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The Good Place‘s Janet is not a robot. Or a woman. It’s not exactly clear what she is actually, not after so many reboots. But what we do know are two things: She has the very best outfits in the afterlife, and actress D’Arcy Carden is a national treasure. No, sorry, that’s selling her short. She’s an inter-dimensional treasure that transcends time and space. She doesn’t play one supernatural being wonderfully, she also plays Bad and Neutral Janet too. Sometimes she even has to be every member of the cast, as happened in the season three mid-season finale. At one point that tour de force performance involved Carden playing Janet-Eleanor pretending to be Janet-Jason so she could talk to Janet-Chidi. (She should win multiple Emmys next year just for that scene.)

She’s turned what was a sentient wealth of knowledge in a dress into one of the best, most complex, most interesting, and – most importantly – most hilarious characters on television. It’s impossible to pick our all-time favorite moment of hers, but we don’t have to now that NBC put together a montage of her finest moments. And we have your exclusive first look at it.



New theory for the show: the Good Place is wherever Janet is. In our world the real Good Place is getting to watch D’arcy Carden, including even when she spent a couple of hours in Janet’s void.

You know a character is amazing when we’re thrilled to watch them do nothing.

Featured Image: NBC

Writer: Kieron Gillen / Artist: Stephanie Hans / Image Comics

Die #1 was a late entry to the 2018 comic book market, but it immediately left a lasting impression, so much so that it still stands in my mind as one of the contenders for best comic book series debut of 2018. Die #2 does the equally, if not more, impressive task of maintaining the high quality of exposition and visual intrigue, and even the recap of the last issue is utterly brilliant it’s compactness and impact.

If Die #1 was a crash course into the premise of the comic, Die #2 is best likened to a crash course into the actual game mechanics of the fantasy world. In many ways, it’s like a second #1 because the entire aesthetic is drastically different. We’re fully entrenched in a saturated land of fantasy. Hans’ artwork captures the desolate ruins of a once flouring kingdom and shows the discomfort of 5 adults who are forced to take up the mantles of literal past lives in order to confront a former delusional friend. It is haunting and terrifying, unifying the best elements of horror and high fantasy and is a great visualization of Gillen’s twisted machinations.

Gillen easily continues the eerie tour de force he started in the first issue. The pivot from emotional nostalgia to an encompassing overview of the new setting and the mechanics of the game are enthralling. Gillen’s metafictional attempts to examine the different classes of old school tabletops is a fascinating reflection of the types of people who used game as escapism. And the brilliance of all of this stems from Gillen’s hyperbolically deep understanding of trope.

Dictator. Fool. Grief Knight. Neo. Godbinder. Grandmaster. All of these are new concepts that have roots and origins in old rulebooks. Gillen’s greatest strength is his ability to manipulate that familiarity to be novel, to be unknown enough to be enticing.

Die is not slowing down. If you didn’t read last issue, please start 2019 right and start reading the single issues. Once you get started, you’re not going to be able to wait for the single issues. Whether you’re a fan of Dungeons & Dragons or not, this is a top tier fantasy comic that should be on everyone’s radar.

10 “Rulebooks” out of 10

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Colored pencils and guitars aren’t often mentioned in the same sentence, and with good reason: very few people on earth set out to master both. You can be a pencil person or a guitar person, but rare is the artistic genius who can wield the twain with equal aplomb. We have an inkling that YouTuber Burls Art may be one of those rare specimens, however; having previously made a snowboard out of (almost) nothing but duct tape, his sights have turned in a more musical direction to create a particularly virant musical instrument, as seen in this video we were tipped off to by Geekologie:

When you get down to it, it’s not a huge mystery how this was achieved, though how the gentleman maintained the patience to do it all is something we might wonder forever. With epoxy and resin, he made a solid block out of colored pencils (1200, in all), and cut and sanded it into shape. We’re guessing he’s a Vernon Reid fan, because this guitar is what you’d literally call living color.

Don’t skip over the parts where he’s sanding it down. The most beautiful wood shavings you’ve ever seen ensue, like glorious, inedible cotton candy. And yes, it really works in the end, as Mr. Art busts out a bit of “To God Be The Glory” by Mateus Asato, suggesting that perhaps divine inspiration was at work here. “Colors of the Wind” is the tune we were hoping for, but maybe he takes requests.

Image: Burls Art

We’re nearly three weeks into what is currently the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history, meaning hundreds of thousands of government workers are still unable to work or are being asked to work without pay, and there’s no end in sight.

Donald Trump says he “can relate” to workers who are struggling to pay their bills and also claims many of those workers support the shutdown. But Trump was born into enough privilege to provide him with a permanent financial safety net. Does anyone believe that he actually relates to the realities of how this shutdown affects people and families?

Some federal employees are lucky enough to have savings or a partner with steady employment to bridge the gap until the shutdown ends. But many government employees live paycheck to paycheck, many are single parents, and many simply can’t work for weeks or longer without pay.

Trump also says many of those furloughed and unpaid employees support his shutdown, though that seems increasingly unlikely as many are two days away from missing a paycheck, and are struggling to make ends meet. Some–hundreds, even–are struggling so much that they’ve taken to Go Fund Me to ask for assistance.

I AM NOT FINE WITH THIS! I need to get back to work ASAP!!! https://t.co/dwDXKjJrt6

— Julie Burr (@juliedotburr) January 5, 2019

According to CBS News, more than 700 campaigns have been launched on Go Fund Me to cover rent, bills, and other basic expenses. (Apparently, that advice to trade chores for rent didn’t go over well with too many landlords.)

Trump and his supporters have tried to convince Americans not to sympathize with furloughed and unpaid workers. They’ve declared them to all be Democrats or well-off pencil-pushers (as if they then don’t deserve to be paid for the work they do). But these campaigns have raised about $50,000 so far, and those that have received media attention have far surpassed their goals, making it pretty clear that people support the workers being hurt by Trump’s stubbornness.

There are 800,000 people not getting a paycheck right now. In those GoFundMe campaigns, there are stories of all sorts of people, from tax inspectors to janitorial staff.

There’s a single mother of six, who is also a veteran and is struggling to make ends meet.

There’s a federal employee whose wife is currently on unpaid maternity leave, taking their double income down to none, and with a newborn in their home.

There’s a TSA worker returning from unpaid maternity leave to a job that is now itself unpaid.

Meanwhile, the shutdown has led to actual deaths across the country. At least seven people have died in national parks since the shutdown began, which is not itself unusual, but because of the lack of oversight within the parks, at least one of those deaths in Yosemite went unreported for more than a week.

Sharice Davids, one of the two freshmen Native American Congresswomen, says the shutdown is hitting Native populations especially hard. She told NPR that she “spoke with one tribal leader who said that they actually lost a tribal member because they were unable to plow the roads so that an emergency service vehicle could get to him in time.”

Lives are literally at stake b/c the federal government is shutdown. Thank you @NPRWeekend for highlighting the shutdown’s devastating impact on Native communities. https://t.co/mBejLRQlqV

— Congresswoman Sharice Davids (@RepDavids) January 6, 2019

In his Oval Office address last night, Trump called the need for a wall “a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.” There is clearly a crisis of the soul happening here but it has nothing to do with a wall and everything to do with a man throwing a temper tantrum and causing destruction in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

(image: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)

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