I write a wank little rant every year for Peter’s birthday and this is a big one – 40, you know, that’s proper grown up. Hard to imagine Peter ever being any kind of grown-up, let alone a proper one, even if the proof is there – the muss of grey hair, the occasional wrinkle on that giant baby face.

Being forced into adulthood by sheer numerical propulsion feels entirely unfair for people like Peter, and probably a good few of us too, who never supposed we’d have to answer to the ordinary mortality imposed by the passing of time. All the kids who never felt the need to actually stop being kids.  

But when it comes to those who already have a somewhat fragile relationship with simply existing, let alone in a healthful fashion, every year well-lived is a blessing, every milestone doubly so. And what a milestone this is.

No matter his age, I suspect Peter is always going to be a massive, twisty, irritating, wonder-filled child. Because he represents the ultimate adventure, a lifetime of creative freedom. An often chaotic, difficult, strange, beautiful, barely-survivable freedom, but freedom all the same, and that’s something so immensely rare and so immensely special. 

A tribute to Bucky Barnes. Because with him, Captain America would go to the end of the line. 

Lyrics under the cut.

"I never got emotional all week. Like, I never really cried all week. I get very focused on work, and I don’t fully get the weight of things sometimes. I was so focused on what we were working on that it wasn’t until me and Seth — so I go up there [on the live show], I do the jokes, I get mad, I leave, and I run over to this corner and they start to put the veil on me, and get me ready for the part where me and Seth run back into the studio audience. I was sitting there, holding Seth’s hand, and we’re getting ready to go, and we’re watching the video. Then I start getting a little emotional. And Jenna, our stage manager, was crying, and she was like, “It’s been a lot of fun, Bill.” And I was like, “Aww, man!” And then that was it"

-Bill Hader on Stefon's farewell sketch