Happy Halloween, Love Sharknado

You guys knew I liked Sharknado, but you probably thought I just "liked" it, like as a joke, good for a little bit of blog fodder and fun-making.  That must mean you guys don't know me at all, because my favorite pastimes are pretty much Halloween, pop-culture costumes, and taking things too seriously.  So I give you my absurd overreaction to ScyFy's best/worst made-for-TV experience: Sharknado.

 

That's me as a shark. And that's my awesome husband dressed as Ian (pronounced "EYE-an," because that's important to me) Ziering. Devotees will notice a glimpse of his actual "Fin's Restaurant" shirt, the name of the bar Ian Ziering runs in the movie. 

 

If you don't know what this is a reference to or why it's funny, check out my intro to Sharknado here.  If you do know what this is and think it's hilarious, listen to the excellent How Did This Get Made about it.

U Suck @ Grammer*: Less Than Perfect

After the whole Literacy Privilege/old, white, sexist, racist men invented grammar and if you care about it you are one, too thing, I think I shied* away from writing another post in my grammar series for fear of looking like a snobby elitist grammar fuddy-duddy.   But then I realized: I am a snobby elitist grammar fuddy-duddy, and you know it, and I know it, and sometimes you just have to be your damn self.

So, today we're back with a new U Suck @ Grammer, acknowledging that language is not an immutable thing, that language is constantly changing, that word-use ebbs and flows and slang becomes uniformly accepted and archaic words drop out of the vernacular and high schoolers have an ever-harder time understanding Shakespeare and we fuddy-duddies have an ever-harder time understanding high schoolers.  It's good that language evolves -- and even if it weren't good, it's true, so we might as well get used to it and embrace it and find interesting new things to like about it.  But, while language is transforming more rapidly than ever, the whole system hasn't gone out the window yet; it's not changing too rapidly, and you guys still have to write resumes and shit for work where you don't want to sound like an idiot.

So, today we're going to talk about two sort-of related word pairs that are widely misused and confused:  "then" vs. "than" and "lesser" vs. "fewer."  Luckily, for as frequently as these words are transposed, the rules governing them are actually pretty simple. 

THEN vs. THAN

First, and please listen to me: "then" and "than" may only be one letter apart, but they are different words, you guys.  They're not interchangeable; you don't get to pick which vowel looks prettier in your sentence.

"Then" is an adverb, almost exclusively used to orient events in time.  You would say: the chicken came first, then the egg.  Or, "I watched Sharknado, then I watched Ghost Shark because it came on next on SyFy."  "Then" is  also used with our favorite tense -- the subjunctive -- following the word "if" in a conditional clause.  For example, you could say: "if I were the writer of Sharknado, then I would kill myself."

On the other hand, "than" is exclusively used as a comparison. You would say: "I liked Sharknado better than I liked Ghost Shark."  Or, "I'm a better writer than the slobs who get paid buckets of money to write crap like Sharknado."  Or, "my face looks 70% less leathery than Tara Reid's face."

Keep in mind that unlike "then," the word "than" has no synonyms, so no other word will do in its place.  If you could say "subsequently" or "afterward" or "following," then you are looking for the word "then."  It doesn't get easier than that, right?

LESSER vs. FEWER

I say the second pair of words is related to the first because "lesser" and "fewer" are always necessarily paired with "than."  Now that we know where to use "than," we can further polish our writing by mastering the trickier, subtler difference between "lesser" and "fewer."  The short of it is: you use "fewer" whenever you're discussing something quantifiable, something you can count.  You use "lesser" when you're describing something abstract or massive or otherwise uncountable.  Let's look at some commonly-encountered examples:

INCORRECT: 

CORRECT:

How Whole Foods does it is the right way: 10 items or fewer.  Remember it this way: Whole Foods is super pretentious and snobby, so they would have correct grammar.   (Note: Publix recently got a grammar award for changing their signs.) 

Okay, quiz time.  One of these is correct and one of these is incorrect.  (Hint: it's not "Big Taste.")  Can you tell which is which?

That's right, smartypants, 40% less fat is fine, but it should be 30% fewer calories. Why? Because calories are necessarily quantifiable.  This one may seem a little trickier because, you say, isn't fat, too, measured numerically?  The difference is that a "calorie" is itself a measurement, and "fat" is itself an object.  Fat can be measured, of course, but when it's counted, another measurement term is required.  That's why the ad would be correct if it said "40% fewer grams of fat," but as it stands, "less" is appropriate.

To conclude, because I am a worldly and thoughtful person interested in self-improvement and becoming less of a lame, vanilla, rule-follower, I will at least share with you the counter-point to all of the lessons that I have taught you today:  Motivated Grammar's "'10 items or less' is just fine."  (I'll note that the author isn't motivated enough to capitalize his title.  Maybe I just haven't gotten to "Not capitalizing shit is just fine.")***  I mean, I still totally think you sound smarter and better if you follow 'dem rules, but it's worth hearing a smart, proactive person explain the linguistic history and make the argument that you can be SO SMART that you purposefully sound dumb.  You know, like a hipster would. 


* Because I always have to say it, "Grammer" is purposefully spelled wrong in the title.  For humor and irony and all.

**I looked up how to spell "shied" like 14 times. It looks so stupid and wrong.

*** I'll also note that the author of "Motivated Grammar" is a computational psycholinguist with a "Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Princeton University and a Master’s in Linguistics from UCSD."  But y'all should still totally listen to me, the theater major with a law degree from a state school, when it comes to words and stuff.

The Extrovert Conundrum: A Confession/PSA/Promise to My Loved Ones

I read this interesting article recently called "How to Love an Extrovert."   Written as a rebuttal to "How to Love an Introvert," the piece condemns extrovert-shaming, does away with the term "attention-whore," and celebrates the layered, genuine, vulnerable, social loudmouths we all know (and some of us love).  It explains that extroverts can be deep, thoughtful people -- not just vapid word-spewers -- and that extroverts can need and enjoy quiet self-reflective time, too.  Until I read this article, I don't think I realized just how much internet advice there is in "defense" of "introverts," tacitly shaming and blaming the unshy types we lump together as "extroverts."  (See, also, this great article: "The Care and Feeding of Your Extrovert.")

From Buzzfeed's 25 Frustrating Things About Being an Extrovert.

I've gathered from the imbalance of internet articles that many introverts think the world is built for extroverts; that extroverts have an easier go of it, have more friends, more happiness, think less, care less, worry less.  But diving down the rabbit hole of the articles coincided with me experiencing an extreme period of personal self-criticism, regret, and almost incapacitating, over-analyzing insecurity.  I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a human adult person who interacts with other, different, human people with different needs and thoughts and senses of humor, and a lot about how to be better at the whole human-person thing in general.

As a (largely) hopeless extrovert, I constantly feel the need to apologize for my behavior: my volume, my energy, the way I just spent 40 minutes acting out Clue for your now-silent new boyfriend who's never seen it and didn't really seem to grasp what I meant by "French farce."  Some of this isn't just being an extrovert.  It's being a socially insensitive, domineering asshole. But the lines are foggy, and the night is dark and full of booze.

Buzzfeed.

When I was younger -- high school, drama camp, high school drama camp, etc. -- I was proud of my personality.  I called my fevered outspokenness "passion" and my plowing through other people's conversations "loquaciousness" and my bossiness "having lots of ideas."  And I was heartbroken when people didn't like me.  Because, you see, I also tried really hard to be nice and considerate and gracious and a good person.  I just couldn't contain my excitement for ALL THE THINGS and my need to discuss and explain and not relent until everyone around me was as excited as I was (or, more accurately, had left the room).  But, it came off wrong lots of the time, and I came off wrong, and through the endlessly embarrassing looking glass of adulthood, I'm starting to understand why.

Looking back, I realize that what I had was this really raw, rough draft of a personality. All the spice and humor and interesting quirks and mouth-movements, but none of the finesse and self-restraint and situational awareness that I needed to be liked or appreciated or invited to places.

I once read the etiquette is the art of making other people feel comfortable.  That's what I didn't have -- etiquette -- not that I didn't write timely thank you notes or exchange polite small talk -- I didn't get that the best person you can be is someone who makes other people feel comfortable.  I was too much myself, if that's a thing, and I didn't understand that small, fitting-in gestures aren't selling yourself out; they're making other people feel validated in their choices and their personalities.

Who you calling "attention-whore?"

I think a lot of extroverts struggle with this conundrum: it's not that we need attention in some sort of negative, overcompensating, low-self-esteem way.  Many of us don't go out seeking attention (as hard as that is to believe). We're just loud and passionate and excitable and have so much fun talking and bubbling that we can overdo it.  When you like to meet people, you like to make jokes, you like to say "yes" to the next party/bar/date/trip/idea, you're unshy and ridiculous and full of mischief, sometimes you can overrun quieter, more reserved, less frenzied people.  I struggle a lot with this, especially lately; I replay conversations and evenings over and over in my head and worry constantly that I talked too much or said too much or hurt someone's feelings or did something wrong.  I don't have the brash confidence I used to have, as my rawer self, and I live in semi-constant state of self-balancing.  It's like a weird, stutter-step dance: two steps forward BEING MYSELF, one step back regretting and overthinking myself.

So, in this long slow journey to "adulthood" (a word whose quotes are earned each weekend where I backslide many bumpy miles down the hill of maturity), I've been trying really hard to be, if nothing else, self-aware.  My husband recently said, "the best any of us can do is just keep trying to be a better person."  And it's true, right, despite it's fortune-cookie/pinteristy flavor?  Trying to be a better person means trying to pick your battles, trying to benefit the doubt, trying to make other people feel good about themselves, trying to shut up once in a while.

My marriage.

But, I was glad to read the "How to Love an Extrovert" article, because I've been doing so much guilt-feeling and self-shaming about my natural social instincts that it was nice to hear "it's okay! You're just that person!" It was nice to feel defended and understood (something we all fundamentally want, right?).  So, real life friends, check out the article; and this one.  And forgive me, please.  And feel free to ask me to shut up for a minute so you can finish your story.  Because I want to shut up, I really do; sometimes I just don't know how. 

Boardwalk Empire: The Coen Brothers You've Been Missing

Alright.  It's time to talk about Boardwalk Empire.  Now that our collective Breaking Bad fevers have broken, we all have room in our hearts and minds and DVRs for another show.  I'm here to tell you that if it's not already, it needs to be Boardwalk Empire.

Boardwalk Empire's $5 million recreated Boardwalk.

Now in its fourth season, Boardwalk is a period gangster piece about Atlantic City bootleggers and businessmen and the early American mob.  It's fiction, but populated in its periphery with real-life names -- Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Lucky Luciano --  so it has this great The Untouchables quality.  It's executive-produced by Martin Scorsese (he gives actual notes on each episode); it was created and is written by Terence Winter (The Sopranos), and backed by a bunch of vetted names.  But, more than anything, Boardwalk Empire feels like one long Coen Brothers movie.  And who doesn't love the Coen Brothers? 

Aside from the obvious actor overlap -- Steve Buscemi in a masterful, stereotype-shattering lead, Kelly McDonald (No Country for Old Men), and other character-actor guests like the masterful Michael Stuhlbarg and Stephen Root -- Boardwalk consistently appropriates favorite Coen motifs and details.   It has some of the Coen's love affair with small town poverty, tinny music, twangy ambiance.  It's got lots of period costumes lit by warm filters and overlaid by an O Brother/No Country dinginess like the whole world is covered in industrial smoke or Model-T dust.  Boardwalk employs some extreme accents and caricatures (Mickey Doyle, anyone?) with the respectful sort of mockery the Coens perfected, at once sympathetic and self-parodying.

But the real Coen crossover is the violence.  Boardwalk, like so much of the Coen's work, is driven by grisly, creative, unglamorous violence -- that pure, bloody, thud-y violence that you can hear as much as you can see (clunks, cracks, breaks, drips -- so much more than just gunshots).  It's hands-on violence, dirty and painful and mean, and when it's done, there are no clean shirts, no salvageable pieces.  But the hands-on-ness of it also means its delicately choreographed: balletic, poignant, poetic in its gristle; it's the sickening air-rush sound of murder by cattle gun; a spear driven right through your one eye; the sawing off of a little green toe.

It's also violence that resolves in beautiful, contrasting vignettes -- art pieces painted in crimson.  Murders in jagged, dead woods, a la Miller's Crossing.  Peeling wallpaper in decrepit hotel rooms a la Barton Fink.  The gentle spray of wood-chipper blood onto snow, a la Fargo.

And though it doesn't always have the Coen's rapid, pedantic, magical dialogue -- there are just way too many words in a 12-hour season to polish each phrase the way the Coens do -- it has its moments (like this little gem of dialogue in Season 2, Episode 5 [starts at 26:00] that's got the Coen's classic out-of-place sophisticated diction -- rural rednecks saying "bamboozled" and "pontificating"). 

Pop Quiz: Coen or Boardwalk?

Of course, Boardwalk stands up on its own without any Coen comparisons -- it's truly an heir both to the line of epic HBO television shows and the long, lauded history of the American mob movie.  But the parts of Boardwalk that call the Coens to mind are often its cleverest, most charming, most profound moments.  And for those of us wishing only that there were two more Coens to churn out even more movies, Boardwalk is a prolific and satisfying fix.

And, frankly, Boardwalk has been one of those great, self-propelling shows that has survived some major plot twists that would be series-enders for lesser shows.  The quality of the writing, the character-building, and the supporting cast (who are able to rotate into and out of lead roles as necessary), combined with the shifting ground of the real-life time period means that that show has a lot of rumbling opportunity to change and grow where it needs to.  HBO must feel the same way, because they just renewed it for a fifth season.  So, if you haven't jumped aboard the Boardwalk train, consider this my (and maybe the Coen's?) endorsement.

Jump aboard the actual Boardwalk Empire subway train car.

Flicky Friday: Joking Bad

Ah, the luxury of having time and money and famous friends.  Here's Jimmy Fallon with an elaborate, multi-season Breaking Bad parody, the kind I think my improv troupe would've made back in the day. Minus the famous friends.

See You Next Tuesday: American Express Travel + American Airlines = American Horror Story

See You Next Tuesday is one of the Boomstick's regular columns. On Tuesdays, I bring you the week's most laughable scumbags, idiots, and jerks for your reading and reviling pleasure.  If you don't get the name, visit your nearest middle school playground and ask the first kid you see.  You can read previous editions here.  Today's subject is:

American Airlines + American Express Travel = American Horror Story

Last year, my husband and I honeymooned at this fabulous Dominican resort called Gran Bahia Principe Cayo Levantado (try saying that after three Mama Juanas).  It's located in Samana, DR, which is a little off the beaten path; we flew direct on Delta from Atlanta to Santo Domingo (about 3.5 hour flight), then took a two hour drive to get to the resort.  My husband booked the trip himself and there was much back-patting about how easy and smooth the trip was, and how close the DR is (compared to say, Hawaii), and how that's a huge selling point for traveling there because you really get to maximize your beach time.

This place is awesome.

We had a great honeymoon and met an awesome couple from Toronto whom we really hit it off with.  They were scoping out the resort for their wedding the next year, and made the mistake of drunkenly inviting us to come.  They obviously overestimated our ability to understand an invitation made out of politeness and duress, because sure enough, we decided to make the trip back to the DR for their wedding and our anniversary.

This time, we decided to use a travel agent to get us some better flight deals and room upgrades.  Andrew's boss, who is the best, nicest, most awesome person in the world, recommended her American Express travel agent, and offered to help us book the trip using her Platinum Am Ex status and rewards.  We were a little surprised that the total cost of the trip ended up being about the same, but figured it's just an expensive resort and we booked a lot closer to our trip this year. 

We were also surprised that we had a layover in Miami this time, since we flew direct last time, but we figured it's because we were landing at a different airport, Puerto Plata, that was probably much closer to the resort.  More travel on the front end; less travel on the back end?  And, naively, we were only slightly surprised and not chest-poundingly furious that the travel agent booked us on American Airlines.  Sure, we'd had a bad experience with American Airlines before (a flight to New York that was flat-out cancelled while we were en route to the airport, owing to "overcrowded skies"), but if a travel agent booked this trip, surely she knew what she was doing, right? Right?? 

Our flight was at 7:55 am, too early to take the convenient MARTA train from our house to the airport (MARTA doesn't run that early).  But, when our taxi arrived to our house at 5:30am on the dot, we made the hubris-riddled mistake of thinking, "wow, things sure are going smoothly on this trip!" We arrived at the airport to find that our flight had been unceremoniously cancelled.   Just cancelled; not happening, no explanation, no apologies.  We were later told by a shrugging gate agent, "oh, the plane didn't show up."  What? What do you mean the plane didn't show up?   "It just never came in last night."  So, like, you guys -- a national airline company -- LOST a plane and couldn't get another one, and couldn't tell any of the people on this flight until we arrived at the airport??

I have since learned that this occurrence is not an aberration for American Airlines. Over the course of the many, many hours we traveled, I had ample time to Google "American Airlines terrible" and "American Airlines sucks" and "never fly American Airlines."  I came up with plenty of hits, and not just angry Yahoo.com pages; actual journalistic exposés and recommendations that Friends Don't Let Friends Fly American Airlines.  The internet is overrun with stories like ours -- and stories much worse than ours.  In the month before those linked stories were written, fully half of American Airlines flights were delayed.

Obviously, since we booked through a travel agent, the first thing we do is call American Express to get us on a different flight.  We thought, "hey, maybe this is why you use a travel agent -- so someone can figure this out for you when something goes wrong. Now I see!"  As you, dear readers, are soon to learn, our positive happy-thinking little baby thoughts about this trip were all really, really stupid and wrong.

The problem, of course, is that we booked the trip through Andrew's boss to take advantage of her -- I don't know what, points? Upgrades?  Because I'm not sure what we got out of it -- but, since her card was connected to the  reservation, when we called American Express, they couldn't move our flights without her permission.  Second problem: Andrew's boss is on vacation in St. Maarten.  Shit.

So, we have no option but to wait around the terminal with the entire 7:55 flight to Miami (remember, we didn't even have a direct flight), and the two employees working there line us up by the time of our connecting flight.  Since our connection was at 11:55 a.m. out of Miami, we end up being second in line, a deceivingly efficient position. 

The gate agent helps a lady in front of us for a while, and then walks off.  Just walks off.  And please don't impute onto what I just said "scurries off" or "rushes off" because to say she "sauntered off" would be adding a few miles per hour.  And then she's just gone.  For 10 minutes.  For 20 minutes. For 30 minutes.  So at 30 minutes, we're frantic, and we decide to call Andrew's boss in St. Maarten at 7:00 a.m. in the morning, which is horrible and rude of us.  And, "thank God," we think (remember the thing about our thoughts: dumb/ wrong), "that she's awake and has her phone turned on and answered the call!"  So we explain the whole thing, falling all over ourselves to apologize and feeling like real assholes, and she's wonderful about it because she's wonderful about everything, and she says she'll call Am Ex and call us back. 

10 minutes go by.  Like, a really, really, really LONG 10 minutes. No call. No gate agent.  We ask the other gate agent if he could possibly help some of us whose flight got cancelled; "First class only," he says. 

Finally the gate agent returns, moving like molasses.  Again, she offers no explanation, no apology, which I'm beginning to think is a fitting tag line for American Airlines in general (American Airlines: No Explanation, No Apology).  10 minutes goes by.  The lady in front of us gets done, she checks her bag; it weighs 54 pounds; you're only allowed 50.  She repacks.  We wait.  It's finally our turn to the gate agent, no word from American Express.  We approach, give our name and itinerary.

The gate agent types it in, looks up and says, slowly, matter-of-factly, "Well, y'all aren't going to make your connection flight in Miami."

.....

No shit, lady.  We go back and forth and research options for us and I pull up the Delta flight schedule on my phone and there's a 9:45 a.m. flight direct to Punta Cana, DR.  (There was, I will note, because I am angry, a 9:45 a.m. flight to Santo Domingo direct on Delta, which is what we would've booked if we'd booked the trip ourselves, which would've given us two more hours sleeping and ten more hours on the beach.  But I'm pretty bitter.)  We look at a map of the DR -- Punta Cana looks closer to our resort than Puero Plata!!  Like, two hours away, which we were planning to have to drive anyway.  We ask about that, she says she can transfer us to Delta, no problem.  Hooray! She prints our tickets and we go to check in at Delta.

Delta is amazing.  They print our new boarding passes, check our luggage.  They give us drink tickets because we've had a hard day already.  I give the Delta gate agent a hug and we march off towards security.

American Express calls.  "We can't access your flight because that flight no longer exists."

No shit, AmEx. No shit. Thanks for playing.

We attempt to go about arranging some ground transportation from Punta Cana to our resort from Am Ex, but the person to whom we're talking now is not the person we need to talk to, and that person won't be in until 9:00 a.m.  Okay.  So we wait, we call at 9:00 a.m. on the dot, we're on hold for close to 40 minutes waiting to talk to someone.  (Our Delta flight was delayed 15 minutes so we have just a moment before boarding).  We find out, via Am Ex, that Punta Cana is NOT a two hour drive from Samana, where our hotel is: it's a SIX hour drive.   Yeah, it's closer as the crow flies, but apparently the DR is not renowned for their efficient and copious paved roads.  Six hours. Yikes.

American Express cancelled our car from Puerto Plata and scheduled us a ride from Punta Cana.  They told us it would be $200.00 and to make sure to put it on our American Express so we could dispute the charge when we got home -- then they would refund us for our troubles.  Now we're getting somewhere.

We get to Punta Cana at 1:30 pm, go through customs for about an hour, go find the van company, they have our reservation, but guess what. No, I really want you to guess.

....

They don't take American Express.

Of course they don't.  Why would they?  They're just the company American Express recommended and insisted we pay on their card. Oh and it's not $200, it's $200/person, plus tax and fees, so it's $450 bucks to get to the hotel and they want it in -- you guessed it -- cash. 

So, of course I'm exhausted and annoyed and we have a SIX HOUR drive ahead of us yet to go and I'm supposed to be on the beach already so I'm pretty furious at this point.  And so I get all lawyery and insist that I won't pay these people $450 CASH that we can't dispute and can't get refunded.  So I call another company with whom I had spoken back in ATL when we were first trying to get this figured out who I knew WOULD take American Express, and he says, "yes, we can take you, easy, let me send you a link to our online bill pay and you just enter your credit card info."  Easy, right?

Not easy.  The internet is "not working" in the concierge room of the airport.  Why would an airport have internet, though, right?  Finally we get a WiFi password and log online on our phones which costs a damn fortune but surely less than $450, right? (Not surely at all, actually- we'll wait for that bill, which I will pay with my American Express and add to my dispute.)  So we pay, and then my phone doesn't have cell service, and then we use someone's cell phone at the kiosk, and then we use a random stranger's phone to call the company and they got our payment and all is well and the guy with the shuttle service is outside RIGHT NOW.

So we go outside, and no guy. And no guy. And no guy.  And I'm calling my contact, who is apologizing but is actually the dispatcher located in SANTO DOMINGO two hours away and he can't get in touch with his driver and we're getting hollered at by every taxi driver in Punta Cana who wants our dinero and every time we tell someone we're going to Samana they look shocked and terrified and say, "But senora, that's six hours away!!!!"

No shit, y'all. 

We end up waiting at the airport calling and walking around and waving at vans for THREE HOURS.  We never would've waited that long, but it came in a series of "he's five minutes away,"  "no really, he's seriously five minutes away, just hold on," that dragged out for three hours. At 5:00p.m., someone from the company shows up and says "Mr. and Mrs., I will take you to your driver."  And we're like,  "wait, you're NOT our driver?" And he says no, but he can take us to our driver.

So we get in the car with him and all our luggage and we've been traveling for 12 hours and we're broiling hot and he takes us down the road a few miles and there's a van pulled over on the side of the road.  And he slows down our van, and at first I'm thinking, come on, don't help this stranded guy, we're in a hurry, but nope: that's our driver.  So we get out of the car, get our luggage, and get into this unmarked white van on the side of the friggin Dominican highway and I'm like -- oh my god, this is going to turn into Deliverance.  Or maybe Taken.  Like, a really rural Taken. In Spanish.

So I'm kind of freaking out a little bit, getting nervous, and Andrew's annoyed with me because I'm starting to ask a lot of questions, like "are we going to die here?" and he doesn't know what to do, and we're both hot and pissed off and out $350.00 and the last twelve hours of our life, and the driver says "you need to pay me."  And then commences a 30 minute stand-off where we're explaining we already paid.  So I call the dispatcher in Santo Domingo and I'm like, "hey, we're here with Luis can you please tell him we paid you," and he's like, "Who's Luis?"

So, now we're in a car with Luis and no one knows who this guy is and we're really, REALLY going to die on the side of this road.  So, the driver is calling his boss and the the dispatcher in Santo Domingo is trying to call the local dispatcher to find out whether Luis is a driver or a serial killer and everyone's speaking Spanish and somehow they're all using MY PHONE to talk to eachother which costs like FORTY DOLLARS A MINUTE YOU GUYS.  And then somehow Luis starts the car and starts driving and I'm not sure if I'm relieved or terrified that the car's moving and that's the last words the driver says to us for the next five and a half hours.

Until we get to Samana, the city where our hotel is, and he tries to tell us in Spanish that he doesn't know where the hotel is, and he wants directions.  And, yes, Luis, we've been here before but it was once and a year ago and now it's nighttime and we're in the backseat you take a FERRY to get there and OH MY GOD AREN'T YOU THE SHUTTLE DRIVER YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING. 

So he stops and asks directions to these two dudes who are sitting on their porch on the side of the road.  And they talk for a while and gesticulate, and then -- what do you know -- the two dudes are piling in the van with us!! And we're speeding off into the distance into the Dominican woods and it's nighttime and I'm a wimp and watch too many horror movies and I'm thinking, "well, this is the end."  And Andrew's trying to listen to them talk in Spanish and is getting super annoyed with me tapping him on the leg incessantly as if to say, "make them stop killing us already."

But, of course, they give beautiful directions to the resort and we arrive just fine.  Andrew tips everyone and they shake hands while I kiss the marble floor of the lobby and thank the heavens that we're around rich people again.  The night manager is there to welcome us and the ferry is all ready to go and we zoom out silently under the most insanely gorgeous Dominican night sky and we go to our marble villa and they had platters of cheese and desserts and fruit and towel swans and rose petals on our bed!  Cheese you guys! Fancy cheese!  Yes!

So the resort is great, the week is great, the wedding is great, the Canadians are great.  We email American Express and tell them this whole story and ask if, in light of it, can we please get transferred to a Delta flight home.  And I find the flight number of a Delta flight and verify that it's not sold out and send it to our travel agent.  I mean, I literally send the actual flight number we want to be on, and we say, you know, if this doesn't work, we'll literally take any other airline because we're pretty scarred on American Airlines and we'll fly out of any airport in this county on literally any airline except American Airlines.

And, because I cannot make this shit up, this is the actual email we got back:

Dear Mr.  [IT'S DOCTOR YOU HORRIBLE TWAT]:

Please be advised that I have called American Air on your behalf in an attempt to change your return flight to a requested gateway-Santo Domingo or La Samana.  Unfortunately no American flights are departing Samana on 7/20/13 and American has sold out flights from Santo Domingo-Atlanta for that date so unable to change the flight as requested I do apologize. 

What. The. Fuck.  I mean, WTF, really, really, REALLY.  I feel like:

So, all told, it took us 18 hours to get to the Dominican, and about as long to get home.  Puerto Plata, the city of our original airport reservation, was NOT closer to the resort; it was three hours away.  Our American Airlines flight in Miami got delayed 2.5 hours.  And, we found out that since we were repeat guests with the resort, we were entitled to a room upgrade anyway, so we didn't even owe that to Am Ex. So, dear friends and readers: do your own research and don't trust that American Express travel agents, who literally BOOK TRAVEL FOR A LIVING, have any better resources, abilities, or understanding of geography than you do, and never, ever fly American Airlines.  To Am Ex and Am Air: See You Next Tuesday.

Flicky Friday (ft. Sharknado)

It's no secret I have a weakness for all things involving chainsaw arms.  While this trailer for "Sharknado" does not disappoint in that arena, when I first saw it, I really wished it were about dinosaurs instead of sharks.  "Dino-nado." "Tor-asaurus?"  Nope, nevermind. Sharks is the best: 

For those of you asking, "Is this real?" or maybe saying, "No way this is real," or "I wish this were real:" I've got news for you: it's real.  It's super real.  And it happened last night.  SyFy channel plugged all the best possible elements of a perfect C-movie* action thriller into an algorithm (washed-up 90s teen soap star + made-for-TV + disaster + screaming, wet, half-naked girls + Kevin's dad from Home Alone + hit species of Discovery Channel's ratings-binge week + weapons + 'copters + Tara Reid), and it turned out to be exactly what you'd expect: the most amazeballs thing ever.

If you didn't see it, you were pretty much alone because apparently all of Twitter did; the internets went about exactly as crazy as you would expect for this kind of thing.  Here's a graph made by a real, paid,  working, adult person that shows last night's tweets-per-minute about "Sharknado," and also an answer to why our country is falling apart.

If you're jonesing for more, here's an interview with the writer (WHOSE REAL NAME IS THUNDER LEVIN) where he explains that the movie is just what we already know about flying sharks taken to its "logical" conclusion.  He also explains the genesis of the idea:

[The production company] asked me to pitch them ideas for a movie called 'Shark Storm'. I asked if this would be a straight up movie about sharks attacking during a storm or a crazy storm made up of sharks. They said it would be straight, so I declined, feeling like we’d seen enough shark movies and enough storm movies.  A month later they came back to me and said they really wanted me to write a movie called 'Sharknato' (at least that’s what I thought they said), and I asked what sharks had to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? I was suddenly seeing the army battling sharks invading Europe… But they said 'No, Sharknado!' They gave me about half a page of notes which I read and replied 'This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read… I’M IN!'

Yeah, emphasis added.  And if you're thinking, "Oh man I really want to watch 'Sharknado' but I only have so much time in my day..." here's a link to THE scene that Gawker (prematurely) calls "iconic:" And here's Vulture's crowning editorial piece, "SyFy's 'Sharknado' in Five GIFs"

Special thanks the Stapp siblings for bringing this to my attention (and happy birthday to one of you!). Here's a birthday .gif for you:

*Wikipedia calls it a "B-movie" but I don't think it deserves that much credit.