#15: At Hertz, no one can hear you scream
Death By Consumption
8/12/24 - 8/18/24
I am freshly back from the wilds of Connecticut, where Justin and I spent the weekend for his frat brother's wedding. I love saying "my boyfriend's frat brother" because it really paints a specific picture in your mind that is shattered when I clarify it was a musical frat, the kind where one of their frat brothers was literally Mr. Rogers. Less keg stands, more music stands.
I could do a whole email on Connecticut, which I haven't been to in a long time, but I'll just leave it at... are you guys okay up there? The vibes felt off in that state in an alarming, hard-to-pinpoint way that only made sense when I remembered the existence and political success of Joe Lieberman. And I'm going to stop myself from saying anything more about the fine people of CT, because I get the sense that the average person from the state is on the verge and I don't want to tempt fate.
Alien: Romulus (2024) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park
Hollywood needs to accept that Sigourney Weaver is one of a kind. You can't just create another Ripley out of thin air, but boy did this movie try. I do love the first few Alien movies, but Justin like really loves them and let me tell you: he was piiiiissed leaving the theater. Parts of the movie were enjoyable, sure, but they were just the parts cribbed from the better Alien movies. Overall, this stupid film suffered from the classic Hollywood problem in which the plot can only continue if the characters make the absolute dumbest possible decisions, so by the end I was left rooting for all of them to get their comeuppance.
And I won't spoil it for you, but just know that a famous dead actor is brought back to life for this film using some of the shittiest CGI and AI you've ever seen, in easily the most morally offensive cameo of the year. You know things are going well in your movie when there's an extremely bloody vaginal birth scene, but the theater audience most viscerally reacts with horror at the CGI-resurrected dead actor cameo.
"Unsolved Mysteries" volume 4 — on Netflix
I know this is a dark thing to say about true crime, but Unsolved Mysteries used to be more fun. I loathe a lot of true crime on principle, but at least Unsolved Mysteries had the whole “if you know anything, send it to us” bit at the end that kind of halfway absolved you from participating in ghoulish spectacle. Like, I’m not rubbernecking someone’s trauma, I’m actually helping solve crime. I might know something even though I've never been to any of these places!!
But the latest batch… yikes. I knew we were in trouble when the first episode was a rehashing of Jack the Ripper, literally the most famous unsolved mystery of all. Did you know Jack the Ripper killed women in Victorian England and was never caught? Well, here are 50 minutes that tell you that and nothing else! The creepiest part of this batch of episodes was the episode in which Netflix thought we’d be fine with suddenly seeing a photo of a severed human head. Dial that fucking blur filter up to 11 next time, PLEASE. Overall, this batch of episodes were kind of stupid and didn't seem like that big of a mystery (the woman in the basement totally fell down the stairs, right? Did you see how big the drop-off on those stairs were?? That house was a death trap!).
The only thing that will stick with me from any of this is that the Mothman has been seen all around Chicago for the past few years. Chicago friends/family, why have you not told me about this??? I would like to see him!
"Couples Therapy" season 4 — on Paramount+/Showtime
It happened. I've finally been Dr. Orna-pilled. I love this woman! This was one of those shows I knew I would like but had never pulled the trigger on before, but when I learned the crucial fact that episodes are merely 30 minutes each, I knew it was time to get on board. I simply cannot let another hourlong show into my life at this point, but 30 minutes is basically zero minutes. Anyway, the point is: Dr. Orna is so powerful. She's beyond words. Watching her, I finally understand how people can join a cult. Is this what those NXIVM freaks felt when they were playing late night volleyball with Keith Raniere? I would do anything she asked me to do.
I can’t believe people actually agree to do this show! But really, they should all be given some sort of Presidential medal. Obviously the main hook this season is the fact that she's doing therapy for a throuple (my amateur diagnosis: all three are textbook narcissists, but they have great posture!), but my favorite of this batch of patients was the deeply tragic gay couple. It feels weird to say “favorite” about a couple who are working out their absolutely horrifying childhood sexual abuse trauma on camera for our entertainment, but this is the show!
What makes the whole viewing experience weirder is that these people are all in Brooklyn, so it was only a matter of time before I ran into some of them, which is exactly what happened the other day, when I met friends in Prospect Park and we were directly next to one of the couples. “They hadn’t had sex in a year but finally did!” I told everyone excitedly. I hope the couple didn't overhear me but also, like, get used to it I guess? You did this to yourself!
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro (1974) — paperback
Robert Moses month continues! I’m about halfway through the book now, which means I’m deep into Moses’ evolution into a hateful, racist, power-mad bigot freak loser. What’s crazy about reading this book while living in NYC is that you simply can’t escape seeing him everywhere you look. Which hit a hilarious point this weekend, as I had just finished the section in which he finishes building the Triborough/RFK Bridge (I promise it’s way more interesting to read than that sounds), only to find myself driving across the bridge on the way up to Connecticut. In the car I fanboyed out a little bit about this damn bridge, reacting like a teen girl would if, say, Taylor Swift had grown to Godzilla’s size, gotten on all fours, and allowed us to cross from Manhattan to the Bronx on her back (or, you know, a different analogy that makes sense). So far, I don’t think my amount of, “Did you know Robert Moses is responsible for this?” has reached truly obnoxious levels, but for the real story you’ll have to subscribe to Justin’s upcoming newsletter, Death By Annoying Boyfriend.
Anyway, fuck you to Robert Moses for destroying so much of the city that can never be replaced, and for being such a nasty, nasty racist. (Did you know he built overpasses low on the parkways on purpose so that buses couldn’t bring the “lower classes” to the parks??? This man was operating on levels of bigotry most people could never even dream of reaching.)
The last time I read a book this long that made me this mad was A Little Life and, much like that book, I’m spending most of it wishing the main character would just die already.
Rental car – at Hertz
Okay, bear with me with this story. I know it's not cool or unique to have an awful rental car experience, since we've all just accepted that rental car companies are, like, fully legalized scams? (But really, how did we get this way? There is no way Hertz has the political power of the airlines and yet they're somehow even more brazen in their brand of "fuck you and we actually hope you die" capitalism. Boeing executives murder their whistleblowers and sometimes their passengers all in the pursuit of money, but I wouldn't put it past a Hertz executive to murder me just for fun.) But, this weekend's experience was so baffling I simply have to write about it.
It started as one of those routinely humiliating exercises with these companies, where you show up for your reservation only to discover there are 10 furious people waiting before you, because the rental car company actually has no cars and all the reservations were lies. As always, people are screaming and berating the two employees behind the desk, who repeatedly explained that this isn't their fault and that the only thing they can do is wait for cars to be returned. They told us to leave our phone numbers and they'd call us as cars were (hopefully) brought back. But I'm no fool. I know the two most important rules in these circumstances are: 1) always be absurdly nice to the employees, partly because it's the right thing to do, sure, but mostly so they know that you're not a monster like these other froth-mouthed freaks beside you, and 2) never, ever leave the premises, even if they tell you they'll call you when something changes.
So I smiled and laughed with them while the other people threatened and harassed, and I was one of only two people who opted to wait in the office rather than returning home. Which meant I was rewarded by suddenly jumping everyone on the waitlist, and was given a car after only about a 90-minute wait. I hopped into the already-running keyless push-button car (these details are important) and drove home. I parked the car outside our building, turned it off, and ran inside to get Justin and our bags. After the car was loaded, I pressed the button and — nothing.
"Key not located," the car said, as I looked at the key in my hand. "Key not located," it kept saying, despite my pathetic efforts to get this "smart" car to realize that the key its dumb ass was trying to locate was right here. Finally, I realized: the keys in my hand were labeled with a completely different car. I had someone else's car keys. Which meant someone else, driving blissfully around or even out of the city, had my car keys.
I frantically called Hertz (which is, of course, a true nightmare of phone tree robocall HELL, made worse by the fact that I not only needed to speak with a real person but I needed to speak with one of two specific people), and when I finally got the employees on the phone, I struggled to explain the absurdity of the situation. "Yes, the car drove out of the garage because you had turned it on for me, but it won't turn back on because you left the wrong keys inside it." And I felt a sick satisfaction when I felt the same horror I had experienced dawn on them. "So... if the other guy turns off his car, too..." the employee said on the phone, and I finished his sentence: "He'll be stranded like I am, somewhere else, and we can't switch the keys." I had found myself in the plot of a high-stakes action movie, Speed 3: Driving Hertz. "Hang tight," the employee said, and then hung up on me. And then... we had nothing to do but hang tight, sitting in our dead car blocking our building's parking lot entrance and exit, for over an hour, wondering if we would bother going through all this effort if we were a probably-underpaid Hertz employee dealing with this shit literally past store closing time. (I absolutely would not, for the record.) Even funnier, I realized that actually I had the right keys, but the wrong car — we were given a gold car when my receipt said I should be in a black car. So now I had to wonder, was this random dude with the other set of keys out there driving around NYC in a car rented to my name, crashing into a bunch of shit and racking up damages that will be billed to me? What was this Kafkaesque situation Hertz had put us in going to cost me?
To our surprise, the employee showed up at our place with the correct keys. But when I pointed out that I was now driving someone else's car, and he was out there on the streets driving mine, she reassured me with a shrug and: "It's fine." To be fair, her day seemed fucking awful, way worse than anything I was dealing with, and we were now 30 minutes past when she was supposed to get off work, so I get it. But when I brought the car back this afternoon, I was surprised to discover that the employees had zero recollection of any of this happening, even though it was less than 48 hours ago. "I'm the guy who had his car swapped with some other dude's, and you had to switch our keys?" I said, and they stared at me as if I had just got out of a spaceship.
Now, I'm aware I'm approaching the territory in which I might plausibly be accused of acting like Bethenny freaking out at a Hampton's market for not recognizing her but I say this only to point out that, if this recent comedy of errors wasn't a memorable experience for these Hertz employees, what horrors must they experience on a daily basis?! Anyway, as always, the moral of the story is that rental car corporate executives should all rot in prison and we should build more trains. A tale as old as time!