Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON*

Polls, politics, postpunk. Friendly Writer and cohost of @Political_Beats at @NRO. Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

Don't make politics your religion; your gods will always be overthrown.

[Liz Mair @LizMair]

“Amy Acton won’t debate me so I’ve decided to self-immolate and preemptively destroy other Republicans on the Ohio ticket.”

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

@MattLoewen59 I think he'd laugh at the PIRANHA II joke at least - but punch me for my opinions about the AVATAR films.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

It occurs to me that 100 years from now, if people are still watching James Cameron movies, it will be a critical commonplace that he peaked with his first major film.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

@Ronin72 I was just discussing this w/@ScotBertram on our @Political_Beats Patreon ep - we both emphatically agree that THE TERMINATOR beats T2. A structurally perfect film.

[National Review @NRO]

University of Chicago students want Congress to repeal the 1958 Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions after a notorious market manipulation scheme. | @JohnPuri2026

https://t.co/LoZbBTl80e

[𝐉𝐚𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭 ⚓️ @jaycost]

The fact that so many self-proclaimed experts who make a living on polling and elections accepted fake results is really striking.

[jeremysenderowicz @senderowiczj]

Unfortunately for the GOP, Ds have a pretty extensive history of freaking out regardless of how good or bad their prospects are.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

You do it to yourself, Vivek - and that's what really hurts.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

I think we can call a wrap on the idea of Vivek Ramaswamy as governor of Ohio, at this point.

I don't regret a word of this long-overdue thrashing. The latest at @NRO: https://t.co/oS2JbhAMSs

[Sean T at RCP @SeanTrende]

This is super-exciting. If you go to the RCP website, you'll see the "RCP + AI" button. Signing up (which you should do with whatever email you use for AI) will send you to instructions on how to add a connector that you can then use for research into RCP's poll database.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

@SeanTrende @baseballcrank Darnit and just as the cycle is coming to an end!

But no joke, I have been looking for this for YEARS in my writing.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

This was an incredible episode (and surprisingly brisk!), and Part 2 will only be more fun. The Cure/1978-1984 on @Political_Beats, w/guest @derekwilc, at @NRO! https://t.co/5x6xEM6d7P

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

This can't be true, but I don't care, I want it to be.

[BENZO-KAZOOIE @BENZOTOOIE]

My wife watched Grey’s Anatomy for a bit and here are some REAL plot lines:

-A man has extra arms growing out of his back he calls “Angel Wings” and it’s implied he can hover with them

-A dead dad possesses his son to perform surgery on his sister. The son’s not a surgeon he’s a janitor who just broke into the OR

-A man fell 40,000 ft from a plane and came in with ONE BROKEN LEG

-A man gets crushed in a trash compactor so they do surgery at the dump using trash as tools. They hum the Fat Albert theme during

-The hospital’s swamped because “a guy dressed as a clown blew up a hospital downtown” implying they’re in Gotham City and the Joker is real

-A burglar uses explosives to blow open a safe, the door then imbeds in his chest and they need a locksmith to open it so they can perform surgery

-Jared from Subway is a recurring character

-The main doctor has a migraine so bad she can freeze time. It’s not played metaphorically, she’s physically moving things

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

A wonderful and telling factoid about Vivek Ramaswamy, emphasizing that the minute people heard him speak he dropped in popularity. (courtesy @JohnPuri2026)

[Shawn @ShawnHils]

voters: I have to choose between food and getting to work

Paxton: (slurring) talafreako wants to trans your kids

Ramaswamy: amy acton was raped by her stepfather. can she be trusted to lead?

Trump: ever stare at the small of a man’s back

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

@burn_the_bill @DanFriedman81 @Catuarus dude, actual writers use appositve clauses all the time, and em-dashes constantly.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

@jstannehill Iran is Trump's version of the Livonian War.

[Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* @EsotericCD]

This was written on January 20th, a month before Trump launched the Iran war.

[Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81]

“The Simpsons” was a beloved animated sitcom that ran for ten legendary seasons and concluded in 1999. The show was celebrated for what was widely perceived as a near perfect run that wrapped before it wore out its concept and overstayed its welcome.

Creator Matt Groening and showrunner James L. Brooks famously decided to bring the show to a conclusion after experiencing the negative audience reaction to the season 9 episode “The Principal and the Pauper,” in which it was revealed that the school’s principal was actually an impostor who had stolen the real Seymour Skinner’s identity. Brooks did not want to sully the show’s legacy by doing a bunch of weird episodes as the franchise slid into mediocrity and cultural irrelevance, so the writers and cast decided instead to go out on top and end things on a high note.

However, because of its centrality in 90s pop culture, a long-running Internet joke is to pretend “The Simpsons” is still on the air, a premise that gets more absurd and deranged with each passing year. If this show were still producing new episodes, it would be in its 38th season now, and most of the voice cast would be in their 80s.

The joke is to imagine how distorted this charming show would have become if it had been stretched out to more than 800 episodes. Comedy posters on “weird Twitter” used to try to top each other by making up terrible ideas for what modern episodes of the show might be like.

For example, a viral 2012 tweet imagined an episode where Lady Gaga helps Lisa Simpson with her self esteem. In 2019, popular shitposter Megan Amram originated the premise of Bart Simpson becoming a men’s rights activist to protest a gender-swapped reboot of “Itchy and Scratchy.”

But perhaps the most elaborate Internet “Simpsons” joke was a 2017 YouTube mockumentary “The Problem With Apu,” in which the comedian Hari Kondabolu ironically pretended to be offended by the charming and innocuous convenience store owner character Apu.

Everyone thought this was hilarious, especially since the show had been off the air for nearly two decades when the mockumentary was released. So, Twitter ran with the joke by pretending to “cancel” Apu, and the viral gag memorably resulted in the character’s voice actor, Hank Azaria, recognizing the meme by promising never to perform the character again, which everybody thought was really funny since Azaria had been retired for years.

Now, nearly a decade later, fans are pretending that the show — which has now been off the air longer than most people tweeting about it have been alive— has brought back the “cancelled” character with a new racially-appropriate voice actor.

I actually don’t think this is that funny, and I kind of think the gag of pretending “The Simpsons” is still airing new episodes has overstayed its welcome, a mistake the actual show “The Simpsons” would never have made.

If you haven’t seen this 1990s classic, which — and I cannot emphasize this enough — ended after 10 seasons in 1999, you can watch all the episodes on Disney+ (except the one with Michael Jackson that got pulled from streaming).