Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 2/4/22

Prostate of the Union Edition

The first interdepartmental staff meeting at the N.T.A.B. happened last weekend, and by all reports, it was a promising first step.

It was obvious to me that the Director of Bunker Ops was already attempting to consolidate power from the moment I walked into the negotiations.

Thankfully, the Bunker Mascot wasn’t having any of that, and remained stoic during the proceedings.

By the third action item, it was clear that she was only there for the sake of appearances, being under the mistaken impression that we were going on some kind of outing.

When this did not manifest, she make it very clear what she thought about that.

Nevertheless, we covered all of the agenda items with aplomb and adjourned early for treats and belly rubs. We also took care of the dog.

The topic of the toilet light was a win-win. Thanks to a couple of judicious suggestions from one of the bunker staffers, the toilet light is now atop the marble stall where it shines down into the general area, illuminating a far more useful swatch of bathroom real estate, bathing the room in a cool, non-changing, blue light. We can live with this.

However, there is now a second toilet light in play—because they come in a two-pack, presumably so that the merry prankster has a back-up when the spouse smashes the first one with a hammer—and this one is in the shower in the decontamination chamber. The first time I tried this, it was dark, and the oscillating disco vibe was quite unsettling. That is, until the color wheel cycled over to red. Not a color you want to see in a decontamination chamber, ever. Just as I was about to protest, the two-minute motion-activated sensor, sensing nothing on the other side of the shower, obligingly turned off, plunging the room into utter darkness.

To recap: we went from murderous, irradiated red, to black out. It was not a soothing, relaxing experience. On the other hand, I’ve now got my shower-taking time down to one minute, fifty-three seconds.   

Broadcasting Is Nigh!

As you can see, the gamma chamber, 2.0, is nearly complete. My space is narrow and tall, and one of the things I was worried about was an echo while recording. So I created this.

Yes, this recording booth is in a closet.

When I’m on camera, the panel is up and light can stream into the space. When I’m recording, and don’t need a picture, I can fold the panel down and make a nearly dead space for me to do book on tape reads, voice-over, and of course, podcasting.

I solved this engineering problem with magnets, hot glue, and duct tape.

All I need to do is bring my laptop in, plug it into place, and I’m rolling in seconds. Pretty nifty. I’ve got some reading coming my way, and I’m working on the format and the show stories for The North Texas Apocalypse Watch and Family Fun Hour: A Thirty-Minute Show. Stay tuned.

I’ve got two more panels to hang, but you get the idea.

Update from the Agency of Health and Wellness, who evidently won the office betting pool and got to name the newsletter this week

This infection keeps coming back. I’m starting to feel like Michael Palin in Time Bandits. “Panty! The problem! It’s come back! I need fruit!” These spells have been about six weeks apart since the summer, and it’s giving me fits. The current theory is that I’ve got Prostatitis, which is medical jargon for an infection in my prostate.

We’ll find out soon enough if that’s the case, because I was doubled over, feverish, and shaking, on Tuesday, inside of ten minutes. I thought I was having a panic attack. Okay, I was having a panic attack, but it was a small one. It’s just that, they both hit at the same time, and it scared the shit out of me.

Thankfully, we had a plan for this. I called the urologist’s office (remember them?) and told the nurse I was having “the problem” and that the doctor told me to call in. He was out of the office that day, but she promised to relay the message. True to her word, she called me back ten minutes later.

There was a lot of back and forth. I had to remind the doctor, through her, that he wanted to put me on a much stronger antibiotic, instead of a repeat of the one I’d previously been on. This took additional time to get sorted out, as I writhed in pain and hated life. The right prescription finally got called in a 4:57 PM. My pharmacy was looking for it, and got it filled in record time.

I’ve been on it for three days now, and all of my symptoms were gone by the beginning of the second day. Again. So, we know it’s an infection. We know it can be treated with antibiotics. And we are attempting to narrow down where, in fact, the infection is. I’m not going to call it a win, because these are battles and not the overall war. I remain optimistic that I can get this under control.

There is another issue on the table here: I’m now officially old enough to start complaining about my prostate. Let’s be clear about something: I don’t want to think about my prostate. I don’t want to contemplate its size, its shape, or its function. And yet, now I wonder how something so small can render me insensible, from a bacterial infection. It’s maddening. Makes me want to go sit on a front porch somewhere, throwing pecans at the neighborhood kids. All I need now is a porch and some pecans.

Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (Netflix)

I’m on the record as being a big fan of Kristen Bell for a whole lot of reasons, but we’ll stick with her choice of projects and the fact that she doesn’t usually repeat herself. With that in mind, I’ll watch whatever she’s in, whenever I see her in it. Right up to and including A Bad Moms Christmas.

When I stumbled across this new series, I could see right away what they were doing. And with Kristen involved, I just knew it would be good. Watching the trailer confirmed it. This would be awesome. She’s got a snarky side to her, and she can play comedy and farce as well as drama. It’ll be great!

I was, it turns out, wildly optimistic. Yeah, it is a satire, and it does take the piss out of that Lifetime Movie on Steroids kind of show that’s been very popular on cable networks for a while now. It’s easy to see, that’s what they were going for. Only they didn’t. Go for it, I mean.

The one problem with this series is that it’s not funny enough to be a comedy, and it’s not serious enough to be a drama. There is one or maybe two chuckle-worthy moments in each episode, but it never really gets rolling. In fact, the trailer for the show is a better joke than the show itself, in that it contains just about every funny scene, minus a few well-written nonsensical voice-overs, used to great effect.

I watched The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window all the way through, hoping at some point we’d crest the first hill and all of the funny stuff would come tumbling out. That did not happen. By the end of it, the only thing I cared about was finding out who the killer was, and the reveal is so twisted and dark, it almost bordered on horrific. I honestly think they were trying to be funny. It’s not.

This show doesn’t know what it wants to be. Its tone is all over the place, and there’s no way to fix that now. If you’re not the biggest Kristen Bell fan ever, you can skip this, guilt-free.

We Need to Talk About Cosby (Showtime)

W. Kamau Bell made his career on leaning into controversial subjects, and this four-part docuseries is just the latest, and I think most detailed, thing he’s ever done. The show is not really a take-down, per se, because that’s already happened (and been overturned, for crying out loud). Rather, it’s a series of interviews, some of them really uncomfortable, from all kinds of people in an attempt to get a little perspective on who Cosby was, and why so many people felt betrayed by his actions.

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Bill Cosby was in everyone’s home, by way of either Saturday morning cartoons like Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids or the sitcom legend, The Cosby Show. Or both. He got the nickname “America’s Dad,” and was, for decades, an avuncular, funny role-model. But behind the scenes, Cosby was engaging in sexual assault and all of the other things that go along with keeping it a big fat secret from everyone. We also find out in this show that, um, maybe some folks did know about it.

I wanted to watch this show because Bill Cosby was one of my heroes as a kid. He taught me how to craft a joke, how to tell a story. I don’t think I’d be the entertainer I am today without having memorized all those Bill Cosby albums and studied how he used his voice, made sounds, all of that. I watched Fat Albert, the same as everyone else. And his HBO special, Bill Cosby: Himself, is an inarguable classic. I loved that man. I cried for him when his son was murdered. And I was one of the millions of people who felt betrayed by finding out all of this dark, evil shit about him. I wanted to see what other people had to say. And man, you get the full spread, let me tell you. It’s fascinating to watch. I learned a lot of things I didn’t know, and with only a couple of exceptions, they were all bad things. However, the good things? Pretty damn cool.

The Cosby scandal seems to always be Ground Zero in a discussion about separating the art from the artist. Bell examines this in some detail, and even gives you his own conclusions as a means of wrapping up the series. It’s not for everyone: there are frank and graphic discussions about “America’s Dad” that you will find deeply uncomfortable if you are not a victim or a survivor of sexual assault, and almost certainly be triggering if you are. At the end of it, I’ve got a better perspective on the whole thing, which was, I suppose, Bell’s intention. And I’ve finally got an answer to the art/artist conundrum that makes sense for me.

The 2022 NTAB Directorial Culture Exchange Update: Jacques Tourneur

Thanks to another snow day, we got the ball rolling with a double feature of films by Jacques Tourneur. Jes chose The Comedy of Terrors, from 1964, starring Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price. I felt this needed a lot of context, so after it was over, we talked about Corman’s Poe Cycle at AIP and Richard Matheson writing these screenplays and it took the sting out of some of the more farcical elements of the movie. But it wasn’t all camp vamping: the first scene between Price and the landlord, played by Basil Rathbone, is a beautiful display of formal language employed as brutal euphemism. In fact, every scene with Rathbone has to be seen to be believed. If you can let go of the absurdity of the premise, that is.

I chose Out of the Past, an RKO classic from 1947 starring Robert Mitchum. One of the best and greatest Film Noir movies. Great cinematography, incredible dialogue, snappy violence, and young, not-yet-legendary actors creating these memorable characters. This one has it all. As one of the now de facto templates for the Film Noir stylebook, it’s a master class. But the movie hangs together on the strength of the performances, especially the scenes with Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, doing a hell of a turn as the villainous gambler. There’s a reason why this is on every film noir top ten list, and if it’s not, then that list isn’t worth paying attention to.

Tourneur was a technician, able to do a lot with a little. In The Comedy of Terrors, he’s following a style guide of sorts, with all of the prior films in the Poe cycle being an established thing at AIP. Out of the Past, on the other hand, is what Tourneur deserves to be remembered for. He took all of the tricks he developed working on Val Lewton’s low budget horror classics, like Cat People (1942), and shot a moody, cynical, wisecracking masterpiece that still looks good after all these years.

Overall, we’re off to a good start, and I look forward to whatever might come next.