The Uffda Times-Picayune

HEY YOU, YEAH YOU. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU LISTEN TO THE VOICEOVER COMPANION/PODCAST BY READING THIS IN THE SUBSTACK APP OR ON YOUR LAPTOP OR WHATEVER, JUST NOT IN AN EMAIL.I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO IT AND I HAPPEN TO THINK IT’S PRETTY FUNNY TOO.KTHXBAI xDA NOTE FROM THE EDITORHello dear friend. I hope you are well. I am pleased to share the first newsletter in a little while. I took a break in September because writing wasn’t fun. Now it is again. Huzzah!This week is a normal newsletter, a real return to form. I’m reviewing a wrestling show from a month plus ago, ranting about Microsoft Teams, and, in and Uffda Times-Picayune first, a work of fiction! Stick with this one to the very end, because, for fun, I wrote a very short screenplay inspired by my first visit to one of St. Paul’s first licensed dispensaries as a kind of creative writing exercise. Let me know what you think unless you don’t like it then please don’t tell me.Thanks so much for reading, it really means a lot to me. It also doesn’t mean much to me if you don’t, because I write for myself because it’s fun and I like cracking jokes. Can’t we learn to laugh again?Celebrate UTP’s triumphant return with a celebratory subscription. Go ahead, use a burner, I don’t care.I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING PUT YOUR DAMN AIRPODS IN AND LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE EVEN IF YOU READ ALONG, AND LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING.I WON’T ASK AGAIN!RINGSIDE WITH UTPBRAWL AT THE MALL: LOCAL WRESTLING AT MALL OF AMERICA REVIEWEDSeptember 4, 1995 started like any other day at the Mall of America. Minnesotans and tourists alike shopped ‘til they dropped. I’m sure the line for the Pepsi Ripsaw was longer than anyone would reasonably expect. We still called it Camp Snoopy, damnit.That night, like many others, a crowd gathered in the Rotunda. This event space is rented for one-off spectacles or other carny-adjacent presentations. I’d argue the Rotunda’s most prominent tenant in recent years has been that waterskiing squirrel(s) that show up once every six months.It’s 1995, and there’s not a squirrel in sight. Instead, hundreds of wrestling fans lined the ledges of the four levels of the megamall. It was the home of the taping of the first episode of Ted Turner’s WWF rival World Championship Wrestling’s (WCW) Monday Nitro, the first strike in the so-called “Monday Night Wars,” where Turner’s TNT aired WCW wrestling at the same time as WWF’s Monday Night Raw. This was the first viable competitor to Vince McMahon’s WWF, and at one point surpassed him in popularity. All Elite Wrestling (AEW), my beloved weekly wrestling show, is the spiritual successor, airing on the once-Turner-owned TBS and TNT, just like Nitro. AEW even calls their flagship show, which premiered on TNT Dynamite, a clear nod to Nitro.That episode is legendary—the vibes in the Rotunda are palpable, and the show is well-known for the match between Ric Flair and Sting, two of the biggest stars in wrestling at the time. You can still watch this episode on Peacock if you have it. I did not.30 years later, my partner and a friend joined hundreds of wrestling fans gathered in the Rotunda yet again. This wasn’t on TV, but was local wrestling promotion F1RST Wrestling’s Saturday Night Nitro, a spiritual successor that captures the same crazy energy only a public event in a giant megamall could do. The combination of paying marks like us with random tourists getting ushered away for standing around too long made for an extremely high-energy crowd, at least most of the time.We were on the third floor, which IMO was the best spot to be for the money. We paid $30 for our tickets and we stood right on the railing for the whole show. We had a great view of the ring, the walkout tunnel, and opportunities to people watch mallgoers.We got there pretty early and were lucky enough to see a match between fan-favorite Big O. Possum and Heavy Metal Lore during the pre-show. Big O. Possum is exactly what he sounds like: a big opossum. He has a pouch, as North America’s only native marsupial, and it holds Joey, a small opossum joey he occasionally throws at foes and he “bites” them. It’s a really funny bit.The actual show was electric. I won’t review all of the matches but a few of the highlights.We opened with Ryan Cruz taking on F1RST Wrestling Grand Champion Devon Monroe. The title used to be called the Wrestlepalooza Championship, after the semi-annual wrestling show they hold at First Avenue, typically in January and a special pride month-themed edition in June. Well now they can’t use it because those snakes at WWE decided AEW having a pay-per-view needed to have WWE counter-programming and sloppily announced they were reviving the WrestlePalooza branding for the first time since 2000. Thankfully the PPV was a total flop.Ryan Cruz is a lot of fun; he’s a great wrestler, but the highlight of his matches are always his walkout, which he does as he leads a group sing-along of Creed’s hit “Higher.” Devon Monroe exudes what he calls “Black Sexellence,” and is known as the Twin City Twister. He’s a high flyer who has been a mainstay for wrestling promotions across the Midwest. Unfortunately, he didn’t hold out and Cruz became champion.The women’s fatal-four-way featured three former WWE and TNA stars alongside F1RST mainstay and fan-favorite (particularly among my friends) Free Range Kara, the only wrestler certified by the USDA. She didn’t pull it off but the match was nuts.Another fatal four-way featured national indie wrestling darling Danhausen, who has been described as “Conan O’Brien possessed by a demon,” juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust Jordan (I saw him at the state fair but didn’t say hi lmao), Houston-based women’s star and now former Uptown VFW champion Hyan, and perhaps the F1RST fan favorite Brandon Gore, whose gimmick is that he is a conspiracy theorist who wears a tinfoil hat. A F1RST staff member handed out tinfoil hats for everyone to wear. I wore mine the entire time. Big Wrestling is watching!Jordan won, but not before such shocking moments as Danhausen dumping his signature jar of teeth on Hyan and Danhausen’s hexing powers being disabled by Brandon Gore’s tinfoil hat.There was a definite low point, 58-year-old Ultimo Dragon was booked to wrestle Shane Black, whose gimmick is that he’s a lifeguard from the sandy shores of Edina (there are no bodies of water in Edina). Ultimo is a long-time favorite and staple of Japanese wrestling. He is in shape but God watching him wrestle was rough. He cut a promo after the fight, likely because the crowd was not popping for anything during that match. Even Shane’s loud whistles and sunblock-covered nose couldn’t save it. The promo was…not great, but I guess I’m glad to say I saw Ultimo wrestle.Local hero Matt Honey was helped by Swoggle, known in WWE as Hornswoggle. Together they took down Heavy Metal Lore, a massive man.My personal favorite wrestler is Mr. Williams, whose gimmick is that he’s a teacher. He is a teacher in real life, but his character is a heel, yelling at kids in the crowd, writing detention slips, and using his lanyard as a weapon. He comes out to Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” and is an absolute riot. My favorite thing to yell at him is that “I bet you supervise unpopular extracurriculars!” Mr. Williams took on local rapper Nur-D, who made his wrestling debut. It was a good showing, and he’s since been billed at another show, so his skills will only improve. I just think like 40% more people need to know who Nur-D is so that his pops will be huge. Nur-D won.The final match was incredible. Two high flyers (they’re brothers) were part of a four-way with perennial national indie wrestling circuit mainstay Gringo Loco (he is a fat, middle-aged, white luchador and he is fucking incredible at wrestling), and a wrestler I wasn’t aware of, Kody Lane, whose gimmick is being a flamboyant cowboy, complete with black tasselled chaps witih pink accents, including flamingos and a matching jacket. Despite being like…7’ tall, Kody could do swanton bombs like you wouldn’t fucking believe. There were a lot of gnarly bumps too—the most memorable being when Gringo did an aerial move onto the other three, who were waiting on the floor (no mat or anything, just good old MOA tile floors) and my God I thought we watched someone’s career end. But JK! I got worked.Great show as always. If you wanna tag along to a show, F1RST does them year-round and, in my opinion, they’re the least-carny promotion in the Twin Cities. If I’m available, I’m down to go.…AND ANOTHER THINGWHY DOES MICROSOFT TEAMS NOT KNOW HOW TO OPEN FILESI know it’s been a while, and this may seem like a trivial complaint in today’s tragedy-laden world, but my God, what is going on at Microsoft and why do they keep fucking with their GOAT-ed Office Suite.I don’t know what it is about the AI bubble, but it’s made Microsoft forget that first and foremost, their main customer are businesses, governments, you know, people trying to get shit done. But hey, from the company that gave us Windows 8 and rapidly sunset Windows 10, causing countless numbers of perfectly good PCs to instantly become e-waste, what can you expect.My specific gripe comes from the fact that Microsoft’s inability to figure out what the fuck the cloud is. At work, you usually have the following places you can store files:* Your local PC, the easiest, internet-free way to save your stuff. It’s also discouraged because no one else can work on those files when not in use.* Shared network drive, which in the olden days was used to share files on your work’s network, now you can usually access it with a VPNGreat—this is standard stuff for most office work environments. But on top of these two options, Microsoft has provided new ways to fuck up your workflow:* Microsoft Teams, which brings you all of the worst parts of Slack with a watered-down version of Skype (God, remember Skype?), but also has a cloud file sharing environment that

EPISODE 2 | JULY 4, 2025 | UTP SALUTES 2025 YEARS OF AMERICAN HEGEMONYWhen a reasonable newsletter author is driven to do unreasonable things, you might expect the worst.But when a “““reasonable”””" man is driven to do (extremely) unreasonable things, you probably should expect the worst.Just over 21 years ago, on June 4, 2004, a local libertarian extremist turned internet folk hero, Marvin Heemeyer, began a violent assault against his enemies: the town of Granby, CO and its crooked, corrupt government officials.Their crime? Not paying for a $42,000 sewer hook-up he requested, not getting the overvalued amount for a portion of property to be used for a concrete plant he campaigned (and lost) against, among other embarrassing, public incidents. He received a “sign from God” that told him to use his Komatsu D355A bulldozer he purchased for $16k—and failed to sell (remember, he couldn’t afford the $42k sewer hook up, but somehow had $16k to drop on a used bulldozer)—to “enact vengeance” against the town. Unbeknownst to local authorities, Heemeyer had, over a year and a half, turned his used bulldozer into an extremely makeshift tank armored with thousands of pounds of concrete, dubbed by the media as the “Killdozer.” Over the course of the day, he attacked the city hall/library (which was hosting a story hour for children), the offices of the Granby newspaper of record, public infrastructure like trees and traffic lights, political enemies’ homes. Nothing was safe. Throughout his violent rampage, police failed miserably to stop him. Allegedly, the governor of Colorado considered a 2-man Javelin missile crew on a Hellfire missile-equipped Apache gunship as a last resort.After his final building was smashed, the bulldozer was rendered inoperable, and he was found with a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound in the cab of his concrete construction coffin. Thankfully, the only person killed by the Killdozer was Heemeyer himself.I could keep reciting the Wikipedia article for Marvin Heemeyer, but I’ll let you fall down that wormhole. What I think is far more consequential, is how Heemeyer’s violence has been pigeon-holed as a sort of “hero of the common man” story that is supposed to be a celebration of everyday Americans standing up against the tyranny of the nanny state. Like if Ron Swanson got too hyper and took things too far.This leads me to a totally different kind of Killdozer, YouTube and Twitch’s killdozer_tv (or as Emily and I have Mandela Effect-ed it, killdozerr). I mentioned him briefly in the June 21st edition of UTP, but the crux of the content he has become known for are these “diet challenges.” He’s about as close as you can get to the platonic ideal of one of the internet’s beloved “himbos.”I knew there was a Himbo Watch, but really wasn’t expecting a Himbo Warning. Subscribe to get all the latest himbo alerts.But why the name “Killdozer?” Is this just one of 100s of radical right-wing messages inserted into every episode by creator Mikey Killdozer?Honestly, and I think you’d agree if you watch his videos, I struggle to believe he thinks about politics enough to have an ideology foundational or coherent enough to slide into his videos. Over the past few videos, we’ve seen a little more and more about his life. I think he’s a dumb, mid-to-late-20s hot guy who spends most of his time eating gross food, going on walks with his wife (who appears alongside him in videos, lately with increased frequency), gambling, playing World of Warcraft (Volmer looks amazing), gambling, and going to the gym. He’s closer to a golden retriever than a German shepherd or rottweiler. Who gambles.I don’t think he has anything in common with Marvin Heemeyer aside from bearing the name of his weapon of choice. If I were a betting man, like Killdozer, I’d probably wager that he just thought the name sounded cool.Here’s a list of all the “diet challenges” he’s done, which is his bread and butter—pun intended:* “The Marshalls Diet” - 7 days, only food and drink (no outside water) from Marshalls* “The Red-40 Diet” - 3 days, only food and drink (no outside water) that contains the controversial additive red-40* “The Protein Shake Diet” - 7 days, only protein shakes, NO OUTSIDE WATER (he almost died)* Last, but certainly not least is: “The Vegas Diet,” where he just…goes to Vegas.In multiple other videos, we see him sports betting, opening Counter-Strike 2 cases, opening Pokémon cards, playing and losing at slot machines, playing and losing at card tables, among other activities, like playing Fortnite, Minecraft, and World of Warcraft, which he also streams on Twitch.By all reasonable standards, this man has a gambling addiction.He apparently has a day job, but it’s not clear exactly what he does from watching the videos alone—he only says he “goes to the lab.” He will drop uncomfortably large sums of money, sometimes in the thousands, on baseball parlays. When he inevitably loses, I’ll credit him, insofar as he responds more or less neutrally. No big crash-outs, for the most part.But he really likes to open up Counter-Strike cases.My brother is a Counter-Strike player (I tried to be, too, once upon the time), and I had him over for a weekend recently. I showed him Killdozer—he was unimpressed. However, we got a glimpse of Killdozer streaming Counter-Strike 2.CS2, and the game it is deviated from, CS:GO have a mechanic where the more you play, the more likely it is that you’ll get a random drop (either in-game or after matches) for some kind of cosmetic item or a case. These cases are marketable on the Steam Community Market, a real in-game market where users can buy and sell cases to each other for real money in the form of Steam Wallet funds.My brother remarked that Killdozer was actually pretty good at CS, but was amused at his apparent strategy: which is to open a case in between every death, (about 5-10 times a game). For $2.50, you can purchase a key and use it to open a case. “Opening cases” on stream is one of Killdozer’s specialties, and his Steam inventory is public.Montuga, a website for tracking Steam inventory prices, estimates the cumulative value of Killdozer’s Counter-Strike 2 inventory at $54,953.05The sheer amount of money this man has spent is almost certainly in the thousands. If he opens 10 cases a day, that’s a minimum of $25. That said, you can use Steam Wallet funds to purchase more cases and keys, so perhaps it’s just a matter of recycling and upselling with some real money here and there. It’s unlikely he’s spent $55k on a free-to-play shooter that’s effectively been out for 13 years, but it’s safe to say he’s sunk in a lot.What’s most mind-boggling, is that this isn’t real wealth. You can’t really turn it into real money without going through a 3rd party marketplace, which don’t get me wrong, a LOT of people do, and at least it’s possible. Call of Duty will charge you literally $40 on cosmetics in your $80-100 video game. At least CS2 is free and you get to gamble. Case Tracker, a site that does what it says, reports that 32,000,000 cases where opened in the month of March alone. My God. Imagine if the casinos reported how many spins each machine had.I’m concerned for Mikey Killdozer in the same way I am concerned for anyone struggling with problem gambling.It’s now extremely easy to gamble, and venues like Counter-Strike cases are effectively casinos with some superficial restrictions and very few regulations around, at least in the US. This sequence from the 6/30 stream really sums it up. In just 60 seconds he warns a viewer “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” when they ask for a recommendation on what the best case for “getting started” would be. His warning is totally genuine. Moments later, he unboxes a knife valued at $475 and celebrates with goofy faces, opening more cases, and his “Get a knife, give a knife” rule to entice viewers to continue watch him gamble.Get an article, give an article. GIVE AN ARTICLE GIVE! AN! ARTICLE! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit uffdatimespicayune.substack.com

“When you go home today, especially you young kids, I want you to write in your journal one thing you felt while you were here.” - Senior sister missionary to us following our tour of Carthage JailNote from the author: Welcome to the very last main edition in this godforsaken series. I’m going to do some kind of haul-type rundown of the books and other paraphernalia I got on this road trip and in the making of this newsletter. New around here? Start with Part 1 now.This edition is longer than the rest and won’t fit entirely in an email. I recommend reading it on Substack, or listening to the podcast version of PtMiM:MM&MiM on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. All 8 episodes out now.Don’t forget to follow UTP on Instagram @uffdatimesAt long last, this is the place: the timely and well-deserved passing of Joseph Smith, Jr., the highly influential and controversial inventor of Mormonism.For 14 years, Joseph had constructed an absurdly successful fandom for his sloppily-retconned fanfiction of the New Testament, where America becomes the main setting and Jesus is no longer the main character. He also made a long, frequent habit of agitating those neutral or opposed to him and his cult.Joseph Smith was the poster child for recidivists; since the first issue of this limited series, I’ve mocked his frequent interactions with the criminal justice system. The man committed crimes, sometimes minor like a bar fight or scuffle, then would tell his followers that Satan will work to prevent him from prophesying by jailing him for his crimes, and it would obviously happen, which only emboldened the faith of his followers. If you can downplay petty/misdemeanor charges as politically/religiously-motivated, no one will believe authorities when you commit far more serious crimes (read: sex crimes).The legacy of the criminal prophet lives on in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), and their truly evil leader, Warren Jeffs, who continues to run his sex cult Mormon sect from prison following conviction for child sex abuse crimes in Utah and Arizona. They claim they are the only true successor to Joseph Smith’s church after the official church abandoned polygamy to curry favor with the US government in the late-19th century. This was just another in a long line of schisms after Joseph Smith left a power vacuum in 1844, with no heir apparent.But this power vacuum had to be created, and last week we saw the beginning of the end for Smith as he focused the vast majority of his time to three pastimes, none of which were particularly helpful to the creation of Zion:* Running for President on a platform of forcing the feds to dispatch troops to deal with “angry mobs” (curious…) and to abolish the carceral prison system (don’t ask why we toured not one but two jails on this trip),* Using the uniquely-granted political power of the Nauvoo city government to punish political enemies and religious dissenters alike, while protecting himself, and;* Being a philandering polygamist sex pest.It’s only fitting that the founder of the most American religion ever would also become the first presidential candidate to be assassinated during a campaign.This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons and Misery in Missouri. This week is our final regular edition: the dramatic conclusion to this several-month series about a three-day weekend road trip I did like four months ago.We visit Carthage, IL, a small town about 25 minutes from Nauvoo and the location of Joseph Smith’s death. We’ll take a guided tour of a jail (talk about a fun vacation) and we see the ugliest summer outfits on poor Mormon women stuck wearing garments (read: at least three layers) in the 95-degree humid-corn-sweat summer.Thanks for joining us.Avoid the awkward situation where I demand the destruction of your printing press because you besmirched me. Subscribe for free to receive new posts, and follow UTP on Instagram, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Trust me, I’ll know if you don’t.Before we can set out for Carthage and take the much-earned Dairy Queen lunch break around the corner from the jail, we have to catch up on what Joe’s been up to.As you’ll remember from last week, Joseph was in the throes of a presidential campaign that turned Mormon proselytizers into politickers as the campaign supposedly had a presence in every state at the time. A robust committee was set up to serve as a political and ecclesiastical body in the so-called “Theodemocracy” the Mormons planned to create.But at the same time, Smith made several significant revelations related to baptisms for the dead, making temple ceremonies more Freemason-like, and introducing polytheism, where faithful Mormon men will become gods themselves. As you might imagine in a world without widespread literacy but full of frontier justice and religious fervor, this was not well-received, especially as the details of Smith’s polygamy became harder for Mormons and outsiders alike to ignore.In May 1844, the same month that Smith’s Reform Party nominated him for President, William Law, a prominent local disillusioned ex-Mormon leader, announced the creation of a new newspaper: The Nauvoo Expositor.The Mormons’ usage of the press was the catalyst that enabled their sudden and astronomical growth. In fact, one of Smith’s first commands to the Mormons that arrived in Missouri was to set up a printing press and start publishing pro-Mormon propaganda. While he knew the pen is mightier than the sword, he also knew its power could be used against him.In early May, Law circulated a notice in town that the Expositor would begin publishing scandalizing information about Joseph Smith, specifically publicly exposing his polygamy, which was still secret at this point. Joseph Smith was enraged, as was the county prosecutor, who indicted Joseph on charges of perjury and “fornication and adultery” based on sworn affadvits from multiple former members. Smith publicly proclaimed that it was ridiculous to believe he was a polygamist and that all of the accusers are liars.On June 7, the Nauvoo Expositor published their only edition: a four-page paper featuring poetry and fiction stories, but also sworn testimony and statements from former Mormons putting it in the paper how mad they are at Joseph and Hyrum Smith for perpetrating and then lying about the Principle.Smith convened the Nauvoo City Council—he was mayor at this point—and declared a trial would be held to address the Expositor. In a sham “trial” that lasted just 2 days, Smith’s Nauvoo declared the newspaper as a public nuisance and called for the destruction of the printing press on June 10.An angry mob of over 100 men raided Expositor offices at Joseph Smith’s command, and destroyed the press. The backlash was immediate and intense. Local non-Mormons were incensed; this was a blatant attack on the First Amendment. TheWarsaw Signal and the Quincy Whig, two papers with a history of criticism of the Mormons called for the arrest of Smith and feared he would seek the same outcome for other critics.An arrest warrant was issued, but Smith petitioned the Nauvoo City Court, which he effectively controlled, to dismiss the charges, which it did. The Signal was outraged and ramped up attacks and scandalous coverage of the Mormons. On June 13, citizens of Hancock County petitioned the governor for assistance. In return, Joseph Smith declared martial law in Nauvoo and his 5,000-man strong force, preventing people from leaving or entering the area without approval from Smith’s effective theocracy.The governor responded by showing up to Carthage on June 21 and the Illinois state government breached Nauvoo by June 23. Smith was nowhere to be found, but two days later, Joseph and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in, along with dozens of other Mormons. The Mormons were all freed on bail except for a small handful, namely Joseph and Hyrum Smith.An important caveat to everything, not that it changes anything in my eyes, is that Smith was not exactly totally innocent: he had a pepperbox handgun smuggled into the jail.Joseph wrote up an order for the Nauvoo Legion to march from Nauvoo to Carthage and break him and his brother out of jail on June 27. Later in the day, a group of allegedly 200 or so men with their faces painted black approached the jail, allegedly incensed. Joseph Smith had assumed the Legion had heard his call. The Mormons had arrived.Joseph Smith turned to a jailer, who had grabbed his weapon to confront the mob, and said “Don’t trouble yourself...they’ve come to rescue me.”Before we even crossed into town, right next to the “Welcome to Carthage” sign, we saw a gun range, which was alarmingly close to to the highway and packed with hundreds of…uh…sportsmen firing guns without a care in the world. An apt welcome to the town that would murder Joseph Smith.We knew it was going to be busy when we were at Dairy Queen beforehand, and multiple Mormon families were dining as well, including a mom wearing the ugliest summer fit, just like an Old Navy color block striped shirt that so obviously had garments underneath. The poor woman must have been dying in the brutal, humid July heatwave in the middle of Tornado Alley. Our friend brought their cat inside, and we got a lot of stares from patrons.After enjoying God’s chosen frozen dessert, the Blizzard, headed across the street to the Carthage Jail.Like the angry mob, we rolled up to Carthage Jail in Carthage, IL. It’s a well-preserved jailhouse, and is more faithful to the original structure than the Liberty Jail we visited a couple of days earlier. Next door is a funeral home-looking single-story building serving as a visitor’s center. The sidewalk leading to the building is lined with cast signs describing Mormon tenets of faith and other bullshit. I got the vibe they were ripping off of the Stations of the Cross. The whole site is fenced in with a 9’ security fence.We were respectful as we entered and went into the lob

When I was in high school, 10th grade was the year we took American History, and I opted to take the Advanced Placement version of the class, colloquially known as AP US History (APUSH). If you don’t remember or your school declined to participate in the gifted kid industrial complex, these classes were billed as college-level courses and provided as a substitute for an honor’s class, but instead of providing college credit outright, you had to take a test and hope whatever college you go to will accept your score.I got a 3 on the APUSH exam. My second trimester was a breeze, an easy-A learning about post-Civil War and 20th-century American history. No problems there. But the first trimester? My teacher was a football coach who started every single 54-minute class period with a 10-25 minute “Convo Question” that was literally just the teacher shooting the s**t with us. It was fun, but painfully obvious that we weren’t being set up for success.I was never really required to learn much about pre-Civil War America. My PoliSci degree was largely focused on the modern era, and when I did learn history, it was almost always 20th century.You’ll be surprised to learn that in my search for learning more about the early Mormon church that national politics were always at arm’s reach from Joseph Smith, and thus, I know now who the Know-Nothings are, and why the Whigs were important, and the steamroller on civic life that was the Jacksonian Democratic Party.It’s really hard to overstate just how shockingly powerful Joseph Smith had become in the 14 years since publishing the Book of Mormon.When the Mormons arrived in Illinois, they elected not to yoke themselves to the Whig or Democrat wagons, instead opting to stay “neutral,” and take advantage of Smith’s massive voter base to sway politicians towards his whims.Nauvoo was the closest thing to the Kingdom of Zion that Joseph saw in his lifetime. Joseph Smith was the prophet, mayor, justice of the peace, and gave himself the title of Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, a militia with real legal authority with 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army.At the same time, Joseph Smith was amassing a, for lack of a better word, harem of “plural wives,” he was marrying in secret. He had successfully, on multiple occasions, pressured and coerced dozens of women and girls (remember: he was a pedophile) to be “eternally sealed” to him, whether they were married already or not.So what’s next for the Prophet? Running for President, obviously.This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Mormons, Martyrs, and Misery in Missouri. This week we're celebrating election day in Minneapolis with a bonus edition to cover Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president of the United States, something that did, indeed, actually happen. We know why he did it (he was insane), but what did he believe? What kind of bonkers policies does a conman criminal with no real political experience put forward in a long-shot campaign for President? What did his friends and followers think? Did it get him killed?Thanks for reading and listening.I swear to God there’s only one more mainline article and one more bonus and then I’m done with the Mormons. Stick around for the funnier ones and subscribe now.Joseph Smith had ambitions beyond his theocracy in Nauvoo: he wanted power, and he wanted power that was illusive.One of Mormonism’s hallmarks is the secretive nature about what they “actually believe.” Depending on how out of the loop you are, you’ll be shocked learning about the various America-centric beliefs, like both reviling and worshipping Native Americans, or their unique eschatology and beliefs about the afterlife. Or maybe you’re just as surprised as most TBMs to learn just how terrible Joseph Smith was and that he claimed to translate the book (he couldn’t read) using “seeing stones” and looking into a hat.The secretive nature lends itself to Mormonism’s cult-like tendencies, while also building fervor, zealotry, and a large in-group. I’d argue this is largely out of Joseph Smith’s obsession with Freemasonry, most of which can be traced to John C. Bennett’s brief time as Joseph Smith’s number one man. Bennett, a Mormon, urged Smith to join and by 1844, Nauvoo had not one, not two, but three Masonic lodges.Many aspects of Mormon temple ceremonies, like secret “grips”/handshakes, passwords, special names, special clothes, are stolen one-for-one with Freemasonry with added Mormon flair.However like the Mormons, Masons were the target of significant public ire throughout the first half of the 19th century. A shockingly powerful national anti-Mason movement began in the 1830s, who were courted away from their one-issue political party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and fell under the tutelage of the Whigs by 1838.The most baffling way this connects with our Mormons is not necessarily that President Andrew Jackson was a Mason, or that the Mormons planned to usurp Democratic power by joining the Whigs. Instead, we have to turn our attention to William Morgan, a prominent upstate New York (of course) anti-Mason who was in the process of publishing a book revealing all of the scandalous secrets of Freemasonry. Morgan was arrested on trumped-up charges, and was disappeared and likely murdered in 1826 in an act widely believed to have been carried out by Masons trying to prevent his book from being published. His death bolstered national anti-Masonic views and led to the creation of the Anti-Masonic Party.When William Morgan died in 1826, his wife Lucinda would remarry, and move to Missouri, where she converted to Mormonism. I don’t think it’s an accident, however, that Lucinda has been identified and is generally accepted to have been one of Joseph Smith’s first plural wives, because of course f*****g Joseph Smith would marry the widow of the most prominent and infamous Anti-Mason activist.Joseph Smith’s obsession with (and frankly jealousy of) Freemasonry led to perhaps the biggest innovations in Mormonism; many of the “revelations” from this time took an already high-demand religion and made it more and more cult-like, with secret rituals and teachings, barring all non-members from Temples, and one-of-a-kind theology like baptisms for the dead. And it all came from the Freemasons. I’m sure no one will ever have an issue with this.I bring this story up because it has multiple important intersections with Mormonism and the end of Smith’s life:* Mormonism’s secretive ceremonies are a sham, and whatever supposed divine purpose they have is really just so he could copy Masons,* Smith’s public support for Democrats in Illinois, on top of his private and public support for Freemasonry, pissed Whigs the f**k off,* His affair with Lucinda Morgan shows his promiscuity and carelessness with “the Principle” at the time; it doesn’t matter how prominent a Mormon woman or girl is: if Joseph Smith is interested, he’ll stop at nothing to get his way.You can probably imagine how a man as powerful and reckless as Smith would become paranoid. He feared and frequently risked his legal and physical safety, but also saw the fragility of his political and religious leadership.The arrival, ascension, and excommunication of John C. Bennett was proof Smith saw his church’s leadership, members, and political allies as disposable. And while the Anti-Mason Whigs and the Mason-friendly Jacksonian Democrats welcomed the Mormons, that didn’t last long. An angry mob always seems to be around the corner, will Illinois protect the Mormons when the mobs inevitably come to Nauvoo?Over the years since first arriving in Jackson County, Missouri, the Mormons had become intimately familiar with the legal system, even beyond Joseph Smith’s extensive arrest record. Mormons were frequently in DC advocating for protection from the angry mobs that always seemed to be wherever the Mormons went (weird how that works). They had earned and rightfully lost political protection in Missouri, but popular sympathy for fringe political groups during the Second Great Awakening meant the Mormons would find greater success in the years to come.In 1842, after Bennett’s excommunication, prominent Illinois politician and infamous Abe Lincoln rival Stephen Douglas publicly acknowledged that, while the Mormons benefited from positive political optics due to their persecution at the hands of the Missouri government, the tide of public opinion had shifted after “two years of popular sympathy.” Douglas would protect Smith one final time, blocking extradition orders to Missouri, which drew ire from the Whigs in Springfield and put the long-term legal and political prospects of the Mormons in Illinois in jeopardy.The Democrats abandoned Smith while the Whigs actively reviled him. He had demonstrated to his friends and followers that they were replaceable. But even if he had haters, he still had guns, a sham court, and the word of God.In late 1843, Joseph Smith was recovering from being “poisioned” (he blamed his first wife, Emma), and wrote to political leaders requesting Nauvoo be given independence as a separate territory but retain the ability to call federal troops to their aid. This was unsuccessful.Joseph Smith then wrote to five people who had announced their candidacies for the ‘44 election to see what protection/support the candidates would promise his 14,000 followers in Illinois. Only three replied and none of them made any promises to help the Mormons.Unsatisfied and paranoid, Smith took action. In January ‘44, Church leaders met in Nauvoo and decided that Joseph Smith would throw his hat (unclear if its the same hat he stared into to “translate” the golden plates) in the ring. He would announce his candidacy in February.His running mate (with Bennett now out of the picture) would obviously be longtime co-conspirator Sidney Rigdon, who many speculate was really the one pulling the strings of creating the more…religious Mo

Editor’s Note: You might have noticed I took September and almost all of October off. This was, in part, because Mormons have frequently been in the national news these past months, and almost entirely for bad reasons.My thoughts are with the community in Grand Blanc, Michigan. To quote Alyssa Grenfell: “nothing can ever justify violence against people for what they believe,” and no one should be murdered at church.Last time we checked in with Joseph Smith and his Saints, they were once again refugees. Joseph Smith was allowed to escape while in custody of the Missouri government and avoided justice for charges related to the 1838 Mormon War. Sidney Rigdon brought the flock to Quincy, Illinois, and a well-connected Mormon heard word of significant chunks of land for sale north of the city, along the Mississippi River in a relatively unpopulated community called Commerce. They got a good deal and the Mormons once again had a home.Commerce, Illinois, where they settled, was a swamp. It was a floodplain on a bend of the Mississippi River. Disease ran rampant among the refugees arriving by the thousands.In spring 1839, the Prophet arrived and declared that the city would be known as “Nauvoo,” which to his credit, is an actual word in Hebrew roughly meaning “they are beautiful.” I actually really admire Mormon place names, and Utah has more than anywhere else. Places like Provo, Orem, and Brigham City make me chuckle as uniquely Mormon places, and Nauvoo fits the bill all the same.Nauvoo became the Mormons’ first fifth attempt at establishing “Zion.” Joseph Smith’s thirst for power and willingness to antagonize neighbors was largely responsible for the many moves his sect made from their humble beginnings in 1832. A lot had happened, since then, and one would hope Joseph learned his lesson and toned it down.Well, he did not.Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons and Misery in Missouri. This week, we’re done with Missouri! Welcome to God’s (one-time) promised land, Nauvoo, Illinois. Joseph Smith claims power to Illinois’ largest city, introduces scandal via a different politically-connected sex pest, and reveals a curious new “Principle,” polygamy. Oh yeah, and we visit Nauvoo, the Colonial Williamsburg of Mormonism.Thanks for reading. (And listening!)The only art project I’ve ever spent real money to make happen was this stupid road trip. At the very least you can give me your personal information (you can then tell me how funny I am)Nauvoo was the largest and most politically influential city in Illinois during the 1840s.The US census doesn’t capture this, though. Mormons arrived after the 1840 census, and with Smith’s death in 1844, they would leave before the 1850 one, but for a time, the Mormon church was centrally located in Nauvoo, with converts arriving in record numbers. By 1842, the town had a whopping estimated 14,000 residents, which eclipsed Chicago’s paltry 2,000 or so. Eat your heart out Cook County.The history of Nauvoo makes one thing clear: everyone from rank-and-file Mormons, Church leaders, and Illinois political leaders largely looked past Smith and his followers’ indiscretions, fearing they’d suffer the same evisceration in the court of public opinion that Governor Boggs and the Missouri government had suffered after the 1838 Mormon War.By overlooking the danger the Mormons’ posed to democracy in Illinois and the United States, the Illinois government allowed (and supported) important political power moves that would solidify Joseph Smith’s institutional power and effectively create a city-state theocracy in Nauvoo. This was thanks to the political capital and expertise of an LDS-convert named John C. Bennett, whose significance to Mormonism was as important as his tenure was short—he was a member for less than two years.Bennett’s whirlwind time with the Mormons was Joseph Smith’s ticket to greater power…and his grave. Bennett was a confidant who was politically well-connected, had legitimacy as a military leader (he was quartermaster of the entire state militia), and was largely willing to be Joseph Smith’s fixer—and Mormonism’s chief lobbyist.Bennett and Smith successfully lobbied the Illinois legislature for a Nauvoo City Charter in late-1840. It’s unclear to what degree the legacy of their political maneuvering is flattered by Mormon apologists, but supposedly an early-career Abe Lincoln, alongside his political rival Stephen Douglas, were both impressed with Bennett’s politicking.The charter was undoubtedly a win for Joseph Smith and the Mormons. It was based on the charter for the capital, Springfield, and provided a number of unusual provisions, including chartering a University of Nauvoo, creating a municipal court system, and most consequentially, granting an official charter for a division of the Illinois state militia to be run by the Nauvoo government.The first mistake Illinois made was to downplay the grievances the Mormons had incurred on their redneck neighbors in Missura’ and give Joseph and his crooks another chance. The second mistake was getting the Mormons an incredible deal on greenfield property along the Mississippi. The third and most consequential mistake they made was giving him guns and the legal authority to use them.Ah. We’re back to talking about Joseph Smith’s obsession with playing army, and this time I don’t think it’s nearly as silly. Joseph took this official charter and f*****g ran with it. More than a militia, he called his troops “The Nauvoo Legion,” after the historical Roman Legions, a volunteer-ish based army that was officially affiliated with the Mormon church and the state government. Joseph Smith appointed himself and Bennett as leaders, but gave himself, who had no actual military experience, the title of Lieutenant General. The only other member of the US military to ever hold that title before or since, was George Washington.He had done it: Joseph Smith was judge, jury, and executioner in Nauvoo, Illinois. Far more than a mayor, Smith commanded actual troops which was extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of which because chartered militias are not typically a) associated with churches or b) confined to a single city. The Nauvoo Legion peaked at 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army.Joseph Smith was de facto mayor (he’d take over formally in 1842), served as a judge/justice of the peace, and led a military that rivaled any on the American continent on manpower alone.His crooked government regularly prevented Missouri agents from extraditing Smith and his accomplices for crimes related to the 1838 Mormon War. Smith was charged with assault in Carthage, IL on at least one occasion, which was dismissed through the Nauvoo courts. Smith was fundamentally immune to political, religious, and legal consequences for his actions, something really good for a sex pervert scam artist.So I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in April 1841, Joseph Smith f*****g ramped up his acquisitions of women for his celestial harem as he went from 4 wives and began his 3-year campaign to acquire 54 additional ones. Alyssa Grenfell has an incredible video covering the history from a variety of sources and does far more justice to the survivors and victims of Joseph Smith than I ever could. I also will add that calling these women and girls “wives” erroneously gives them agency over their situation.When we acknowledge that these women and girls did not likely have the agency or understanding to decline or refuse sex and relationships withe the prophet, we may find it valuable to point out that Joseph used a few different stories to coerce and coax an estimated 59 total women and girls into courting, wedding, and consummating the taboo “plural marriage.”* Often he claimed that God came to him in a vision declaring that he was to wed the victim.* Sometimes he claimed it was a favor he was doing to guarantee the woman and her family go to the Celestial Kingdom* Sometimes he claimed the women would go to hell if they didn’t, and they had to seal themselves to him to save their eternal self.* Most alarmingly, if any of these didn’t work, he would claim an angel visited him in his sleep with a flaming sword and told him that the angel would murder him if he didn’t marry X or Y woman/girl. Man had no rizz in his Latter Days.Joseph used “the Principle” to effectively make the inner ring of church leaders a kind of a wife-trading sex cult, where patriarchs took up multiple women, gave up daughters to other predators, and in general, create a further in-group bound by a shared expression of taboo, criminal, evil sexual exploitation. This, of course, included the newest member of church leadership, John C. Bennett.This is total speculation, but I think Joseph and John had a…special relationship. He might have been a Friend of Nephi, if you will.Just one excerpt from a July 1840 letter from Bennett to Smith helps paint the nature of their correspondence:“My anxiety to be with you is daily increasing, and I shall wind up my professional business immediately, and proceed to your blissful abode, if you think it best. Look at all my letters and papers and write me forth with. You are aware that at the time of your most bitter persecution, I was with you in feeling & proffered you my military knowledge & prowess.” I think this man was in love with Joseph Smith.There’s not a lot of evidence to the contrary, aside from that I’ve heard Bennett referred to as “super weird” and “kind of a freak” from contemporary Mormon critics, and all signs point to the idea that, sometime before ‘43, when Smith made his formal declaration to church leaders about “the Principle,” Bennett was lured to Nauvoo in part to participate in the sort of underground sex trafficking cult that existed below the surface of the Mormon’s chipper, pious facade. His Wikipedia does a better job than I could summing it up:Bennett left the

In many ways, Joseph Smith is the 1800’s proto-L. Ron Hubbard (founder of Scientology). The forerunner for b******t, batshit cults, if you will.Scientology and Mormonism have a lot of similarities—they’re both American, they’re both highly-structured, hierarchical, pseudo-corporate entities cosplaying as a church, and most importantly for the next few editions of this series, they were both founded by military wannabes. Beyond this, they both have cosmological elements, a self-described narrative of constant persecution, and are both infamously difficult to leave and make high-demands of followers for their time, money, and free agency.If you weren’t aware, L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction author turned religious wacko, was the failson of a Navy officer who just wanted to be a cool sailor like his dad. The military blunders/catastrophes podcast Lions Led By Donkeys has an incredible recounting of his career that better contextualizes it within Scientology. The Scientologists claim he had a miraculous career and used Dianetics alone to heal from a career-ending injury. The US Navy said he was never injured and just had an ulcer he was hospitalized with for 6 months.1838 gave us our first look at a Hubbard-esque Joseph Smith that anyone familiar with the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text) should have seen coming. I didn’t spend a lot of time covering the content of the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text), but significant parts of the book revolve around the documentation of wars/conflicts the “Lamanites” supposedly participated in on the American continent, despite literally no evidence existing aside from the Book of Mormon (fraudulent holy text). The book discusses tactics, strategies, and describes dozens of battles. Smith was a wannabe war hero just like L. Ron Hubbard.Before we could get the “1838 Mormon War,” Mormons were still given the benefit of the doubt that they were a persecuted religious minority seeking to take advantage of the promises of the Constitution and the frontier spirit of Manifest Destiny. The Missouri state government had a chartered militia in the Mormon-haven Caldwell County, which ostensibly was to protect the Mormons from persecution by angry mobs and locals. While Jefferson City had abandoned the Mormons during their fool’s errand to re-take Jackson County land in 1834, they were here to protect them now.At this same time, when the state has given the Mormons land, military protection, and dozens of second chances, the consolidation of the Mormons in Far West was upending the church power structure. Tensions between leadership in Kirtland and Missouri are well-documented, and the Kirtland Safety Society crisis only fueled more unrest, distrust, and paranoia.I can’t imagine a paranoid cult leader obsessed with war and military tactics, who was now emboldened with access to the legitimate use of force afforded to the state, would let this power get to his head?This is Part 6 of Putting the Moron in Moroni. Buckle up, this edition is a bit heavy on the history, but these events are critical turning points for pre-Utah Mormons.This week: Joseph sows the seeds of his own demise while putting the last nails in the coffin of the Mormon project in Missouri, the supposedly peaceful Mormons engage in some good ol’ mob violence, and we visit a holy jail. Thanks for reading and listening.I swear on my life that I won’t be talking about Mormons in this newsletter forever. I am funny, too. Subscribe now and take my word for it.The Mormon church had a new lease on life in Caldwell County, and Joseph Smith used it as an opportunity to weed out dissenters and further control his followers in Far West, MO.We visited Far West a couple of weeks ago, but there was an important revelation there that led to the inscriptions on the embarrassing monument we saw. Joseph Smith revealed in April 1838:* Far West is a holy and consecrated place,* The Law of Tithing is now a thing,* The church should be called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” and* God told Joseph Smith that his Kirtland loyalists should be installed as leaders in Far West.We talked last week about Martin Harris’ excommunication and revolt in Kirtland. As you might recall, Harris was one of the so-called “Three Witnesses” to the Book of Mormon’s creation who later recanted (and would later recant the recantation once the Saints moved to Utah) and claimed it was all b******t.The other two, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, were Smith’s loyalists in charge of managing the Missouri church before the Kirtland exodus. Predictably, Cowdery and Whitmer became principal targets of Smith’s reorganization, which is a pretty nice way of putting it.In early June 1838, David Whitmer, his brother John, and William Phelps (who wrote the hymn from last week’s edition), were formally accused of heresy and were excommunicated from the church. Their crimes? Not obeying Joseph’s rules. The Law of Consecration, which we’ve brought up a few times in this series, was an edict commanding followers to liquidate their property and assets to the church, and the church would lease it back to them. The Whitmers and Phelps were accused of selling their land in Jackson County, which had not been under church control. They were also accused of disobeying the Word of Wisdom, specifically, that they were indulging in coffee and tea, according to John Turner’s Joseph Smith.On June 17, 1838, Smith’s second-in-command, Sidney Rigdon, delivered an infamous oration, the “Salt Sermon,” during what I would describe as a meeting akin to a wrestling promo. Rigdon gave a scathing rebuke of detractors/dissenters of the Church. We don’t have a one-for-one transcript, but he invoked the Sermon on the Mount from the Book of Matthew to call for sanctions against those disloyal to Smith and his church, including erecting a gallows in the town square of Far West. Wheesh.Smith was present and spoke after Rigdon, and according to Turner, seemed somewhat apprehensive of the call for violence and urged peace. At the same time, he made the theologically incorrect claim that “Peter hung Judas” as a way to justify violence against traitors. To me, Smith’s effective endorsement was choreographed like a good heel’s promo; they had already prepared printed pamphlets of Rigdon’s remarks they had distributed to those present for the address.In the days after Rigdon’s “Salt Sermon,” Smith loyalists in Far West drafted a letter signed by 80-some Mormons (not leadership, mind you) and demanded these wicked, designing men (the Whitmers and Cowdery) out of Caldwell County. Almost as consequentially, local Mormons established what they called the “Danites,” a fraternal order meant to serve as a kind of informal paramilitary force operating extrajudicially. They had tacit support from Joseph Smith and were focused on “self-defense” against mob violence. Within two days, the dissenters and their families had fled the immediate danger of the mob-violence-minded Mormons and left Caldwell County.On July 4, at an Independence Day celebration, the cornerstones (now encased in glass) were laid at the Far West Temple Site (where we visited a couple editions ago). At this event, Sidney Rigdon again delivered a firebrand speech that all but confirmed the Mormons’ days of adhering to an ideology with a modicum of non-violence were over: he declared any mobs attacking the Mormons should prepare for a “war of extermination.” The pamphlet they gave out at the event had the subtitle: “Better far sleep with the dead than be oppressed with the living.” Uffda!The speech was effectively a public declaration of “independence” from the Missouri state government and called for the Saints to fight to the death to protect themselves from “mobocracy” and set the tone for how the rest of the year would go for the Saints. Let’s see if it pays off (it won’t).On August 6, 1838, voters in Caldwell County headed to the polls for the first time, and the premier candidate had specifically called out the Mormons as “horse-thieves” and “robbers.” The Mormons also headed to the polls—a group of thirty or so approached the polling place but were denied the right to vote. A brawl ensued, including one Mormon inciting the Danites by name, who were willing to kill for their cause.There were no injuries, thankfully, but the event is known as the “Election Day Battle.” This was covered on our tour of Liberty Jail, where the missionaries called it “a disagreement on election day.”Mormons had been settling in areas around Caldwell County, including neighboring Carroll County, where Mormons had moved into the vacant town of De Witt, MO. That same election day, Carroll County voters approved a ballot measure to expel the Mormons from the county. Over the next two months, Mormons would be run out of town by angry mobs who burned their houses down, stole property, threatened lives, etc.Two days after election day, the Mormons concocted a scheme to try to force the local government outside of Caldwell to defend them. Smith led a group of around 100 armed Mormons to the house of Adam Black, a justice of the peace in Daviess County. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t sign their agreement that he would use force to prevent Mormons from being attacked by angry mobs. Joseph, a f*****g idiot, thought that a signed note had to be legitimate. The next day, Black signed an affadavit that he only signed anything to prevent his “instant death.”The new Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs (incredible name), was made aware of the plight of the Mormons as both government leaders like Black and Mormon officials pleaded for military aid. Boggs obliged, partially, and sent the state militia. State leaders warned Smith and the Mormons that their militia in Caldwell County, sanctioned by the state, was not permitted to enter any other county. In response, the Mormons took the Caldwell County militia to Daviess County to “defend” Mormon settlers there.

“This earth was once a garden place, with all her glories common, and men did live a holy race, and worship Jesus face to face, in Adam-ondi-Ahman.”- Mormon hymn “Adam-ondi-Ahman”Listen: this newsletter series is also a podcast. It’s through the “voiceover” feature on Substack - listen for free on Substack or in the Substack appMissed an issue? Start at Part 1 here.The Mormons really thought they cooked when they set up their theocratic enclave in Far West, Missouri in 1836 after getting justly kicked out of Jackson County; at long last, the Mormons had won themselves a home outside of Ohio or New York.The 1834 Zion’s Camp mission to use quasi-military force to attempt re-seizing the properties Mormons left behind in Jackson County after their eviction was a colossal failure. However, in private correspondence, the Attorney General and Governor of Missouri expressed deep concern over the Mormons’ ability to mount a sizable militia force relatively quickly.Actions taken by so-called “Anti-Mormons” only further radicalized the Mormons who had already given up everything, in many cases multiple times, to support the now nomadic church that was created just a few short years prior. These Mormons had nothing to lose, driven by 2nd Great Awakening fervor, their cult of personality Joseph Smith, and a tendency to antagonize the locals no matter where they went. Remember all of the angry mobs?Surely nothing can go wrong.This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons, and Misery in Missouri.In July, against my better judgement, I took a road trip from the Twin Cities to Missouri to visit Mormon holy sites. In this series, we’re looking at my bonkers experiences, the historical context of just what the hell happened at these historical sites, and analyzing what this bit that went too far can tell us about the world’s most American religion. This week, we visit the Garden of Eden…sorta, Joseph commits banking fraud and gets kicked out of Ohio, and we try and fail to determine once and for all whether this is all a f*****g joke to them or not. Thanks for reading and listening.Good God, we’re still doing this series. When will it be over? Subscribe now and I promise you’ll eventually receive the last one.When we last checked in with Joey and the gang, the pressure was starting to build.It’s 1837, and Joe and his boys (for the most part) are still based out of Kirtland, Ohio. The church was in dire financial straits—as you’ll recall, the Mormons were not the rich pseudo-communitarians they are today. There was no Swig or Crumbl to directly funnel money up to the church.Joseph had largely relied on revelations and good-natured frontierspeople giving up what little they had for the church Smith convinced them was true. Joseph Smith relied on well-meaning rubes, like Martin Harris and the folks he stayed with in Hiram, OH when he was tarred and feathered, to string along enough money to make it to the next venture.Like all good cults, Joseph used revelations and prophecies to try to will new money and resources into existence. This worked, for the most part, but new temples, like the one in Kirtland that was dedicated in 1836, were not cheap. It didn’t help that his people had been violently evicted from the holy homeland that he had declared, and the well-documented flaring of tensions between the Ohio and Missouri communities was coming to a head.You might remember the United Firm from a few editions ago. This was a short-lived business venture of Smith’s cult that, paired with the Law of Consecration, created a mutual aid network (or at least purported to) that focused on pooling resources to create community wealth for the Mormons. What I didn’t mention, is that this endeavor, which was focused solely in Missouri, collapsed in 1834 with the Mormons being kicked out of Jackson County.In late 1836, Joseph concocted quite the scheme to bolster the church’s coffers. Long before the Federal Reserve existed, and during a time where banking in the US was pretty much nothing like it is today, Joseph thought the easiest way for the church to raise money would be to simply create a church-owned bank. After all, banks were the ones making their own bank notes and banking was wildly different state-by-state. S**t was fake!Smith wanted to take advantage of the largely unregulated and undeveloped American (and Ohioan) banking system, and devised the “Kirtland Safety Society,” which despite its nice-sounding name was effectively a bank meant to literally print money for the church.Or so they thought.Orson Hyde, one of Smith’s Kirtland lackeys, was sent to the Ohio capitol seeking a bank charter from legislators to authorize their church bank. Believe it or not, this did not work. Joseph Smith chalked it up to typical Anti-Mormonism. “If thine scam shall not come to pass then thee shall even blameth thine biggest haters” is something he could have said about the situation.There was some luck on a second visit to the legislature, but a noted-anti-Mormon activist legislator that had personal beef with Joseph Smith intervened to make sure the Mormons didn’t get their coveted charter. From ‘36-’37, Jacksonian Democrats took power in Ohio and rejected every bank charter but one for two years. Call it good governance or bad timing but regardless it wasn’t going Joseph’s way.Under the counsel of counsel, the Mormons decided they would move forward and start a bank in everything but name. They founded The Kirtland Safety Society “Anti-Banking Company” (KSSABC), and I wish I was joking about the name.They had already secured the printing stamp to create bank notes as the “Kirtland Safety Society Bank,” so they had to add an awkward “ANTI” and “ING CO.” in tiny print on either side of the word bank so you know they are definitely not in any way a bank. Smith must have been well-versed in the Fielder Method, because this was a very “Dumb Starbucks” strategy: The plan: call it an “anti-bank” to avoid banking regulations. The legally dubious KSSABC was a disaster right from the get-go in January 1837.Immediately, lawsuits were filed against the company’s officials, including Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith. They were lampooned in local media for printing worthless “Mormon money.” The company would not make it to the end of the year, and was seized with $100k in debt, including $30k used to bail Smith out of jail for running an illegal bank.This was the last straw for some significant early members of the church, including all three of the Book of Mormon’s original witnesses. They had been willing to put up with a lot of b******t: Joseph was a lying philanderer running a racket to fund trips to Missouri, Canada, upstate New York, Philadelphia, and pretty much anywhere he wanted to go. His followers had made embarrassing exoduses from various places at the hands of angry mobs. Hoity-toity upstate New Yorkers were now willingly associating with hicks from Missouri and Ohio. The horror of it all!But for many of his longest and loyalest followers, swindling faithful believers into giving their money to an illegal bank to offset Joseph’s traveling and poor financial management was a bridge too far.The fallout was incredible—Joseph Smith condemned his now former-friends with excommunications and public denouncements. Smith’s vengance campaign against his now-oppss was further fracturing the Mormon project in Ohio, which was coming to a head by the end of 1837.A follower named Warren Parrish rallied disillusioned Saints to fight back against Joseph. He allegedly led an armed insurrection mid-church service, and Parrish publicly chastised Smith and the church in the paper, and even tapped Martin Harris to join his cause, who now claimed he had never seen the Golden Plates at all.Behind the scenes, as outlined in John Turner’s extraordinary biography of Joseph Smith, simply called Joseph Smith, Smith’s loyalists were privately irritated with Joseph’s sexual promiscuity. This was before Smith hard-launched polygamy as doctrine, and between financial ruin and moral corruption, Joseph’s church in Ohio was at its weakest and it was so painfully obvious that it was squarely his fault.Would you believe it if I told you that Parrish’s armed insurrection against Smith actually worked?Parrish successfully commandeered the Kirtland Temple, while Smith and his confederation of rubes and criminals were followed by an angry mob looking to arrest Smith to stand trial. A warrant was out for Smith’s arrest for fraudulent banking, again.For the umpteenth time in his life, Joseph Smith and his followers were driven away from their home for legitimate reasons, but Smith played it off as typical anti-Mormon b******t.The Mormon experiment in Kirtland was over for now, and for the rest of Smith’s life, at that. And we didn’t even talk about all the other b******t, like the mummies and the papyri and all the stupid theology-building revelations he would have during these self-inflicted tribulations.Smith set off for Missouri, and hundreds of Mormons, including most of his loyalists, followed in-tow. They headed for Caldwell County, and its seat, Far West to unify the once divided church into a community of 4,000+. A significant number of detractors would stay in Ohio and the Kirtland Temple would eventually come under ownership of resident-Utah-opps, Community of Christ. The LDS Church in Utah would not come to own the temple until 2024.In case being run out of Ohio wasn’t enough, Joseph Smith and his band of refugee Mormons were testing how far they could go with the limited liberties the Missouri government had afforded them in Caldwell County.By the end of January, the church had formally moved its headquarters to Far West. Despite getting a dedicated enclave in Caldwell county, many settlers chose to set up homesteads and settlements outside of it, in neighboring areas, notably Daviess County.A Mormon named Lyman Wight was one of these Daviess County settlers, and set up

Listen: these are podcasts too, only on Substack.Catch up on the whole series starting with Part 1 here.Follow us on Instagram: @uffdatimesThe first article of this series was titled “The World’s Most American Religion.” I made this claim because there aren’t many institutions that represent the American experiment quite like the Mormon Church.TSSC would be just a twinkle in Joseph Smith’s eye if it weren’t for manifest destiny, the brutal colonialist expansion westward as the American government gobbled up territory to build the most powerful empire in history. Their beliefs in doctrine like the Curse of Ham and their concept of male-only priesthoods literally institutionalize racism and define a literal patriarchy. Today, the Church is propped up by massive sugar-fueled corporate endeavors, venture capital and asset management, and an extensive, global network of guilty tithe-paying TBMs. I’d argue all of these are pretty American characteristics of the faith.Even the leader of the church is called a President. Mormons are historically militant, and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both notably (and separately) called for Mormons to take up arms against the United States government. I mean, s**t, they believe that the biblical Zion will be built in the Americas and that Jesus visited here after his resurrection.What’s somehow more American than all of that, is how the Mormon Church uses an empty, remote holy site to house a tacky, overpriced gift shop to squeeze just a little bit more money out of pilgrims who drove untold distances to see such holy places as jails and empty fields. Especially me.Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni. This week, Joseph proves he did not learn his lesson when he was tarred and feathered in Ohio. F**k Ohio, Joseph and the gang are going back to Missouri. We did not learn our lesson that these religious sites are mostly just empty fields. F**k Kansas City, let’s check out a gift shop next to an empty field in the middle of nowhere.We’re keeping the Mormon History Retelling chronological, so the Road Trip Gonzo will be a little out of order, but we’re telling a story here, people. Thanks for reading and listening.Please sign up for a shift cleaning the temple. We know you don’t have any hobbies and Boy Scouts doesn’t start back up for at least a month. You do what your Temple Recommend, right? It’ll be fun, we can play Apples to Apples after.It’s April 1, 1832. One week ago, Joseph Smith was dragged out of the house he was staying in by an angry mob in Ohio. No foolin’.The mob called for Smith’s castration, but the doctor in town refused to comply. They didn’t care too much, because they still covered the prophet in tar and feathers and he was “left for dead” in the street.These are all events that probably happened. But now, a week later, Joseph and his confederation of crooks were making their way back to Missouri for yet another mission. This second visit to Missouri was less consequential in terms of actual historical events, but had some pivotal moments for Joseph testing what he can get away with via revelation.On April 26, 1832, Joseph Smith revealed that the Saints had to make their community in Zion (Independence) bigger. This edict tapped some of his most fervent loyalists to stay and grow the frontier colony of Mormons. They had more or less abandoned the mission of converting Native Americans and were squarely focused on building a larger community.Smith did this by commanding the establishment of the “United Firm,” the first major business venture of the church aside from the publishing of the Book of Mormon. This revelation was primarily focused on the “literary and mercantile” aspects of the church, and specifically in Independence; how can we make and sell more books and other b******t to make the church more money, while pumping up our rookie numbers?At the same time, more and more of the first TBMs were bought in on the idea of colonizing the area from Zion to the Missouri River, as we learned last week. The idea of missionary work was starting to take hold and Mormons began their longstanding cultural tradition of being extremely annoying.Like the Bhagwan in Oregon over 100 years later, Mormons effectively aimed to outnumber the non-Mormons of Independence to control the land, politics, and civic life of the region, and there were certainly few enough people to do so. This was, as you may recall from last week, a directive from God.Most of the correspondence from summer 1832 that’s documented in the Joseph Smith Papers, an apologetic (not that they’re sorry, but that they’re Mormon Apologists) pseudo-historical research project of the LDS Church, boils down to Joseph trying to talk everyone down.Tension was growing between the Kirtland and Independence congregations; the Missourians were more…fanatical in the frontier religion sense (lots of speaking in tongues, visions, etc.) and the Kirtlanders were pissed that Joseph’s attention was elsewhere when Kirtland should be the main priority. It was almost certainly not clocking to them that Joseph Smith was standing on business (getting a bad rep in Ohio for being a philandering con man).In September, we get the first-ever account of The First Vision. As you may recall, this was the story where Joseph didn’t know what church to join so he went to the woods by his parents house and asked God. He got on his knees and then Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, two distinct beings, appeared before him. Or at least this is the version Mormons know.This 1832 account was much different. He claims to have seen “Deity,” a phrase I’ve never seen outside of the First Vision context in Mormon theology (exmos please educate me). No mention of Heavenly Father, only “God” who is also Jesus Christ but also refers to a father? No mention of two distinct beings. Luckily for Joseph, this version was not published until the late 19th century, well after his timely death.Joseph wrote in a letter to William Phelps, one of his top guys who moved to Independence, in November that reported about 800 people had joined the Saints in Zion. This letter, like most of the correspondence from the time, tried to assuage concerns from the Missourians, this time because the financial support promised from the Kirtland church had yet to arrive (Joseph also revealed that they were to build a temple in Kirtland).At the same time, these enterprising Zion-ists were attempting to fulfill God’s revelations to operate a printing press and store to prop up Smith’s Missouri project. This was not their brightest idea.The Evening and Morning Star was the name of the Mormon-operated newspaper in Independence started in June 1832 and began ruffling the feathers of the “old settlers” of the Independence area.This was an important step in the creation of Zion and showed that the Missouri delegation was taking Joseph seriously, despite the near constant infighting since the end of 1831. There were leaders teaching their own versions of doctrine, and wherever Joseph wasn’t, Mormon leaders were criticizing him behind his back. Other colonies struggled to align their doctrine with Smith. Between slow transportation and communication, Smith was doing damage control for the better part of 1832 and 1833. Oh yeah and he also took a mission to Canada. I’m sure his local leaders struggling to keep everything afloat really loved that.Who knew a decentralized cult would have constant struggles for power?The Star, however, may have gone a bit too far in poking the bear that was the local racists in the area. In their July 16, 1833 edition, they published an editorial with “practical” advice for free “people of color” who are moving to Missouri, which mostly just amounted to “please keep your papers on you.”We, readers and listeners, are smart enough to know that the Mormons were extremely racist, but to the slaveholding hick settlers of Missouri, they took it as an invitation for Black Mormons to move to the area, or worse, encourage the enslaved people of Jackson County to join the Mormons for an armed revolt against the slaveholding locals.This was also Ye Olden Days, so mass communication wasn’t really a thing. Messages and letters could take weeks or months to get to Ohio from Missouri and vice versa. Correspondence between the Ohio and Missouri at the time showed great worry from Smith that the tensions could quickly become insurmountable. New doctrine was being created, and a “Book of Commandments” was sent to Missouri to be printed at the press in Independence.The Ohio church was totally unaware of the scale and speed at which locals would negatively react to the July 16 editorial. On July 20, locals published a response which made racist assumptions that Smith was trying to incite a race war in Jackson County in hopes of padding his numbers or push the locals out of town. This was also a period where Mormon doctrine would continue to radically diverge from mainline Protestantism and later, there would be speculation that Joseph Smith had begun privately practicing polygamy as early as 1832—Brigham Young and his contemporaries would say as much after Smith’s death.Regardless, the locals’ rebuttal worked, and that same day an angry mob (funny how there’s always an angry mob chasing the Mormons around) destroyed the printing press at the Evening and Morning Star. Remember, the church is Ohio, including Joseph Smith, had no idea.In Jackson County, things moved really fast. On July 23rd, an angry mob rounded up the church leaders in Independence. The Mormons were compelled to agree to the locals’ demands, which principally kicked the Mormons out of Jackson County. They agreed to have at least 50% of Mormons leave the county by January 1, 1834. The leaders were allowed to continue to wrap up their business, but the message was clear: Stay out of Independence, Lebowski! Stay out of Independence, deadbeat! Keep your ugly f****n' goldbrickin' ass out of my prairie community.T

“We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.” - Article Ten of the LDS Church Articles of Faith“I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob! I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well. And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.” - “I Believe” from The Book of Mormon (musical)We did almost no planning for this road trip.The idea had been a joke I’d been kicking around for years. I can spend all day reading books about Mormons, hundreds of r/mormon and r/exmormon posts, and Wikipedia wormhole my way down the complicated-ass racist and patriarchal lore. Not to mention the hours of ex-Mormon Alyssa Grenfell videos I watch to pass the time during the workday.The only things we knew about this trip were that we had lodging accommodations at three hotels. One night in Kansas City, one night in the middle of nowhere, and one night in St. Louis. We’d get to see the city a little, but more importantly, both cities are near holy sites in the Mormon faith.(If you didn’t catch the first or second issues, go back and read it on Substack, or listen to it on the Substack app. This isn’t an ad for Substack, I’m just too lazy to put it anywhere else.)We woke up in Kansas City and ate breakfast at Dagwood’s Cafe, just across the state line in KC, KS. It was terrific and extremely affordable. 10/10.We spent the morning in downtown, primarily at Kansas City Union Station, where I enjoyed the hell out of their extensive model railroad museum. It’s honestly shocking how large the setup is given there’s no admission fee. Just an absolute blast and it’s great for kids. I also got some pics of the Western Auto building and the WWI memorial.It was really f*****g hot out. We were smack dab in the middle of the national heatwave plaguing the entire lower 48 in late-July. The only respite for the entire trip was the cool A/C of my Honda Civic. Godspeed you beautiful blue b*****d.We drove from the train station to a quick stop at the Kansas City library to take a picture of the wall styled like books. Turns out that’s just the parking garage for the library so I snapped a quick photo and we were on our way.Our time in Kansas City was a whirlwind—we stayed in the city less than 24 hours. I couldn’t point on a map where even the general area we stayed was; it was me, the GPS, and revelations from the Angel Moroni that guided me towards the various empty fields across the Great Plains we would be visiting.Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons, and Misery in Missouri. This week, we’re actually doing The Thing and starting our Tour de Mormon with a visit to Temple Lot in Independence, Missouri. This location is arguably the Mecca of Mormondom, especially because splinter groups largely recognize this community as Zion, while the apostates in Utah have their great and abominable church.Thanks for reading and listening.If there were a way I could baptize you to christen you as a new newsletter subscriber, I would. If you are already subscribed, please sign up for a shift cleaning the temple.Independence, MO is considered a “satellite city” of the Kansas City metro area.It’s about a 25-minute drive from downtown KCMO, and is a proper city in its own right; Independence boasts a population of over 120,000. Most Americans will recognize the name from the MN-made edutainment classic The Oregon Trail, where it’s one of the main launch points for your pioneer trek west. Yes we do need to buy four shotguns and 1000 shells and 8 oxen.The drive from downtown featured a smidge of highway before embarking on the onslaught that was Truman Road east of downtown KC. This long stretch of road connects Independence to Kansas City and is named for the Harry S. president who grew up and lived most of his life in Independence.The entire road was a mix of industrial and commercial buildings that seemed closer to a ghost town than the great avenue fit for a president. Storefronts were boarded up. It wasn’t the welcoming boulevard one would hope for on the road to the Garden of Eden.The first stop we made was Truman’s house and his wife’s aunt’s house across the street. Only the wife’s aunt’s house was open and it wasn’t particularly interesting. It’s basically just one exhibit where you get to “see how in love they were” before glossing over justifying his use of the atomic bomb. Just a small thing he did two times. I’ll give Truman some credit, it really did feel like they were in love. And the bombs also happened.We made a brief stop at the Truman presidential library to get a stamp on our friend’s National Parks Service passport and we headed toward the big shiny metal and glass spiral towering over the sleepy Midwestern city.In 1831, with his little blue book at the ready, Joseph Smith was convinced he needed to move west to try to convert American Indians to Mormonism.When we last saw Joe, Sidney, and the gang, they had just arrived in Kirtland, Ohio. Almost immediately, Joseph Smith led a missionary party to Missouri in summer 1831. Encountering what Wikipedia calls “some moderate success” proselytizing, the Saints decided to set up an extant community from Kirtland in the frontier town they ended up at: Independence, MO.In August 1831, Joseph Smith declared in a (handwritten—remember he was functionally illiterate) revelation “how to preceed [sic] concerning purchuseing [sic] Lands”:“Hearken Oh ye Elders of my Church, saith the Lord your God, Who have assembelled [sic] yourselves together, according to my commandment in this land which is the land of Missorie [sic] which is the Land which I, have appointed & consecrated for the gethering [sic] of the Saints.…Behold the place which is now called Independence is the centre place, & the spot for the Temple is lying westward upon a lot which is not far from the court-house. Wherefore it is wisdom that the land should be purchased by the saints and also every tract lying westward even unto the line runing [sic] directly betwen [sic] Jew and gentile and also every tract bordering by the Prairies in as much as my Deciples [sic] are enabled to buy lands.”Joseph Smith identified a 62ish-acre parcel of land known today as “Temple Lot” as the location where the first Mormon temple was to be built. He also taught that it was exact location of Christ’s Second Coming, and while it was never written as a revelation, contemporaneous accounts from other Mormon leaders (including Brigham Young) report that Smith taught that the Garden of Eden was also in Jackson County, Missouri, suggesting it was also at Temple Lot.Smith’s revelation designating Independence as Zion started a chain of events that would *spoiler* lead to his timely death in 1844. Important to note is God’s commandment that the Saints were to buy as many tracts of land as possible between what is effectively Independence and the border with Kansas to the west, which includes the entirety of modern-day Kansas City (which would not be incorporated until 1850).There was also commotion in the Mormon movement: you mean to tell me I moved whole family to join a group of fanatical converts in bumfuck nowhere Ohio, and now we’re supposed to move to Missouri? Thankfully for Joseph, God revealed a solution to the PR crisis and was able to do some damage control in September, after his return to Kirtland from his first visit to Jackson County:“[The Lord shall] retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland, for the space of five years, in the which I will not overthrow the wicked, that thereby I may save some.” - D&C 64:21It’s important to remember that the Mormons were not rich at this point. Joseph Smith relied heavily on the generous distribution of land to white settlers as part of the Manifest Destiny-era, which enabled the church to effectively build wealth through real estate ownership. They also formalized this process in the church community, particularly via the Law of Consecration, a convenient revelation from February 1831 establishing Fully Automated Luxury Mormon Ohio Space Communism; this revelation commanded Mormons to live communally and consecrate their property and personal belongings to Smith’s church for the (stated) benefit of the poorest members of their community. Mormons = Woke?Basically, we have a series of revelations telling Mormons to move further west to Missouri, purchase as much land as possible, then give that land to Joseph Smith and his jabroni cronies.I’m sure the racist settlers advocating for slavery in Missouri would really love it if a bunch of religious Yankee nutjobs came to their town in the middle of nowhere to build a theocratic society based on a bunch of treasure digger b******t, led by a guy who made a career of sex trafficking his friends’ wives. He was also a pedophile. This is not a serious religion.The area around Temple Lot is built up today, and is noticeably lacking an official LDS Temple, y’know, the one they’re supposed to build to give Jesus a place to Second Come to.Instead, a striking, towering glass spiral rises out of the relatively flat treeline as you approach the Temple Lot area. There is no angel Moroni heralding the trumpet for the end times. That doesn’t mean it’s automatically friendly. As we drove up, the main entrance of the temple looked a lot more like a Bond villain compound than a site of holy reverence.This is not an LDS temple, but the world headquarters and temple of Community of Christ, one of multiple splinter groups from the mainstream LDS church that split off after Smith’s death in 1844. They’re the largest non-LDS denomination of Mormonism. The theological splits are frankly not interesting enough to cover, but they diverge on many of the hallmarks of Utah Mormonism. For example, women can receiv

Listen: I’m recording podcast-style narrations for this series. You can listen on Substack and in the Substack app, catch Part 1 here.When Joseph Smith published the Pearl of Great Price in 1838, he claimed to have received his “First Vision” and visit from God in 1820The story goes that he didn’t know what church to join, so he went to the woods, fell on his knees, and asked God. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ (two distinctly different beings who also look identical) appeared before him and told him to join none of them. This is amusing because he was a practicing Methodist up until his founding of the church. This probably never happened. We were also told this exact recounting at least three times at various Mormon sites we visited, twice by missionaries and once by propaganda video.Young Mormons are encouraged to memorize the 1838 account of the First Vision. This is despite neither Smith nor any of his contemporaries, documenting the final, canonized “First Vision” before 1838. 18 years is an awful long time to not mention something that would become the foundational event core to the Mormon faith. No First Vision means no Moroni visit means no Golden Plates. At least we know he was an honest and upstanding member of the community.It’s well-documented that young Joseph was a “treasure digger,” who employed folk magic, like dowsing machines, to try to find buried treasure. He used this scam to trick fellow Upstate rubes into giving the poor farm boy (Mormons’ favorite characterization of young Joey Smith) money, which ultimately led to Joseph Smith’s first interaction with the United States justice system, when he was arrested in 1826 for being paid to find treasure he promised existed on a farm. and turned up empty.The kickoff to all of the pain and suffering the Mormon church would go on to create, started when Joseph Smith claimed that an angel named Moroni visited him in 1823 and told him to go to Hill Cumorah, a small hill about two miles from his parents’ house (convenient) where the Golden Plates were supposedly buried. He claimed he had to go look for them on the same day in September every year for four years at the request of the Angel.Supposedly, he was finally allowed to get the plates in 1827.Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni, my series covering the Mormon church’s influence on American history and culture with a road trip to holy sites in Missouri and Illinois. This week, we’re not actually on the road trip yet. There’s a lot of church history that sets us up nicely to Joseph’s revelation of just where exactly Zion is, the New Jerusalem in the Americas, and the same place where Christ will return during the Second Coming are. We’re just getting started.Thanks for joining us.Continue to receive all of my revelations by joining the Subscriber List of Uffda Times of Newsletter-day ComplaintsThe Golden Plates were allegedly in a script that has never been found to exist in any culture on Earth, which Joseph Smith called “Reformed Egyptian.”It was this same “language” that Smith would go on to claim in 1842 was used in facsimiles of actual ancient Egyptian papyri he bought from a traveling salesman in 1835. In case he weren’t weird enough, he bought 4 mummies from the same salesman, too; this was, of course, for phrenology purposes.The papyri he purchased were indeed authentic funeral papyri looted by Europeans digging up the necropolis in Thebes. Joseph Smith claimed they purported to depict the so-called Book of Abraham and allegedly an “untranslated Book of Joseph,” which turned out to be a copy of the Book of the Dead, a funerary document used in Egyptian society for over 1,500 years.Joseph Smith was obsessed with convincing people he had a unique gift from God to be able to translate pretty much anything (anything to feel special I guess).He wrote an “inspired” translation of the bible where he removed parts he didn’t like and added whole chunks. Almost none of it is in the modern LDS canon except for two included in The Pearl of Great Price: his total re-work of Genesis he called “The Book of Moses” and a new version of the Book of Matthew. Nothing says “The Word of the Lord” like rewriting one of the four canonical gospels. The “translation” of the Book of Mormon allegedly took three years and was financed by a rich gullible man from Palmyra named Martin Harris. Harris’ wife left him over his financing of the translation and publishing after Smith could not recreate the same “translation” twice after she took the 116 pages they had made so far, which were never recovered. But Martin stood to be a financial beneficiary if the book takes off so our man was bought in. Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb.The “translation” process was absurd: sometimes the plates were in a different room entirely. Sometimes it was forbidden to see them. Sometimes they were under a sheet. Sometimes Moroni took them back. Sometimes you could watch Joseph. Sometimes he would wear a veil. Smith claimed the characters would spontaneously appear as he looked into a hat with two magic rocks. He also was functionally illiterate. This is not a serious religion.The visit from Moroni and the Golden Plates are the keystone of the religion: if Joseph Smith faked or lied about the finding, translating, and publishing of the Book of Mormon, the entire premise of the religion falls apart. There were no Nephites or Lehites or Lamanites. The Urim and Thummim were just random polished rocks. There were no Golden Plates.If Joseph lied, the Book of Mormon is b******t and the church isn’t true.Perhaps the most baffling part of the entire translation affair relates to the Three Witnesses. In every copy of the Book of Mormon, there reads a letter that attests David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris’ all saw the gold plates and attest to the Book of Mormon’s legitimacy."And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true."All three of the Book of Mormon’s original witnesses would be excommunicated from the church by Joseph Smith in 1838.NOW That’s What I Call Legitimacy!None of this really matters because after The Book of Mormon was published, it caught the attention of fellow Second Great Awakening nutjob Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon had his own congregation of fanatics, and in 1830 he proposed to Jospeh Smith that they should combine their congregations and move the Mormons from Palmyra to Kirtland, Ohio, where Rigdon was currently set up.This was advantageous for Smith, who had run into legal trouble in New York, including being charged with a misdemeanor for being a “disorderly person” in 1830. He also corroborated an account that he got into a violent scuffle with his neighbors, who claimed he had been raucous after a night of drinking (oh yeah, Joseph Smith was a big drinker even though he preached abstinence from alcohol) and assaulted six of his neighbors, whom Joseph Smith would later claim:“[I] whipped the whole of them and escaped unhurt which they swore to as recorded”Remember, if someone wrote it down it must have happened.Sidney Rigdon will come up as a frequent accomplice (and later detractor) of Smith, but his conversion and merging of churches brought hundreds of new followers to the faith, a built-in community in Ohio, giving Smith and his cult an out as his reputation had deteriorated significantly in New York. Some cynics believe Rigdon was behind much of the writing in the Book of Mormon, but that’s water under the baptismal font as far as I’m concerned.Rigdon also gave Smith an air of legitimacy: a man of the cloth was sold on Joseph Smith? Maybe he’s onto something…Oh yeah, and God said in December 1830 that he couldn’t keep translating more things until he went to Ohio. Convenient.The Upstate congregation of Smith’s Church of Christ was not exactly thrilled with the Rigdon developments, and there was a lot of resistance to the Prophet’s insistence in uprooting everyone’s lives to move to f*****g Ohio. But much like the legitimacy of the Book of Mormon’s translation, none of this mattered because in February 1831 the whole Smith family and a significant number of followers (some “fifty souls”) moved to Ohio anyway.Smith took advantage of Sidney’s ability to lead a congregation and left Rigdon to look after the flock in Kirtland, while Joseph sought bigger ambitions: if Lamanites (read: Native Americans) were once followers of Christ, maybe they just need a little of the Prophet’s razzle-dazzle testimony to get on board.Whether it was Joseph Smith’s hubris or a revelation from God, in June 1831, he revealed:“Behold thus saith the Lord unto the Elders whom he hath called & chosen in these last days by the voice of his Spirit saying I the Lord will make known unto you what I will make known that ye shld [sic] do from this time untill [sic] the next conference which shall be held in Missorie [sic] upon the land which I will consecrate unto my People which are a remnant of Jacob & those who are heirs according to the covenant” - D&C 52:2You really gotta love how much extra crap he includes to sound vaguely biblical. Religious doctrine based on his (very bad) vibes.Joseph Smith gathered up a small group of about 8 people and they took off, mostly by boat and waterway, for the 900-ish mile journey west. They proselytized the whole way there, and Joseph’s ego must have been through the roof, because allegedly their missionarying worked on white people in Ohio and Illinois. People of the Second Great Awakening were really receptive to charismatic con men like Joseph Smith.At the culmination of their journey, they find a small community near the Missouri River with just 20 or so buildings: the settlement of Independence.Thanks for reading/listening

Listen: I’ve made a voiceover for this article and actually put some work into the production. I’d like to do podcast-y stuff and this is my first shot.Give it a listen in the Substack app or website. Follow us on Instagram: @uffdatimesSince I was in high school, I’ve had a fascination with the members of and institution that is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, AKA the Mormon Church.The LDS Church is largely known by Americans today as a quirky religion in Utah with overly chipper, sometimes pushy and irritating, members who proselytize with Sister/Elder name tags and go door-to-door on missions across the world. The So-Called Church (TSSC) likes to keep it that way. TSSC is often accused, particularly by former members, as being closer to a cult than a traditional denomination of Christianity. The religion has been controversial from the very beginning, with its race science-obsessed fiction-inspired lore, con man and criminal founder, Joseph Smith who came up with a canon reason to f**k his friends’ wives (he was also a pedophile), and the mob violence its followers tended to bring to wherever they settled.Mormon kids receive a sanitized view of the world, particularly an incomplete view and history of their own church and its theology. Many Mormons won’t even understand if you try to push back against the most unsavory parts of the Church’s history, particularly Joseph Smith’s affinity for f*****g other people’s wives and also being a f*****g pedophile.Sheltered kids beget sheltered adults beget sheltered kids and so forth. It is extremely common for Mormons who leave to be frequently harassed by practicing members, disowned by family (especially financially, which is particularly risky if they skipped college to do a mission), and otherwise undergo years of deprogramming to think like a normal f*****g person and not a Mormon. There’s a reason Wikipedia has an entire article devoted to LGBTQ Mormon suicides.Today, Mormonism is most closely associated with Utah, but like all good wacko 19th-century American religions, started in Upstate New York (Palmyra, to be exact), before moving to Kirtland, Ohio, and then Independence, Missouri, and finally Nauvoo, Illinois before Joseph Smith’s assassination by an angry mob.Well, you might know that Missouri and Illinois are a completely doable weekend road trip from Minnesota. And that’s exactly what I did.I’ve wanted to do a Mormon pilgrimage for a while, and this plan materialized after a friend of my fiancee and I’s was making a cross-country move from CA to PA. This friend also happens to be the first ex-Mormon I’ve met and welcomed into my life. We pitched the idea that we meet them in Missouri and do a road trip to various important sites to Mormons, specifically:* Temple Lot in Independence, MO, where Joseph Smith declared Jesus would return for the rapture; it was also where he said the Garden of Eden was,* The site also has a massive Mormon temple that is actually run by the church’s largest splinter group, the Community of Christ (who will be a frequent foil for the Mormons in this series)* Liberty Jail in Liberty, MO, where Joseph Smith and conspirators were held on treason charges after the Mormon War of 1838,* Far West, MO, which was to be the location of a Mormon temple and was at one point the largest Mormon community at 4,000,* Adam-ondi-Ahman in Daviess County, MO, the location where Joseph Smith claimed Adam and Eve were banished to after getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and the closest thing to the Garden of Eden on Earth,* Nauvoo, IL, a small town that was once the center of Mormondom and is where Joseph Smith is buried today, and finally* Carthage Jail, in Carthage, IL, where Joseph and his brother Hiram were held and consequently murdered by an angry mob.In this series, I want to document the most insane s**t I saw, heard, and experienced immersing myself in Mormon tourism at a time where Mormonism is at a crossroads: do they maintain their unique theology as an out-group of Christendom, or pull back and embrace a more mainstream protestant approach, allying itself with the country’s evangelicals?Is all the tithing money in the world enough to stop this house of UNO cards from tumbling down?This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons, & Misery in Missouri, and I hope you’ll join me for the ride as we explore some of the most foundational, sacred, and underwhelming holy sites in Mormonism.Don’t miss a single issue of this limited series, Putting the Moron in Moroni and all your other favorite UTP originals and surrender your personal information to me.Before we can talk about the trip, we need a primer from what they would call an “Anti-Mormon” AKA me.I want to make it very clear that I believe the Mormon Church is exploitative and employs cult-like strategies to maintain a congregation of yes-men willing to give incredible amounts of money and time to the Mormon cause. I believe Mormon culture is toxic, and its more important than ever that we remember exactly who the LDS church is, and for me, who better to do that than the Church themselves through their missionaries and holy sites. It’s my belief that this is a cult and Joseph Smith was a criminal and a cult leader.Since 2000, the LDS church has enjoyed its strongest era of soft power and relevance in American culture since its inception in 1830, all thanks to mass communication.Mormonism thrives on TV. The TikTok age has brought forth hundreds of wildly successfully Mormon influencers who romanticize the ideal Mormon life, where moms are homemakers and dads are patriarchs endowed by God.The most far-reaching and successful work of pop culture about the church is the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, which takes every opportunity to roast Mormons and also to be extremely racist. Thank you, Trey Parker and Matt Stone for missing the whole point all the time. It obviously didn’t bother the Mormons too much, considering they are usually the primary Playbill sponsor for productions since.Shocking documentaries have been made, and books written, about splinter groups where the most conservative, patriarchal doctrines are turned up to 11. I’m talking about groups like Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist LDS (FLDS) sect, and other sects’ various crimes highlighted in Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. Turns out an environment obsessed with bloodlines, control, and conformity begets sociopaths who are EXTREMELY obsessed bloodlines, control, and conformity and also being pedophiles.Mormons’ shockingly outsized influence on pop culture extends far beyond television and social media; Mormons can also sing and write books and start dessert/sweet treat fast food chains.David Archuleta was famously LDS before abandoning the church and decrying it in his 2024 song “Hell Together.” 2010’s Jeep Commercial Core rock band Imagine Dragons is famously Mormon, which explains their safe, family-friendly music that can still be heard on variety station airwaves across the country today. Pop culture aficionados can enjoy Benson Boone flipping like a jackass off a piano as he sings his boring songs about falling in love. Generations of hormonal high school orchestra students have been enamored with the vaguely sexualized manic pixie dreamgirl that is violinist Lindsey Stirling (who disavowed the church when she was featured on Archuleta’s song named above).The late-aughts were a boom time movies and books by Mormons. Nearly every kid in America was quoting the still exceptionally funny Napoleon Dynamite, which was made by an active, practicing Mormon. Middle school girlies weren’t free either: the Twilight series is an infamously Mormon work. Stephanie Meyer is a practicing Mormon and the books are known as a quintessential modern Mormon classic, evidenced by its presence at the Far West Temple gift shop, “The Country Store.” We haven’t even talked about Mitt Romney (and we won’t).Mormons are also making their mark on the American diet. Crumbl is a national 1000-calorie cookie fast food chain that was started in Utah by Mormons, with over 1,000 locations across the US as of June 2025. The “dirty soda” trend originated in Utah, where soda shops outnumber coffee shops due to the religion’s rules against consuming coffee (Minnesota has our own version, whose owners are LDS, called Sota). Cafe Zupa’s has exploded as the primary national competitor against Panera Bread’s monopoly on the bakery-cafe dining concept.All of these people, works, and organizations associated with the Church and its members vary in “how Mormon” they are, but regardless, the church and its adherents genuinely believe that people making half-baked 1000-calorie cookies are actually missionaries spreading the word of God.Beyond the cultural impact, Mormonism, and specifically the mainline Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is basically an infinite money glitch for those at the top.Despite supposedly having just 17 million followers worldwide, the Mormon church is the most financially successful religious institution on the planet, with assets, including cash, amounting to an estimated $293 billion. This has largely been the result of the faith’s doctrine of tithing, where members, no matter what they must sacrifice to do so, must contribute 10% of their income directly to the church.The church has an official venture capital and investment management division called Ensign Peak. Wikipedia estimates that Ensign Peak alone manages more than $124 billion in the Church’s assets. How else do you think companies by BYU grads get their start-up money? Yet, stake presidents are urged to pressure members into tithing no matter how they and their family will suffer to do so. Mormon Facebook is full of AI-ass posts lauding people sacrificing food because they spent so much on tithing (not all Mormons are rich!)The Church enjoys free labor from their members, as if 10% of their income wasn’t enough. The iconic imag

The year is 2009. The first decade of the new millennium is coming to an end. The economy is in shambles. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is released to great acclaim. I am in 7th grade, and Facebook just arrived in my middle school.I was an active internet user from a young age. I regularly used the “kitchen computer” for Wikipedia wormhole dives, YouTube videos, and online games like Runescape. I’ve had consistent, pretty much unfiltered access to the internet since I was probably 11 or 12.I remember bits and pieces of early Facebook. The girl I had a crush on (and our whole friend group) had all made Facebook accounts around the same time. It wasn’t MySpace, and the part that worried me the most was using your real name and likeness.While the internet was largely unblocked and my site visits largely unmonitored, I was only allowed on Facebook if I didn’t use my full name, so I used my then online alias Yankeefanboy123, stylized “Yankeefanboy Onetwothree.” No, I do not like the Yankees anymore, and yes, I have always been an obnoxious contrarian. I was also very worried because I thought they (Facebook) would find out (classic Noah) I was under the age requirement.Welcome to Please Don’t Add My Mom Back on Facebook: An Oral History of a Social Network. Growing up online at the blooming stages of social media was complicated, but I think a lot of my peers have reverence for the early days of Being Online.Reflecting on Facebook’s influence on my life is also complicated; it’s the easiest way for me to revisit memories, both good and bad, of my late mother, whose descent into addiction and isolation is laid fully bare on her still archived and technically active Facebook page.This week, we’re going to cover those formative years, which for me coincided with being in middle school. What a fucking nightmare.Thanks for reading and listening. And why didn’t you poke me back?Dude, did you see Stanford is on theutpbook.com now, too? That’s crazy. I think we’ll get it pretty soon. Give me your email and I’ll let you know.Part 1: Parent Permission Required (2009-2011)I was on Facebook doing Facebook things probably every day, once I had access to my own computer. My dad would buy extremely-cheap, used business laptops from his work, which was how I had my “own” laptop.I didn’t have a cell phone, so Facebook messages were the only way I could message people. This was before most kids had smartphones, and Facebook had a text-to-message feature, same with text-to-post. There was an incredible crossover era where people had online forum-esque signatures for SMS messages, so every Facebook message would have a My Chemical Romance quote or something at the end of it. Incredible stuff~~xxX Welcom 2 Tha Black Parade MCR4EVA Xxx~~Facebook was liberating. It was the first time I was somewhere online where I was interacting with people I actually knew in real life. MySpace was already falling out of fashion, and Facebook was also seen as being more “private,” which is hilarious in retrospective. This wasn’t Runescape or Xbox Live, but something totally different to me.Despite being 11 or 12 years-old, I was legitimately using Facebook to “catch up” with people, the timeless marketing gimmick used for Facebook once it outpaced its original market of current college students. I had a pretty major move in 3rd grade, and my now 6th/7th grade-self used Facebook to re-connect with my neighbors and school friends who I had drifted from, and even a few who had moved to other parts of the country.For me, the best and cringiest part about going back to old Facebook posts is without a doubt how earnest I was in sharing basically everything I was doing. Of course, everyone I know wants to see pictures of me in front of the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. Of course, everyone wants to know how long it took me to read John Green’s Looking for Alaska. There’s an excitement to the novelty of writing out these silly UTP articles and essays for my friends that takes me back to a different internet that was optimistic and exciting. It’s fun to reminded that it’s cool to be earnest, actually.I also want to be up-front that, as the title suggests, a significant part of my early Facebook memories are of my late mother, who, like all good suburban moms that are also children of the 80’s, used Facebook to reconnect with friends, share life updates, and play games. Nothing had her in a vice-grip quite like fucking Bejeweled Blitz. She was putting up World of Warcraft playtime numbers in a Facebook match the colors game.This was also around the time her addiction began to consume her life. She was ostensibly more connected with friends than ever, even as she began to isolate herself.I have many, many memories of being in the kitchen talking to my mom while she played Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook on the Kitchen Computer, which typically transitioned into a frenzy of YouTube viewings, where my mom showed me all the things people always say they wanna show their kids. This is how I saw famous scenes from The Brady Bunch, cheesy 70s kid’s shows, and whatever nostalgia trip my mom was currently on. My parents always treated “showing me things for grown-ups” as a rite of passage, especially movies; I was a Quentin Tarantino fanatic at age 12.My mom loved to laugh. She introduced me to sketch comedy, stand-up, and was almost always trying to crack jokes. If she wasn’t using Facebook to try to catch up with you, she was trying to get you to laugh, her posts, comments, and messages full of bad one-liners and cheap punchlines.Linda was an avid prankster, frequently in trouble at her Catholic high school, and later on crank calling people when she was probably a little too old to be doing that (read: 40s). She enjoyed chatting with old friends and making new ones. She had a network of mutual friends that were all prolifically active on Facebook, including a few she never knew IRL.I have my suspicions about the real intentions of befriending men across the country on Facebook but she did make a lot of interesting connections, including a guitar player who played in The Meat Puppets for a short period of time in the early 90s. This man was in attendance at the infamous Nirvana MTV Unplugged Live in New York recording, which to me was tantamount to being present for Christ’s crucifixion. I have old messages begging for information about Kurt Cobain or what it was like to be there. He was clearly drunk while messaging me.I had a smaller, but just as active cohort of the other 12-year-olds I knew that had Facebook. It was well before my grandparents were on, or even my dad and siblings. I was documenting everything I did, and complaining a lot. As I mentioned earlier, ever the contrarian, I used Facebook to remind everyone just how special I was because I was a fervent Yankees fan, triggered by 2009 playoffs fever and a few years of baseball card collecting.I was also unusually upset about the Minnesota Vikings bringing Brett Favre in, and certainly didn’t like his wavering commitment to the team I barely understood. I wasn’t a football fan in any way, but caught the bandwagon spirit of 2009, what with Adrian Peterson and all. I made a litany of memes mocking Favre and Vikings management, despite having no investment before that football season. But, this was a big time for the Vikings, and my getting caught up in the excitement would lead me to play my sole season of youth football, which, like all efforts of mine, was an attempt to get girls to like me. Today, I am a loyal prisoner of the Vikings fandom, and it does not make me more attractive. And it all started with me making crass Brett Favre memes to share on Facebook.My mom was a common guest in the comment sections on my Facebook posts, which was unspeakably horrifying for a teenager.My mom always befriended my friends and we would spend time hanging out with her in the late hours of the night, like always at the kitchen computer, which was usually fun because she’d show us stand-up clips, iconic sketches, and whatever racist jokes were fashionable at the time; my mom did think Jeff Dunham was funny and MadTV was just as likely as SNL to be what we were shown, and a lot of those sketches have aged like milk. I’d protest to my friends, but my friends actually liked being treated like adults, and my mom loved cracking jokes and laughing.On utpbook, the one true social network, I felt 2009 was a good year to feature posts from. I credit high school speech team with socializing me, so my 12-year-old lack of awareness and unbridled online enthusiasm is really fun to look back on. I’ve peppered a number from that venerable first year on Facebook throughout the piece and plan to throughout this series.Part of what spurred the idea to talk about Facebook is because doing this newsletter and accompanying podcast feels like early Facebook to me. It’s the one place online I actually enjoy being, and sharing art/things I’ve made with people, even my faceless Substack subscribers, takes me back to a time shortly before my mom’s alcoholism became fully apparent and the beginning of The Bad Times (8th Grade-ehh present).Buuuuut this newsletter gives me the creative joy that I felt in the pre-The Bad Times times. This is a new kind of Times: Picayune. Uffda!I shared creative writing samples, of which I can no longer access because Zuck and his ghouls disabled the Notes feature on Facebook and now my anti-Twilight fanfictions from ‘09 are gone. Let me just say this: Jesus blows up Edward, Bella, and Ugly Betty with a rocket launcher. Just burn down the Library of Alexandria, why don’t you.In the years since moving back to Minnesota, where I’ve had my own office/studio/rehearsal space, I think about early Facebook because, in those 2009 days of old, I often posted about my guitar, wanting to play guitar, wanting to buy a guitar, post pictures of my guitar, and so on. Once again, this was an effort to get girls to like me, and li

Alright. Alright, alright, alright. The b***h is back. Sound the trumpets. Lay down the red carpet. Bring out your offerings. UTP is back for 2026.Originally, I had written a whimsical intro about the razzmatazz and pizzazz of welcoming the new year and my overcoming a writer’s block that has afflicted me for the better part of two months.I was actually finalizing the edits to this very edition while sitting in a Powderhorn, Minneapolis coffee shop the morning of January 7th, when Renee Good was murdered just over a mile away as the crow flies. I had actually taken that as a mental health day, if you can believe it.I can’t emphasize enough how much worse things have gotten in the last few weeks. I’ve actually been paranoid to write anything about this but I just don’t give a s**t anymore—Minneapolis did nothing to deserve this and the constant trauma and grief of everyone has so successfully been channelled into productive anger by people who are far braver than me.There is no figurehead making the media rounds. It is so decentralized it’s almost baffling that anything is coordinated. People act on good faith. Minnesota’s unique culture of civic participation, one that’s been stamped out in neighboring Wisconsin—which by definition is not a democracy, prepares a variety of responses. It is the most inspiring thing I have ever experienced.Believe it or not, living in a total police state is actually Not Great. South Minneapolis, particularly, is now teeming with SUVs with license plates from far-away lands, if they have any at all, filled with masked, armed goons who will turn any bystander—observer or otherwise—into a prop for their twisted fascist marketing campaign for a worse world.I mean, s**t, I’ve gone to mass twice this month. Thank God for Father RJ at St. Thomas More in Saint Paul.When I was revising this to write about the ongoing conflict in Minneapolis, I originally started writing about schools; the highly public assault of Roosevelt High School students on the same afternoon Renee Good was murdered was the high school the kids on my street attend. I was aghast at the cruelty of the decision to do that, and there was no naivete in my thinking that this was just the beginning. This is going to get worse. And it did. So here we are, weeks later.I can’t and won’t recount more of the events for you: I know you are paying attention. Don’t look away. I have an idea for a Minneapolis-centric gonzo piece about being a Regular Person In All This B******t, but that’s not what we’re doing today.Instead, I still want to share what I wrote, and maybe provide a little friendly humor in these trying times. They want you to be afraid. They don’t want you to enjoy jokes that made my Greatest Generation grandfather nearly faint. “I wasn’t expecting so many four-letter-words,” was his review of Putting the Moron in Moroni. They don’t want you to read UTP.The original bout of writer’s block was broken by a guest appearance at a local wrestling show, so I’ve got some of that below. Emily and I watched a dating show about virgins on Hulu and I have some things to say about it. And finally, I saw and am here to report on my Official Opinions of Wicked: For Good. Sorry ahead of time.Hang in there. Stay safe. Minneapolis is the greatest city on the planet and it’s not even close.RINGSIDE WITH UTPBREAKING: EDDIE KINGSTON SHOWED UP AT NIGHT ONE OF WREMIX AND IT WAS THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFEJanuary means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for local wrestling fans, we know it as the first of local wrestling promotion F1RST Wrestling’s shows of the year, Wremix, one of their signature flagship events that combines burlesque dancing, pro wrestling, and music into a damn fun few hours of entertainment where the bar has no line, and getting ringside is achievable without shoving and pushing people out of the way.The show was re-branded from “WrestlePalooza” after WWE shamelessly ripped the name away from them to counter-program AEW’s September pay-per-view, All Out. Sure, it was an old ECW PPV brand name, but really? You gotta f**k over F1RST and AEW? F**k off.These shows usually have surprises—it is a wrestling/rock concert/burlesque variety show at the Twin Cities’ best “danceteria,” First Avenue, that venerable bus-station-turned-nightclub of old. This night was no exception, and my God what a treat.This was our first time attending both nights of this event. We had done much hand-wringing over whether we were actually going to go to the first night, but we decided a day or two beforehand that it was going to be worth the feet pain, little sleep, and extra cost and got tickets.F1RST has been host to stars from across the wrestling world in the past, and it’s not unheard of for stars like Swerve Strickland, Orange Cassidy, and Danhausen to make appearances at shows. My review of Saturday Night Nitro in September has many examples, like Ultimo Dragon, Shotzi, and Priscilla Kelly.We arrived early and stood in the same spot we always stand. The show started a little late and after the video hype package and following promo monologue by F1RST Wrestling’s own blue-haired host we love to hate, John Maddening.The first match begins with the walk-out of current Uptown VFW Champion Jordan, the toothless all-arounder billed by his full home address, who is also my coworker’s friend’s ex-boyfriend. He walks out to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” which always come back when he positions his opponent on the ropes and asks the crowd “Can I kick it?" with the required “Yes you can!” cheer in response.The match was billed as having a surprise opponent. “Can I Kick It?” starts to fade out and the lights go out. After a few beats of silence, the distinctive Phantom of the Opera-esque organ of the fake-DMX theme song of only one wrestler in the world: god damned f*****g Eddie Kingston.EDDIE KINGSTON? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The same Eddie Kingston I’ve been writing about for the past months since his triumphant, if disappointing AEW return late last year? The same Eddie Kingston of whom I have a magnet of a chibi version of on a filing cabinet at my desk at work? The same Eddie Kingston who had to fight for everything he had?Yes. It was.Eddie came out and didn’t say much. Billed as “The Mad King” Eddie Kingston, he and Jordan had a well-matched bout until the match was rudely interrupted by the perennial F1RST Midwest indie circuit darlings None More Violent, which features “The Freakshow” Cho (who threatened to murder me at the 2024 Doobie Dabbler) and the extremely scary and equally pretty Jinn Hallows, who is always killing it in a crop top.Eddie and Jordan teamed up (twist!) and fought None More Violent, but not before Eddie cut a little promo (thank God! Give this man the microphone!). The match featured an amazing moment where the crowd grew quiet and Eddie shouted “F**k you, you m***********g c********r.” Incredible to hear in person, literally 10 feet away.I didn’t mention that Eddie Kingston did make eye contact with me. We usually stand within eyeshot of the front right ring post on the ground level. Between the two shows, I:* Made eye contact with Eddie Kingston,* Drunkenly called for Jordan’s attention (on night 2) and, when I had his attention, I screamed “I saw you walking around at the state fair last year!” Emily hid her face in shame like Marge Simpson,* Double main-eventer and man whose career I thought we watched end at MOA, Gringo Loco, was given superpowers by me pointing at him and screaming as we made eye contact twice,* We also saw local music stars The Gully Boys hanging out at the Depot Tavern attached to First Ave before night 2.If I reviewed every match, it’d be the whole damn newsletter/podcast and I also don’t remember them all, but my favorite wrestler I had never seen before was Effy, the TNA legend (who is strangely anti-AEW) whose whole gimmick is that he is gay. He was begging Shane Black, whose gimmick is that he’s a lifeguard, not to take his clothes off. He apparently has a kayfabe gimmick of targeting twinks, so that also came up. He fought both nights and they were both amazing.F1RST Wrestling more than delivered with Wremix. Carrying the torch of the One True WrestlePalooza, Wremix featured excellent burlesque performances, including an outstanding “omelette du fromage” Dexter’s Laboratory cosplay. Music was awesome both nights, and the Gully Boys were a treat as it was their last local show for a while.Wrestling evangelists will tell you that if the campiness and pageantry of wrestling is even a little interesting-sounding to you, go to a local wrestling show. Wremix will likely happen twice yearly, once in January, and once in June for Pride. Let me know if you wanna go, I’m always down.WHAT’S ON THE IDIOT BOX?HULU’S VIRGINS AND THE BANALITY OF CULTURAL REGRESSIONAh yes, a 6-episode limited reality series about awkward grown adults seeking love and connection is actually about the slow cultural regression we’ve been speedrunning since the COVID-19 pandemic. Hear me out (or don’t, you don’t get a choice).The premise of Virgins is extremely simple: four adults who consider their lack of intimacy core to their identity struggle and flounder as they try (and fail) to get laid. We watched the spiritual prequel earlier last year (also on Hulu), Are You My First?, whose premise was far more competition-esque. Love Island but nobody has any game.Why anyone would sign up to be on this show is beyond me, but they found four wannabe reality stars who must have a thing for public humiliation rituals because I don’t understand how anyone would think this is a good idea.I want to point out, as r/polyamory users will do about the existence of the concept of “jealousy,” that the conflicts these people have with being virgins are entirely self-created and self-reinforced. You actually don’t have to tell people that? You actually don’t have to make a big deal about this fabricated social construction of you

Hey this is Noah Hansen saying howdy to all the girls out there in Radioland. Or Newsletterland if you’re reading this instead. Hey listening audience, did you know this is also written down on Substack? You don’t just have to read the auto-generated “show notes” on Spotify.Anyway, it’s been a long week. Eddie Kingston tried to “do it the right way” and lost to Samoa Joe, but not before Joe could make a salute to John Cena as Cena nears the end of his retirement run. Cena acknowledged him on Instagram.I had to miss banjo class because of the snow, so that’s been a thing (if you’re reading this I’m soooooo sorry Julie) that ruined my week. Thankfully I’m still riding the high of the Minnesota Vikings shutting out the Washington Commanders a week after being shut out for the first time in two decades by the Seattle Seahawks.In today’s edition of UTP, we’re highlighting the heroic comeback and meteoric rise of the Bang Bang Gang before they take on FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championship in Cardiff, Wales on Saturday. We’re also looking at the mechanical keyboard I got at the Goodwill on Black Friday—a first-ever thrift find even if I am finding the keyboard impossible to type on. …And another thing, I’m really annoyed that Warner Brothers has two potential buyers.Every link is a gift link if I call it that. Send this “gift link” to your friends because even if they don’t care what I’m writing about, maybe they’ll think I’m funny. You will tell them I’m funny, right?RINGSIDE WITH UTPTHE JUICE IS WORTH THE SQUEEZE: THE BANG BANG GANG IS STRONGER THAN EVER (EVEN IF 2/5THS OF THEM ARE OUT INJURED)Throughout the history of independent wrestling (that is to say, not WWE), promotions have struggled to break through the Fed noise and make a cultural impact outside of the niche world of dorks fighting online about simulated combat interrupted by poorly written, acted, and directed soap opera scenes.World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the only true pre-AEW competitor to what was then called the WWF, did do so in the 1990s with perhaps the most commercially successful non-WWF wrestling brand, the New World Order (nWo), a villainous wrestling stable whose t-shirts you have almost certainly seen over the many years. Though, it should be said that a) the entire gimmick was former WWF Superstars teaming up to take over the competitor during the peak of the so-called Monday Night Wars, and b) basically every star, including the kayfabe leader of WCW, Eric Bsichoff, would end up as part of nWo. Are they really rebels if the entire establishment belongs to them?Across the Pacific, New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW or just New Japan), had success with a legally-distinguishable but extremely similar gimmick, Bullet Club, a stable primarily made up of foreign-born wrestlers in Japan, which debuted in 2013. I am not a wrestling historian by any means, but the Bullet Club logo and accompanying brand is still wildly popular with wrestling fans stateside. If you go to any wrestling show, there’s a damn good chance you’ll see a handful of people wearing Bullet Club shirts. Twin Cities hip-hop-person-turned-pro-wrestler Nur-D sells shirts with a modified version of the Bullet Club logo.Bullet Club’s popularity led to multiple sub-factions/spin-offs, perhaps most notably, The Elite, the wrestling stable that is the namesake of All Elite Wrestling. The Elite were the primary driving force behind the early success of AEW; the 2018 All In pay-per-view (organized by The Elite) was the watershed moment that proved there was a market for large WWE competitor in the US, and this was primarily boosted by the wildly popular YouTube vlog series Being the Elite (BTE), which follows the lives of the members behind the scenes.Today, only three groups of the original Bullet Club exist: the Bullet Club War Dogs, The Elite (which hasn’t been considered a Bullet Club faction since 2018), and Bullet Club Gold, also known as the Bang Bang Gang.The War Dogs almost exclusively exist in New Japan, and I’d recommend watching the 2025 match-of-the-year contender from Wrestle Dynasty back in January where Kenny Omega fought War Dogs leader Gabe Kidd in a nearly hour-long bout that was largely driven by Kidd’s hatred for the “traitor” Kenny Omega. The fight is easily in my top three of the year and famously left NJPW legend Hiroshi Tanahashi in tears.So that just leaves Bullet Club Gold, also known as the Bang Bang Gang. When I started watching in 2023, they were still billed as Bullet Club Gold, and even wore Bullet Club-branded apparel, albeit modified. The Bang Bang Gang debuted a few months before then, when “The Switchblade” Jay White (who led Bullet Club in Japan after The Elite left) made his debut in AEW saving fellow Bullet Club alum “Rock Hard” Juice Robinson (not to be confused by “Freshley Squeezed” Orange Cassidy).Within a few months, they were joined by Austin and Colten Gunn, the twin sons of wrestling legend Billy Gunn. Together, they put the Bullet Club name to the side and called themselves “The Bang Bang Gang.”Jay White, Juice Robinson, and the Gunns were immediately fan favorites. The Gunns had been stuck in the shadow of their dad for a pretty mid trio storyline, but they fit right in alongside Jay and Juice. Their signature intro has them standing in a circle facing out, with the lights out, with one lone spotlight directly above. As the fog machine blows into the beam, we can only make out a bit of each member’s face. Austin Gunn will say in a sorta bad guy (?) voice “By the order of the Bang Bang Gang.” Juice Robinson has long been the Charlie Kelly-esque “wild card” and would do what I could only describe as a crazy Street Fighter character’s idle animation, sporting a long, scraggly beard, and wild untamed curly hair.Picking up off our discussion of The Acclaimed at the end of last week’s UTP, there was a very amusing time after the Bang Bang Gang turned face in 2024 where the Acclaimed and the Bang Bang Gang joined forces in a supergroup they called the Bang Bang Scissor Gang. Billy Gunn was reunited with his sons and everyone got to scissor all the time. It didn’t last, of course, but it was an incredible few months before Jay White and Juice Robinson were both injured.In fact, in the two short years I’ve been a viewer, either Juice or Jay have been injured pretty much the entire time. There was a roughly year-ish long gimmick where they used a cardboard cut-out of Jay White called “Card-blade,” and would do the same for Juice as well in 2025 when both Jay and Juice were injured. This summer, the Bang Bang Gang announced a new member, Ace Austin (who was in the original Bullet Club), would debut in AEW as part of the stable.On July 12 at All In: Texas, Juice Robinson made his triumphant return from injury as part of the Casino Gauntlet match, AEW’s response to the Royal Rumble. He had a new look: no more trunks, he had a black and gold one-piece. He’s clean shaven and not acting like a monkey man. He doesn’t do well, but does get a nice pop when he comes out.A few days later, AEW releases a dramatic sit-down interview between backstage presenter Renee Paquette and Juice where he candidly says he is tired of being a punchline, and that he wants to do something different with his character. We don’t get much development until an episode of Collision before Full Gear, where the Bang Bang Gang are given the opportunity to win $200,000 in a match on pay-per-view. Uncharacteristically, Juice is the voice of reason between himself, Austin Gunn, and Ace Austin (confusing, I know), and proclaims the funniest line he’s said in a promo in recent memory: that they plan to save the money they win and invest wisely using deferred savings accounts, including a 401(k). Extremely funny stuff.They did win, and since then, Accountant Juice is mostly gone, but this past Saturday (December 6) on Collision, something magical happened. Austin Gunn and Juice Robinson came out to harass current Tag Team champs FTR while they were grandstanding a promo shitting on some other tag team. They come out, and it’s f*****g insane.Instead of the typically silly or humorous take on a wrestling promo, Austin and Juice deliver on building some massive hype for this Saturday’s Winter is Coming: AEW Collision, which will be from Cardiff, Wales. Cash Wheeler says Austin Gunn will never be more than Billy’s son, and Juice will never be more than “Mr. Toni Storm” (Juice Robinson and Toni Storm are married).The Bang Bang Gang takes the mic and cranks things up a notch. Austin says he’s the son of a wrestling legend and that Juice is the son of a carpenter, while Cash Wheeler is the “son of his first cousin” and Dax is “just a son of a b***h.”Juice takes the mic and delivers more verbal abuse about how they’re going to be the next AEW World Tag Team champions. Juice delivers the classic Bang Bang Gang catchphrase.“And if you don’t like that, then we’ve got two words for you:” Juice pauses. We hear a loud “Guns Up!” from the crowd before Juice moves in closer to Dax Harwood, grits his teeth, and says “And New,” which is the phrase used in wrestling (particularly AEW marketing) to introduce the new champions. The crowd Ooos and Aaahs because this was…shockingly good and has me pumped for the future of the Bang Bang Gang.Juice Robinson and Austin Gunn of the Bang Bang Gang will be taking on Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler, FTR this Saturday on AEW Collision on TNT at 3:30 Central.UTP THRIFTSAFTER A DISAPPOINTING BLACK FRIDAY CLOSURE, THE SAVAGE GOODWILL RISES LIKE A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHESOn Thanksgiving, Emily and I were doing our once weekly or so tradition of “TikTok Time,” where we watch the TikToks Emily had sent me over the week (I used to be a TikTok-er but stopped using it earlier this year). She had shared a video about a thrift store in Shakopee that was located in an old big box store shell.The finds in the video were incredible, and looked to be closer to how I remember Save

Welcome back, friend, to the newsletter and podcast that puts the UTP in perfect utopia: The Uffda Times-Picayune.This one would be a good one to read and follow along with the voiceover, especially for the third article. I’m getting better at podcasting!As our brave and noble movement of journalistic malpractice marches forward and onward to victory over the dreaded menace, truth, we’ve also picked up a number of new readers and listeners that must be reminded of just what the hell we’re all doing here, and who better to do it than the propaganda arm of UTP, the Ministry of What’s It To Ya and Nunya Business (WITY-NB):NOAH THE EDITOR was born some time ago along the sacred mountainside of suburban Denver. The Glorious Editor was born of a sunbeam, carried by a flock of pigeons, before the infant Editor completed their first of sixty-seven most glorious perfect 300 games of bowling at the Bowling Alley of the Revolution. Shortly after, Noah delivered an edict: Friend’s Humorous Newsletter to Make Life Worth Living. The most excellent and factual newspaper of record was christened with the raising of 1000 doves, a procession of 16 military wives, 32 softly focused brightly-colored eyes, and the heralding of 500 trumpets. The first edition featured the holy revelations of blessed AEW kayfabe scripture, another testament of "Hangman" Adam Page, a review of the first Wicked, and complaining about living in a nation of scams. It was truly what the brave, chosen people of UTP-land needed from their Glorious Editor. May we Uffda onward for one thousand generations! So anyway. Welcome to my personal mouthpiece for infodumping (did you know I wrote nine newsletters about Mormons?), complaining, opining, trying creative writing, and really whatever I want. Don’t take it too seriously.Hell has frozen over in Minneapolis. Ice is on the streets, despite the city’s promises to do what they can keep it out. It’s gotten mighty slippery out there. Keep an eye out for yourselves and others! Not only does your face hurt if you walk outside, but we also have a development on the Eddie Kingston-Samoa Joe storyline in AEW. They had their big promo, which they had hyped up on Collision on Thanksgiving, on this week’s Dynamite, and I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Eddie needs to be going after the Death Riders, not wasting his time with The Opps and Hook. I know Hook betrayed him, but they also weren’t really friends? Like they were teammates for like a month and two TV appearances. Just really disappointing. At least we’ll probably get an MJF return in the next 1, 2, 3 weeks.In this edition of UTP, I review the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera that stopped in Minneapolis, we give the green monster a run for their money as we do Noah’s iPod 2025 Wrapped, and I address the wrestling songs on my other wrapped top list. This is UTP Soundwaves, where we chat everything music. Thanks for reading (and listening!).It’s not spam if you send it to your friends. Give them a phone call. Why don’t you call anymore? Should we be getting landlines?UTP AT THE THEATREPHANTOMS AT THE OPERAThis past long weekend I had the privilege to attend the traveling production of perennial UTP person of interest Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1980’s 1890’s fever dreamThe Phantom of the Opera.Phantom is my partner’s favorite musical. One of our first experiences with musicals together was when I showed her the theatrical Jesus Christ Superstar, and she showed me the 2012 Royal Albert Hall anniversary production of Phantom. We had the pleasure of seeing the 50th anniversary production of JCS at the Kennedy Center in 2022, and we saw the non-equity tour at the DECC in Duluth in February 2024. But we haven’t had the chance to see Phantom.I’ve since seen the 2012 version of Phantom multiple times, the film version once, and shockingly good high school productions on YouTube. I’ve watched the horrific sequel Webber based on a 1999 Phantom fanfic, Love Never Dies, where the Phantom leaves the catacombs beneath the Parisian opera house and moves to, I shit you not, Coney Island.I’m not going to re-litigate Phantom. The story is relatively simple (even though I probably had to see it like 5 times to fully grasp what the hell was going on). Two buffoons buy an opera house, with an established pair of stars, when a mysterious playwright who lives in the catacombs of the opera, known only as the Phantom of the Opera, uses written threats and dubiously supernatural techniques to frighten the owners into substituting another cast member, the soprano Christine Daaé, who had a young love fling with the opera’s newest patron the Vicomte de Chagny Raoul. Drama ensues.Phantom is fun (and confusing if you are stupid, like me). This production was among the best of the best. In fact, Emily said that of the four times she’s seen it live, this was the best version.I was not a theater kid; band was my jam. But I did play in pit orchestra, including the single worst pit of all time for The Music Man. People thought our playing was a joke. One instructor affiliated with the production famously called us (in retrospective) the “worst pit orchestra ever.” I did play a Phantom medley in concert orchestra, but that was my only experience prior to meeting Emily. That and the drum corps version (which was so popular they did it two years in a row).But despite my lack of theater kid credentials, I can appreciate this production’s extraordinarily intricate tech. We got the full chandelier experience, explosions, swinging, and all. The Phantom’s eerie voice was piped in using surround sound speakers around us. The way the curtains were so intentionally used as set devices, both in diegetic (Phantom has multiple musicals-within-a-musical) and non-diegetic senses (dynamic curtain draws and lifts seamlessly took us from place to place) was truly enamoring. This production did NOT fuck around.The cast was incredible. Isaiah Bailey delivers an all-time great performance as the titular Phantom, a character who is functionally an incel terrorist that does double-duty as an all-time favorite of the romance genre; he’s a misunderstood softie who is only evil because society forces him to be, secluded away hiding his talents and skills. Bailey is perfect opposite Jordan Lee Gibert’s Christine, and I would say that the casting is damn near perfect. You’d think Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the musical for these people.“I don’t get it. Why am I supposed to care about him? He killed people!” - my brother after the conclusion of the 2012 version.Our showing was marred by a technical issue, though. In the midst of the beginning of the final descent into the Phantom’s lair, I think the boat (an all-time silly Broadway prop) got its wheels jammed or something? They stopped the show and lifted the lights for about 8 minutes, but honestly, I don’t think a single person cared because the intricate production is worth the wait. No one wants to see half-assed Phantom of the Opera.Less interestingly, an opp from my past sat down right in front of us. A ghost from my past. A phantom at the opera, if you can believe it. I don’t believe in real ghosts, but I sure as hell believe in metaphorical ones.Anyway, the real Phantom of the Opera was fucking awesome. 5 stars. The only downer was that the production was priced appropriately… around $90/ticket. But if that’s what it takes to pay the high quality union crew, then that’s fine with me.SHAMELESSLY RIPPING OFF THE GREEN MONSTERNOAH’S IPOD WRAPPED 2025I had a humorous idea on my personal Instagram story: what if I had a Spotify Wrapped, but for the music that’s just on my iPod? Well here you go.My partner Emily got me a purple iPod Nano for my birthday earlier this year. When I was a kid, all I fucking wanted was an iPod, and finally, I had one.The timing was nice—King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, my favorite band, left Spotify after widespread reporting about the CEO’s personal financial investments in drone warfare companies. So I loaded it up with a who’s who of music from my Spotify time, and also old music I’ve had in my personal data archive, which goes back to… 2010? 2009? Idk, but it’s been a while.I want to point out something kind of funny in all this: my family never had any Apple products growing up (or today). I explored too many places I didn’t belong on the internet with old Windows XP business laptops my dad bought. My first smartphone was a then-seven-year-old Google G1, the first-ever Android phone, hacked of course.So you’ll imagine my surprise when I use an old MacBook of Emily’s to start writing and doing *gestures to podcast and newsletter home studio*, plug the iPod in, and find out that actually, you can’t use an iPod on modern Apple hardware: iTunes no longer exists. It literally only exists on Windows in 2025.I have an 8GB model, which fits roughly 1000 songs. I’ve filled the whole thing up, but have a “to-go” playlist of 16 songs I listen to most often. Consider this the definitive THE TOP 16 SONGS ON THE ONLY PLAYLIST ON MY IPOD, you won’t believe number 15!In a humorous ironic twist revealing that I have no values, I’ve made this a Spotify playlist.* “Phantom, Pt. II” by Justice from Cross (2007)French electro duo Justice was the first grown-up music I really found on my own. I was on a certain website known for funneling young men into right-wing identity crises, which I thankfully never went down, but the song was featured in a meme on the /video games/ board of said website. Since that night in 2010, or whatever, I’ve loved this song and the band.I love Phantom Pt. II because, despite having no words, it’s infectiously catchy and easy to dance to. Easy number one and keeps me checked in for the whole album. I was also supposed to see Justice live this year but had fucking shingles. Fuck you, 3rd Grade Noah, for getting chicken pox even though I was vaccinated.* “Nouveau Americain” by Brazilian Girls from New York City (2008)This son

Happy Black Friday UTP’ers. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and made a point to bring up controversial topics and plug my newsletter to your coolest family members. I really appreciate it. I also hope you full-body-checked five dads for a good TV deal, but I know you didn’t, because that America we were promised is gone. RETVRN!Actually, I thought people didn’t shop on Black Friday in-person, but I swear to God the traffic in and around both the Eagan outlet mall and the Mall of America was worse than I’ve ever seen it. Easily a thousand-plus cars between the two locations just trying to get in. At 3PM! Insanity.I wanted to make a note that picks up off last week’s UTP. You may recall I published a diatribe about AEW CEO Tony Khan’s fumbling of Eddie Kingston’s return after a year-long injury. Well, Tony must have read my newsletter, because last night, on the Thanksgiving episode of AEW Collision, we were treated to three courses of whoop-ass as Eddie Kingston cut a self-described “shoot” promo, where everything was off the cuff. Unfortunately the YouTube video version cuts out a good minute or two of preamble, but this is the first promo since his return where Eddie is ruthlessly real. Please watch the 2-minute clip.I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend are prepared for more snow if you live in da Great White North. Oh yeah, we’re on Instagram now. Thanks for reading.COMING SOON TO YOUR INBOX HOLE AND SPOTIFY OR APPLE PODCASTS FEED:Facebook had an outsized impact on my adolescence, as well as my late mother’s adulthood. Early Facebook signaled the final stages of transition from bulletin board systems and forums to multi-billion user websites and apps that define most people’s experiences online.In this sentimental special (hopefully not a series, lol), I’ll reflect on Facebook’s power to connect yet isolate, its stupid f*****g games, and more on Zuckerberg’s zombie social network, from when I made my account at age 12 in 2009, to today’s malformed monster that is Meta.Coming soon.Thanks for reading The Uffda Times-Picayune! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.U(TP) DECIDE ‘26THE DONALD TRUMP FACE TURN: THE (OTHER) SWERVE AMERICA NEEDSThis week we got the first piece of political news out of the White House this calendar year that brought me true joy: the bonkers, totally unexpected press conference Donald Trump held with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.There were conflicting reports. In the morning, there were rumors Trump had backed out of the meeting. I had seen a headline or two that it might be happening, but I was shocked when I saw the N** Y*** T***** email subject line that Trump was “heaping praise” on Mamdani. Excuse me?In case you weren’t paying attention to the New York Mayor’s race, MAGA-land had come out in full force as anti-Mamdani. Although not in force enough to rally behind the endorsed Republican candidate and living Grand Theft Auto character Curtis Sliwa—Trump actually endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former Democratic Governor of New York who was making a pathetic attempt at keeping moneyed Democrats (read: Republicans) in power. Cuomo lost in a blowout.The anti-Zohran campaign was heavily focused on Mamdani’s identity. Brown man, socialist, non-white name, baddie Hinge-wife. Crash-outs a-plenty across social media after Mamdani’s decisive win. There were even threats to deport him, despite his citizenship.It’s been a couple of weeks since then, and a lot has happened, but MAGA-land has towed the party line, as everyone would expect them to when they spent the entire campaign regurgitating racist comments and seek to discredit then-Representative Mamdani’s reputation simply because he isn’t white.In this context, we get the Oval Office meeting. It’s a press conference. The administration has not been afraid to use these exact opportunities to humiliate wavering allies at home and abroad, and to welcome some of the most evil warlords on the planet (an ex-Al Qaeda leader and MBS—in the same week). So we expected the worst. Only problem, Trump fuckng loves Zohran.Even the Donald isn’t immune to Zohran’s infectious charm, positive attitude, and focus on getting things done, or at least that’s what he told us.“He said some things that were very interesting and very interesting as to housing construction and he wants to see houses go up. He wants to see a lot of houses created and a lot of apartments built. We actually—people would be shocked. But I want to see the same thing.”Pardon me what? When the f**k was the last time Donald Trump talked about the idea of “housing.” Like what? I don’t have much more to say about this press conference except that it gave us a Trump we really haven’t seen in a minute. I saw a tweet remarking that he hasn’t looked this happy since the McDonald’s banquet lunch he held for the Crimson Tide during his first term.He was genuinely happy to meet with Zohran. He took him on a tour of the White House, and most notably, took a photo together in front of a painting of FDR that Mamdani had said was one he liked. In the photo, Mamdani seems to struggle to even half-heartedly smile, while the President is beaming from ear-to-f*****g-ear.We are way past due for a Donald Trump face turn.Using wrestling parlance when talking about who is good and who is bad with Donald Trump are actually pretty apt, not just because I have no other frame of reference with culture other than wrestling. Did I mention I didn’t start watching wrestling until I was 26?If you didn’t know, in the aughts, Donald Trump was a frequent guest star on WWE programming. Trump is famously friends with Vince McMahon (which makes a lot of sense knowing how they’re both pervert sex pests). I was never a WWE fan, so I can’t tell you many of the angles, but I know they ran an angle where Trump had “purchased” RAW, and was going to be making booking decisions. Another, and perhaps the most famous angle, was when Donald Trump and Vince McMahon had “their” respective wrestlers duke it out, and whoever lost, had to have their head shaved. Trump would go on to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013—our first WWE Hall of Fame President.Trump’s appearances on WWE programming are sporadic over the years, but his friendship with McMahon goes deeper than just occasional attendance at WrestleMania. Vince’s kids were groomed much in the same way as Trump’s to be underlings for dad. Vince has appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice as a guest judge and “expert” promoter (read: carny).The entire premise of a huge chunk of challenges on The Apprentice involve who can be the most obnoxious on the streets of New York for attention. Hillary Clinton was more right than anyone will give her credit for when she called Donald Trump a “carnival barker.” Like all her clunky, intellectualized insults, this one could have been refined to just “carny b*****d.” My personal favorite intersection of prescient-politics-and-wrestling that was more foreboding than anyone could have expected was during an in-ring promo at WrestleMania XX in 2004. Former Minnesota Governor and WWE Hall of Famer Jesse Ventura conducted an in-ring interview with Donald Trump, who was running as the presidential candidate for Jesse’s Reform Party, a half-hearted publicity stunt that famously got Roger Stone connected with Trump. Ventura asks about the likelihood of a wrestler, suggesting himself.As Ventura touched Apollo, the stage was set for Donald Trump to make himself the main storyline in American culture for the first quarter of the 21st century. If you watch old episodes of The Celebrity Apprentice particularly, you see a different kind of Trump. Trump’s not usually the one running the show in the board room (where deliberations happen before he fires someone on the losing team each episode), because he usually sics his kids or a powerful guest/friend (like McMahon) on people; Trump is really there to be the real-world Hedonism Bot from Futurama. How decadent, mmmm!So now it’s been a week or so now and have we seen Trump turn face? No.This wasn’t a face turn because I don’t think Donald Trump views Republicans as the ‘faces’ of American politics. He used to be a Democrat, after all, and has never really exemplified anything close to “statesman.” He has, however, been hyperfixated on whether he will go to heaven or hell when he dies, and he talks about it a lot. Supposedly, Pope Leo XIV told him he would not be saved simply because of the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era peace agreement for the Middle East that famously precluded *gestures wildly at Palestine*.The face turn can only happen if Trump believes that Democrats are actually good guys and that he might see some redemption as a universal good guy, and I don’t think that’s going to happen. Trump called Tim Walz a slur on Thanksgiving on Truth Social, so I don’t think he’s any different than he was before this.Maybe Mamdani can leverage this relationship to be a more effective negotiator than any of DC’s Democratic leadership. Wild speculation on Xitter called for naming massive public investments in housing, transit, and health care after Trump, and that Mamdani might be the only lefty politico who is savvy an charismatic, and professional enough to trick Trump into doing good things only so he can take the glory.Imagine the country if the cult of personality of Trump was able to steer his toxic fanbase towards being less evil? Mamdani’s visit all but showed that the posturing, insults, dehumanization, coded and overt racism, and much more are all exactly what everyone knows them to be: just another f*****g promo.Instead of pay-per-views, we get elections. Instead of Bret Hart burying that piece of s**t Bill Goldberg, it’s Donald Trump literally burying his political rivals. Everything is done for the fan reactions, for the “pop.” It’s not a coincidence that Trump has held his signature rallies non-stop since before his first election

Welcome back to another edition of the world’s most recommended newsletter/podcast to my friends’ coworkers.This week we’re back to normal after we wrapped up Putting the Moron in Moroni last week. I’m really proud of what I put together and I hope you’ll give it a read/listen if you haven’t already—start with episode 1 here.Also: this newsletter is also a podcast, which you can now listen to on the Substack app/browser, or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. All 9 episodes of Putting the Moron in Moroni are on there.Now, celebrate with me as we talk about more important things: banjos, wrasslin’, and transit-focused YouTubers.Did you know? 100% of all Uffda Times-Picayune subscribers are extremely hot. You don’t want to be ugly, do you?BOTCHED! GRIPES ABOUT GRAPSEDDIE KINGSTON’S 2025 REBOOT“I drink to drown my demons—but they know how to float.” -Eddie KingstonOn May 11, 2024, around 3,000 people gathered at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, CA for the New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) Resurgence pay-per-view.The second to last match was NJPW star (and terrifying person) Gabe Kidd vs. the 17-year indie wrestling legend Eddie Kingston.Eddie is a beloved wrestler among the nerdiest wrestling fans because he never wrestled in WWE. AEW Founder (and head of booking) Tony Khan has tapped decades-old rivalries Eddie Kingston has with other indie veterans, particularly those in Ring of Honor. Eddie’s nickname is “The Mad King,” which was made a pejorative turned term of endearment: “The King of the Bums.” He loves to talk about being from New York, he wears untied, floppy-ass Timbs, and his favorite joke/catchphrase is “Deez Nuts.” Eddie Kingston’s favorite artist is DMX, and his AEW theme song is like a discount DMX song set to music from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.Kingston loves to tell his story. He is well-known among wrestling fans for his tenacity on the microphone.“Promos” make up roughly 20% of a good episode of wrestling TV, and it is shockingly difficult to be good at it. I happen to have a mutual friend who happens to be in an acting class with an active WWE Superstar in Orlando, and a former-WWE star took public speaking classes taught by a friend of mine at UMN. Based on his comments about the student’s performance in the class it’s not shocking to me he was let go by WWE.Promos can be a lot of things. There are pre-recorded segments and backstage interviews. Many times, the wrestler will come out to the middle of the ring and rail on whatever they need to by hyping up for the next big show or pay-per-view or fight later that night or whatever. In some cases they might be plot-moving segments like MJF and Chris Jericho’s NYT award-winning performance in the Dinner Debonair Wrestling TV Show Broadway Musical Sketch. Promos are all about being good at extemporaneously speaking and improv.Yes, and? The good promo makes the good show. I covered an amazing Swerve/Hangman promo earlier this year that I still recommend watching. I’m also proud of D.E.N.N.I.S.’ing Joe Goldberg. And the COVID/Second Gilded Age Airbnbs they seem to film at a lot now.Eddie Kingston, whether because of his tough Yonkers upbringing, his time as a union ironworker, or something else entirely, can fucking go for it on the mic. I’ve linked a 2.5 hour compilation of his best promos on AEW. My favorite is the spring 2022 period where Chris Jericho attempted to seize AEW and make it more like the WWE—the full promo starts at 1:31:00.Chris Jericho’s faction was called “The Jericho Appreciation Society” (incredible name) and featured wrestlers that used to wrestle at WWE. Their gimmick, was that AEW needed to embrace “sports entertainment,” which is the marketing speak Vince McMahon used to describe what professional wrestling is. Jericho amusingly refers to the AEW fanbase as the “AEW Galaxy,” parodying the absolutely real “WWE Universe.” The JAS even start calling themselves “Superstars,” which is the WWE marketing-speak name for wrestlers. One last WWE marketing-speak (because this one annoys me so much): pay-per-views are now "Premium Live Events (PLE).”Eddie Kingston is the perfect foil: he never wrestled in WWE, and is perhaps one of the most committed wrestlers to maintaining kayfabe, the carny term for what is canon in the wrestling storyline. Eddie threatens to kill people. Eddie tells stories about his tough childhood, how he had to scrap and fight to stay alive.“Do you know— SHUT UP, I swear on my mother, shut up. Do you know what a hit means? Do you know that Chris? Look into my eyes. LOOK IN MY EYES, I LIVE BEHIND THEM. When you say ‘a hit’ in my world, you end things…you need to be ready to put a person IN THE GROUND. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it to you—no hesitation.”- Eddie Kingston in a face-to-face confrontation with the Jericho Appreciation SocietyThere’s so many others—the promo right after that one in the AEW Timelines video is another favorite, where Eddie Kingston calls into an episode of Dynamite and threatens to make Chris Jericho “feel the pain” his wife must feel as she “fears for his life” because he’s just that mad at Chris Jericho. I just really love the idea that a wrestler can just call in and threaten you. I love wrestling.Anyway, back to NJPW Resurgence (2024). I couldn’t even tell you the storylines—I don’t watch New Japan—but I know that the match ended with a gnarly botch of a table spot that broke Eddie Kingston’s leg, and tore his ACL and his meniscus. He was the AEW Continental Champion, having literally just won the first Continental Classic. In the time since, Kazuchika Okada (the New York Yankees of Japanese wrestling) took his title and it was consolidated into the new AEW Unified Championship.We got radio silence on Eddie. He is 42 years old, mind you, so there was speculation that he might be out for longer, or even that he might have to hang it up.Wrestling dirt sheets had rumors throughout summer 2025 that Kingston was nearly cleared to wrestle, but AEW hadn’t said anything. That was until an early-August ’25 promo from Big Bill, the beloved 7 foot-something wrestler most recently aligned with “The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho, but that bit is gone (as is Jericho, probably). His promo was calling out an unnamed wrestler but ended saying it was addressing Eddie Kingston. The next episode of Collision featured a promo-of-few-words when we saw a remote segment of Eddie Kingston accepting Big Bill’s challenge, from his home in New York. We would not see a single promo from The Mad King before his return at All Out in September.There’s not really a good reason for Big Bill and Eddie beefing. Why not have Eddie join in on the Death Riders storyline? He famously fucking hates Claudio Castagnoli in kayfabe, and one of his greatest rivalries in AEW was Jon Moxley? We never find out and the Mad King’s entrance is largely unceremonious. He wore an orange t-shirt that says “CLAUDIO SUCKS EGGS,” as well as two rosaries—not much for da big pay-per-view. I think the orange shirt was a sub-textual preview of him entering “Team Taz,” the now-defunct faction of orange-wearing wrestlers associated with Taz and the “outlaw” FTW Championship, which Chris Jericho was the last fighting champion of. He fights Big Bill and I’m gonna admit, he looks pretty rough. He’s still somewhat nimble but it’s clear this last injury did him real good. I’d compare the performance of his comeback to Jamie Hayter’s—underwhelming and a little scary…please don’t get injured again!Eddie wins. It’s been a couple months so I don’t remember…really anything from the match, but I do know that after the match, Big Bill and Bryan Keith beat the absolute shit out of Eddie. And then—the signal! It’s HOOK!Hook’s stupid new song is playing. He had a cool Westside Gunn song that was iconic and now he has this corny-ass “tell the girls I’m back in town” song that I really can’t stand. Hook runs out and saves the day—basically a return for Hook too after he left The Opps, and they’ve been a little tag team faction since.The match was widely panned and really shouldn’t have been on the card. Dave Meltzer, if you care what he thinks, gave it one star. Ouch.It’s not hard to see where TK went wrong on this one. Why is the greatest man on the mic not beefing with big enemies? I understand he’s a lone wolf, so it makes sense for him to pair up with Hook, but do we really need another faction? I guess it makes sense so that Eddie is only doing 50% of the wrestling.I don’t blame Eddie, he’s not in charge of booking. I’m happy to have Eddie back, but he’s not being used to his full potential. We need Eddie promos. Eddie was the missing voice during the egregiously long reign of the Death Riders, and now that he’s back and paired up with one of weakest promo cutters in the locker room, we deserve the Eddie we love. Give Eddie 20 minutes to address his enemies. Do a shoot on Chris Jericho leaving AEW. Use his reverence for Ring of Honor to elevate that show. Beef with MJF for no reason (God where tf is MJF please come back). There’s probably way more lore connecting Eddie with the locker room I bet we’re just scratching the surface.Eddie is a decent wrestler, but he’s an incredible performer. To Eddie, all of this is real. Eddie is so convincingly earnest, you believe everything he says. I genuinely believe he is trying to fight the other person in the ring. No one has told him anything is choreographed or staged—he’s just out here beating the shit out of people. Tony Khan: let’s get him doing what he does best.UTP SOUNDWAVESI’M LEARNING CLAWHAMMER BANJO AND CAN’T TAKE ANY OF THE SONGS SERIOUSLYI mentioned very briefly in a June edition of this newsletter that I was taking a banjo class. I’m finally ready to talk about it.I remember “community ed” classes held at my elementary and middle schools as I started staying after for various activities. Grown-ups would show up and go to my classroom to do…whatever it is they were doing.I don’t know why, but I always