Issue #56: How Hard Is It To Lift The Seat?
Seriously gotta work on that aim.
Welcome back, everybody!
Just a quick breakdown of the blog for any new readers:
I ramble for a bit and give an update on my life and what I’m thinking about this week
I talk about the movies I watched recently (usually in the last week but I’m still catching up)
I do some rankings, ask some hypothetical questions (ex: what are the chances my dad cries while watching this movie?), and then I give my no frills, no jokes review
We ignore grammar errors here at the blog. Give me a break.
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Hello everybody. I hope everyone’s week started off well yesterday. I don’t know about where you guys all are, but out here in LA, it’s finally starting to feel like spring. After about 5 days of rain spread throughout these past 3 months and a few days of sub-50-degree weather here and there, things are looking up. It was 75 degrees and sunny today, which is as close to perfect of a day as you can get. Now, I know as soon as I write this it’s going to rain and the weather is gonna go to shit.
*Author’s Update: I just checked the radar for tomorrow and it’s supposed to rain. I love when it rains, but FML.*
Every time I write one of these intros I feel like I have nothing to write about because I don’t do much. But once I spend a bit more time thinking about it I still feel that way. But then I spend more time than I should thinking about it and I manage to come up with something. Here’s that something for this week.
I’ve mentioned my neighbors a few times in past blogs. I will be writing an intro about them soon, but today is not that day. Today I sympathize (empathize?) with my female audience.
I haven’t taken a gander into my reader demographic breakdown, but if I were to guess I’d assume that it skews male. Despite that, I know I have a dedicated female reader base out there (other than my Mom and Grandmothers) who read every week. I also know that the majority of this female reader base is made up of my friend’s moms who are probably hoping to catch me writing an embarrassing story about their sons. You all are the best and I thank you for being more loyal readers than your sons.
A few weeks ago I wrote about how 5’ 11” is the worst height. I mentioned in that blog that I knew I may have been alienating my female readership with that topic. Today I change all of that. Today I write about a topic that I know for a fact is close to all of your hearts:
Seriously, how hard is it to lift the toilet seat when you take a leak?
Let me get ahead of it before I get called out. I can already see my mom and sister getting ready to text me or add some comments to this blog about my historically bad track record with this very thing back home. But before they do that I have to assure them that the Will they remember is the Will of the past. Sure, I may have been bad about lifting the seat when I was younger, but that was before I realized just how annoying it was; before my eyes were opened.
Growing up I shared a bathroom with my sister. Being an ignorant child, I scoffed at the idea of lifting the seat when I went to the bathroom. Why should I spend an extra 5 seconds to lift the seat when I already have impeccable aim? Now, I wasn’t exactly Legolas when it came to accuracy. But hey, even Steph Curry misses a three from time to time. I’m gonna tell you now that I did not learn back then. It didn’t matter how many times my mom mentioned it to me or my sister complained to me about it, like any great shooter I knew I just needed more practice; you know what they say about 10,000 hours.
Flash forward a few years and my sister got her own bathroom. In my recollection, she managed to achieve this through years of pleading with my parents to escape from the horror show that is a pre-teen boy’s bathroom. Did my lack of toilet seat lifting contribute to this move? It was most likely the #1 factor. But this did nothing to deter me from my ways. At this point, I was like an old dog who couldn’t learn a new trick. If anything, AOK’s departure only made it worse. A personal bathroom meant I only had myself to please. Having only myself to please meant that no one would complain about the seat not being lifted except for me, which would never happen. So my practice continued on.
In high school, we moved, which meant that AOK and I started sharing a bathroom again. You’d think that I would have learned to appreciate my mom and sister’s wishes at this point. You’d also be quite wrong. I wasn’t nearly as bad as I had been in the past, but I wouldn’t give myself over a 50% average when it came to lifting the seat vs not lifting the seat.
Which takes me to college.
Which is where things began to change for the better. The college dorms of guys are traditionally quite gross and I will not lie and say that my and my friends’ dorms were any different. But while we let the stench of stale beer and leftover Cookout waft through the halls and the rooms with reckless abandon, one thing that quickly became a point of contention were the people pissing on the toilet seat. My whole life I had been scolded for this behavior and it hadn’t bothered me. It only took living with other guys who did the same thing for me to see the error in my ways. Here’s where the realization I made comes in:
When you piss on the seat and have to personally deal with the consequences of your actions, it is what it is. When it’s someone else’s piss on the seat, they become public enemy #1.
It only took me 18+ years to become enlightened, but at least it happened then and not later. For example, during my junior year, I lived with 7 of my best friends in a dorm room. We shared 2 bathrooms that year, and we quickly realized that we had chronic seat pisses in our midst. Whenever it was brought up everyone turned into a mob guy on the stand; denying everything and acting dumb. But let’s be real, we all knew who the culprits were, there was just nothing we could do about it. It’s not like they were gonna stop (they didn’t) and it’s not like we could go in there and lift the seats ourselves before they went.
It’s now the year 2025. I’m now a seatlifter through and through, regardless of where I am; it’s hardwired in me at this point. But since it’s in the intro of the blog you know that means an issue has arisen in my life. That issue is my new roommate.
I live with 3 other people, and I, unfortunately, have to share a bathroom with one of them. It’s a small price to pay for having my own room and everything, but it’s still annoying, especially because it’s on a separate floor and I have to walk down a steep spiral staircase every time I need to use the bathroom. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m used to that at this point. Unfortunately, what I also got used to was having my own bathroom because my roommate never used it. Well, for a month at least, when we didn’t have a 4th roommate and I actually had my own bathroom. But we filled the spot in February and I’ve been sharing the bathroom with my Turkish-immigrant roommates ever since. He’s a great guy, he’s super nice, and he keeps to himself…but he pisses on the seat.
To be fair, it’s only happened a few times so far. However, in accordance with the saying: once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. We’re firmly in pattern territory at this point and I see no solution in sight. Could I talk to him and work it out like civil adults? Sure I could. Will I be doing that? Not until it becomes so much of an issue that I can’t deal with it anymore.
My typical pattern with lesser issues such as this is as follows:
Initial incident occurs —> curse offender out silently to myself —> incident occurs again —> curse offender out silently to myself again —> incident occurs repeatedly —> air my grievances on the blog —> incident occurs again —> say “it is what it is” until I can’t deal with it anymore
Now that we’ve reached the reason behind this intro, I want to circle back to where I began. To all the women reading this blog: we (men) are quite stupid creatures. We convince ourselves that lifting the seat is an inconvenience that we need not comply with because we have the best aim in the world. But in the immortal words of Coldplay:
We try our best but sometimes we don’t succeed.
So, to anyone dealing with a brother, son, husband, boyfriend, or even roommate who isn’t lifting the seat up and has the aim of a stormtrooper, I'm here to tell you that old dogs can learn new tricks.
Now, I can’t sit here and act all high and mighty on you; I have lapses in memory sometimes, but like everything in life, it’s a work in progress.
I haven’t even mentioned putting the seat back down once you’re done. We’re taking this thing one step at a time; I’m afraid that’s above the comprehension level of a lot of my male readers. Baby steps people, baby steps.
*Editor’s Note: The author didn’t even put the seat back down regularly until college but now he does every time (most of the time) We all get there eventually. It just took his ex-girlfriend yelling at him about it and a certain South Park episode to convince him to do it.*
Watch at you own risk.
Did that intro work at all? It probably didn’t but I have no idea.
But if you got this far you just read the whole thing, so you might as well keep reading about the movies I’ve been watching.
I made a new website. It’s basically the same as the old Vault, but it’s been given a makeover and the movies and documentaries I watched in 2024 are now available as well. If you check it out please give me suggestions on how I can make it better. And let me know if there are any issues I need to fix.
Check it out here!
Alright, on to the blog.
Movies count for the year: 46
Doc count for the year: 8
Movies at Home
Inching ever closer to having no life.
We’ve finally arrived at the first couple movies that I watched in 2025.
Carry-On (2024)
AKA: Evil Jason Bateman fucking rules.
This movie came out right before I went home for Christmas, and while I didn't get a chance to check it out before the holidays, I knew that it was going to be right in my wheelhouse. Any movie that uses Die Hard as a clear inspiration (all the way down to being set on Christmas Eve) and has a long-haired Jason Bateman playing an evil terrorist immediately jumps to the top of my watchlist.
So I watched this the day I got back to LA. I had just flown into LAX earlier that day and this movie is set there, so it felt timely. Is this movie shot in LAX in any way? No, and if you've been to the airport before that could not be more obvious, but who cares? Like I said, it's got Jason Bateman playing a bad guy, so the inaccuracies can go out the window. If there's anything you need to know about my dad, it's that Jason Bateman is his guy. Jason Bateman has never made a movie worse. Just like how I wrote about Hugh Grant last week, you'll never be pissed to see Bateman in a movie. Carry-On is no different. I'm a big Taron Egerton fan as well (he plays the main character in this movie) but Bateman is the real star and steals the movie in my opinion.
Going through TSA is the most unnecessarily stressful thing of all time. This might just be me, but there's something about it that makes you feel like you're getting away with something every time you go through that metal detector without being stopped. Not that you ever actually get away with anything because you were never actually trying to, but the premise of the entire TSA system makes it feel that way. What's more intense is the fear you get when your bag gets flagged for search. Again, not that there's any reason to stress out or be anxious about this, but there's always that thing in the back of your head that thinks: "Oh shit, did I forget to take my drugs and guns out of my bag when I packed my toothbrush this morning?"
My most stressful moment was when I was traveling with my family back to Maryland from a vacation. I forget where we were coming from, but my bag got flagged while going through security. No issue, we had plenty of time till our flight and there was nothing in my bag that would warrant the stress of being found. None of this mattered. I felt like I was a mater criminal and the police were about to find where I hid the stolen diamond.
The search went smoothly to start; emptying my bag, going through the pockets, etc. But I was stressed for a different reason: a certain outer pocket of my backpack. Ever since I had gotten this backpack, at this point I'd had it for 5 years or something, there was this one pocket that had lost the ability to zipper open. I legitimately had not opened this pocket in almost 5 years so I had absolutely no idea what was gonna be in it.
In an attempt to be helpful, I told the TSA agents that they didn't have to bother with the outer pocket because the zipper was broken, it hadn't been opened in years, and there were probably only pencils inside of it or something. Here’s a tip to anyone getting their bag checked by TSA:
don't say things like that.
It sounds like when a serial killer says "Oh, no need to check that back room. The doorknob is broken and it hasn't been opened in a few years. It's just a storage room back there." Obviously, that's the place where the bodies are hidden. Telling a TSA agent not to open a pocket in a flagged backpack that is impossible to open as if someone tampered with it is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done at an airport. Thankfully there were no bodies or drugs in that outer pocket of my backpack once they got it open, but it was just as much of a surprise to me as it was for the TSA agents as to what they found in it. Thankfully it was only some pencils (as I had already told the TSA agents in my attempt to be helpful) but for the amount of trouble they went through I almost wish it was something a bit more incriminating to just make it so they didn't waste their time with me.
You know what I mean?
Mount Rushmore of Airports I’ve Been To:
Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
I’ve only been here once, 10+ years ago for a layover from San Fran to Maryland, but it was such a good airport that I think about it a few times a month.
Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI)
Homer pick but I don’t care.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT)
Flew out of here during my time at Wake too many times for me not to include it. It’s also got a Potbelly, Bojangles, and Shake Shack all in a row, which might be the best trio of restaurants at an airport in the world.
Denver International Airport (DEN)
It’s a conspiracy theorist’s heaven, but it’s also a damn good airport
Worst Airport Ever
Kansas City Airport (MCI)
We flew out of here every year to fly back from Thanksgiving and every year I was reminded of how terrible this airport was. We were always there at the crack of dawn and the food options were dog shit. Boo MCI.
Do They Say the Title of the Movie In the Movie: The main character is a TSA agent; of course they say it.
Chance My Dad Cries While Watching This: 1%
No, But Really: This is simply the type of solid action/thriller that I cannot get enough of. The influences of classic thrillers from the past are all over this movie and it’s better for it. It knows what it is and what the audience is expecting of it and it’s perfect in that way. Taron Egerton is a really solid leading man who has put in some real good work in recent years while Jason Bateman is the best part of every movie he’s in. I would gladly watch this again tomorrow and the next day. A great new option for any action fans.
Kicking and Screaming (1995)
AKA: Life after college sucks.
I don't care what my parents think.
In the first days of January, I was sitting in my room trying to pick a movie and I decided to take a flier on Kicking and Screaming. No, not the one with Will Ferrell (that movie sucks), the one directed by Noah Baumbach that not many people have heard about. To be honest, I picked it because it was short and because there was a Rewatchables episode on it that I knew I'd be able to listen to the next day when I went to play basketball. Regardless of the reason behind my choice, I loved this movie.
I thought it was a perfect representation of the purgatory-like aspect that life after college feels like. Also, similar to Diner, a movie I covered on the blog a couple of weeks ago, the way the characters talk in this movie is crazy similar to the way me and my friends talk despite this movie being 30 years old. Once I finished it, I asked my parents if they had seen it since it came out just after they graduated college and I figured if they'd seen it they would have loved it. They had not seen it and hadn't even heard of it. This was not a complete surprise because this movie did not make a ton of money when it came out, so I did what I do best: recommend a movie I like to someone. So they watched it and to my shock and horror, they didn't like it.
But I don't care what they think.
I know that this movie is good. I know that this movie is funny. I know that this movie is sad. And I know that if they watched it when they were my age they'd like it. Am I aware that it's not a perfect movie? Sure, but considering Noah Baumbach wrote it and directed it when he was 25 on a shoestring budget ($1.3 million) it's wildly impressive. This movie resonated hard with me because I'm in the exact situation the main characters in the movie are in. They just graduated, they don't have jobs, and they don't know what they want to do with their lives. Similar to a movie like The Graduate, it's amazing how watching a movie at a certain time in your life makes it that much better and that much more resonant. The same thing happened with The Breakfast Club for me. When I watched it in middle school I didn't get it. When I watched it again in high school; it felt like a holy text.
Movies are the best.
And my parents are wrong.
Do They Say the Title of the Movie In the Movie: No sir.
Chance My Dad Cries While Watching This: 0%
No, But Really: While this movie clearly isn’t for everyone (just ask my mom and dad) I thought it was brilliant. As soon as it was over I wanted to restart it and watch it again because of how much I enjoyed it. It took a second to get used to how real the dialogue feels but once you’re in it you’re in it. I was laughing my ass off watching this movie and I could feel the relationships I have with my friends in the main characters. It’s also probably the best representation of immediate post-college life that I’ve seen in any form. I highly recommend but I guess I can’t guarantee you’ll like it.
Running It Back
Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
AKA: A movie made for adults who played Mario when they were kids.
There are a lot of different ways this section could go. I could talk about my memories of playing the original NES Mario game at my Grandpa Jerry's house when I was really little during Thanksgiving. I could talk about how Chris Pratt has become the go-to guy for animated voiceovers despite no one liking the choice and despite him not changing his voice at all for the roles he takes. I could talk about playing and beating New Super Mario Bros. with my sister numerous times growing up. Hell, I could even talk about my months-long grind in high school to beat Mario Kart back when I actually had no life. I could even mention my experience with Beerio Kart along the way. The point is that I could take this section in a few different directions because Mario has a big place in my memory. I think it's safe to say that Mario has a big place in most people's memories, especially people born after 1960(?). Not sure what age to go with there, but the first Mario game came out in 1983 so I'm going with 1960. If I was 23 when Mario came out I know for damn sure that I'd be playing it.
Mario is universal and he's not going anywhere anytime soon, so I could have taken this section in any of those directions. But what I really want to talk about, and this might go over like a lead balloon, is the original Super Mario Bros. movie. Now, I'm not entirely sure when I was first made aware of this movie's existence, but what I do remember is that this movie was considered, and is still considered, to be an absolute mess. You know what? As I'm typing this I remember where I first was made aware of this movie. I used to read a lot of comics back in the day and Thor was my favorite superhero. My Mom got me a collection of old Thor comics one day and I read through them like it was my job. For all of the comics that came out in 1992 and 1993, the full-page advertisements for Super Mario Bros. were everywhere.
At this point I was incredulous that I hadn't seen, or heard, of this movie until now. How in the world had my parents kept this movie from me for so long? It seemed right up my alley and I couldn't believe they were keeping it from me. The timeline for this whole situation is very murky in my memory, but I remember first watching Super Mario Bros. while babysitting (shoutout the Sosmans next door). The kids I was watching were asleep and I was surfing the television for a movie to watch and saw that Super Mario Bros. was starting.
It was cosmic timing.
My choice was made for me and I saw back and watched. Since then, somehow, some way, I've seen this movie multiple times. Why, I could not tell you. It is, as advertised, a complete and utter mess, but I kind of love it. I can't tell you why they made any of the decisions they made when it comes to the casting, the plot, or the adaptation as a whole because it is unlike Mario in almost every way, but it's so wild that it almost works. It's probably been 10+ years since I've seen it, but it's glorious in my memory and I like to keep it that way.
I feel the same way about Batman and Robin with George Clooney. A movie that is objectively terrible and over-the-top, but my memory of it is when I saw it, and when I saw it I fucking dug it. For anyone who hasn't seen the original Super Mario Bros movie, don't tell me I didn't warn you before watching it, but it's worth the watch just to see how wrong they got it the first time around. It's a franchise that you can't adapt to live-action, and it took them fucking up the first time to realize that.
For some context on what the hell I’m talking about, here’s how they adapted a goomba to live action:
Truly insane.
What a film.
Mount Rushmore of Mario Kart Wii Cups:
Flower Cup
4 absolute bangers. This cup has two of the best courses in the game (Coconut Mall and DK Summit) and has always been the #1 in my head.
Star Cup
I originally had this ranked #4 but moved it up once I actually used my brain for a second. Maple Treeway is and always has been one of my favorite courses, and Koopa Cape is an all-timer as well. It’s got no bad courses, but Daisy Circuit and Grumble Volcano are steps below Mario Circuit and Wario’s Gold Mine for me so it can’t take the #1 spot.
Banana Cup
Is my love for Waluigi Stadium skewing this ranking a bit? Potentially, but you also can’t deny the power of Delfino Square and Sherbert Land. My opinion on Shy Guy Beach is that you can take it or leave it, but it’s by no means a bad course, just not my favorite.
Special Cup
People may protest this because it has Rainbow Road. News flash: we’re not in elementary school anymore. Grow up and admit that you like Rainbow Road, and this cup, while difficult is a ton of fun. It’s got the best Bowser’s Castle map and Moonview Highway is one of the most unique and fun courses in the game. Oh, and Dry Dry Ruins is also there.
Do They Say the Title of the Movie In the Movie: Not surprisingly, they do.
Chance My Dad Cries While Watching This: 3%
No, But Really: While the action “movie” part of this movie might be lacking, for anyone who has ever played Mario Bros. or any of the surrounding games, this is nostalgia and easter egg porn to the max. I think it’s impossible to have a bad time with this movie if you’ve ever played any of the games or are familiar with the universe in any way. I’ve seen it a couple of times now, and while I know it’s not exactly good per se, I’ve enjoyed myself both times. Is there a slight feeling of a corporation milking our nostalgia for this character for all that it’s worth? Sure, but put blinders on me like I’m a horse because this is just the first of many films that is gonna be in this franchise and I’ll be seeing every single one of them.
Franchise Mode
GOTTA GO FAST (Pt. 1)
After consulting with my performance consultants/biggest critics (my Mom and Dad) it’s been established that the blogs made up of entire franchises (such as last week’s Spider-Man and Paddington blogs) might not be as entertaining for readers who have never seen such movies. So, in accordance with this realization, I’m gonna try out something new.
At the moment, I’ve got 5 movie franchises that I watched in 2024 that I haven’t talked about on the blog yet. Starting this week I’m gonna start including one movie per franchise in the blog to slowly work my way through those franchises.
The first franchise we’ll be covering is the Sonic the Hedgehog series. I promise I have more exciting ones on the way.
Thanks for reading.
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
AKA: A design changes everything.
The internet is a terrible place. Sure, there are occasional spurts of goodness that come out of it, and you wouldn't be able to read this fantastic blog without it, but overall, I think we can all agree that it's a hell hole. But like I said, sometimes the entire internet can come together on an issue and make some real change. I'm of course talking about the saga of Sonic's original design for this movie.
It was the spring of 2019, April to be exact, when the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog dropped.
The reaction was swift and immediate. I don't know about you guys, but this trailer made me think this was going to be the biggest pile of horseshit of all time. But this is a time we can thank the internet for being such a brutal place because the trailer went viral immediately. For being really, really bad.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, was criticizing the design of Sonic and Paramount quickly realized they had a problem. So 3 days (3 days!) after the trailer dropped and went mega-viral, the director of the film, Jeff Fowler, announced that the movie would be delayed and that Sonic would be redesigned. So along with thanking the internet, we must also thank Paramount and Fowler for listening, because the movie was delayed until January of 2020. Now, I don't need to tell you all what happened just a couple months later, but Sonic did really well in theaters despite all this ($320 million worldwide), and even though it took me 4 years to get to it, I was aware that it wasn't as bad as people thought it would be; and they were correct!
But here is where the conspiracy theorists enter the picture. Sure, you can look at the fact that it caused the movie to get delayed 6 months, cost the studio millions of dollars, and made VFX artists work overtime without pay to get it done, but there's an interesting argument to be made that the original design for Sonic was merely a marketing ploy. Think about it; it caused expectations and hype around the movie to grow, and all PR is good PR as the saying goes. Whatever the case may be (there's no way it was a marketing ploy, they're so lucky that the internet reacted the way it did) Sonic was a success and spawned 2 sequels (and counting) that are genuinely not bad and actually quite solid for what they are.
Sonic and his surrounding universe has always been a distant 3rd, behind Mario and Zelda/Link for me. But I gotta say, out of the countless video game adaptations, Sonic has the best track record by a mile at the moment. We'll see what the second Mario movie can do, or the Legend of Zelda movie that is in development, but kudos to Sonic for doing what they've been doing so far.
Do They Say the Title of the Movie In the Movie: Yup.
Chance My Dad Cries While Watching This: 0%
No, But Really: What can I say? These movies are fun. Are they good? Not necessarily, but for 90-100 minutes you can watch Sonic fight Jim Carrey while James Marsden chimes in from time to time. It’s funny, light, and is the movie version of empty calories. You’ll enjoy yourself but you won’t remember what happens in it the next day. Great option for family movie nights and for kids especially, but there’s enough in there to please older audiences as well.
-Alex Ovechkin is very good at hockey
—9 away!
—-I’ll be in Chicago in 2 days
——I’m scared
