Just Some Stuff for Sunday: Pretty Much Just South Park
Stuff I liked the week of July 21, 2025
Good morning, Sunday Stuffers! It’s time for me to share the stuff I read, listened to, or watched this week that brought me a little joy or comfort. What a crazy week. First CBS announced Stephen Colbert’s Late Show cancellation after Colbert criticized Paramount, who happens to own CBS. Then a few days later South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker inked a $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount+. And a few days after that, Stone and Parker released South Park’s season 27 premiere, which mocks Paramount and depicts a certain someone in bed with Satan. How brilliant is that? Which made me wonder…why did Scott and I stop watching South Park over 20 years ago?
So let’s get to it:
The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Santa on the Interwebs. Back in 1995, a college friend gave Scott and me a VHS recording of a crude looking stop motion cartoon. It was a short film created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone about a bunch of fourth grade boys in South Park, Colorado debating the true meaning of Christmas. It was the funniest, most foul-mouthed thing I had ever seen, and Scott and I played that VHS tape for anyone who visited our home. This was how we had to share content back in 1995. I cannot tell you the number of times Scott and I cried laughing watching those little cartoon kids. South Park the series didn’t debut on Comedy Central until 1997, so we felt very cutting edge.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut on Paramount+. Through the late ‘90s, Scott and I regularly watched South Park on Comedy Central, and we were very excited about the full length feature film. It was the summer of 1999, I had just turned 30, and I was newly pregnant when we saw South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut in the theater. Loved it. I bought the CD soundtrack, and I played that sucker A LOT. It’s juvenile and inappropriate and profane and dumb. It’s also super, thanks for asking.
6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park on HBO. So all that early love for South Park coupled with all the talk about it this week made me curious as to why we stopped watching the show regularly. In fact, I didn’t even know about the 2011 documentary 6 Days to Air until this week. It’s got a lot of writers’ room footage, interviews with several writers and animators who work on the show, and fun details about how they make a complete episode in just six days. It’s pretty incredible. So why did we stop watching South Park? It was partly just wearing thin, but also I decided it’s mostly SpongeBob’s fault. We had our son in 2000, and it’s hard to watch a dirty cartoon when you have a toddler around, so we added SpongeBob SquarePants to our regular TV watching rotation. No regrets. I still think the first three seasons of SpongeBob are brilliant, and our family still quotes one of those sea creatures on the daily. But now I might have to check out some of these new South Park episodes. I just have to find out a way to watch without Paramount+.
The Grody-Patinkin Family is a Mess. People Love It: The Interview in the NYT. Okay, this has nothing to do with South Park, but I love the Grody-Patinkin family. Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody have been married for 45 years, and they have spent a lifetime as successful actors and artists. I watched their kooky TikTok videos early on in the pandemic, and they are a delight. I’m rewatching Homeland right now, and Mandy Patinkin’s Saul Berenson is one of my all-time favorite TV characters. What a voice. In this NYT interview they (along with their son Gideon who started recording them during the pandemic) talk about finding viral success later in life, the ups and downs of marriage, being politically active, and what’s next for them.
Here’s yet another installment in my effort to revisit songs, bands, or music videos from the ‘80s and early ‘90s that merit a closer look. Rock star legend Ozzy Osbourne died this week. I think my favorite thing about Ozzy is that he wrote a classic HEAVY METAL song that is played by marching and pep bands all across the country until this very day. “Crazy Train” was written in 1980 by Osbourne, Randy Rhoads, and Bob Daisley about the Cold War, and high school pep bands are STILL blasting out that tune at various sporting events. I know this, because I listened to my son play it about a million times at football and basketball games in the 2010s, while he was drumming in his high school band. In fact, I just heard a high school band play “Crazy Train” in the local floral parade I attended earlier this year. Fifteen-year-old band geeks LOVE to say, “Ayy ayy ayy” and bang their heads. Rest in peace, Prince of Darkness. You were a true original.
