During a summer day-trip to Washington, D.C., my young sister Laura and I experienced a short period of bathroom panic as we drove around with our mother, Nancy, at the wheel. Nancy said it was partly because of all the large fountains…all that gushing water was weakening our resolve.
It follows that millions of Los Angelenos felt the same psychological pressure yesterday due to the city coping with constant rainfall.
HE to Cozzalio: One “potty” break during the screening of Nouvelle Vague, and then another during a subsequent showing of Breathless?
So no attending to business BETWEEN these films, as some of us might do. Instead you sit down and watch both films and then in the middle of each one you go “whoops!…sorry, heh-heh, excuse me!” Then you get up and miss maybe three or four minutes of each film.
What is that? This is not serious movie-watching. Godard would have sneered at this. Ask anyone. Ask Scorsese or DeNiro.
So you go through your daily life submitting to bathroom breaks…what, six or seven times each waking day, not counting waking up at 2 or 3 am (or 3 or 4 am) to take a whiz or a dump?
Forgive me for making a coarse assumption, but “potty break” sounds to me like sit-down action. It’s basically a child’s term like “I went poopie” (I have a four-year-old granddaughter so don’t tell me) or, if you’re standing up, “I went pee-pee” or “wee-wee”.
I would have gone for more oblique terminology like “I used the facilities” or “I hit the head” or “I heeded the call of nature”, all of which allude to or allow for the possibility of stand-up action.
I shudder at the idea of hitting a bathroom this many times per day. It sounds like a form of tyranny.
Speaking of “sit-down action”, I posted a related piece 14 years ago.
[Posted on 9.19.11] Last night Jett, his roommate Sonya and I caught a 7:50 pm screening of Drive at Brooklyn’s UA Court Street Stadium plex. My second viewing. Great film.
I hit the smallish bathroom after it ended. Two urinals and a toilet stall with six or seven guys lined up. I should have bailed right then and there, but I was looking for a little sit-down action and wasn’t sure of my alternate options.
A guy left the stall and a 30something black dude took ownership and, like, didn’t come out. Three, four minutes. Five minutes. Six. Could he be undergoing self-administered surgery? Filling out a mortgage application?
Then, still on the pot, he began talking to his girlfriend on his cell, flirting with her, settling in. “How ya doin’? Movie’s over…yeah. You wanna eat somethin’?,” etc.
If I had any balls I would have knocked on the stall door and, just like Tom Cruise in Collateral, said, “Yo, homey!” I didn’t, of course. I just stood and waited like a sap, listening to this jerkoff go on and on. The idea of showing consideration to others simply hadn’t occurred to him.
Around the seven- or eight-minute mark I gave up and went outside and used the facilities at a nearby Barnes and Noble.
It’s simply a matter of culture and manners. Let’s face it — some people are low-lifes.
I’ll be attending an invitational screening of George Clooney‘s The Ides of March at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday. If I happen to hit the bathroom after it ends I can absolutely guarantee that nobody will sit in a toilet stall for several minutes, ignoring the fact that several others are waiting, while chit-chatting with a girl. I’ll put $100 on this right now. I’ll bet anything.