![\"\"](\"https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/media/posts/19/13ef29f4-e16e-437a-8089-aaa7b157a7f7.jpg.jpeg\")
when terrible things happen, there are moments of levity. they feel wrong, and you feel guilty, but you can’t help it.
\nthis one happened when we had called the family back to the hospital to say goodbye to nancy. we were all gathered in the waiting room, waiting for her brother to arrive from georgia—who, based on the timing, seemed to be making the trip on foot with no gps.
\none of my husband’s cousins offered to go get coffee for everyone. i would have sawed off a leg or eaten a cactus to leave the waiting room, so i volunteered to go with him.
\nwe wandered around for a while because neither of us actually knew if the lobby had coffee. eventually we found the panera and got in line. nate stepped up and said, “six coffees, please.”
\ni hadn’t slept since 8 a.m. the day before. it was now 10 a.m. i was eating a fruit cup with my hands and staring at the cashier like she could solve the world’s problems.
\nshe said, “would you like a coffee tote?”
\nnate and i stared at her for what felt like three minutes, then at each other for what felt like eight, and then said, “sure,” in unison. i think i also added, “whatever the chef recommends.”
\nthen she asked another question that probably makes sense if you sell coffee but made no sense to us: “what kind of coffee?”
\nwe stared at her again—me shoving fruit into my mouth, nate silently reconsidering what coffee is—as if she had asked us the meaning of the universe.
\nfinally, he said, “just… your most normal coffee.”
\nthe poor woman went to make us a tote of her most normal coffee, and what felt like three seconds—or several lifetimes later, because nate’s aunt and my mother-in-law was dying a few floors up—she came back and asked what kind of sugar we wanted.
\nat some point in there, we had gotten deeply involved in a discussion about the show land man and completely forgot we were in panera, or that the coffee salesperson existed at all. we were genuinely startled that someone was interrupting our very important conversation about billy bob thornton’s latest acting achievement.
\npulling ourselves together, we made a lot of eye contact back and forth with each other—neither of us knowing how many sugars exist in the world—before i said, “an assortment.”
\nnate inhaled a bagel. we asked for an unreasonable number of cups. then we got back on the elevator, carrying enough coffee for a small city, and started laughing.
", "author": { "name": "Mary Delaney" }, "tags": [ ], "date_published": "2026-04-22T18:48:11-04:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-22T18:48:11-04:00" }, { "id": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/hobart-ny.html", "url": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/hobart-ny.html", "title": "Hobart, NY", "summary": "Today Andrew woke me up because our Airbnb’s gigantic windows were suddenly filled with the close-up views of cows. We thought they were relegated to the hill we’d seen them on yesterday. Apparently not. It is the best thing that has happened to me in…", "content_html": "Today Andrew woke me up because our Airbnb’s gigantic windows were suddenly filled with the close-up views of cows. We thought they were relegated to the hill we’d seen them on yesterday. Apparently not. It is the best thing that has happened to me in recent memory.
\nI read somewhere that cows like music, so I played them the ukulele for a while. A few of them wandered closer and made direct eye contact with me. It was great.
\nDavid says it’s not stupid to post what I played. So here it is.
\n\n
", "author": { "name": "Mary Delaney" }, "tags": [ ], "date_published": "2026-04-13T19:43:23-04:00", "date_modified": "2026-04-13T20:01:31-04:00" }, { "id": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/intersteller-a-vicious-review-for-tim-part-1.html", "url": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/intersteller-a-vicious-review-for-tim-part-1.html", "title": "intersteller: a vicious review for tim: part 1", "summary": "I’ve tried to write this review many times since I saw this horrific hellscape of a movie. My opinion of this film has made me more friends and enemies than any other belief I hold. Those who are correct are the friends. Those who fall…", "content_html": "
I’ve tried to write this review many times since I saw this horrific hellscape of a movie.
\nMy opinion of this film has made me more friends and enemies than any other belief I hold. Those who are correct are the friends. Those who fall short are the enemies.
\nOne of the friends was my brother-in-law, Tim, who understood that this is a stupid movie filled with garbage fake science and, for reasons I still cannot explain, space libraries.
\nI lost Tim recently, and I don’t know who I’m going to text now when I remember a new, stupid plot point of this stupid fucking movie. But in honor of Tim, I will attempt to fully articulate why no one should like it - and why we must, as a society, reckon with what it has done to us.
\nEarth is dying of dust. Corn is apparently the last surviving crop, yet everyone is showering regularly. Fascinating. The movie should have been called Agricultural Vibes and Daddy Issues.
\nThe world’s population is at risk, so naturally Matthew McConaughey’s character thinks, “How can I make this crisis about myself while emotionally devastating my children?”
\nHe used to go to space recreationally, apparently. So when humanity is on the brink, they’re like, “Matthew McConaughey, can you grab Anne Hathaway and head back up there?”
\nAnd he’s like, “Absolutely. My children will understand. Or they won’t. I will be in space blissfully unaware of the trauma I am causing.”
\nOne of his children is named Murph. This is a key point that will come back later in a very confusing manner that will make you yet again reassess everything you thought made sense, which was like 2% of the movie.
\nThroughout all of this, the soundtrack is just “BWAAAAANNNNNGGGGGG,” as if the organ itself is also confused.
\nNow we’ve moved onto how the dust was really messy and we’re doing weird documentary style interviews with the people who remember the messiness.
\nI'm confused by the presence of pancakes at breakfast because I was under the impression that corn was our final agricultural achievement.
\nMurph is always yapping that there’s a ghost in the house. She is a child living through planetary collapse, but yes, let’s diagnose her with hysteria instead. That feels responsible.
\nAlso they have coffee? How?
\nTimothy Chalamet appears briefly as “Boy in Sweatshirt.”
\nMurph is named after Murphy’s Law, meaning she has grown up believing her existence is a cautionary principle.
\nMatthew McConaughey makes absolutely no helpful effort to clarify this.
\nAlso her mom is dead.
\nNow Matthew McConaughey is in a business meeting about farming.
\nWe learn the Apollo missions were faked (??), which deeply upsets him because he is professionally committed to the concept that space is real.
\nWe are again treated to a sweeping, golden shot of a thriving cornfield. Zero dust. Not a particulate in sight.
\nI was told Earth was dying.
\nThe corn appears moisturized.
\nThe ghost is now aggressively reorganizing the library in Matthew McConaughey’s house. Books are flying everywhere. Murph, who has been medically classified as “unstable” for noticing obvious gravitational anomalies, is blamed.
\nForeshadowing: she did not simply wake up and decide to redecorate via poltergeist.
\nFor reasons I cannot emotionally process, the casting director placed John Lithgow - one of my favorite actors - into this film as Matthew McConaughey’s father.
\nThis is an act of violence against me personally.
\nI will never forgive them.
\nOoookay. Now the party starts.
\nDust is attacking them in a barn, so they bravely deploy decorative masks from around their necks and lightly gesture toward respiratory protection.
\nMoments later, this aggressively well-groomed family sits down to drink water and eat bread. In the dust apocalypse. The hydration levels remain impressive.
\nMatthew McConaughey finally realizes Murph is not psychotic. The “ghost” has been communicating NASA coordinates through strategic book violence. As ghosts often do.
\nHis truck is buried in dust.
\nHe looks freshly conditioned.
\nFucking Murph just has to go to the coordinates herself, because apparently “don’t” is a suggestion, not a rule. Classic Murphy’s Law in action.
\nAnd now, behold the film’s unsung hero: the rotating ATM robot. Misused, misunderstood, and tragically never allowed to fulfill its destiny.
\nAnd, oh joy, Anne Hathaway shows up. She’s here. She exists. And yes, she’s as grating as advertised.
\nGoddamnit, they got Michael Caine. Of course they did. Is nothing sacred? Are we just raiding the British National Treasure Vault and tossing legends into a cornfield?
\nMeanwhile, everyone in this secret NASA basement is acting normal but pleased with themselves because a remote control opened some aggressively wood-paneled doors. Behind which: a fully assembled spaceship that no one heard being built. Not one intern said, “Hey, what’s that constant welding noise directly behind the conference room?”
\nAnd there he is. National treasure Michael Caine, lowering himself gently into the dust bowl to ask Matthew McConaughey to drive his new space boat. Alongside Short-Haired Anne Hathaway, who is wearing Black, because Space.
\nFamously this is the first time Matthew McConaughey goes, “Wait. I have children.”
\nAnd Michael Caine is like, “Dust waits for no man, Cooper.”
\nNow we’ve transitioned into a PowerPoint presentation called So You’ve Just Discovered Saturn.
\nSlide one: Saturn is a planet.
\nSlide two: It continues to be a planet.
\nWe are all growing and learning in real-time.
\nAnd oh look, the game manager from The Hunger Games has arrived to explain that we have several planets to go take a quick peek at, as if we’re browsing Airbnb but for humanity’s extinction backup plan.
\nAnne Hathaway cannot simply discuss astrophysics. No. To speak about space she must don The Lab Coat. Because Science™ requires visual confirmation that a woman knows things. The coat goes on. Authority achieved. Sanity restored.
\nMurph is understandably distraught. Her father is leaving on a space mission that will almost certainly kill him, and her own life is threatened by the encroaching dust. He gives her a watch so she can measure the minutes he is gone, and silently tally how dead he probably is.
\nSpace ghost is basically screaming “fuck you, don’t go!” via falling library books. Matthew McConaughey is like, “I GOTTA GO TO SPACE, SHE’S MY GIRLFRIEND!”
\nHe makes a face that looks like a stroke, but I’m 99% sure it’s just pure unhinged joy at finally escaping parenting and Earth at the same time.
\nSomeone cracks a joke about having “a lot of slaves” for their robot colony. One of the astronauts is Black. Timing: zero out of ten.. Did the movie ever care? Nope. Are we cursed to remember it forever? Absolutely.
\nSexy space Anne Hathaway is basically like, “if you’re game, I am,” and Matthew McConaughey is like, “sorry, I have a girlfriend and she’s literally Space.”
\nAt this point in my review, you’re probably thinking, “It would have taken less time to read War and Peace.” I am here to tell you: I have read War and Peace. It’s a difficult book, but I ultimately learned something from it. That is not the case with Interstellar. This movie deserves a review long enough to fully catalog how stupid it is. And buckle up, because we’re just getting started - we have officially reached Matthew McConaughey’s girlfriend: space.
\nKnown sweatshirt wearer Timothy Chalamet is back to send Matthew McConaughey sad videos from dust Earth. Murph will not speak to Matthew. This makes him sad. Luckily, he has unnamed Black man to comfort him.
\nThere’s so much spinning in space in this movie. At some point, they must have realized we get it - they’re in a spaceship… in space.
\nThey enter a wormhole, which causes Sexy Space Anne Hathaway to develop feelings because her fingers are getting all wonky. They’ve made it to some part of space we were already trying to get to. Space talk, space talk, space talk.
\nOne hour on this planet equals seven years on Earth, and yes, that’s relativity, folks. I cannot believe anyone was okay with someone being named Dr. Mann, but I digress.
\nI have completely lost track of what’s happening, but Matthew McConaughey is furiously drawing circles on a whiteboard. Unnamed Black man must stay on the spaceship and age forever while the rest of them gallivant across the planet.
\nA note from my husband: “I think this movie is what happens inside the brain of a schizophrenic man standing next to an ATM.”
\nI have to be honest: I gave this movie a chance, despite my total disinterest in space. When they deploy to this planet, my cautious optimism erupted into an undeniable, all-consuming rage—a rage I have nursed since the first viewing. I was comforted by Tim’s rage because we all need someone to say: “I saw that part too. It was so fucking stupid.”
\n\n
To be continued…
", "author": { "name": "Mary Delaney" }, "tags": [ ], "date_published": "2026-03-06T15:56:45-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-06T15:56:45-05:00" }, { "id": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/guest-post-one-verse-more-like.html", "url": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/guest-post-one-verse-more-like.html", "title": "Guest Post: One Verse More Like", "summary": "Guest author: David Delaney As is well documented Rent is a terrible musical with bewildering morals and confusing portrayals of heroes and villains (The guy who works hard so that he can let his friends live rent free in a loft while they dick around…", "content_html": "Guest author: David Delaney
\nAs is well documented Rent is a terrible musical with bewildering morals and confusing portrayals of heroes and villains (The guy who works hard so that he can let his friends live rent free in a loft while they dick around pretending the act of suffering is art? VILLAIN. The gleeful dog murder? LITERALLY AN ANGEL.)
\nThe songs are all over the place as you’ll read about in Mary and my ongoing series but I’m here to talk today about One Song Glory, a song that is 25% fucking rad killer verse one and 75% terrible chorus that sucks and verse 2 that completely falls apart.
\nOk so we open with a sparse electric guitar with heavy delay, then add male vocals, and a high synth. Tasteful, atmospheric. Drums come in on the hats to build, we’re cooking. And the lyrics? Verse one starts excellent. I really like how the word glory doesn’t fit that well with the rest of the lyrics. He keeps saying it and it keeps jumping out of the lyrics, SORT OF LIKE glory or the desire FOR glory is constantly interrupting Roger’s thoughts which oh man, it totally is.
\nThe non-glory lyrics are also really doing a lot of storytelling quick. We get that he’s dying very quickly, and then “from the pretty boy front man” gives us history while at the same time showing us what Roger now thinks of that history. This is efficient lyric writing and I’m totally behind it. Then we introduce a love interest, awesome. Repeating that the love interest was a young girl for emphasis… not a great move in 2025 but this musical was written in like the 1930s or something so it gets a pass.
\nAnd that’s all the good parts of the song. Now we get “time flies time dies” which is a stupid lyric that the writer (rip) should be ashamed of. If you’re going to take the position that time dies you’re gonna need to flesh out that concept a little but Jonny Larson isn’t even doing that I think he’s just saying the girl dies which is unclear, and only unclear so that we can shoehorn in the terrible time dies lyric. Awful. Awful what is happening here can we hear verse one again?
\nNo we have to hear the chorus which is just shouting glory over and over, the vibe shifts to boring rock and then thank god we go back to groove 1 for verse 2 but the lyrics. Here we get “find glory, in a song that rings true TRUTH LIKE A BLAZING FIRE” A song that rings true is kind of the absolute minimum that a successful song could hope to do so that is a boring thing to say and should not get a whole line of the song, but then we like lyrically cut away from Roger musical-singing-his-thoughts to Roger riffing trying to write the one song that One Song Glory is about and what he comes up with is Truth Like a Blazing Fire.
\nOOF. Well that one sucks Rog, what else you got, “an eternal flame” OOF not better. Is Jonathan Larson writer of Rent trying to show us that Roger is an awful songwriter? Because those lyrics are embarrassing and Larson the writer has shown in verse one that Larson can actually do good lyrics. So surely he’d know that truth like a blazing fire an eternal flame is just trite nonsense that does nothing lyrically. Why is that in there, why does it suck so much. Is it to make us filled with disdain for Roger? Maybe!
\nNow I’d like to get really nitpicky- because next Roggo says this song will come from the soul of a young man, a young man and that just sucks. Why does he say young man, this song is clearly a retrospective nostalgic number from the perspective of an adult man looking back or at least it was in glorious verse one. The truth is the only reason Roger says young man is to echo the young girl lyric in verse one, but the two lyrics are totally unrelated, this is EXTREMELY LAZY repeating or not repeating things in lyrics should be intentional and if you do repeat something it should have a slightly different meaning each time you hear it or you’re wasting your listener’s time.
\nOk I need to go to bed but “Before the virus takes hold” is overly dramatic and makes a mockery of the tasteful scene setting in verse one, beautiful, scene setting verse one. I will conclude by saying sorry my article isn’t as funny as Mary’s [editors note: true], and that One Song Glory and Roger’s whole storyline in Rent encapsulates an overly precious, self indulgent view of art creation that leads inevitably to the creation of no art. Do not make art like Roger, do not try to make One Song that will bring you Glory. Instead, try to write A Song that you Kinda Like. Try to write a song like the first verse of One Song Glory. Jonathan Larson famously wrote like hundreds of songs for Rent and producers had to trim them down. Why does Roger had one songitus when Larson would know that doesn’t work why why why why why
\n", "author": { "name": "Mary Delaney" }, "tags": [ ], "date_published": "2026-02-18T12:52:53-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-18T12:59:28-05:00" }, { "id": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/this-entire-song-could-have-been-avoided-with-electricity.html", "url": "https://PonysBestFriend.stupid.pizza/this-entire-song-could-have-been-avoided-with-electricity.html", "title": "This Entire Song Could Have Been Avoided With Electricity", "summary": "Mimi is sexy and wet and Roger wears a leather jacket. This is the full extent of the character development available to us. Rent is about unemployed people who are shocked to learn landlords exist. They believe their gigantic NYC loft should be free (including…", "content_html": "
\n\nMimi is sexy and wet and Roger wears a leather jacket. This is the full extent of the character development available to us.
\n
Rent is about unemployed people who are shocked to learn landlords exist. They believe their gigantic NYC loft should be free (including heat) so they can play guitar and make intrusive documentaries about homeless people without asking them. There’s also a dog murder, but we’ll get to that.
\nThey also believe that burning their eviction notices will stop them from having to pay rent. Historically this did work for draft cards, so they are clearly operating from a proven legal framework.
\nArguably the main plot—besides aggressively not participating in capitalism—is that Roger, AKA Mopey Jon Bon Jovi (MJBJ), should be emotionally prepared for anyone he meets to do heroin at any time, including directly in front of him, as a form of personal growth.
\nThis brings us to the song I will be reviewing: “Light My Candle,” starring Roger and Mimi, AKA I’ll Do Heroin If I Want To Thanks Very Much (DHIIWTTVM).
\nThe song begins with Roger noticing Mimi is shivering. She explains her heat was turned off, which could be related to her not paying for it, but is also definitely the heroin.
\nThey then attempt to heat an entire industrial Brooklyn loft with a single candle. Unfortunately, they keep blowing it out, suggesting that basic candle management has not yet reached this artistic community.
\nMimi is sexy and wet and Roger wears a leather jacket. This is the full extent of the character development available to us.
\nThey light the candle. It goes out. They light it again. It goes out. This happens approximately 30 times. Practice makes perfect.
\nThere’s a charming moment where Mimi points out that Roger thinks she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend, and Mimi receives this information as if it’s flirtation. Can I please have a light for my candle? Also I resemble the woman whose death permanently destroyed your psyche. Why can’t you just do heroin about it and move on: The Musical.
\nWe also learn that Mimi is a stripper at the Cat Scratch Club (that’s where she works, she dances). This brings us to the most confusing line in the entire song: Roger says he didn’t recognize her “without the handcuffs.”
\nI do not look down on stripping. I think it’s a perfectly valid profession. I do, however, believe the income could theoretically be applied toward rent.
\nBut more importantly: where were these handcuffs positioned so that Roger could not recognize a presumably naked woman as the exact same near naked woman currently shivering in his apartment? Were they on her face? Were they obstructing her bone structure? Were they personality-altering handcuffs?
\nIf handcuffs make someone unrecognizable, then the entire justice system is built on a lie. Every mugshot is now legally ambiguous. Your honor, that was me in handcuffs. This is me without handcuffs. I trust you can see these two identities are completely different.
\nNext, Roger—who has fully transitioned into I’m A Drag Who Hates Fun—is like maybe don’t do heroin anymore, it turns out it’s bad for you.
\nHe has a line where he tells Mimi he used to have all her symptoms because he was a junkie, which is objectively helpful medical information delivered in the least persuasive way possible.
\nMimi loses her heroin, which creates an opportunity for Roger to observe, from above, the exact trajectory of his remaining years.
\nThey’ve already used all their matches due to their ongoing failure to understand candle mechanics, but she eventually finds it. This seems to resolve things emotionally for her.
\nThey then introduce themselves by name, which feels late.
\nRoger should not be around this person. She is a bad influence. Unfortunately, all of Roger’s friends will soon explain that he is actually the villain for not immediately embracing heroin, emotional devastation, and whatever is happening with this candle.
\nIn conclusion, Light My Candle is a beautiful story about two strangers who refuse to pay their rent or utilities and lack the technical skills to operate a candle. Over the course of the song, they learn nothing, solve nothing, and run out of matches. The candle never successfully lights the loft, but it does light the path toward them learning each other’s names, which is the first step toward the incoming emotional damage that is this musical.
\nMy brother says this has spoilers in it so if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know what happens in it you shouldn't read this :(
\n-------------
\nOk, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate movies. I just think the best picture nominees should be of a higher standard. Parasite was incredible. Arrival probably should have won best picture but lost to Moonlight, a movie I am told is very good but I have never watched but I swear it’s not because I’m racist. I have not been in the mood for that movie and also I regularly forget it exists. Every single thing I write sounds more racist than the last thing I wrote.
\nMy obvious racism aside, I don’t think it’s fair to just put Emma Stone in a movie simply because it will then be nominated for best picture. She’s Oscar bait. She could be in a movie about lizard people attacking mars and they’d nominate it. They’d invent a new category to nominate it even harder if the lizard movie was in black and white.
\nBugonia was largely fine. I like Jesse Plemons. The idea of people going insane and thinking successful people are aliens makes sense to me - it seems so unachievable it must be space magic. Shaving her hair felt unnecessary and just a tad sexist because really you think women get their power from their hair? But to get an Oscar you do have to bravely shave your head on film (I’m looking at you Anne Hathaway, Les Mis, 2012).
\nSo she somehow manipulates these two dummies into taking her to her office. Note: other things happen in between the head shaving and the visit to the office they just aren’t worth mentioning.
\nOh shit I forgot they also covered her body in antihistamine cream so she couldn’t send a distress signal to the Andromedans (space peeps). Something about the lunar eclipse is significant. I think it’s how space people can get into Earth’s orbit? I don’t care. Fuck space.
\nI am remembering a lot more about this movie now. I think they electrocute her a bunch because they think she has a higher pain tolerance because she’s a Andromaaeidlit or whatever.
\nThe brother of Jesse Plemons dies somehow. I cannot confirm how. It definitely happens in the basement.
\nJesse Plemons and Alien Anne Hathaway go to her office and she’s like go in that closet and it’ll transport you to planet Ajfalsdfkljf. And he’s like ya sure. But then his suicide vest explodes (forgot to mention, he was wearing a suicide vest).
\nAlien Anne Hathaway is knocked out and put in an ambulance and then she’s like absolutely fucking not, goes back to her office and goes into her closet (gross, probably filled with Jesse Plemon’s body parts) and then is transported to her mother ship (BIG REVEAL SHE IS AN ALIEN) where she and her colleagues all appear to be furries.
\nHonestly? 5/10, I did not hate it.
\n", "author": { "name": "Mary Delaney" }, "tags": [ ], "date_published": "2026-02-16T17:17:35-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-16T17:26:32-05:00" } ] }