Sideshow

Political memes come and go, but “Thanks, Obama” has stuck around for seven years. Sean Rameswaram discusses all those videos, GIFs, and tweets with Nona Willis Aronowitz from Talking Points Memo and Barack Obama from the White House?!!

For his final episode, Sean Rameswaram traces the path of creative work he has personally posted, from blogging to sketch comedy videos to a truly ill rap posse. To close out the show, he gets the posse back together for one last song.

Special thanks to Jay Cowit for this. 

Like Sailor Moon and Ron Swanson before him, Hodor belongs to a special league of TV characters who have become memes. When Kristian Nairn received the casting call for a role in which he would only utter one word over and over, he was ambivalent. “Do I really want to do this?” he asked himself, feeling apprehensive about playing a verbally challenged giant who can only say “Hodor.” Fans of Game of Thrones can thank Nairn’s mother who, as an avid reader of George R. R. Martin’s novels, convinced him to take the part.

There’s fan art, a smartphone app, GIFs, supercuts, and even a joke in the official Google search results for “Hodor.” “That stuff really takes me to the fair,” Nairn says of his Hodor’s second life online. “I just think the character is endearing. Out of all the people in Westeros who are trying to cut each other’s throats, he’s really a pure soul – the only warm, fuzzy feeling you’re going to get.” 

Nairn is well-aware of how much power he yields as the actor behind the most beloved character on the internet’s favorite TV show — the most pirated show of all time. And he’s using this unique position to promote his other passion: house music. When Nairn isn’t shooting Game of Thrones in Ireland, he’s touring the planet spinning house. It’s a grueling schedule that has taken its toll. “I had to stop at one stage there because I was going to die. I hadn’t been home for nearly seven months.” 
Nairn is still touring regularly, but in smaller bursts. And he’s embracing the world’s bottomless enthusiasm for his other gig. His tour is titled “Rave of Thrones” and fans are encouraged to come dressed up as their favorite characters from the show. “Don’t blame me for that,” Nairn says, acknowledging the theme wasn’t his idea. “People are going to think you’re some twat,” he says. “I have this opportunity to have a supercharged DJ career. Who in their right mind is going to say, ‘No, I don’t think so.’”

Nairn has had more time to focus on music in the past few years as his character’s storyline has been put on hold by Game of Thrones’ writers. “I missed him last year. I missed the costume, even though it smells,” Nairn says, pointing out that his woolen getup reeks of death. After an episode featuring Hodor and his gang slaughtering rabbits, the wardrobe department covered his already-thick costume in rabbit carcasses. “If you look closely, you’ll see little rabbit feet and asses. There’s ears and stuff hanging off the costume. There are little faces. It lives in props and you can literally smell it before you see it.”

Hands: Hodor vs. Sean Rameswaram
(Sean Rameswaram)

WARNING: THIS EPISODE IS EXTREMELY PROFANE. The roast is a sacred tradition for stand-ups, but a group of comedians is taking it to ever more insulting places at the Comedy Store in LA. Sean Rameswaram speaks with host Brian Moses and comedian Jeffrey Ross.

Sean Ramesawram speaks with Humza Deas, who isn’t impressed by his nearly 100,000 Instagram followers, though he should be. He earned every one surfing subways, climbing bridges, and scaling New York City’s skyscrapers for the perfect photo.

It’s hard to determine whether we care about lyrics more thanks to the internet, but we’re figuring out new ways to show how much we care online. Sean Rameswaram talks lyric videos with The Atlantic’s Kevin O’Keeffe and lyric annotation with Genius’s Sasha Frere-Jones.

The internet is doing great things for advice columns. Andrew W.K., T-Pain, and Haruki Murakami are the latest to life coach, but Dear Sugar remains the fan favorite. Cheryl Strayed discusses her work as Sugar, and its recent re-launch as a podcast. 

In 2012, an unknown musician named Tobias Jesso Jr. got dumped, was hit by a car, and found out his mom had cancer. He went home, started writing songs, and everyone loved them — from Adele to Jimmy Fallon.

Al Madrigal has been The Daily Show’s “Senior Latino Correspondent” for years. In his funny new documentary, Half Like Me, he travels across the United States and Mexico to explore his ambivalence with that ethnic identity. Along the way, Madrigal discovers that he can’t really pronounce his own name. He also discovers that he doesn’t really care. 
While on his journey of self-discovery, Madrigal is joined by a number of well-known figures, including the Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos, who attempts to teach Madrigal how to pronounce his last name in Spanish. Though he’s patient with Ramos, Madrigal isn’t sold on his critique: “I think any way I pronounce my name is the right way,” he says. “For people to tell me it’s the wrong way is just absolutely ridiculous.”
“Being ‘half’ has always been confusing,” Madrigal says in the opening of his film. “White people think you’re Mexican — I’ve had people throw me towels at health clubs — and Latinos give me shit for not being Latino enough.” For most of his life, Madrigal has been called “pocho,” Mexican slang for being brown on the outside and white on the inside (think coconuts). By the documentary’s final frames, the comedian (who was born in San Francisco to a Mexican father and Sicilian mother) has come to terms with his identity issues. “It took the documentary to get there,” he says. Making it also helped him realize he wasn’t alone. “A lot of people feel the exact same way.” 

Since “The Fast and the Furious” in 2001, the series has become one of the most profitable movie franchises of all time. Feminist, novelist, and English professor Roxane Gay tells Sean Rameswaram how the movies are progressive – and maybe even brilliant.