Earlier this year, when John Early dropped his wild and genre-defying HBO special Now More Than Ever, the comic was busy on the picket line with his fellow Writers Guild members. But now that the strike is over and he’s back to work, we finally have the chance to ask the Search Party star all our burning questions about the bewildering state of culture today, from gays forgoing the use of deodorant to that one tech CEO trying desperately not to age. Following in the footsteps of none other than Deepak Chopra, we tapped Early to take this week’s Rorschach Test, in which he sounds off on Bryan Johnson, Instagram infographics, Jacob Elordi’s handbag collection, and the former Congressman George Santos.
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GEORGE SANTOS
“Full beat. I’ll lose the weight and I’ll play him.”
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INFOGRAPHICS
“We have to move on. We have to go deeper. My issue is the uniformity of aesthetic. It’s always a weird, kind of milky rainbow gradient.”
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FYC CAMPAIGNS
“Demoralizing but necessary, I guess.”
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BRYAN JOHNSON
“Full beat. He obviously has an inch of foundation on in all his photos and a really bad dye job, too. He would look so much better if he just let himself go. It’s perverted. He’s a pervert.”
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WEGMAN’S ON ASTOR PLACE
“Wait, wait, wait. What is that?”
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COLE ESCOLA
“Barbara Stanwyck. Our Home Out West is a masterpiece. They’re one of my dearest friends ever and just a god. We don’t deserve them.”
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RESIDUALS
“Never seen one. If we were in the ’90s and I had the career that I have now, I would be living in Bel Air from residuals alone.”
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MATT RIFE
“I don’t know her. I’ve never seen Matt Rife’s work. I know that people are really talking about him right now. He’s someone who the perverted Instagram algorithm has pushed to my discover page because Instagram thinks that I’ll think he’s hot, maybe purely based on his jawline. So I associate him with the weird mukbang videos that are also on my discover page.”
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TAX EVASION
“Shakira.”
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“HEY, HANDSOME.”
“Hey, handsome is funny. I’m always like, So, I’m fat?“
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SPOTIFY WRAPPED
“I think this is another huge problem with culture right now. This is a sickness in gay film Twitter, everyone listing their favorites of everything. There’s a lot of voluntary ranking going on and I think it’s one of the many ways that social media is keeping us in a permanent state of adolescence. And I just don’t like it. It’s unbecoming.”
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JOHN WATERS
“Daddy.”
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CAREERISTS
“What? I have this low-grade hum of panic that you’re saying a pop star I don’t know. What are my thoughts on careerism? I don’t know, we should all just have kids.”
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JACOB ELORDI’S HANDBAGS
“I think I really like them. I think they’re so chic. It doesn’t feel like a kind of opportunistic gender play. It actually feels authentic to him, and really fucking chic.”
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CUM GUTTERS
“Okay, I have a little story, which is that I used the word ‘cum gutters’ in my special and a sweet PA on the crew witnessed an HBO executive googling ‘cum gutters’ on their phone during the live taping. But as far as my own relationship to cum gutters, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in person.”
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LEASHING CHILDREN
“I mean, who’s to say what I would do if I had kids. If I had kids in New York, I would definitely leash them.”
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DUVET COVERS
“’I would say I’m really starting to understand the importance of straightforward cotton. When I went to college in 2006, they were really pushing jersey on younger millennials and I totally fell for it. But I dated someone who was very, very serious about the breathability of bedding and it’s really changed my life. You cannot sleep with some synthetic duvet cover.“
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ASSIGNED SEATING
“I think this is the Resy-fication of culture right now, which is that you have to have a smartphone and you have to be type-A to enjoy any part of culture. You can’t show up to a restaurant and get a table spontaneously. You can’t walk into a movie spontaneously. I really think we have to do away with this stuff.”
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EMMY VOTERS
“Absolute angels. What will we do without them? Really, just physically gorgeous.”
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LAUGH TRACKS
“’They take me back to watching The Brady Bunch every morning before school in third grade and being really kind of disturbed.“
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RON DESANTIS’S HEELED BOOTS
“Oh my god. I haven’t seen them. Can I look them up? [Looks them up] Wait, wait. This is crazy. It’s giving Ginger Spice.”
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GOING SANS DEODORANT
“I think I actually love it. Let’s all be more French.“
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HOUSEWIVES UNIONIZING
“Listen, unionize every workplace. I’ll be on the picket line in solidarity with them when they need me.“
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GOING ON A WALK WITH YOUR COUSIN
“I wish I could say what I really feel. You’ve just made me Christmas crazy.”
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