The Best Worst Movie of 2020 (Spoilers!)

Guys. Guys guys guys. 

I'll be straight with you: This may come as a surprise (AHEM!!), but I don't get out much. I haven't been to a movie alone with an adult human since before Pixar. And ever since then, 99% of the movies I've seen in the theater have starred CGI muppets voiced by Jack Black or Dwayne the Rock Johnson or some shit like that.

And so it was that in this, the Year of Our Lord 2020, I watched a movie called The Invisible Man, starring that white lady from the Handmaids Tale, but without the Little Red Riding Hood cloak and giant coffee filter/veterinary cone collar bonnet thingie.

So yeah. Imagine a movie starring that lady. Imagine her in an amalgam of the Gas Light (the 1938 play from which the infamous psychological torture technique takes its name), Sleeping with the Enemy, Spider Man, Fatal Attraction, Harry Potter, American Psycho, and a 1991 ABC After School Special about healthy relationships and domestic violence.

Imagine, if you will, the best worst movie of 2020. 

I knew it was going to be the best-worst, because it came out in March, which is the notorious post-Oscarish time of year that studios release their biggest duds. And the Invisible Man did not disappoint in that department.

Start with the title. Someone was def mailing it in for that one. Like, oh, let’s make this movie about a man who stalks a woman while invisible and call it ... wait for it ... INVISIBLE MAN. All the side eye to that ALONE!

Here's what I remember. (Keep in mind, I don't remember much, because I had my feet up on a heated recliner seat that doesn't exist in Juneau. Frankly, these seats came from Mars as far as I and my fellow traveling skate mom were concerned, since Juneau just graduated from folding chairs and, as I said, I don't get out much).

Anyhoo, Elizabeth Moss plays the abused girlfriend of a tech bro douche billionaire named Adrian Griffin. Because of course that's his name. That WOULD be the name of a genetically-modified organism bred to look like a hybrid of Jake Gyllenhaal (who side bar, I legit went to summer camp with for three years in the '80s, true story), Adam Levine from Maroon Five, and a pangolin. 

In short; boyfriend has good hair, five days of stubble, the personality of a Portobello mushroom burger, and the empathy of a Great White shark.

THAT guy is definitely named Adrian Griffin.

So anyway, Adrian Griffin is a computer engineering genius who made an invisibility cloak out of a million tiny cameras in his fancy basement somehow. This becomes an important detail, as we come to learn that Adrian Griffin met his very boring girlfriend at "a party" and honed in on her as the best prospect to lure and imprison in his sprawling, minimalist compound overlooking the ocean in the San Francisco Bay. 

It is now we learn that Elizabeth (I'm calling her that because I forgot her character's name and am too lazy to Google it) has plotted an elaborate escape from the estate in which--again for reasons unknown--she does a Mission Impossible where she drugs Adrian, tiptoes out of bed in her lingerie, disarms 18 different alarm systems, grabs a bug-out bag she's been hiding in a secret ceiling panel, changes into a Cal Poly hoodie so we know she’s no bimbo, hurls herself over a ten foot cement wall, and jumps into her sister's Audi. 

All when it was apparent she could have just walked out the front door all along. But then the movie would have ended after 13 minutes, and it didn't. It went on for about 117 more.

Well, needless to say Adrian is sad to lose Elizabeth, and so he does what any other jilted lover would: he fakes his own death with the help of his younger brother slash trust attorney, leaves her a large inheritance, dons a high-tech invisibility cloak, and proceeds to gaslight the ever-loving shit out of Elizabeth for months on end.

In the interim, Elizabeth moves in (asexually?) with a hot single dad Black detective and his daughter, who seems to be her niece, but is maybe just a family friend? It's unclear. And basically, Adrian follows Elizabeth around in his cloak and does poltergeist shit like break dishes and step on sheets and also more hardcore stuff like sabotage her job interviews with other misogynists, send emails from her email account, and frame her for slitting her sister's throat at a hipster sushi bar.

By this time, I have about a gallon of Diet Coke threatening to rupture my bladder, but I gotta see how this ends. SWEET VINDICATION!! After driving Elizabeth into a secure psychiatric facility, Adrian finally takes his tech one step too far and tries to take out her entire medical and corrections team in a firing squad. This causes various substances to get into the hardware of his camera suit, and he starts short-circuiting and FINALLY THEY BELIEVE HER!

You can probably tell by now that this movie has more loose ends than a thread factory.

Adrian finds out that Elizabeth is pregnant with his baby, even though she was supposedly on birth control, and here's where we get to the After School Special part. Elizabeth rattles off an entire checklist for Domestic Violence 101. This would be laudable, but these awkwardly-placed “red flag lessons” are lost amid the sheer ridonkulosity of a movie that ends--SPOILER ALERT--with Elizabeth giving Adrian a taste of his own medicine.

How? Well, by stashing an invisibility cloak in a different ceiling panel, going to his house, getting it, putting it on, and murdering him during dinner to make it look like a suicide.

I mean, the end. Just THE END.

This is the Most 1970s Man Author Description of a Female Med Student Ever

I’ve been so busy torching our trash government and crumbling democracy both online and IRL, that it’s been awhile since I reviewed a book. 

Having now read 15 pages of the 1976 medical thriller, Coma, by Dr. Robin Cook, I feel well qualified to embark on some more amateur literary critique.

I’m on vacation with my extended family in Maine, and I plucked this off the shelf of the VRBO we’re staying at, because I needed to cheer myself up after absorbing the shock of the impending climate apocalypse in The Unhinhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, by David Wallace-Wells. 

I vaguely recognized the cover of Coma from my parents’ collection of late-70’s mass-market garbage, and was hoping that between those covers would be an instruction manual for how to enter a DIY drug-induced coma in the event of an unbearable reality.

No such luck. 

The title, it turns out, is a self-referential one about the author, who I can tell you from my quick perusal is quite possibly the least woke man ever to pen a female character (which is saying a lot). Just to orient you, here’s the summary of the novel/“sensational MGM movie starring Genevieve Bujold (‘scuse me who?) and Michael Douglas!”:

They call it “minor surgery,” but Nancy Greeley, Sean Berman, and a dozen others, all admitted to Memorial Hospital for routine procedures, are victims of the same, inexplicable tragedy on the operating table: They never wake up again. 

So far, so good.

Some untraceable error in anesthesia has caused irreversible brain death, leaving each of them in a hopeless coma.

Cool cool.

Something is very wrong here. And Susan Wheeler, a beautiful young medial student, hazards her life to uncover the horrifying explanation — a plot so ghastly, so far-reaching, so terrifyingly incredible yet so nightmarishly possible, it will leave you suspended in a state of fear.

Putting aside the fact that “never waking up again” sounds like a pretty turnkey solution to the Trump years, the scariest thing about this book is the rendering of main character Susan Wheeler, who—you may have deduced by now—is the young doctor version of “sexy librarian.” 

I was thinking about my mom, who had graduated from medical school about five years before this book was written, and the descriptions of Susan being the lone woman at the front of the classroom rang true. 

What did not necessarily ring true were the rest of the descriptions of Dr. Wheeler.

When she gets up for work one cold morning: “her circulatory system dissipated her body heat into the cold room, making her nipples rise up from the summits of her shapely breasts,” and “goose pimples appeared out of nowhere along the insides of her naked thighs.” 

This happens while Susan is “wearing only a thin, worn-out flannel nightgown she had gotten for Christmas when she was in the fifth grade.” She only wore this comfortable garment when she was “sleeping alone” and was partial to it because it “had always been her father’s favorite,” a man she had “enjoyed pleasing from a very early age.”

UMMMMMMM .... WUUUUUUT.

The human physiology 101 factoid about the circulatory system embedded in cocky graduate student juvenile Daddy erotica is typical of Cook’s style, which name-drops shitloads of technical medical jargon amid mundane descriptions of unrelated circumstances: 

“With well-rehearsed adeptness, [the anesthesiologist] attached his Pentathol syringe to the three-way valve on the I.V. line” on another young, beautiful female patient who is receiving (what else) a D&C under a surgical gown that barely reached “up to her hard nipples.”

And that, dear readers, is as far as I got in Coma.

Can We Please Talk About Bird Box for a Second

Bird Box? More like TURD Box, amirite?! BADUM-DUM-CHHH!  But seriously, folks. I just rowed in from the river last night, and boy are my triceps tired! Take my traumatized and blindfolded unnamed children, please. And don't forget to tip your waitress. 

God this movie sucked so hard you guys.

You get the sense that Bird Box was originally supposed to be released in the theater, but then someone quickly realized it sucked and that no one would pay $15 including popcorn for this POS. Someone at the studio rightly recognized that this movie's only redeemable feature was getting to ogle Trevante Rhodes and Sandra Bullock (quite possibly the two hottest people on earth) for 108 minutes. At that point, Netflix probably picked it up and hyped it like it was the next Silence of the Lambs.

Holy shit but what an unfresh tomato this movie is. And yet, I couldn't stop watching. I couldn't decide what was the most ridonks part: The extremely un-woke portrayal of mental illness? That we never find out what the "creatures" are? That the post-apocalyptic school for the blind has fresh linens on hand? That Sandra Bullock is legit some 30 years older than Trevante Rhodes and they look like a totes norms couple because Sandra Bullock sold her soul to the devil for eternal youth?  

Nope, none of those things. The most ridonks part was the fact that these kids listened to their mother. Now I know all you early childhood experts are going to come for me with theories as to why this is, but for now let's just pretend that I'm Sandra Bullock (YAY) dropped into rapids (BOO) with my kids (BOO) in a post-apocalyptic hell-scape (BOO).

Me/Sandra: Whatever you do, do NOT take off that blindfold. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!

Boy: But the blindfold is ITCHY!

Girl: I'm huuuuuungry. I only had like, ONE granola bar for breakfast.

M/S: LISTEN TO ME IF YOU REMOVE THAT BLINDFOLD YOU WILL DIE

Boy: *Wailing* FINE! I don't care! Just leave me on this river bank to DIE then!

Girl: Mommy you're scaring me! *starts to remove blindfold*

M/S: I SAID DON'T TAKE OFF THE FUCKING BLINDFOLD! Oh shit, the rapids are coming ... 

Boy: What are rapids?

Girl: This one time in Mr. Z's class this kid threw up and we couldn't leave for rece--

M/S: LIE DOWN IN THE MOTHERFUCKING BOAT! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU IF YOU TAKE THE BLINDFOLDS OFF AND DON'T DO EXACTLY WHAT I SAY YOU WILL DIE

Boy & Girl: *Lift corner of blindfold juuuuuuuust to take one tiny peek?

Needless to say this would not end well. Kind of like Bird Box which ended in an aviary full of tropical birds in the middle of a temperate rain forest somehow.

This Movie Scared the Ever-Loving Shit Balls Out of Me in 1992

Maybe it was my age (12-15) or the era (1989-1992). I guess it could have been both, either, or neither. But something in my neural architecture during these specific five years made every movie I saw at the time occupy several acres of semi-permanent real estate in my brain, especially the psychological thrillers. 

I haven't done a film retrospective on here in awhile, but somehow today I was recalling the Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

Fam, when I tell you this movie scared the ever loving SHIT BALLS out of me in 1992! 

There was SO much trauma packed into 110 minutes of Rebecca De Mornay acting crazy (my 9th grade boy classmates creatively renamed her "Rebecca De Hornay,” although if this movie came out in 2018 she’d be Rebecca De Morecray); Annabella Sciorra (Law and Order/Sopranos) and Generic Hot Dad With a Beard™, a.k.a. Matt McCoy. Matt's only other film credits appear to be Police Academies 5 and 6. FIVE AND SIX, y’all. Not even two or three. Or four. 

Still, that's about three more movies than I've ever been in, so who am I to drag the man?

Anyway, to recap, per Wikipedia: "the tale follows a vengeful, psychopathic nanny out to destroy a naive woman and steal her family."

Annabella Sciorra plays a meek, mousy-yet-still-pretty asthmatic gardener and secular wearer of an Orthodox Jewish sheitel-chic hairstyle who, while preggers with kid number two, gets sexually assaulted by a dude gynecologist. 

Side note: what is up with dude gynos in 1992 much less 2018. Is that even a thing? Seriously, I kinda feel like vaginas are a medical specialty that MAYBE dudes can just sort of voluntarily opt out of from now on? Like where is the female peen doc? Nowhere, that's where.

But anyhoo, the dude gynecologist is married to an also-preggers Rebecca de Morecray. He kills himself after Annabella #MeToos him, and four other women come out saying he diddled them in the stirrups. Of course, instead of facing up to his Weinstein/Cosby conduct, he kills himself, and then Rebecca goes into early labor from the stress and bleeds so much she’s forced to have an emergency hysterectomy.

And THEN--here's the kicker: instead of being pissed at her dead husband for committing serial sexual felonies and then offing himself rather than face the consequences of his actions, Becky with the Crazy Eyes™ decides to commit the rest of her living days to ruining Annabella’s life by changing her name, applying for a job as a Annabella’s Nanny, seducing the star of Police Academies 5 and 6, wet-nursing Annabella’s infant son, turning Annabella’s young daughter against her, and trying to murder Annabella in her own greenhouse by rigging the glass to fall on top of her, but instead it falls on her BFF and Annabella has an asthma attack and turns blue because Crazy Becky™ secretly emptied all of her inhalers. 

Oh and btw Becky frames the family’s mentally disabled black handyman as a pedophile and gets him fired, because OF COURSE SHE DOES.

In the end, Annabella figures everything out, but there's of course a propulsive final scene in which Crazy Becky™ breaks Police Academy Husband's™ legs with a shovel and tries to kidnap both kids, but Annabella fakes an asthma attack and shoves Becky out of a window where she is OF COURSE impaled on a picket fence and dies before the sirens and blankets--which signal the "happily ever after" of all 90's psychological thrillers--arrive. 

Looking back on this movie, I'm struck mostly by the INSANE MISOGYNY of it, and how totally normal it felt and seemed at the time.

I mean, let's recall that the triggering event for the entire plot line of this movie was a gross man gynecologist who serially sexually assaulted his patients. And really the movie should have ended there. But it didn't, because, SHOCKER, Gross Felon With Zero Agency™ was married to a CRAZY LADY who got even MORE crazy when her uterus came out.

And then, once her uterus was gone, she couldn't do anything but try to steal another woman's motherhood and husband because her life was gonna be empty and meaningless without a hot husband who wanted to fuck her and give her a couple of shorties. 

It's no coincidence that this movie came out one year after Anita Hill. We've come a loooong way baby. 

Or have we?

This is Basically How Netflix and Chill Goes in My House

Scene: 9:00 p.m., kids in bed.

Geoff: [Picks up remote]. Wanna do a Satan? [a.k.a. Occult Crimes]

Me: Nah, we've watched all of those. See the check marks? Let’s do a Forensic. [a.k.a. Forensic Files]

Geoff: [Starts scrolling] How about this one [starts reading, doesn’t need/wear glasses, unlike me] . . . "When a prime suspect in a young girl’s mur—"

Me: Nope. No kids. I can't deal with murdered kids.

Geoff: Okaaaaay. How about this one: “When a graduate student disappears and is presumed dead—"

Me: Ugh no! No missing young women!

Geoff: Why do you even like this show again?

Me: Just keep going.

Geoff: Okay . . . “When a woman is raped and murdered—"

Me: No rape!

Geoff: [Exasperated sigh]. We're running out of options for acceptable crimes. How about “A family of four is gunned down in what appears to be an interrupted rob—"

Me: Dude, I said no kids.

Geoff: Oh yeah. Wait wait, here’s one: “After a young mother is killed and her 4 year-old daughter is brutally assaul—"

Me: I SAID NO KIDS!

Geoff: I was just kidding about that one. What about this: “When a man dies after a hydraulic jack slips and drops a truck on him, investigators soon discover that it wasn’t just a tragic accident."

Me: Oh that sounds good!

Geoff: Fuckin’  FINALLY. [Presses play, starts watching]

5 minutes later ....

Me: Oh wait. I’ve seen this one. I think I watched it at a hotel on a work trip.

Geoff: Are you fucking serious right now?

Me: Serious as murder.

Geoff: Fine. [Returns to home screen] How about this one: “When hikers in Alaska discover . . .”

Me: No Alaska. That’s too close to home. Also I’m super sick of Alaska reality TV.

Geoff: Can you just come over here and do this?

Me: No I’m too comfy on this couch right now.

Geoff: Okaaaaaaaaaay. Here’s one: “After a real estate tycoon leaves a will with instructions to follow in the event of his violent death, his skull is found riddled with bullets.”

Me: YES!

Geoff: So you’re saying you don’t care about a real estate tycoon getting shot in the head?

Me: I mean, I’m not saying I’m happy about it, it’s just less sad to me than women and children being raped and murdered somehow.

Geoff: How is that?

Me: I don’t know, it just is. Like an old rich white dude getting murdered seems less traumatizing to watch for some reason. I’m too tired to defend myself right now. 

Geoff: If you’re not careful I’m going to update our life insurance policy.

Me: If YOU’RE not careful I’m going to make you a “health shake” with antifreeze.

Geoff: If YOU’RE not careful I’m going to inject your butt with undetectable traces of succinylcholine in the night.

Me: Shut up we are missing this entire episode.

Geoff: How many bullets do you think it takes to be “riddled” with bullets?

Me: I’d say at least three. Two is just two bullets. I think anything above three is probably a riddling.

Geoff: I was thinking more like ten.

Me: I don’t think there’s a bright line rule on this, but I’m going on record right now to say that I’d be offended if you chose a gun as your method of murder and did anything short of a riddle to me.

Geoff: Yeah, I think the more bullets and stab wounds the more you love someone.

Me: That’s what the experts seem to say. Definitely the more stab wounds the more you love someone because the experts always say that’s the most intimate crime. If you really loved me you’d stab me at LEAST 400 times.

Geoff: Weren’t we going to write a play about this?

Me: Maybe when our kids go to college.

Geoff: These cops are literally the dumbest people I've ever heard. [dumb-sounding dude voice] "Blood spatter indicated there had been a bloody struggle.” NO SHIT, Detective Geinius. Can I switch this to Taladega Nights now?

Me: Yeah sure, I’m going to sleep.

Let’s Talk About All the Therapy Eleven from Stranger Things Will Need the Minute She Turns 25

*Caution: may contain spoilers*

I grew up reading Stephen King and watching E.T., The Goonies, and Reality Bites in the theater and also on VHS. So naturally I have devoured Stranger Things on Netflix. 

Only one thing detracts from my enjoyment of this groundbreaking series, and that’s contemplating the RIDICULOUS amount of therapy 13 year-old “Eleven” (a.k.a. “El”) will inevitably need when she grows up.

Let’s break this down:

Eleven (nee Jane’s) mom, Terry, is a test-subject in a secret CIA mind control project, with whom Eleven has zero contact until early adolescence.

You’re not off to a great start in life when you’re born to a test-subject in a CIA mind control study. Things get even worse when you put a blindfold over your eyes at age 13 while imprisoned by a cop in a cabin in the woods, access a secret dimension, and find your mom sitting catatonic in a rocking chair, only to reach out to touch her as she evaporates into the ether. This experience alone justifies a lifetime of psychoanalysis.

Jane is stolen at birth by a mad scientist she calls “Papa” who re-names her “Eleven,” and raises her in a CIA lab in Hawkins, Indiana.

Being stolen from your mother at birth by a cold nutty professor who makes you call him “Papa” is a pretty bad turn of events. When Papa changes your name from “Jane” to “Eleven,” experiments on you continuously by attaching nodes to your head, and places you in a sensory deprivation tank on the reg—in buttfuck Indiana of all places—you’re pretty much guaranteeing future daddy issues.

Eleven escapes from the lab and is hunted down by the CIA, but a group of pre-teen boys rescues her first.

So Eleven escapes “Papa” only to be rescued by four more boys, one of whom gives her yet another name—“El.” Sure the boys are nice and the group develops a close friendship.(Hello, Stockholm Syndrome?) But escaping one male captor/protector only to bounce into the orbit of four more is unlikely to help resolve any of the aforementioned daddy and control issues that are fully entrenched in her neuropathways by this point.

She has telepathic abilities and chronic nosebleeds.

This is admittedly pretty cool. But being able to open a can of Diet Coke with your mind while blood runs down your face is not normal. So at a minimum, Eleven will need to process issues of difference amid her peers.

She is forced to subsist on Eggo waffles and dead squirrels.

Early experience of fight-or-flight will trigger the trauma centers of the brain and require complete realignment of the nervous system later in life. Living on the run from men who wish to experiment on you while being forced to hunt and roast squirrels in the snowy forest via telekenisis for the better part of a year is the stuff PTSD nightmares are made of.

Eleven is imprisoned by a well-meaning but recovering alcoholic police officer in a dilapidated cabin in the woods “for her own safety.”

In case you’re counting, this is the second adult male in Eleven’s life to forcibly take control of her personal space, body, and autonomy under rather desperate circumstances. The man happens to be a police officer who is grieving the loss of his own child and using El as a proxy for his grief. He establishes “rules” for her “safety” and basically pretends to be her new daddy. The cop later adopts El without her knowledge and gives her yet ANOTHER legal name, only letting her out of the house to go to a middle school dance with her little boyfriend, Mike. FUCKING SELF IDENTITY/ESTEEM AND DADDY ISSUES UP THE YIN-YANG, PEOPLE! What a mess.

She finds out she has a “sister” lab subject named "Eight" who can make people hallucinate, and stays with Eight and a pack of teen runaways.

The fact that this is the least bizarre and traumatic thing to happen to Eleven should be your first clue as to the extent of the therapy she will someday require.

She has a cute boyfriend who will inevitably stop being her cute boyfriend in six months and break her heart.

Sadly, this makes Eleven like every other heterosexual girl on the planet who needs therapy someday. You know what they say, the first cut is the deepest.

I’m Not a Dotard and I Can Prove it Because I Took Two Teenage Boys to See a 10:05 p.m. Showing of IT

Last week, along with most of America, my vocabulary increased by one word: "dotard." I'd never have guessed that Kim Jong-Un would've taught me a new word in my native tongue, and yet there he was, calling Donald Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" whom the chubby dick-tater-tot would "definitely tame" with "fire."

As soon as I stopped laughing,I IMMEDIATELY Googled "dotard" and learned that it was a noun meaning "an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile." 

Wow, for once Kim Jong-Un and I could agree on something!

Now the suffix "tard" has obviously fallen out of favor and for good reason. A lot of things sucked about being a kid in the '80s, among them how junior sociopaths would call everyone who didn't rise to their level in the social hierarchy some sort of "tard." Like "fucktards" or "retards" or "gaytards"--with impunity. After doing some etymological research, I discovered that "dotard" was more closely linked to "dotage" than "tard," and had reached its peak use in about 1800.

The point of all this, though, is that I AM NOT A DOTARD. How do I know? I'm glad you asked, because I'm about to tell you. I TOOK TWO TEENAGE BOYS TO SEE "IT" LAST NIGHT! AT 10:05 P.M. Pee-fucking-Em, ya'll!!! That's NIGHT TIME. A horror movie. AT NIGHT! In the THEATER.

Rewind.

We were sitting around having dinner earlier that evening, and my friend's 17 year-old son announced his plans to head out to "the Valley" to see a 10:05 p.m. showing of Stephen King's IT with his 16 year-old buddy. "How are you getting there?" his dad asked. When the kid said "you're driving me," his dad laughed in his face. "Not tonight I'm not!"

"I'll take you!" I volunteered spontaneously, before I could fully appreciate the implications of my offer. 

It was only 7:30. That meant I would have to stay AWAKE for another two hours to pick the kids up and then another THREE hours to watch a horrifying movie. This last part was actually pretty easy, because I am a YOOOGE Stephen King fan and have read all of his books, including IT. I legit wanted to see IT and no one--and I mean not one adult I know--would agree to see IT with me.

And so the arrangements were made. Two hours later, I was sitting in a half-empty movie theater with a box of frozen Junior Mints and two teenage boys I'd basically just met, about to watch Pennywise the clown fuck some shit up.

As I cringed turtle-like into my coat and probably herniated a disc in the process, I realized that I wasn't even scared. At least not by the parts of the movie that were supposed to scare me.

I was scared that I'd suffer hearing damage from the volume. I was scared of the kids being mean to each other. I was scared of the girl character's dad who was sexually abusive. I was scared about my own kids becoming teenagers. When it was all over, one of the boys asked me if kids were really that mean to each other in the '80s. "I've never seen ANYTHING like that," said one of them.

Well that's a relief, I thought, remembering how Gary Lit would barge in on me in the bathroom and how Rolph Heitmeyer (sp??) would smack me upside the head as hard as he could while waiting for the bus.

But here in 2017, one thing was clear: I had stayed awake to see a horror movie in the movie theater with two teenage boys who didn't seem 100% mortified to be there with me.

#ResistDotardation

The First Brain Rule for Aging Well

Let me tell you how and why I came to own this bookmark advertising a free audio book called "Brain Rules for Aging Well." Or why I think I came to own it, anyway.

My friend who teaches college in Denver always has great book recommendations, especially novels, and I needed a new one.

A novel that I could really invest in for a week, you understand. One I wouldn't be tempted to throw across the room in disgust in favor of binge-watching "Murderous Affairs" on Netflix or scrolling through social media in spiraling despair.

A long novel worthy of a prestigious literary prize, or at least a nomination for one? A novel whose every other turn of phrase I could marvel at in respect and awe. Like The Goldfinch or Middlesex or something substantive and memorable like that.

The Nix, by Nathan Hill. That would be my next fiction love affair, and I trusted my infallible matchmaker that it would not disappoint.

This wouldn't be another thin, dime-a-dozen diaspora memoir written by an orphaned lesbian llama farmer from Yemen, endorsed by Oprah, and discarded in the front seat pocket of 19D after a two-hour flight.

It was an 800-page paperweight by a boring 30-something white dude. And no one in publishing gives fiction book deals to boring, 30-something white dudes anymore, probably with good reason. So if Nathan Hill from Iowa wrote a national bestseller in 2017, the book had to be pretty good, is what I'm getting at here.

"I think there's a Tattered Cover in the airport," my friend offered helpfully. And it was with no small feeling of triumph that I found it not 50 feet from my gate, bleary-eyed and even more haggard-looking than usual at 5:47 a.m.

The problem was, it was closed.

Through the grated metal slats of the shuttered, sterile looking airport box store I could see a late-20s hipster with a manbun and a security badge on a lanyard. He was counting change in the cash register, and it was clear he had no plans to unlock the doors to this bookstore even one nanosecond before he had to, which according to the internet was 5:00 a.m., and as I said earlier it was now 5:47.

I made a soft but desperate scratching sound on the doors with the knuckle of my right forefinger. In my left hand I held a grande iced soy latte from Starbucks; beads of cold water were condensing around the black Sharpie of my misheard name: 

"Livi."

Manbun glanced up briefly with lazy disinterest, as if I was a stray alley cat prowling for fish scraps, and turned his head back down to the register. I backed away a few steps but firmly planted myself in front of the store, lurking there to let Manbun know that I knew that he was 47 minutes late for work.

A few moments later, Manbun opened the gates in a way that made clear he was just doing his job, albeit belatedly--not going out of his way to do me (of all people) any favors.

I found the Nix and went to pay for it. "Would you like a free bookmark?," Manbun asked. I thought I detected a passive aggressive undertone in his voice, and I think I was right.

Because of all the free bookmarks behind the counter--and I could see there were a few--this is the one Manbun handed to me.

I'm almost 40 now, so I know. The first brain rule for aging well is this: Always assume that a younger person is trying to insult your intelligence.

Jerry Bruckheimer is Executive Producing 2017

You guys. I finally figured out what the actual fuck is going on here. Jerry Bruckheimer is executive producing 2017. There's simply no other explanation for the past 8 months.

The successful Hollywood producer, best known for his epic popcorn disaster flicks, has now broken the fourth wall to delve into a new genre of reality-based meta cinema. 

The plot:

A lecherous real estate magnate and pathological liar is unexpectedly propelled into the presidency of the United States.

His election, clouded by a perfect storm of nefarious foreign influence, technological failings, and disorienting propaganda is facilitated by a shadowy cabal of Russian oligarchs, neo-Nazi quasi-intellectuals, and his icy adult children. 

His estranged wife, a former super model partial to wearing 7-inch stiletto heels at all times, is reluctantly along for the ride and separated from her lover, the head of security at a high-end jewelry store in one of her husband's leveraged-to-the-brink-of-bankruptcy skyscrapers.

At first, the divisive new president is bouyed by a revanchist, disaffected populace impoverished and made sick by the very tax, environmental, and health "policies" he is advancing. 

Chasing the ever-elusive high of public adulation, he regularly holds Hitler-style rallies with the complicity of a craven and ineffectual Congress bought and paid for by weapons lobbyists.

But soon, the scope of the president's ineptitude is laid bare by crisis after crisis.

The American people begin to turn on one another as nature's wrath, propelled by global warming, unleashes its fury. 

Unprecedented storms and earthquakes shatter records, destroy cities, and befuddle embattled scientists whom everyone in authority refuses to listen to. Desperately warning of the next cataclysm, they offer data and tweet warnings in vain.

Meanwhile, a petulant and vindictive dictator an ocean away keeps testing new and better long-range missiles, daring the semi-demented and impulsive sociopath at America's helm to blow up the planet in service of his own ego like some sort of Freudian suicide bomber.

Please, Mr. Bruckheimer. Only two words can save us now: Bruce Willis.

Sports Romance is a Genre of Bodice Ripper, Apparently?!

I'm taking a break from all the feel-good news about Nazis in America to deliver a report from an alert O.H.M. reader about Julie Brannagh, USA Today's "bestselling sports romance author." 

Before I get to what that means, lemme just say I lied about Nazis. This post isn't totally a break from Nazis, because apparently the way we discovered Julie Brannagh--and in turn the existence of the sports romance bodice ripper--is through Nazis.

I'll explain.

My friend was reportedly going down an internet rabbit hole, researching brands that are distancing themselves from Nazis (as you do in 2017) and stumbled upon the whole New Balance and Trump sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G controversy. 

This in turn led to him finding Julie Brannagh, who decided to use her awesome brand power for good: to declare she would no longer continue to walk her chocolate lab, Moose, in New Balance kicks because Trump. In the now-seemingly innocent times of 11/6/16, Julie tweeted: 

I have been wearing New Balance shoes (at $160/pair) for the past 10 years. If they support Trump, I've bought my last pair.

And good for Julie! 

Make no mistake: I am by no means dragging Julie Brannagh, as the last thing I would do is drag someone--particularly a fellow sister in Trump hateration--from living her truth in writing and making a respectable living at it to boot. I'm more just confused and amazed at the sheer specificity of a literary genre that was heretofore totally unknown to me.

Naturally, I immediately followed Julie on Twitter and set about doing my own deep dive into her life and bibliography.

The first thing I discovered is that Julie Brannagh does NOT have a Wikipedia page, and after "the President of the United States firmly denounces Nazis and actually means it," this is the number one thing that needs to change in 2017.

So I then followed Julie on Twitter, where she self-identifies as a football fan to the ninth tenth power, and went to her website. 

There I discovered she is based in Seattle (Go Seahawks), has an agent, and has published "Blitzing Emily," "Catching Cameron," "Covering Kendall," "Holding Holly," "Chasing Jillian," and "Intercepting Daisy," among others.

I confess I don't even know what even one of those football terms mean. I barely even know the difference between a linebacker and a quarterback. I'm not even sure if linebacker is one word or two. So needless to say, the combination of football and panty-moistener bodice ripper romance novels is not exactly one I would have come up with myself. 

But like the maple-bacon donut, sometimes the whole is better than the sum of its parts, and helping a strapping tight end (tightend?) out of his shoulder pads in the shadows of a steamy locker room shower doesn't sound half bad, TBH.

If you think I am not ordering ALL of these books from my local independent bookstore TO-DAY, taking a pint of low-fat chocolate fudge brownie Ben & Jerry's out of the freezer, and warming up the vibrator, WELP, THINK AGAIN, FAM!

In the meantime, you'll find me strategizing how O.H.M. can become the (now sadly bankrupt) "Alaska Dispatch News' Most Ridiculous Terrible-Parenting, Trump-Mocking, and Vulgar-Feminist" blog.

Now that's genre-specificity!

https://twitter.com/julieinduvall

Not Equipped

I am not equipped for this task. That’s what I thought, for months after he asked me. His message sat in my in-box, blinking, criticizing, reminding. I see you, it said. I see you not doing this thing you promised to do.

He didn’t ask again, but I knew he wouldn’t. My disappointing failure to do this was going to be just that: My own failure and my own disappointment.

I wrote to him and told him I was halfway there. I had read my friend Ishmael’s book of poems, Rock Piles Along the Eddy, but I couldn’t do the second part. I couldn’t write about it.

Sorry it’s taken me so long. I haven’t forgotten, I promise. But I’m not equipped to do this. That’s what I told him, in so many words. I thought your poems were beautiful, but what do I know? What does a Jewish woman, born and raised in New York City, and an Alaska transplant/intruder/interloper know about the poetry of an Inupiaq and Tlingit Alaska Native man?

Moreover, I’m not a literary critic. I write about farts, nipples, Cheetos, and Donald Trump's spray tan for tweets, shares, and viral laughs. I don’t know anything about poems. Or if I do, I’ve forgotten. And when I did know, it was the classic western kind. Keats, Yeats, Walt Whitman. Norton Anthology stuff. I have nothing to say.

He assured me that I did have something to say, which is why he had asked me to say something. And over the course of some back-and-forth, I realized he was right. The problem was not that I had nothing to say. To the contrary, I had plenty to say. I was just afraid to say it.

The night before, I’d asked Geoff what my “angle” on this post should be. He said “don’t go there.” By “there” I knew what he meant. He meant The Things We Don’t Talk About. For us, maybe why we chose to circumcise our son and why we don’t have a Christmas tree. The Holocaust, slavery, genocide, diaspora, assimilation, competing in the historical trauma “suffering Olympics.” As if there could be a Gold Medal in such a thing. 

Preposterous.

But, Ishmael said, this is the crux of dialogue. It is the crux of my blog, too, though the medium seems trivial, petty and ephemeral. To explore and probe with authenticity and sometimes vulgarity, and hopefully some depth, the things we don’t like to face. The Things We Don't Talk About. To stare into the blinding sun of those things, open my eyes wide, and let them burn my retinas.

What does it mean to do that in this particular instance? Well, I think it means to acknowledge that there is a reason I do not like to wear my Alaska Native jewelry and why my lavender kuspuk stays buried in a drawer, out of sight. It feels dishonest and appropriating to adorn myself with these objects. 

It means “passing” as “white,” and collecting all the prizes—big and small—awarded for the genetic happenstance of white skin. Being in, of, defending, and benefiting from the systems erected and imposed amid the ruins of a very recent and evident cultural genocide, the reverberations of which are felt, seen, and heard everywhere, every day, in this state. 

To concede the point that it is more than “white guilt” or “white tears.” Or being “woke” or "calling people out" for being “not woke.” It is those things, of course, but above all, it is white complicity.

A few lines from one of Ishmael's poems in RPATE (my invented acronym for this, Ishmael’s second collection of poems) reminded me where the rubber of my reluctance met the road of necessity to do the simple thing Ishmael had asked of me:

This is Native land.
Until you recognize this, there is no justice.
Until you act on this, there is no justice.
Until you dig deeper than empathy, there is no justice.
Until you give up what you never should have had in the first place, there is no justice.
Taking up the space, the land, the airtime, the mic, the profits,
the recognition, the dialogue, the conversation.
It’ll never feel right.

Steps Toward Dismantling Collective Psychosis on Colonized Land is the title of the poem from which this excerpt is taken.

In Alaska, we live in the wake of a massive cultural genocide perpetrated with surgical, devastating precision on a complex and rich culture. This is a fact. To acknowledge it as objective reality—and not a matter of subjective perception—is, just maybe, one tiny step toward dismantling the collective psychosis that none of it ever happened.

Breaking Beast

Once upon a time (i.e. last night), our whole family watched the 1991 cartoon version of Beauty and the Beast. Paige has seen the movie many times, because we made the mistake of buying it during her mercifully now defunct "Disney Princess" phase.

She wanted to watch it again for the first time in years, because Hermione Granger stars in the new live action version. Isaac, age 6, is highly gender-conforming and never had a princess phase, so this was his first screening of the animated "classic."

The world could drown in the ink spilled on feminist take-downs of the fucked up Disney Princess Industrial Complex, and yet I feel driven to spill s'more because of my son's WTF reaction to this movie.

Reviewing the film's main plot points and messaging, it's easy to see why even a six year-old boy--not yet entrenched in society's misogyny and having instinctive common sense--gave this movie the side-eye:

1. GASTON AS CREEPER: Gaston is a class A-1 gym creeper. He stalks Belle the entire movie and throws a 120-minute temper tantrum because Belle “friend-zoned” him.

2. BELLE AS HUMAN CURRENCY: Belle is 100% human currency. First she’s her dad’s caretaker. Then she's shuttled back and forth between her dad and the Beast. At the castle, she trades herself in for her dad, then becomes the Beast’s prisoner, then leaves to rescue her dad, and then goes back to the Beast of her own "free will."

3. THE BIBLIOPHILE FIG LEAF: Belle likes books, because somehow that’s supposed to make her seem less like human currency. In fact, this plot device only makes Belle's obvious lack of access to a meaningful education and rich professional life that much sadder.

4. BELLE HAS PATTY HEARST SYNDROME: As a coping mechanism, Belle develops Patty Hearst Syndrome by sympathizing with her captor. All it takes to win her over is dinner and dancing in a ballroom and a playful snowball fight shortly before the Beast saves her from wolves.

5. BEAST IS AS BAD AS GASTON: The Beast is only a slightly less awful version of Gaston, because he too cannot take no for an answer. Isaac put it best: “This movie is scary. Why is he trying so hard to make her like him?” Good question, kid!

6. THE FERTILE OCTOGENARIAN: No one explains from a scientific fertility perspective how the old Mrs. Potts (the teapot/maid), who is voiced by Angela Lansbury and looks 85, has a toddler/teacup who is her “son.”

7. ANATOMICAL ISSUES OF HUMAN AND BEAST COPULATION: Conveniently, no one deals with the difficult issue of what would happen if Belle and the Beast tried to get it on—like how would that work anatomically? Belle doesn’t jump the Beast's bones until after he transmogrifies back into an animated Brendan Frazier doppelgänger, so the film leaves this question hanging.

8. CARTOON BRENDAN FRAZIER IS GROSS AF: As I say above, in the end, the Beast turns into an animated Brendan Frazier, but he looked way better as the Beast. (In a double-blind study 9 out of 10 women said they would rather fuck the Beast in his Beast form as opposed to his Brendan Frazier form).

I want to make a sequel to this movie and call it “Breaking Beast.” It’ll be like a mix between Breaking Bad and the original classic fairytale.

Belle's dad Maurice develops tuberculosis and starts tinkering with crystallized absinthe (street name: “green ice”) to sell to the villagers to pay for his treatment. (Rococo-era France doesn't have single-payer yet). 

Maurice calls up his old pal the Beast/Brendan Frazier, and the two go into “business” together. They commandeer the wooden cart that has “Asylum for Loons,” painted on it (in the original movie, an angry mob tried to shove Maurice in there and have him committed to an 18th century mental health facility), and they drive it deep into the forest. 

There, the two start cooking absinthe, and they buy an old flour mill in the village as a fence for their operation. All of the ancillary characters—Gaston, the anthropomorphized furniture from the castle, the angry mob, etc.—are the Beast and Maurice's drug gang connections, fixers, lawyers, and rivals.

The pressures of the drug trade start to fray the relationship between the Beast and Maurice, and pretty soon the Beast is partying in the castle all wasted, while Maurice lets villagers OD like whatevs and has to bury all his gold coins at the bottom of a moat.

Meanwhile, Belle stays at home clueless, wringing her hands and along for the ride yet again, just like her character in the original movie and most of the female characters in Breaking Bad.

Inspiring! Hero Mom Stays Awake Through All 150 Minutes of Lincoln on Cable After 8:30 p.m.

Wonder Woman might be smashing Box Office records this weekend, but real female superheroes don’t always wear capes.

As luck would have it, they sometimes go commando and braless in Star Wars pajama bottoms from Fred Meyer and a University of Montana Grizzlies T-Shirt.

That’s the main takeaway from one local mother’s unprecedented journey across the space-time continuum to a dimension in which it is possible to stay awake through all 150 minutes of Lincoln, the 2012 American epic historical drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis, despite a start-time on cable of 8:30 p.m. on a random Tuesday.

“Honestly, looking back I don’t know how I did it,” said hero and mom Cindy Jones during a phone interview the following morning. 

“I think it was because I forgot to take my Ambien. But frankly, Lincoln was so fucking boring I shouldn’t have needed it. Still, I felt guilty—like I should learn more about American history even though I’m usually drooling by 9:00 p.m. It just happened to be on, so I decided to make an effort.”

Jones managed to boldly remain conscious where no mother ever has before—lying down on a couch, during any feature-length film that begins on television after 8:00 p.m.—much less Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.

Breaking new ground, both of Jones' eyes were 100% open through the raucous, 13th Amendment Congressional debate scene with Tommy Lee Jones, and also that one part where Sally Field yells at Lincoln near a log-fire in the White House right before he tells William Henry Seward (played by David Strathairn) to tap some executive orders out on a Morse Code telegram type machine or some shit.

“I can’t believe they did all of this without electricity,” Jones remarked to no one in particular, and—miraculously—while fully alert.

“God, life back then was like being on a camping trip 24/7, even for the President of the United States. What a shit show! Joseph Gordon-Levitt is cute though.”

If only more mothers could manage to stay awake through Lincoln at night on cable, maybe Trump wouldn’t be President RN.

These Quotes from the Handmaid's Tale, Written in 1984, Will Terrify You with Their Prescience

"It's good to have small goals that can be easily attained."

"I'm ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it's false news, it must mean something."

"Last week they shot a woman, right about here . . . She was fumbling in her robe, for her pass, and they thought she was hunting for a bomb. There have been such incidents."

"It has taken so little time to change our minds, about things like this."

"When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that."

"Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary."

"But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual."

"I'm allowed to watch the news . . . Such as it is: who knows if any of it is true? It could be old clips. It could be faked. But I watch it anyway, hoping to be able to read beneath it."

"In reduced circumstances, you have to believe all kinds of things."

"This is something you can depend upon: there will always be alliances of one kind or another."

"For every rule there is always an exception: this too can be depended upon."

"Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure."

"It can't last forever. Others have thought such things, in bad times before this, and they were always right, they did get out one way or another, and it didn't last forever. Although for them it may have lasted all the forever they had."

"They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics . . . That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on."

"Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The road-blocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual."

"It's outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it?"

"There were marches, of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared. And when it was known that the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started, the marches stopped." 

"If my life is bearable, maybe what they're doing is all right after all."

"Better never means better for everyone . . . It always means worse for some."

"Perhaps he's reached that state of intoxication which power is said to inspire, the state in which you believe you are indispensable and can therefore do anything, absolutely anything you feel like, anything at all."

"He says this as if he believes it, but he says many things that way. Maybe he believes it, maybe he doesn't, or maybe he does both at the same time. Impossible to tell what he believes."

"Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations."

"I've heard this speech, or one like it, often enough before: the same platitudes, the same slogans, the same phrases: the torch of the future, the cradle of the race, the task before us."

"To institute an effective totalitarian system or indeed any system at all you must offer some benefits and freedoms, at least to a privileged few, in return for those you remove."

Half of America Has Same Two Thoughts at Once

Fully half the country tonight had the same two thoughts at the same time in quick succession: 

1. Why couldn't that also have happened on 11/9/16; and

2.  Can this please be a metaphor for the entire future? 

A small fraction of the nation also wondered where Steve Harvey was and if this was all just a big conspiracy and stunt from the jump.

Meanwhile, #MAGAs everywhere were pissed about LaLa Land even though they didn't see it, had never heard of Moonlight, and still think taco bowls are Mexican food. 

O.H.M. Movie Review: The Bridges of Madison County

Before there was Fifty Shades of Grey, there was The Bridges of Madison County.

It's been awhile since Hollywood released a granny panty-moistener starring Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, or any of those other pace-maker heartthrobs who were totally repulsive when I was 17, but who now (in their mid-1990's iterations at least), seem vaguely attractive. Like yeah, I could maaaaaaybe see tapping that under the right circumstances now, but talk to me in 10 years and I'm def DTF those silver foxes.

Anyhoo, we could all use a distraction from the rapid unraveling of our democratic norms at the tiny hands of Our Sentient Cheeto Overlord, so I went back and watched Clint Eastwood get rained on while weeping and posting up a 120-minute long geezer-boner for Meryl Streep on cable.

To achieve full Trump Distraction Zen--or TDZ, as I call it--I tried to put the two A-listers' real-life political differences out of my mind: How Clint talked to an empty chair pretending it was Obama one time, and gave an interview to Esquire in which he called everyone who thinks women and minorities should have basic shit part of "the pussy generation;" or how Meryl made a dramatic speech about what an obvious asshole Vladimir Cheetos is at some awards show and it was a huge deal on the internet for two minutes.

Instead, I chose to focus on their loooooove. Their nauseating, clandestine four-day fuck-athon in which they eat some Italian food prepared by Meryl and take walks around her farm and roll around in the literal hay. 

Clint is on assignment for National Geographic to shoot pics of some boring-ass bridges, and Meryl's husband and teenage kids are conveniently away at the state fair earning a blue ribbon for their pig or a giant kolrabi or something. Clint comes to the farm looking for directions to (what else) a bridge, and somehow we're supposed to believe that this is the set-up for love at first sight.

All I know is that at one point, Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood end up in a tin bathtub sponging each other down with washcloths, which is clearly the inspiration for that Cialis commercial with the two people in a field in the two separate bathtubs.

Now let's take a quick timeout for an indignant outrage break to see who I've offended so far: civil engineers who love covered bridges; the mayor of Madison County, Iowa; people with geezer-boners and pace makers; people on Cialis; and peri-meopausal women who reach for a tube of KY at the first thought of riding Clint Eastwood's gray jock in a tin bathtub.

See? Now you don't need to message me and tell me that COVERED BRIDGES ARE VERY IMPORTANT and YOU TOO WILL NEED KY VERY SOON! I know all of this, and I can't wait for every last one of my pubes to fall out. 

True story. Trust.

I'm simply doing a basic public service here. I'm here to tell you that there is actually something more nauseating on television than Trump, Inc., and it's The Bridges of Madison County. 

As SCROTUS would say, enjoy!