Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 12/19/22
Merry Snot-mas and a Mucus New Year edition
To Whom it May Concern:
The Bunker Emergency/Crisis Level is currently on yellow, which is coincidentally the color of the mucus which has jammed itself into the Administrator’s cranium, apparently with the avowed intention of exploding his skull from the inside out. However, I’ve watched Scanners 17 times, and I know a little something about not getting your head exploded by internal forces.
Suffice to say, I’ve been well and truly under the weather. Low energy. I’ve been typing this update in increments of three sentences, after which I require a juice box and a lie down. Staring at the computer screen is doing nothing for the sinus pressure that keeps building in my skull, the PSI increasing every minute, until my nose starts whistling like the world’s worst tea pot, and I go stick my head under hot shower water to try and uncork the tangerine-sized snot-clot that is lodged between my ocular cavity and the bridge of my nose.
I finally broke down and went to the doc. The verdict: Bronchitis, which in turn caused sinusitis. Awesome. I’m trying to cough without coughing, and swallow without swallowing, to no avail. Hopefully the meds will kick in soon. My last coughing fit sounded like someone shaking a can of spray varnish with that ball rattling around in the can.
The Indignities of Age: Colon Health
If I had known at the age of twenty that my fifty year old self would be overly-concerned about my bowel movements to the point that I actually planned a date and time to shit into a cup, I might have been a lot nicer to the Baby Boomer generation.
For those of you who don’t know this—and why would you know? It’s not sexy, it doesn’t help sell body spray, for someone in their early twenties, sounds like something a million miles away—but for those of you who haven’t hit officially “middle age” yet, the chances of ass cancer for men go up after the age of 50, so much so that for your yearly physical, they expect you to lie still so they can send a camera up your butt to look at your colon.
They also like to put a thumb up your dumper to check the prostate gland, for the same reason mentioned above. So much stuff they want to put up your butt.
I’m not on board with this, not if there’s another way, and in point of fact, there is. Turns out they can check your prostate levels by looking at your urine, which I am more than happy to fork over. And as for the ass cancer, well, they can look at your poop, presumably the way old wyrd women used to root around in sheep’s entrails to tell the future. The thing is, though, someone decided that this was elementary enough that anyone could do it—the collection process, I mean, not the looking for ass cancer. So they send you home and tell you to wait for a kit to show up in the mail. “But it’s only 97% accurate,” they say, pointedly, like they expect me to go, “What? Only 97%? Screw it! I’ll take that camera in the pooper, and stat!”
And so, to avoid the indignities of having strangers remote-control a camera into my colon, I instead have to make a 4th grade science project out of my toilet seat with a collection cup, a plastic tray, and a brief window wherein I’m supposed to scrape the stool sample with the collection probe and then preserve the sample with the solution provided. You know…like a scientist! At least they let me finish going to the bathroom first.
The weird thing was, I got the box and didn’t do it right away. I had to work myself up to it. Mostly, I had to mentally drill into my own process and see when and where I could interrupt business as usual to play Mister Wizard with my poop. Once I was sure I could make it happen, I waited a few more days until I had to go more than a little and less than a lot. That cup is only so big, and well, I’ve seen what an all-cauliflower and spinach diet can do to a toilet. For posterity’s sake, I’ll just tell you that the morning ablutions, with a half-cup of coffee ingested, was just right.
I couldn’t look the lady at UPS in the eye. The box says COLON-GUARD and HUMAN SPECIMENS on it. I would have preferred trying to mail a severed human head. Thankfully, I was able to distract her with Christmas chatter and other small packages to mail, so she wasn’t too curious about my freight.
Now there’s nothing to do but wait. I’ve been getting text reminders from them this whole time about making sure I complete the test before the expiration date. I wonder if I’ll get a text that says, “Congratulations! You are Ass-Cancer Free for another year!” Maybe Santa will bring me a clean bill of health for Christmas.
After all that, you deserve a dog picture. Season’s Greetings from the Bunker Mascot!
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Amsterdam/Dude, Where’s my Jet?/Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Amsterdam (HBO Max)
A Jewish doctor, a black lawyer, and a wealthy heiress forge a lifelong friendship in France during the Great War, and are reunited years later over a murder and have to outrun a vast criminal and political conspiracy, all while bouncing off of weird and quirky characters and one another.
In a year full of quirky, character-driven films, Amsterdam is trying hard to get out front of See How They Run before everyone sees the Knives Out sequel. I don’t mean any of that in a bad way. This movie is an engrossing delight from start to finish. Set in New York City in the early 1930s (my jam), we get the back stories on the doctor, played with aplomb by Christian Bale (and it may be my favorite thing he’s done), the lawyer (John David Washington, Denzel’s kid!), and the heiress (Margot Robie in yet another role where she just effortlessly kills it) at the same time that bodies are falling and we’re enjoying watching what looks like genuine friendships playing out onscreen.
That’s probably because the writer and director is David O. Russell, she same guy who did Three Kings and Silver Linings Playbook. The dude knows what he’s doing, and in this case, his all star cast, which includes Taylor Swift and Robert DeNiro, is all too happy to chew scenery and crack these little asides. Best of all, what starts out as a fun historical fiction romp turns into a timely and prescient historical reality that I won’t spoil for you, but do make sure you watch the credits where Russell put actual newsreel footage next to the fictional character he wrote and showed the exact same words coming out of their mouths.
If you liked any of Russell’s previous movies, or if you have a thing for Christian Bale or Margot Robie, you won’t want to miss Amsterdam. It delivers the goods, like a real old-fashioned well-made film used to do, back when we had more of those.
Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? (Netflix)
At the apex of Pepsi’s popularity in the 1990s, one teen-ager watched an over-the-top commercial and thought, “Yeah, I want to try and collect seven million Pepsi points to win the Harrier Jet they showed in the commercial.” And that’s exactly what he did. This is the documentary of that young man and his dogged pursuit of an elusive prize.
I was initially worried about this quick and dirty documentary, given the high ratio of reconstructed footage they were using, but those images were frequently narrated over by the actual people doing the actual thing, so I'm prepared to give that tactic a pass.
I was never a Pepsi drinker. My tenth grade English teacher taught a unit on subliminal messages and symbolism in media to my class in 1986, and I’ve picked commercials apart ever since, and I never wanted what Pepsi was selling. I was not a member of the Pepsi generation, and I am damn proud of it.
Like any good documentary, what often brings you into it is not the date you go home with, and I’m pleased to say that Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? is about far more than Pepsi being a mega-corp and the 1990s being the 1990s. In between the gonzo stunts is a sweet relationship of friendship and a determination to not be defined by a single instance, which is kind of anathema today, but could still be pulled off, Pre-Twitter.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)
This stop-motion animated version of the classic story gets retold through the distorted lens of Guillermo del Toro and not only is it a vast improvement over the turgid live-action Disney film earlier this year, but this is hands-down my favorite version of the story.
Fair warning: this ain’t no Pinocchio for children, unless you’re raising your own versions of Eddie Munster and Wednesday Addams. Pinocchio being built and coming back to life is very much a Frankenstein allegory, at least, initially. Del Toro has set the movie in Fascist Italy during the time of Mussolini, and the analogy of who is really a puppet and who isn’t is pretty clear.
Pinocchio is an agent of chaos in this movie, forcing others (and himself) into seemingly smaller and smaller boxes, but it’s the wooden puppet’s independence that pulls him through—his disobedience. This is not a re-write of the Disney film. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio goes back to the 19th century story by Carlo Collodi and liberally re-interprets and contextualizes it for modern audiences while keeping the storybook feeling intact.
I've never read the original story, but you've got me very excited about seeing del Tori's Pinocchio. That might be one for Christmas Day afternoon!
Sorry to hear you're feeling poorly - I've had bronchitis and sinusitis, though mercifully never simultaneously; bloody hell, that must be tough! I hope it eases a bit by Christmas so you can taste some nice (nut-free!) food and the only tangerines you have to worry about will be those left in your stocking by Santa (hey, you've been good this year).
I'm always fascinated by the differences in colorectal cancer surveillance between the US and UK. We don't do mass endoscopic screening because it's just not medically necessary to scope people that much, unless you have something like FAP - every one to three years - longstanding IBD or other specific medical history that would heighten your risk.
For the healthy majority it's introducing more health risk and cost to the system than is associated with potential false negatives from home tests (and presumably the thinking is that if you become symptomatic, you'll attend the doctor, get blood/stool tests and get scoped anyway if needed, at which point the already low individual risk is cancelled out by the benefits), especially for a cancer that is both frequently preventable and highly treatable when caught early, which annual home tests should ensure. It says a lot that you managed to get one by digging a little and questioning the policy - long may you evade their alien probes!
As a frequent victim of bronchitis, I sympathize. I also opted for the stool sample rather than colonoscopy. It's an adventure getting that sample just right for them.