you had written it better I would have had nothing to criticize.” In fact I was a fan of his better-known brother’s books and so initially prepared to cut him some slack.)

  34. 34.

    dmsilev

    @NotMax: I never got around to watching S2 of that. I should find the time; S1 was hilarious.

    Premise: A show that is a cross between an Agatha Christie novel, the classic film Rashomon, and a massively over the top genre pastiche. There’s a murder mystery at the titular afterparty, all of the guests/suspects are being interrogated by a detective, and their told-in-flashbacks stories are all shown in various film styles that match the character. So, the guy with the unrequited crush on another character gets a rom-com, the wannabe musician gets a musical (complete with big dance number and all the rest), there’s an action-movie spoof with a silly-stupid car chase, etc. etc.

    And, as is required for Christie and similar stories, the clues pointing to the correct perp are present, but you have to carefully look for them, or you can wait until the end when the detective goes through her reasoning and points out why she knows who was lying etc.

  35. 35.

    Kristine

    For reasons I can(not) explain, I hated the film version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley. Jam-packed with my fave British actors, and I wanted to throw things at the screen. I know Le Carré approved and iirc had a walk-on role. I don’t care.

  36. 36.

    raven

    @schrodingers_cat: I don’t think so. The physical problems are a bummer but love taking care of our doggie and I do cook every day I’m just not excited about it like I used to be. The reading thing has been going on for a couple of years and it may be related to meds. I do listen to audio books every day while I work out.

  40. 40.

    zhena gogolia

    @Scout211: It’s been recommended to me by so many people. I read the first page on Amazon and decided it wasn’t for me. And “poverty porn” sounds about right.

    Maybe you could say that about Dickens too, but he had style!

  41. 41.

    dexwood

    For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve never liked historical novels, Quentin Tarantino films, and ABBA.

  42. 42.

    West of the Rockies

    I’m a wretched person.   I do not understand why anyone would find Steve McQueen or Edward Burns to be leading men.  Their expressions never change.  Your actors.   Emote!

  43. 43.

    thruppence

    I don’t know if I could (or need to) explain, but I really enjoy Tom Waits. From the 70s to now, he’s always been on his own path with lots of twists and turns you can take or leave, in music and his various film roles from Down by Law to the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, where he essentially plays the Devil in Heath Ledger’s last film. If you don’t know his work, check it out.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: Oh my.  That’s not good.  Mobility issues getting you down?  If you tell us next week that you have no interest in football, we’ll know you are in serious trouble.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @Chris:

    I think Endgame just provided a nice narrative jumping off point, and the way it was immediately followed by Covid and the moratorium on theaters helped a lot of people lose the taste for it.

    That could be part of it. Two movie theaters near me closed down during the pandemic, and this helped eliminate my movie going habit.

    Also, I am not willing to go through the hassle of signing up for a streaming service just to watch a single movie, even if I can later cancel.

    I wish I could just stream a movie on demand on any streaming service.

  50. 50.

    Jess

    Cy Twombly. Love his work, and I can’t explain why. And I’m an art historian/artist. I love that’s it’s a mystery to me, though.

  55. 55.

    Mike in NC

    Never been much of a Tom Cruise or ‘Mission Impossible’ movies fan. We found the last installment on Amazon Prime: ‘MI: Dead Reckoning Part One’ or something like that. Really terrible and that’s almost three hours of our lives we’ll never get back. The longer it dragged on, the stupider it got.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: That’s what we do on Medium Cool, go outside the lines.  I think of the topic as a conversation starter, and a good conversation goes where it will.

    And I’m totally good with that on Medium Cool.

  57. 57.

    David 🏈 Mahomes! 🏈 Koch

    For reasons I can’t explain I’m drawn to the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce romance

  58. 58.

    Jess

    @Scout211: I’ve tried to read various works by Kingsolver and have never managed to get into any of them. I have DC on my kindle and will make an attempt on it soon. And that will be my last attempt to read this author if I can’t embrace this book.

  61. 61.

    CliosFanBoy

    I think Napoleon Dynamite was stupid.  Everything, Everywhere, All at Once bored me silly, and the hot dog fingers were just idiotic.   Spaceballs was the worst movie I ever paid to see in a theater.

    Star Trek and Star Wars got much much better the less Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas had to do with them.

    As for music, the Dreadful Grate, Yes, Rush, and U2 are dull and pretentious.

    Baseball was only truly fun between 1960 and 1980, when the draft and the minor leagues made brains more than money the key to building a good team, and before free agency gave an unbreakable advantage to the handful of really rich teams.

    Neither the movie nor the TV series MASH aged well at all.  They are now basically unwatchable.

    Oh, and Superman is the most boring superhero EVER.  He’s allergic to glowing green rocks, and his “disguise” is a pair of glasses that don’t even have real lenses!

  63. 63.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: ​ I could not, for the life of me, get into Breaking Bad. It struck me as miserable person being miserable even though they are trying to do the thing that should stop making them miserable. Not at all what I consider entertaining.

  65. 65.

    raven

    @schrodingers_cat: Funny, I’ve actually been thinking about getting rid of some of my cookbooks. I’ve got quite a collection and almost never crack them. The eating/cooking thing almost seems more physical than anything else.

    water girl

    I don’t think having to cancel the fishing trip helped but that’s just last week.

    eta

    I’m not around as much because I no longer work from home so I’m not parked in front of the computer all day.

  66. 66.

    Chris

    @Mike in NC:

    They have GOT to stop making these things so damn long.

    I watched that movie and the last John Wick on my Christmas flight home. Both pushing three hours. The last Indiana Jones last summer, same thing. All three of the last James Bonds were at least twenty minutes longer than they needed to be. Make action movies two hours long again, please.

  68. 68.

    Jess

    I CAN explain why I love this compelling, informative, visionary book: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s powerful and timely and just might save humanity if enough people read it. If you’re at all concerned about climate change, I urge you to read it. If you’re not concerned at all, I’m going to force you to read it twice and then eat it.

  73. 73.

    RSA

    @Chris:  I’ve never been able to get into TV shows that are just about basking in the shittiness of their characters.

    I talked about this issue with a friend a while ago, having not watched TV or movies for some years. I’d see the first episode or three of a series and think, “Wow, the world would be a better place if the main character were taken out of it,” and I’d wonder why I should watch several seasons of that character and their compatriots not only live but thrive. My friend suggested that it could be a way to learn about the nature of good and evil, about life and death, about boundaries and temptations, and so forth, and I had to admit she was right. But it still wasn’t for me—it moved too close to the line of glorifying bad actors and nihilism.  It was just too hard to watch.

    Oh, well. I’m missing out on what some view as solid modern art.  Maybe I’ll be able to appreciate it, some day.

  74. 74.

    StringOnAStick

    I love watching British and Scottish gardening shows, and none of the advice applies in our high desert, much colder zone area.  My husband loves it even more, and he doesn’t garden at all!

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    Sacrilege, I know, but for reasons I can’t explain I can barely, barely abide anything Jane Austen.

    @laura

    Joseph Andrews.
    ;)

  83. 83.

    lowtechcyclist

    For reasons I can’t explain, I love taking the lyrics of songs in ballad meter, and singing them to the tunes of other songs in ballad meter. Like singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” lyrics to the tune of the “Leave It To Beaver” theme music.

  86. 86.

    citizen dave

    These threads might as well be titled “Now Spew” threads because most jackals didn’t follow the rules at all.  I can’t think of anything at all that I like or don’t like that I can’t explain.  Major Tom Waits and Who fan, so I’ll say, for reasons I Can’t Explain, I haven’t minded listening to The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” hundreds of times.  It was their concert starter more often than not.  I sometimes wish that Tom Waits had been much more active in his music career these last 15 years, but it’s his life to live.

    Re: Movies, a recurring measuring stick I like to use is this from Gene Siskel: What is more interesting: watching this movie or if I had lunch with the actors/director?

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    For reasons I can’t explain, I have been unable to stay awake through the entirety of any of the Star Wars prequel movies (aka eps. 1-3).

  88. 88.

    Tehanu

    For reasons I can’t explain, I can’t watch anything where a character* undergoes humiliation and/or embarrassment — even if it’s richly deserved.   I will literally get up and walk out of the room rather than watch.

    * Come to think of it, I have trouble watching real people be humiliated and/or embarrassed. Or embarrass themselves.

  90. 90.

    Kristine

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    The cure for that is Slow Horses. Oldman chews through the scenery like a lion through a herd of wildebeast.

    I adore Slow Horses. So glad there will be a fourth season and am hoping for more.

  92. 92.

    Kristine

    @Tehanu:

    For reasons I can’t explain, I can’t watch anything where a character* undergoes humiliation and/or embarrassment — even if it’s richly deserved. I will literally get up and walk out of the room rather than watch.

    I have a problem with that as well. Can’t watch bullying either.

  94. 94.

    Suzanne

    @Jess: So I am the art nerd in my household, and Mr. Suzanne tolerates it. A few years back, I made him go with me to the Clyfford Still museum in Denver, and he absolutely loved it. He said that something really clicked for him that day. He kept wandering from painting to painting, then back to the one he looked at. For a couple of hours. (The building is really good, too, BTW.)

    The painter for me who is like that is Jasper Johns.

  96. 96.

    Jess

    @Suzanne: I love Jasper Johns, but that’s not so mysterious to me. Never warmed up to Still, though, even though there was a whole room dedicated to him at the SF art museum. It’s funny how that works, especially with AbEx painting. I went from “meh” to “OMG” with Rothko, for example. Like your husband–the light went on for me when I saw the Seagram paintings at the Tate.

  98. 98.

    Leto

    @lowtechcyclist: Nah, there’s thousands of hours of explanations on why you can’t. Same with the sequels (7-9). 7 had a ton of potential, even moving past some of the most glaring issues, but it just went down the shitter for 8 and 9. John Boyega spoke at length about the fact the scripts were in constant flux, and the actors had no idea wtf was going on with their characters. Which also helps explain his character, the handling of Rose, and just so much else.

    Just like Zac Snyder, stop giving JJ Abrams money for anything. Stop letting him fail up, ffs.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Chris:

    I’ve never been able to get into TV shows that are just about basking in the shittiness of their characters. That’s not a problem with movies; I’m fine with the Godfather trilogy, for example.

    I guess for me it depends on the show. But I know what you mean about movies vs TV shows. The characters on TV shows are coming into your home week after week, and in the past American TV shows in particular would tend to soften antagonistic recurring characters, sometimes making them obviously figures of ridicule, or winking and nudging at their villainy.

    I know people who insist that any show or movie must have a happy ending and that characters they like must have a redemption arc. I don’t need this.

    But there is a fine line for me. An example might be the negative superhero show “The Boys.” I don’t see much intelligence here, just over indulgence in the idea of how “cool” it would be if superheroes were sexist assholes.

  101. 101.

    kalakal

    A film a lot of people seem to like and I just can’t get into is The Princess Bride. To me it’s almost good but fails at the last hurdle.

  103. 103.

    Argiope

    @Jess: weirdly, my SO and I restarted it this pm after nearly 4 months on hiatus. We are listening as a road trip thing, but I feel like maybe I’m missing out by not reading a paper version.  Usually I feel the opposite—I like different narrators. But somehow it feels disjointed this way.  Am I doing it wrong?

  106. 106.

    Chris

    @RSA:

    My thing with the “nature of good and evil” stuff is that evil is just nowhere near as deep or interesting as 90% of these stories make it out to be.  Evil is shallow, selfish, plain, and simple. The campy stuff like The A-Team and Leverage, where the bad guys are dumb one-dimensional schoolyard bullies plus thirty years, in the end are giving you a far more realistic take on what evil looks like than anyone who’s ever tried to make these people interesting enough to sustain a season of television.

  108. 108.

    Juju

    For reasons I can’t explain I’m fascinated by Hallmark Christmas movies. I shouldn’t be, but I am.

  109. 109.

    wjca

    @Juju: For reasons I can’t explain I’m fascinated by Hallmark Christmas movies. I shouldn’t be, but I am. 

    I find that there’s quite a bit of good stuff on the Hallmark Channel.  My wife is appalled.

  111. 111.

    DesertFriar

    For reasons I can’t explain:

    Critics loved ‘Last Tango In Paris’.  Hated it then, hate it now.

    Critics hated ‘The VIllage’ (M. Night Shyamalan). Still one of my top 10.

  113. 113.

    Nancy

    • @Jess: me too. I have the DVDs and I have to watch them several times, then put away for a few years, then watch both seasons again.
  115. 115.

    AM in NC

    @schrodingers_cat:  I thought the first installment of the Wolf Hall tv show was great.  Damien Lewis and Mark Rylance were fantastic and I eagerly await the next installment.

    For reasons I actually can explain I could NOT get through the much-praised novel.  Neither could my husband, and my mom made herself finish, because she just rolled that way with books.  I found the book to be waaaaaayyyy overwritten with purple prose I just could not slog through.

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