This monster continues to bray into any microphone that settles near that quivering sphincter in the middle of his wretched face that if we just stopped testing people for this deadly virus, then the virus itself would miraculously disappear. Either he truly believes that, in which case he should be removed from office because he is clearly delusional and needs to be institutionalized, or he just wants to stop testing because he knows that if nobody knows for sure what's killing all these people then he can claim the virus isn't such a big deal after all and tell everybody that he alone somehow saved the republic, in which case he should be removed from office because he's become a clear and present danger to the American people. Either way, every single time this fascist, rotting jack-o'-lantern spews his madness I start screaming at my television.
I feel like I'm in Hell, like we're all trapped in a fucking nightmare that is swallowing up everything good and descent before our eyes, and nearly half of the people in this country think everything's going just peachy fucking keen. My own brother keeps irresponsibly telling my parents that if they've had a flu vaccine then they've got antibodies that will fight off COVID-19, which is demonstrably false. But he believes it because he's gone down this alt-right rabbit hole along with far too many others, and there may be no coming back from this. We're not on the edge of disaster; we've already toppled over the precipice, and we are careening headfirst toward a very nasty end.
I'm not just talking about this virus. I'm talking about the ongoing rise of fascism in this country, which has been met with a resounding shrug from so many. I'm talking about the continued sabotage of the United States Postal Service performed by deranged minds in government who have dreamed of forcing this supposedly Constitutionally-protected service to collapse in order to privatize the mail, so they can turn a profit from this once-sacred institution. I'm talking about the continued vilification of intellectuals and higher learning, the scorning of "the elites" by wealthy politicians and greedy businessmen who manipulate their constituents to turn smart people just trying to do what's right into scapegoats while they make out like bandits on the blood, sweat and tears of the people they supposedly represent. I'm talking about the looming specter of climate change, a threat that could have been easily nullified at any time over the past three decades, but the ghouls perched in their places of power were too busy hoarding their wealth and influence to care about the gathering storm on the horizon. The storm that's no longer on the horizon, but bearing down on us all, just and unjust alike.
So we're doomed. We may weather this current crisis, but there are a dozen more just waiting in line, champing at the bit for their chance to grind us all into the dust, and even if more competent leadership were to take the reins in January, it may be too late to stop what's coming.
I also watched a movie called The Pool this morning, and I absolutely fucking hated it.
I was very much looking forward to this movie, based on all the raving reviews I read online last year. And after noticing it recently being added to Shudder last night, I decided I'd give it a shot. For anybody who doesn't know, The Pool is about a guy who gets trapped in a giant, empty diving pool with a crocodile, trying to escape the hungry beast and find a way of of his predicament. That's the premise. Right off the bat, I knew I was in trouble when the opening scene showcased the crocodile in all its terribly-rendered CG glory. I know this Thai production was working with a limited budget and I need to cut them some slack, but this dumb crocodile looks like it was pulled right out of an old video game, maybe from the Playstation 2 era, if I'm being charitable. This creature never looks like it exists in the same universe as any of the human characters that share screen-time with it, and that's a big problem for me. But fuck it, if the movie's good, I'll be able to roll with it.
I was not able to roll with it, folks. The story concerns an idiot named Day, who is working with some production crew that is shooting... something... in a big diving pool. I'm not sure exactly what they're filming, only that it involves a lady dressed like a clown swimming around a submerged chaise lounge and a dead tree in a diving pool. Is it a music video? Some film student's fever dream? The introduction to a surreal pornographic movie? I have no idea. All I know is this guy Day is part of the crew, and he even convinced the director to give his adorable dog Lucky a part in the final product, jumping over... something? The movie's never clear on any of this, just breezing through the set-up as quickly as possible, at the expense of trivial things like character development and plot coherency.
After production wraps, Day just hangs around after everybody else leaves, floating in the pool and ignoring his girlfriend's phone calls while his nameless pal switches on the pump to slowly drain the pool, chaining up his dog so he doesn't wander off and get into trouble, reminding Day that his Insulin shot is nearby (Day's a diabetic), then fucking off for Nepal and out of this movie. Day then promptly passes out and awakes to realize that several hours have passed and the water level in the pool has dropped precipitously, meaning he is now trapped with no immediate means of escape. This is the first stupid decision that almost caused me to switch off the movie and call it a day. I guess I just assumed beforehand that the protagonist would find himself trapped in the already empty pool via falling in at some point in the narrative. I never imagined this man would be stupid enough to fall asleep in the pool after he was just informed that the drain pump had been switched on, knowing full well that the only access ladder had already been pulled out of the pool and was resting several feet away from the edge, out of his reach.
So Day panics and tries to climb out, failing repeatedly. Then his girlfriend calls again, and the vibration causes Day's smartphone to slowly slide closer to the edge, so Day readies himself to catch the device when his panicked dog Lucky slips over the edge on the opposite side of the pool and begins choking to death. Day grits his teeth and swims over, just tall enough to boost Lucky back over the lip of the pool and to safety, then the phone falls in the water and is ruined. Oh no. Then a crocodile shows up and tries to eat Day, a bunch of other stupid stuff happens, Day's girlfriend shows up to check up on her man and finds herself trapped in this ridiculous farce as well, and even more stupid, stupid plot shenanigans unfold.
Shenanigans involving a pizza delivery guy who just misses Day (fucking Pizza Hut apparently co-funded the movie. Go figure), Day and his girlfriend crawling through a bunch of tubes looking for another way out then just giving up, and Day telling his girlfriend to hide in an access hatch, even instructing her to plug the way out with a nearby steel barrel in case the crocodile manages to get in, even though the crocodile can't get in because it's in the pool above, which is just an inane plan on its surface, but things get worse when a torrential rain begins, flooding the access hatch and Koy (her name is Koy) can't remove the barrel from the exit and resigns herself to death by drowning in this claustrophobic space since Day has apparently forgotten all about her at this point. Then a sudden breeze knocks over what I initially thought was a clothesline that dips into the empty pool, but then I noticed Day wrapping his hands up in torn strips of his t-shirt to climb the clothesline and I realized this was actually fucking barbed wire, which I don't get at all. Where did this goddamned barbed wire clothesline come from? Why does it exist?
It was at this moment that I began questioning whether this Day character knew what he was doing regarding his life in general, because there was no reason for him to be subjecting himself to this bullshit. Day should have retrieved his girlfriend, who is smaller and lighter, had her wrap her own hands up with his shirt, perch her on his shoulders while standing on the chaise lounge for extra height and have her climb up, avoiding as much of the barbed wire as humanly possible. That's the sane plan. Instead, he chooses to nut up and free climb almost twenty feet of barbed wire on his own, and of course the barbed wire snaps when Day is within reach of the lip of the pool, and he falls and destroys one of his legs. This man is too stupid to live. I'll freely admit that I was not rooting for Day to escape his situation as soon as I realized he was just a complete fucking idiot who dragged himself, his girlfriend, and his dog into a situation that was so incredibly easy to avoid that I'm almost convinced this asshole somehow did it all on purpose. I wanted the crocodile to eat this dumb motherfucker five minutes in, and my opinion did not change by the time I was finished watching The Pool.
You may note that I didn't say "by the time The Pool was over", because I didn't watch the entire movie.
I couldn't.
A few minutes later, a pair of dummies who lost their radio-controlled glider in the empty pool dropped the access ladder down to retrieve their property, climbing out and just missing Day as he struggled out of the drain pipe. The final scene I watched began with Day realizing the two idiots who climbed down into the pool to retrieve their glider moments earlier left the access ladder dangling within when they exited. giving our hero the opportunity he's been looking for all along to just climb out of this fucking nightmare, save his girlfriend and dog and move on with his life. Then the crocodile, which I guess Day forgot was still in the pool with him, attacks for the dozenth time. Day eventually stabs this dodgy CG prick in the eye with one of the chaise lounge's broken legs and makes his way to the ladder. But the concrete drainage tubes that the ladder has been secured to roll away due to the rainfall, yanking the ladder up and out of Day's reach, because sure. That makes sense.
I almost stopped the movie right there, because that was just too much for me. An hour's worth of dumbass contrivances to keep this stupid asshole trapped in an empty pool had become too much, and my sanity was beginning to crumble under all this unnecessary weight. But the movie only had a few minutes left, so I decided to just stick it out and watch to the end. That was a mistake.
Day gives up hope and lies down, waiting for the hungry crocodile to put him out of his misery. Then he hears Koy blowing her rape whistle in the access hatch, hanging on by a thread and trying desperately not to drown, so Day decides he needs to dig deep and keep fighting, even though the croc just clamped down on his abdomen, surely puncturing several vital organs in the process. But this doesn't really matter, since The Pool treats all of Day's injuries more like inconveniences than life-threatening crises. Diabetic Day goes seven days without Insulin or substantial food or water, he sustains a head wound that causes him to lose consciousness, he shatters one of his legs, and he spends most of the last thirty minutes of the film just generally bleeding quite a bit, but none of this seems to affect him all that much. He just acts dazed for a minute or two then gets on with being a complete fucking idiot time and time again.
So after Day jams that same busted furniture leg in the crocodile's mouth, preventing the beast from closing its jaws again and rendering it at least temporarily harmless, his dog Lucky, who has been chained up by the pool all this time and is still alive, conveniently never noticing or barking at any of the other people who happened by this black hole over the past week, just starts barking again, and Day screams "no" and the hapless dog just... jumps into the empty pool, breaking its neck and dying.
The moment poor Lucky's neck snapped, I stopped playback, stood up, and took a walk. I walked around for about ten minutes, absolutely furious at the movie I had spent over an hour watching, for what I had just witnessed. How needlessly cruel had The Pool become? I was genuinely angry, and still am, that this movie arbitrarily decided to kill a dog in such a pointless manner. I never came back to The Pool. I will never finish watching this wretched movie. I imagine Day probably uses his dog's corpse and attached chain to climb out of the pool and save his own life, and he probably rescues Koy from her own predicament just before she drowns. Maybe he kills the crocodile, maybe he just leaves it to die alone in the pool. It doesn't matter. None of it matters.
The Pool didn't need to be such a terrible, poorly-thought-out farce of a movie. It didn't need to have a rock-stupid plot and an unlikable, incompetent nothing of a protagonist. And it didn't need to kill off the dog, certainly not in such a cold-blooded and distressing fashion. The Pool is easily one of the absolute worst movies I have seen in a long time, and I have no idea why it's gotten such glowing reviews. It's almost worthless. Where are our standards as movie-goers? This movie can go fuck itself with a busted furniture leg.
I'm now thoroughly depressed, so I guess that means it's time for a brand-new episode of... what's the name of this fucking podcast? Is it Trappo's Chap House? Shit, that is what it's called, isn't it? What kind of deranged name is Trappo's Chap House? Christ. So this episode is called The Wonderful Ice Cream Podcast, and it's a direct continuation of last week's conversation. And by "direct", I mean this is just the second half of that conversation. Back in 2017, I attended Planet Comic-Con in Kansas City for the first time, to support my nephew, who has Cystic Fibrosis. The plan was for my nephew to get the red carpet treatment, meeting a bunch of celebrities and collecting some free swag, and I expected to take no part in any of it. I just wanted to attend a big convention for the first time, and assumed that at some point my brother and his family would go on their adventure, leaving me to my own devices for a while in this massive convention center. That is not what happened.
Much to my surprise, I got swept up in this hullabaloo, meeting many celebrities and even getting Stan Lee to autograph my convention lanyard, which was a big highlight for me, to say the least. But what still truly stands out for me was getting to spend several minutes just getting to hang out alone with one of my favorite actors, talking about one of my favorite movies. I never expected I would ever have the opportunity to tell Edward James Olmos how his work in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit profoundly affected me, until it just happened on that warm spring afternoon. This podcast tells that story. It may not be very entertaining, but it's the best I've got right now in terms of uplifting entertainment, so just sit back for a few minutes and you'll hear the tale of one lame starfucker's encounter with that guy who played Gaff in Blade Runner.
Chapter 18: The Wonderful Ice Cream Podcast
That's it. That's all I've got. Maybe I'll be back next week. Maybe not. Maybe we'll all be dead, and none of this will even matter. Maybe we're all already dead and this is just our collective Hell. Whatever. I think I'm going to go get really drunk and roll around on the floor crying while listening to a bunch of sad songs. Right now that's just the only plan that makes any sense at all to me.
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