Ahead on Differential

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #8.

I.

I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve spent the vast majority of my shift today bawling my eyes out at YouTube compilations of displays of sportsmanship. Like “Rainbow Road,” I don’t know why it’s such a reliable tearjerker. They’re not even great compilations; in the videos I sampled, the voiceover was generally lacking, the sequencing didn’t make sense, there was barely any context given. I wouldn’t follow these channels under any circumstances. Doesn’t matter. Waterworks, on. It all started with pulling up David Freese’s walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series and it just escalated from there. I was this close to just plugging “animals react to returning owners” or some such thing, but thankful I pulled out of the skid. I don’t know, man, I’ve got to kill time at work somehow.

II.

I first encountered Kiwi comic Guy Montgomery in 2014 during the first season of The Worst Idea of All Time⁠, a podcast where he and his friend Tim Batt watch notorious turkey Grown Ups 2 every week for a year and chronicle the erosion of their sanity. Since then he’s bounced around the Antipodean variety show circuit, appear on Taskmaster NZ and the Aussie version of sketch improv show Thank God You’re Here, among others. His magnum opus, though, is Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, a gleefully absurd comedy game show that grew out of a COVID-era YouTube show and a live 2023 edition at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The sets look like castoffs from The Price Is Right circa 1974 and “silly” doesn’t even begin to cover some of the spelling games played. There are five seasons available across two networks (one in Australia, one in New Zealand), and it’s simply the best shit.

III.

I think there’s only one of them left. I don’t know if it can see me but it sure as shit can smell me (on account of all the shit smeared on me). I think its legs are compromised enough that he will not stand much longer; its shins look like a bundle of spent drumsticks shoved into a tube sock. I lock in; you must always lock in. I run as fast as my gashy feet let me. Now it definitely sees me. I jump and connect with a flying knee and knock that sucker’s head clean off his torso. I put my fingers in the orifices bowling-ball style, and I jam the skull into the nearest recycling bin. I mutter, to no one, “touchdown.”

IV.

I haven’t listened to an album today, so I’ll reach back into the archives and recommend an old favourite. When I first got back into buying music on physical media, one of the first albums that was glued inside the changer was Animals by Pink Floyd. I have had Dark Side of the Moon in my life for too long for any other Floyd album to be my favourite, but Animals may be their best, and certainly ⁠Roger Waters’ best and most statement as a songwriter. Like, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” is the shit, even if it’s a hair unsubtle. But me, I’m a David Gilmour guy. “Dogs,” man. That’s the one. That’s two, count ‘em, two recommendation of albums from 1977 thus far, and brother, you can expect a bunch more by the time I’m through.

#dd