We're Back in the Email Business!

Please pardon the brief hiatus of a long time.

We know. It’s been quite a while since we sent out the beloved and tremendously infrequent companion newsletter to the Questionable Material with Jack & Brian podcast.

We know this because we’re sentient and semi-intelligent, but also because we had people commenting, emailing, and mocking us on social media. So, we caved. We transferred all the folks who originally signed up over to this, our new Substack. Just like podcasts and hyper-partisanship, Substack is all the rage these days. They also have an appreciation for the First Amendment, which seems to be in short supply.

In the time that has passed since the last newsletter, many things have happened. Cloth masks are no longer effective. Donald Trump is no longer on Twitter. Milk, gasoline, and fentanyl cost more. Some of you probably have had kids during this time, or at least kissed a lady, so congratulations. Others may have graduated college, gone through a bitter divorce, impulsively acquired a puppy, or qualified for the Army Rangers. We’re proud of you regardless. Nevertheless, no matter what you did in that window of time, there’s no topping what Brian’s favorite beer store guy did:

Also in that stretch of time, the listenership of our high-brow fart joke podcast has continued to increase. Very similar to inflation, but with less effect on the outcome of the midterms.

We’ve gotten some great advice from our Business Savvy Friend (BSF), who is the main reason we had a TV show back in the day. BSF says business savvy things like, “Why are you idiots starting a YouTube channel from scratch when your TV show channel has thousands of followers?” It’s a good question, and the answer is that we don’t know — but we’re great at puns and ‘80s pop culture references.

We took BSF’s advice to heart and commandeered the old B.S. of A. YouTube channel. Probably for the better, because now it’s called Questionable Material with Jack & Brian That title does much better in a search algorithm than The B. S. of A. — which we’ve learned is wholly comprised of words and letters that every search algorithm is trained to ignore. That’s the answer to the decade-old question Why aren’t B.S. of A. sketches on YouTube? They are, they’re just absurdly hard to find because the oh-so-clever show title effectively renders them invisible.

Speaking of sketches, the funny, albeit slightly preachy film Don’t Look Up is reminiscent of a sketch we did in 2013 called “Asteroid!” wherein we predicted not only a partisan government being incapable of doing anything to save us, but also a Trump presidency:

Sure, we miss having a prescient TV show, but without some moneybags fella footing the bill for a camera crew and talented actors from the now-defunct Upright Citizens Brigade, a podcast it is! Speaking of, Episode #116 just dropped. You can subscribe to it on any podcast platform via our website.

In closing, we will aim to be more regularly newslettery, because the weekly podcast episodes aren’t time-consuming enough. Maybe we will even have a subscription tier. Or maybe we won’t. It’s all fluid, like gender and Ukrainian borders.

In the meantime, we love feedback. What you like, don’t like, what you want more of, or less of. Suggestions, ideas, negative experiences with men’s grooming tools. It’s all good. Send it our way.