Facts that I'm too lazy to look up

Who Kendra Wilkinson is

What “SMH” means

Michael Fassbender’s age

What kind of music “trap” is

What day of the week Christmas is

When the next Flyers game is

The name of the hidden track on Reflektor

If your tongue swells when you’re dehydrated

When The Americans returns

What side your appendix is on

How long the invasion of Grenada lasted

If the grandfather in The Goldbergs is the same guy in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Who won the 1964 World Series

What the submission guidelines for Painted Bride Quarterly are

How long Hamid Karzai has been prime minister of Afghanistan

Whether Daylight Savings Time starts or ends this weekend

I guess I could spend a few seconds on Google or Wikipedia but aaaaauuuuuuggghhhhzzzzzzz

The Scariest Scenes I’ve Seen

There are different types of scares in movies and TV. There are the obvious jump scares when the monster jumps into the frame of view and you scream and then feel like an idiot for screaming. There are scares that keep you up at night. There are scares that are in situations that are not gory or horrific but unsettling and that get under your skin and stay there.

 

My favorite horror movie is The Exorcist and I don’t think anything can beat its gaudy terror and more subtle, unsettling questions. The most horrifying scene for me is 12-year-old Regan stabbing herself with a crucifix and saying unspeakable things in a demon’s growl. There aren’t too many other movie scenes I’ve found harder to watch. Another scene from that movie that I remember being awful is the spinal tap scene, maybe because of my fear of needles. They found horror not in something supernatural but in a medical procedure.

 

Rosemary’s Baby is another horror classic but there aren’t too many individual scenes that jump out at me as horrifying. The movie is more of a slow burn of disturbing events. However, I am always appalled by how awful Mia Farrow looks as a pregnant woman. She should be glowing with good health and instead she’s gaunt and hollow-eyed.

 

As for TV, two of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever seen were on Breaking Bad. The end of “Crawl Space” was hair-raising, with Walt lying under his dug-up floorboards and cackling, a man at the end of his rope who has completely cracked up. Meanwhile, a stunned Skyler walks slowly through the house as Marie’s panicked voice rings out on the answering machine. The whole time, a rhythmic beating echoes like the beating of the hideous heart. “Ozymandias” was a horror show from beginning to end but everything after Skyler and Flynn got home was especially scary. The most gut-wrenching had to be when Walt was backing out of the driveway with Holly while Skyler screams hysterically in the street. I don’t think I’ve ever been more concerned for the safety of a fictional character. The genius of that episode was how it started with a traumatic event and just kept building and piling on more awful things until the end when I couldn’t take it anymore.

 

I was one of the people who was scared of The Blair Witch Project. A lot of the movie was boring but the end, when they got to the house, scared the hell out of me at the time. It was just something about the way the screaming sounded far away since the sound camera was detached from the video camera. The friend standing in the corner waiting to die was nightmarish. There was also something nightmarish about the scribble drawings with the red eyes in The Mothman Prophecies. That movie freaked me out.

 

For good, old fashioned jump scares, I yelped at the end of Carrie when her hand reached out of the ground. I also saw Alien at about age 12 and was traumatized by the chest bursting alien.

 

I suppose I can count The Human Centipede as scary but it was borne more from disgust than anything. I didn’t know anything about the movie and based on the title, I thought it might be a campy romp with some guy whose DNA gets crossed with a centipede’s, like The Fly. Boy, was I wrong. Instead, I kept thinking, “I can’t believe they expect us to swallow this crap” and left needing to bleach my eyes out.

 

Add your own horrifying scenes below.

 

Apropos of Nothing

Agents of SHIELD is a missed opportunity because it hardly showcases any Marvel Universe characters. SHIELD has a rich, 50-year history and the show doesn’t take advantage so what’s the point? All they would have to do is take a few characters who haven’t shown up yet in Marvel movies and introduce them as SHIELD agents. Have people walk into the Helicarrier, introduce themselves as Agent Carol Danvers and Agent Luke Cage and watch every comic fan applaud. Meanwhile, the non-comic fans could also get a taste of these longtime characters. Instead, the cast consists of Some Woman, Some Guy, Some Other Woman, Fric and Frac from the United Kingdom and Agent Smirk. I have zero interest in any of these people. Plus, I am choking on the snarky Whedon dialogue because a little goes a long way. There is a universe of untapped Marvel lore and they just choose not to tap it. 

I thought we agreed as a society that we would not hum in public. I was in Walgreens waiting in line when a woman behind me was humming along to “Stuck With You” by Huey Lewis and the News, which was playing in the store. She didn’t just hum sporadic phrases; she was on every note of the music and it didn’t help that she was right behind me. I was so annoyed and the line was not moving anyway so I had to leave the store and go somewhere else. The lesson is that you might have a song in your heart but you need to keep it inside you.

I think they should alter the pitch of the dial tone just slightly. Everyone would wonder if they’re having a stroke. That would be fun!

The Comcast guide is still listing Wheel of Fortune as “Merv Griffin’s version of the classic game of hangman.” If you really have no idea what this 30-year-old show is, how is mentioning long-dead Merv Griffin going to help? It’s a game show. Vanna White turns letters. You’ll get the gist within five seconds of turning it on. Are there really people who find Wheel of Fortune too obscure but would recognize Merv Griffin as a cultural touchstone?

“Suicide” is a noun and not a verb. Don’t say, “She suicided.” Say, “She committed suicide.” That was today’s morose vocabulary lesson.

I saw a horrific turkey on the Food Network. It was all wrinkly, as if it had been brined after cooking. The chefs then dumped some kind of pecans or something all over the skin. I was watching it from a distance at the gym and couldn’t see the closed captioning so it looked like they were pouring some kind of bugs all over the turkey. Either way, do not add pecans or any nuts to your turkey this Thanksgiving. If someone served me that, I would turn around and leave.

Sports Calculus

I loosely follow playoffs after Philadelphia teams are out of the race but then it becomes a calculus to figure out whom to root against. There are many factors that go into this decision: Teams that are rivals of Philly teams, teams that knocked my teams out of the playoffs in the past and teams I just don’t like or are sick of hearing about. So I’m going to make a formula and figure out who I should root for and who I should hate in the baseball postseason. I realize this will be outdated since teams have been eliminated but hindsight can be just as fun.

 

Atlanta Braves. They are the worst and I take pleasure in seeing them flame out in the postseason. I was proud that the Phillies had a part in their demise in 2011 by sweeping a series that meant nothing to them but was the stake through the Braves’ heart. Remember last year when the Braves lost the play-in wild card and there was some controversial call and fans threw their trash onto the field? That was great! I will always actively root against this team. I dread when the Phillies play them in Atlanta because of that embarrassing tomahawk chop. A cheer should be rousing but the Braves’ cheer sounds like the keening of a widow at a graveyard.

 

Cleveland Indians and Pittsburgh Pirates. I wanted a World Series between these two. I have no problem with these teams. Christ, just give it to one of them already. Their fan bases have earned it.

 

Los Angeles Dodgers. I have a little residual annoyance for this team because they were a rival for the Phillies in ’08 and ’09 but they were not much trouble to dispatch so I’m over it. I remember being really annoyed by the fawning over Manny Ramirez and the deeply embarrassing “Mannywood” outfield corner the Dodgers painted for him. I’m not swayed by the argument against teams with high payrolls. Some people sniff at this and say, “They’re trying to buy a championship.” No, they’re trying to spend enough to attract quality players to win one. Baseball is still a business no matter how much we pretend it’s an endless matinee of Field of Dreams.

 

Boston Red Sox. Meh. I’ve stopped caring. However, I will say that if the Red Sox end up losing, we’ll be subjected to another Bill Simmons column that tries to scientifically prove that Bostonians feel sports-related pain more acutely than anybody else. Yes, nobody else can understand the pain of losing like you. You are all special. Please continue to marinate in your disappointment and go on and on and on about it. They can also dial back that “Red Sox Nation” nonsense. It’s a region. Every team has a diaspora of fans and you are not the exception.

 

Detroit Tigers. I’m fine with them. I wouldn’t mind seeing the Tigers win the World Series.

 

St. Louis Cardinals. Can’t stand them. Oh, but how can I hate a team that plays in America’s Heartland, where folks (people are always “folks” in the Midwest) skip through fields of grain as pies cool softly on the windowsill? They have the Best Fans in Baseball! And they play in Baseball Heaven! And la-dee-da-dee-da! The aura of smugness and humblebragging surrounding the Cardinals media and fans is thick enough to choke me. Drew Magary said it best: http://deadspin.com/why-your-cardinals-suck-1443513646 . I’m also not a fan of teams that parlay a mediocre season into a wild card slot and win the World Series, which St. Louis has done twice now. They’re “meh” for 162 games and then get on an 11-game hot streak and there’s a reward and it doesn’t seem fair. Just. GO. AWAY.

 

So based on my calculus, who do I want to win? Nobody, because I am bitter and don’t like any team but mine.

 

 

Goodbye, Comcast

We are disgusted with Comcast and thinking of switching to Fios. Just about every night around 9 p.m., we lose Internet access. This is a problem since streaming is our main medium of entertainment. A lot of shows come on after our early bedtime so we like to catch up the next night and we also stream movies and previous seasons of TV shows. I got sick of wasting three nights trying to watch the same episode of Mad Men only to have the screen freeze six times during the credits. The last straw was last weekend when we couldn’t even watch a preview of a movie. It’s also annoying since we are moving away from DVDs due to space considerations and would rather stream everything but with the lack of Internet, we have no guarantees.

 

Yes, first world problems, people in Iraq don’t even have electricity all night, etc. But when you’re paying a premium for Internet and cable and phone, the system really needs to work, or what good is it? It’s especially true as I work from home once a week and really hope I can get online during the day because I enjoy the perk.

 

We have had technicians come out four times in the last few months but they just have not been able to solve this problem. One of our neighbors is having the same issue and getting a runaround. So we’re pretty much done. If you’re not going to earn our business and fix this problem, goodbye.

 

Comcast seems like a terrible company anyway. Even the network it owns has been awful lately. NBC was, for at least 25 years, wall-to-wall quality programming. Thursday nights was like going to church – a really entertaining church that nobody ever missed with four great sitcoms in a row. Even the Saturday night schedule was killer in the ‘80s and when was the last time anyone wanted to stay home on a Saturday and watch TV?

 

Now there’s exactly one show, Parks and Recreation, that I will watch on NBC. I was reading a book about how Jeff Zucker pretty much destroyed the network by airing insipid crap instead of the highly polished shows it used to have in abundant supply. The last straw for me was when NBC aired the execrable Whitney on Thursday night. That was like a sacred timeslot for gold standard shows like Cheers and now you’re just letting any half-baked crap air there? No thanks. It amuses me to see that Zucker went to CNN and is still peddling nonsense non-stories, given that it aired blanket coverage of that cruise ship with overflowing toilets, as if it were some matter or national importance.

 

But anyway. Comcast is the worst.

That's enough

OK, that’s just about enough. The federal government has been shut down for over a week over what is basically a dick-measuring contest (which is what everything else in Congress comes down to).

The legislative branch passed the Affordable Care Act and the judicial branch upheld it. It is the law. It has its glitches and its drawbacks but it is the law. There are no more hurdles for it to overcome. It is time for the hissyfit to end and for the Republicans in particular to realize that they lost both the 2012 election and the battle over healthcare.

What kills me is there are probably people in Congress who think the way to protect the middle class from the overwhelming horrors of national healthcare is to put some of those middle class people out of work temporarily. Meanwhile, the legislative branch earns a salary while doing literally nothing to avert this shutdown, while Capitol police officers protect them without pay.

Incidentally, I wish the media would focus less on the fact that our national parks and monuments are closed and emphasize that the people who work in those parks are out of a job. It’s inconvenient that you can’t go to Valley Forge or Independence Hall but the people who work there may not be able to pay their mortgages on time. That’s the real problem here.

All of those ass clowns in Congress can go. All of them. I don’t want to vote for an incumbent again anytime soon. I wish I could register in every state so I could vote all of them out.

Except Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She can stay. She can run for president if she wants to. I read a speech of hers denouncing the “anarchists” in Congress and morons who think taxes = socialism and I just … I just … I can’t even explain what I felt. It was like a ray of light came down from heaven and I had an orgasm.

Boycott PA

This is, what, the second or third time Gov. Corbett has had to apologize for comparing gay marriage to something offensive? The hilariously depressing thing is that in this latest instance, he’s corrected his original assertion, that gay marriage is comparable to 12-year-olds who want to wed, by saying the more appropriate analogy would be a brother and sister who want to marry. What’s next — clearing things up by saying gay marriage is like setting puppies on fire?

Corbett’s comments just crystalize for me that fact that we are not going to be moving back to Pennsylvania. We moved to Delaware because it was more affordable but had half-anticipated moving back to our home state once we could, given that’s where a lot of family and friends are. But with the Keystone State’s continued fight against gay marriage, I think I’ll be keeping in touch with people from the First State. Steve and I did not exchange vows last April just to move back to Pennsylvania and have the commonwealth regard us as roommates.

I don’t feel welcome as a gay person in Pennsylvania, at least not by the government. In contrast, I do feel welcome in Delaware. My adopted state passed gay marriage with breathtaking speed and no drama. The legislature passed it the day we got home from our honeymoon, the governor signed it immediately and less than two months later, gay people were wedding at the courthouse. Philadelphia may hold the edge on Wilmington as far as the gay scene but at this point in my life, I need more than just a few bars and clubs with rainbow flags. I need the pride of commitment to my husband and legal protection for our union.

Of course, we do certainly feel welcome by our friends and family in Pennsylvania so it’s not like we’re going to stop speaking to anyone or dramatically refuse to set foot on PA soil. What I will be doing is not spending a dime more of my money than I have to in Pennsylvania. I’m not even going to give that government whatever pittance of a sales tax I would be spending there. I’m not going to refuse to attend a social function in PA, but if I have a choice, I’m not eating or drinking there. I’m not getting gas there. I’m not doing any Christmas shopping on my lunch break near work. After years, I stopped buying Yuengling in favor of Delaware’s Dogfish Head. I also stopped buying the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday and switched to the Delaware News Journal. (This had less to do with gay marriage than with the fact that the Inquirer treats the tri-state area like a bi-state area and completely ignores Delaware so I get no local news. We’re a small state but it’s not like it’s all an empty wasteland. If they circulate to our area, they could at least cover us a little.)

What I will be doing instead is spending more to prop up the economy of my adopted state — the state that has made me feel welcome as a gay person. The Diamond State is home now and I’ll just have to visit people in my old state. I really wonder if Pennsylvania will have a “brain drain” of gay couples who will leave to marry elsewhere. Even if PA passes gay marriage, it will be too little, too late for me. It is the only state in the Northeast that offers no recognition for gay couples. So I’m out (pardon the pun).

I know that not buying gas in Pennsylvania will have no effect but it’s just a small symbol, something that I feel the need to do.

Wipe that smirk off your face

Now that my tragic facial condition, Bitchy Resting Face, is a documented medical phenomenon, I propose we add another category: Smirky Resting Face.

Smirky Resting Face is for those people who walk around with a smirk on their faces no matter what their emotional state. You’ve seen these people, just going through life like they’re barely suppressing their laughter at you or they’re amused by some kind of secret. I thought of this recently when we were watching Agents of SHIELD. I looked at the expression on Agent Coulson’s face and said, “He could wipe the smirk off his face.” 

If strangers can see my frown and tell me to smile, why can’t I see someone with that little half-smile and say, “Wipe that smirk off your face”? Who isn’t annoyed by a Smirky Resting Face? That facial expression is condescending and a little mocking. During an interview, President Clinton once told a reporter to stop smirking. I was glad he did it because the guy (I can’t think of his name) did smirk all the time and it made his face punchable.  

Well, if a president doesn’t have to put up with your smirk, I don’t see why I should.  

“Oh,” you’ll say to me, “that smirk is just their natural face. They can’t help it.” Guess what, Straw Man? I can’t help my Bitchy Resting Face, either. So if I have to get cornered at parties with people trying to correct the position of my mouth and then when I force a smile people complain that the smile looks forced, it’s only fair that we try to have an intervention for the smirkers and correct their mouths so they are frowning a little or have a non-insufferable expression.

Don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.

I had the most presumptuous dream

I dreamed Steve and I were home and looked out the window and saw people sitting on our deck. We went out to investigate and there were a bunch of our acquaintances just sitting there, chatting and having a few beers. Kim and Jason were there, too. That’s how they roll: Inviting themselves to party on their brother’s deck without bothering to ask.

 

I was livid that these people, many of whom we barely knew, were presumptuous enough to think they could just socialize without our permission. I went outside and confronted them. With a barely veiled attitude, I had a long conversation and told them they needed to leave. While I was talking, most of the people felt uncomfortable and slipped out without my noticing.

 

Later I dreamed that Steve and I were not yet living together and I was trying to get to his house. I was driving up the streets but couldn’t get there because many of the streets were one way and it was a maze I couldn’t negotiate.

 

So I walked into this woman’s house and used it as a shortcut. She was vacuuming and when she saw me walk in, she wasn’t surprised, as if people cut through her house all the time. She told me to go out by way of the balcony. I did and jumped down onto a steep hill and went to Steve’s.

 

Last night was apparently the night to dream of people who were on other people’s decks and balconies without permission. I have a very hard time just walking in someone’s house, even if it’s a friend and they tell me I can just walk in. This stems from childhood. I was once about to knock up on a friend’s house and a guy was going to their door at the same time I was. He must have thought I lived there because he told me to go ahead and walk in. I must have been about 5 or 6 so I listened to him because he was an authority figure giving me permission. I walked in and I barely remember but I guess my friend’s parents were surprised to see me. Luckily, I knew them and I was just a kid so they understood.

 

So if you ever tell me “Oh, just walk in,” I’ll do it but the kid inside me will cringe and expect to get in trouble.