Fans of Ariel Pink, aka Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, either willfully ignore his troubling politics and avid troll-y nature, or they celebrate them and complain that critics just aren't in on the "joke." But any person who would go on Tucker Carlson's show in the wake of being cancelled, post January 6th, to whine about how he couldn't book gigs all of a sudden, is pretty much asking for trouble, and is arguably a little touched to begin with.
But when it's almost an hour of wall-to-wall press mini-scenes, many of which are debates about what constitutes assault? Oof. I will say that if the goal was to make the viewer feel trapped in a claustrophobic loop between glam chair and sprinter van with nonstop tension the entire time, it was a success. I'm sweaty. Anxious. Desperate to disassociate alone in a hotel robe.
Braun was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison by District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in 2021 for failing to adhere to the terms of his supervised release. He will only serve 20 of those months as he has been detained in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center since this spring. Despite the commutation, the terms of his supervised release included strict behavioral guidelines and a fine of $100,000, both of which Braun violated according to federal prosecutors.
