In which I almost died but I didn’t so it’s funny instead

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The shower in our bathroom is a two-piece affair, with an overhead rainwater-style showerhead and a second handheld one that’s mounted on a grab bar and fully adjustable. I generally keep both running for the entire time I’m showering, and the handheld gets used as a handheld quite a bit as well, because I am a fat man and as a fat man I have nooks and crannies and such a thing makes the whole hygiene process a lot more complete. There’s also a bench in the shower, which technically was put in there to be sat on but which I mostly use as a way to make my feet and legs easier to wash.

Well, today I was finishing that process up and managed to somehow drop the wand, and a lot of things went wrong very quickly. The first thing I did was to look straight down, as one might expect from someone who had just dropped something. Unfortunately, and I don’t think I could have done this again if my life depended on it, I managed to drop the thing in such a way that it landed pointing directly up. Which means that, while balancing semi-precariously on one foot, I dropped the shower head, started a little bit at the loud noise when it hit the tile floor, had time to think oh, shit, I hope I didn’t break anything, then looked down, to be surprised by a rather intense blast of water coming up from the floor and directly into my face.

Telling this story, I feel like it shouldn’t have surprised me to get water in my face while showering, but the direction was unexpected, y’know? You don’t expect the floor to spray you when you’re showering, unless you’re in a much more complicated shower than I was in.

And my surprised reaction to that led directly to being flat on my ass in the shower a second or two later, wondering what the hell had just happened. I then, in rapid succession, went from ow to did I break anything to did I break part of the shower to it would be super to explain what had happened if I’d landed on the shower head, because no one would ever believe that story, ever.

And that led to a mental apology to my wife, because if I had managed to break a bone on the way down– I’m not quite old enough to be worried about breaking a hip in a fall or anything but who the hell knows– my son was in the house but it was going to be several hours until he noticed he hadn’t seen me in a while, and my phone wasn’t going to be reachable without crawling across the shower, and one way or another there is no way I’m allowing any EMTs in the bathroom with me until I’ve managed to put some underwear on, which was also not especially reachable, so I’d probably have just decided to die instead.

But none of that happened, so I thought Okay, there’s today’s blog post sorted, dragged myself up to my feet and finished my shower.

The end.

A brief note on Gene Wilder

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I know I’m a couple of days late, but: while I am not the world’s biggest Gene Wilder fan, and in fact I’m pretty sure I have never seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in its entirety, and in additional fact am suddenly not even entirely sure that’s the proper name of the film, I will always, always, always be grateful to him for this fucking sublime moment from Blazing Saddles:

I would kill to know how many takes this took.  Cleavon Little is trying so hard to keep his shit together and Wilder is just torturing him.  It’s the best moment in an entirely brilliant movie.  RIP, Gene.  And fuck you, 2016.

In which bustin’ makes me feel good

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aw3snei4begajpjm8agh… which, holy shit, that’s a double entendre, isn’t it?  And it took me 32 years to notice it?  Okay, now my childhood’s ruined.

Here’s the clearest indication that I enjoyed Ghostbusters: the main characters’ names are Abby Yates, Erin Gilbert, Jillian Holtzmann, and Patty Tolan.  The receptionist’s name is Kevin, and I don’t think he had a last name.

I need you to understand this about me: I don’t remember the names of fictional people.  I can read entire books and be able to describe the plot in close detail and have trouble recalling the main character’s name.  I can almost never remember the names of any of the leads of movies.  And I know all five of the major characters in this film.  First and last names.  That’s freaking amazing.  It shouldn’t be the case, but it is.

I didn’t initially want to see Ghostbusters, not because I thought it would Destroy my Childhood– that’s not a real thing– but because I thought it was an unnecessary remake.  The first film is sacred to me, but its sacrality has not led to me seeing the second film more than perhaps twice, so I can’t really pretend I have any loyalty to the franchise.  And there are no Marvel superheroes in this movie, so ignoring it would be well within my established prior practice.  Then I looked around and decided I’d rather change my mind than be on the same side of some of the people who agreed with me about not seeing it, and then I laughed my ass off at the first trailer.  And then I saw the movie on opening night, a thing I haven’t done in, literally, years.

This movie’s funny as hell and you should watch it.   If Kate McKinnon isn’t the funniest motherfucker alive– can I call a woman that?  What if she’s gay?– I don’t know who it is, and Leslie Jones is funny as fuck too.  Also notable is Chris Hemsworth’s performance; I’ve enjoyed his Thor but I seriously had no idea that the guy could be as funny as he is in this movie.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the putative leads yet, Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig.  I know little about Wiig, but I’ve seen McCarthy in other stuff and she has annoyed me.  Honestly, I thought the two of them were among the weaker bits of the movie.  They have their moments, certainly, but they don’t do “smart” as well as McKinnon does– she is the perfect mad scientist– and many of McCarthy’s lines in particular read like the kind of dialogue that dumb people write for smart people to say.  “You did not disclose that the vehicle in question would be a hearse!” or whatever it was, for example.  Wiig forgets that she’s supposed to be a physicist about fifteen minutes into the movie and there’s no real need for her to remember it since someone has to be the straight woman and be the butt of all the ghost-vomit jokes.  I didn’t dislike her, but she’s not a reason to see the movie.

I do find myself wishing that Patty could have been an academic– either also or maybe flip her role with one of the other women.  I think the idea of a Ph.D candidate in New York history working for the MTA could have worked, for example.  But Patty is a fun character and the Sassy Black Woman stereotype we were all worried about is dialed back about as far as it can go.

Interestingly, this film shares its biggest flaw with Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  TFA’s worst moments all involved the characters from the original trilogy.  Similarly, Ghostbusters is at its worst when it’s trying to remind us that all of the actors from the original films (except for Rick Moranis, who quit acting years ago) supported the project.  Other than the nice touch of putting a bust of Harold Ramis outside Erin Gilbert’s office, the only cameo that wasn’t insanely distracting was Annie Potts.  Murray and Aykroyd, in particular, brought the movie to a screeching halt the three times they were on screen.  And then once you realize what’s going on, and that they’re all gonna show up, you spend the movie watching for the next one, and it’s distracting as hell.

Other than that, though, and Paul Feig’s moderately annoying habit of cutting to Kate McKinnon’s or Leslie Jones’s reaction to every line someone else says (make it part of the drinking game) it’s a hell of a movie.  The villain is interesting– he’s basically a GamerGater who has lucked into some supernatural physics– the effects are fun, and some of the shit they get up to with the proton packs and the other weapons Holtzmann comes up with are awesome fun.  There’s a great stinger at the end of the movie, too, even if the film should have ended with the line “I love this town!” like the first one did.

(Yes, I know what I just said about the first movie.  But they set up that line and then don’t deliver it.  They shoulda, dammit.)

Also, this:

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I wanna marry Kate McKinnon, guys.  I know; I’m married and she’s gay.  Realistically, though, if you think about it, neither of those two things really have much of any effect on my chances, so I figure I’m free to dream on that point.  Then again, I’ve never seen her in anything other than this movie, so maybe it’s the possibly-straight-but-I-doubt-it Jillian Holtzmann who I want to marry.  She’s not real.  That doesn’t affect my chances much either, I guess.

This movie is funny and you will like it so go see it.

The end.

Cedric the Entertainer on Trump/Gingrich 2016

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Tuesday… Tiscellany

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So this week is just gonna be thin, content-wise, and that’s really all there is to it.  I could probably go to bed right now and be asleep in seconds.  The new job isn’t exactly strenuous, but right now the training is focusing more on “learn policies and procedures” and not so much “interact with people,” and as a result oh my god am I bored.  I’ll like the work, I’m convinced of that, but I’d like to start doing it, and I’m not even halfway through the training yet.

So.  Yeah.  Normally at this point is where I’d post a music video, but I feel like something different today, so instead have a Steve Harvey clip.