I was going to say something snarky about how you use your free time, then I remembered I watch 3 to 4 MLB games per week.
Uptown girl?
I say this from the bottom of my heart… THANK YOU.
When I was younger, it absolutely pissed me off that parents/grandparents/teachers would give me shit for spending a few hours playing a game, while spending 4-5 hours every single night in front of the TV.
Exactement! As the French would say.
I’ve been surprised by how much of a YouTube fan I have become. I’ve curated my feed to be almost entirely people with soft Nordic accents talking about slow living, art and culture essays and little old ladies (and men!) chatting about cross stitch. Also some great stand up comedy in there. I’ve found it much easier to just bypass stressful and triggering stuff on that platform vs other platforms.
I love that song so much, it encapsulates my passion for class-conscious stories of forbidden romance. It’s dead simple but gets its hooks in me anyway.
No, all of if is true, not in the sense of some objective universal Truth being mumbled by some guy on YouTube with a hair style that could be fashionable only on Pluto, but in the sense of helping me understand how some influential people think, even if they’re reprehensible assholes, and how they therefore shape the sociopolitical landscape. A few of the names I didn’t mention, for instance, who were the subjects of one-on-one interviews with Maher, were Ron DeSantis, Rick Santorum, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vax lunatic currently in charge of America’s health. It’s made me less surprised, though no less saddened, that one Donald J Trump was elected not once, but twice, to the US presidency.
I like it for a completely different reason. “Like” might even be a strong word, for what I feel.
I was in a dance revue. Now I did ballet. But there was a 8 person young lady group who lost a Tap dancer. I was the only one able to fit in, what can only be described as a cocktail waitress , costume.
I had to learn a dance in a bout 20 min.
Everytime I hear the song opening I start a little march step, ball change, toe tap, ball change.
And oddly the song plays nearly everytime I go in a certain grocery store. It’s uncanny.
Of course, I have to dance it out. Just do. 
Theres a youtube of billy joel “masterclass” on youtube at UPenn(?)
If you can find “billy joel masterclass 6 of 12” on youtube, theres a very special “variation” on “uptown girl” at about 3:30 in the video. I hope you can see it.
Not sure if this will help you, but a lot of the time I have trouble with video essays if I don’t speed them up to the speed my brain can parse them. It also has a nice effect of obscuring any speech quirks that can be annoying.
Great clip. That Richard Chu got game. I liked Billy’s explanation of why he got someone else to play music he wrote.
I watched the rest of Big Joel’s video, it’s very good.
- He pointed out how hilarious it is that Bill Maher thinks he got some special insight into Trump during their dinner when it’s so transparently obvious that Trump was flattering Maher as a potential political ally and he played right into his hands.
- Maher seems to sincerely believe that we need to reach across the aisle and regard each other as full human beings…except woke people. Woke people are mocked, dehumanized, slandered and otherwise to be punching bags for Maher’s show, and we should assume the worst of their intent and never actually try to understand them. Woke also means whatever thing we hate right now.
- Maher repeatedly states that woke is why Kamala lost the election but seems disinterested in examining other factors such as her actual policy. The assertion that most voters would have voted Democrat if not for wokism is a pretty strong one, especially considering Bill Maher himself, who hates woke with the heat of a thousand burning suns, still voted Democrat.
- Bill Maher hates Islam, holy shit. In his terrible documentary Religulous he asserts that the violent passages in the Koran must mean that the Muslims he’s interviewed must be lying to him about their peaceful intent. He makes no such assertion about The Bible or Christians. He also later pointed to that same anti-theist aggressively bad faith documentary as evidence that you he seeks to understand and not ridicule, which is patent horseshit. He is a smug asshole to everyone in that film. (I’ve actually seen it, years ago, and that was about all I needed to see of that man.)
After finishing the video, I’m convinced Bill Maher is sincere in his convictions, which is a little sad, because they require a staggering level of cognitive dissonance. Also, sometimes he can be funny. He remains an unserious, uncurious pseudo intellectual hypocrite.
Bill Maher is a piece of vinyl. On his HBO show, his guests were the grooves. He provided a medium for discourse, as a vinyl record provides the medium for the sound to be decoded from the grooves. His comments at the end of the show were presented as humor, not serious discourse. In the end, the man himself is largely a cipher, but he has put forward interesting material, mostly through the mouths of others. It might just be time for him to return to the Avocado Jungle of Death.
I’d love to be in that store and turn the corner to witness that. 
Every description of Maher could apply to Joe Rogan with the name changed. It doesn’t help anyone’s case.
Really? Maher’s show is now in its 23rd year on HBO, in good company with John Oliver’s show on a network generally known for the quality of its original programming. Maher’s show has been nominated for no less than 41 Primetime Emmy awards. Joe Rogan is a dirsreputable podcaster who hasn’t been recognized for much of anything AFAIK, and in fact has had dozens of his podcasts pulled from the Spotify archives for being offensive or otherwise inappropriate. There’s a lot about Maher that one can legitimately criticize, but if you think Maher and Rogan are exactly alike I’d say your judgment meter is in serious need of recalibration.
Dang, and here I am typing “Maher and Rogan are exactly alike” and not even realizing it. How clumsy of me.
Joe Rogan has a bunch of fans who consider themselves enlightened centrists, same as Maher. “I may not always agree with the guests Joe Rogan has on, but I appreciate that he’s willing to present different perspectives and I often learn something.”
I hear this all. the. time. It’s a cliche at this point.
Joe Rogan also has two legs, same as Maher. Doesn’t make them similar in any meaningful sense.
Anyway, the thing you “hear all the time” you won’t hear from me about Joe Rogan, because I’ve never listened to any of his podcasts, have no idea what sorts of guests he’s able to attract, and have only the vaguest idea of who the guy even is, except that he’s apparently some species of obnoxious asshole with a reputation for spreading disinformation.
But for me, what you quote is literally true when it comes to Maher’s show. I’ve learned a lot from watching the show, sometimes in terms of objective facts that his research staff turn up, but more often just from the opinions of respected knowledgeable guests, and occasionally I just learn about the particular type of craziness that inhabits the brains of influential crackpots like RFK Jr.
As I’ve said many times, many of the criticisms of Maher are valid, but that doesn’t take away from the multi-faceted informative value of the show.
And yet you’re willing to state, with absolute confidence, that he’s nothing at all like Bill Maher?
I’m capable of reading Wikipedia.