The incredible true story of how I became superhero Elasta Bladder (from '13)

(735 words)

Alfred Hitchcock said the length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder. Interesting perspective from a filmmaker whose last name concludes with a vulgarity involving an essential component of male urination. 

Of course, he made the statement about 30 years prior to the introduction of the pause button that rendered his point mostly moot.

Besides, I disagree that movies are too long.

Bad movies are too long.

Good movies aren’t long enough.

Therefore, the real problem is that bladders are too small.

Reliable internet medical sources -- and is there any other kind? -- say the average human bladder holds about 300 milliliters (10 ounces) of urine.

If that’s true then I’m exceptional because my bladder can hold about a six pack of Yuengling. 

So when I say anything outlandish enough to cause people to blurt I’m full of crap, I have a ready rebuttal. I’m full of something, true, but it is not crap.

But talking rebuttals in this case would be getting off subject, not to mention off track.

It’s taken me 50 years to learn my superhero identity.

I am Elasta Bladder!

It’s true. I can drink buckets of beer, lemonade, water -- you name it -- and hold it forever. The discovery had made me what can only be described as cocky.

Just yesterday, we enjoyed a splendid inner tube float down Stonycreek River in Johnstown with the friendly folks at Coal Tubin’. It was great.

The only problem was that one of our party started complaining about the need to use the bathroom the instant the rubber hit the river. Setting aside the fact that we were immersed in body of water in a town known for historic flooding, I knew the person had just been in a bathroom 30 minutes previous.

So I went off.

“You have the bladder of a 7-year-old little girl! For god’s sake, either hold it or just piss in the river and stop your whining!”

My pee pep talk infuriated my wife, I guess, because the person I was screaming at for behaving like she had the bladder of a 7 year old girl was our 7 year daughter, Lucy.

It was a first time in white water so I think a big part of it was nerves. Either way,  her inability to urinate left me pissed.

I have no idea from whence her unreasonable fears sprang.

Or do I?

See I wonder if my superhero bladder might stem from some childhood incidents not dissimilar to my daughter’s. Yes, I was once a small child in a situation where angry grown men were screaming at me to urinate.

It was in the cavernous men’s rooms at old Three Rivers Stadium back when the Pittsburgh Steelers were winning Super Bowls with unparalleled regularity.

I believe the architects who designed the stadium were aware that the average human bladder could hold just 10 ounces of urine and merely assumed Steeler fans would comply with that biological imperative.

But they did not. Everyone was drunk. And everyone had to pee. Right away.

So there I was. I’d consume my 12-ounce glass of warm, flat soda and maybe 15 minutes later need relief.

I vividly remember my nerves twitching standing in those steamy, stinking men’s rooms, my eyes about butt high on the guy in front of me. It got worse the second my zipper descended and I approached the porcelain.

“C’mon, kid! We don’t got all day. Do your business and get out!”

I don’t think they heckled Terry Bradshaw as relentlessly as they did 10-year-old boys stricken with shy bladder.

I couldn’t go. I remember zipping up, fleeing and not peeing until the game was over and we were home and I was behind a locked bathroom door.

It didn’t scare the piss out of me. Quite the contrary.

I guess what happened to me wasn’t unlike what happened in the Spider Man saga. But instead of Peter Parker being transformed, it became a matter of me being determined to forever more just park my peter.

Thus ends the story of Elasta Bladder in Flood City, a dandy name for a comic action flick, maybe one that would have interested old Hitchcock himself.

I’d pay to produce it but right now I don’t have a pot to piss in.

On the bright side, I don’t really need one.

Related . . .

A galling story on useless body parts

Flush-free toilets in golden age

Home opener, movie reviews & tweets

Out of petty protest, I once again will not be attending the Pittsburgh Pirate home opener today. I won’t further enrich owner Bob Nutting who reaps enormous profits and never does anything to improve the once-proud franchise team.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t exercise my inalienable right to play hookie.

Happily, The Pond, the Latrobe tavern that rents me the shabby second-floor penthouse, understands this. Dave and Jill bring in a popcorn machine, offer deals on hot dogs and get a nice friendly crowd of inebriates to enjoy watching the festivities.

If Nutting could hear us booing him it would be just like being there.

So that makes it a good day to fire off a round of observations and sprinkle in some recent tweets before I take myself out to the ol’ ballgame.

• We’ve seen a bunch of movies, old an new, lately. Just saw “Paul” with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and Seth Rogan as an errant alien. Pegg and Frost are the Brits behind two of my favorite movies of all time, “Shaun of the Dead,” and “Hot Fuzz.” Just hilarious. It was very good, but not in the league of their best, both of which score in the upper 90 percents with reliable critic compiler, www.rottentomatoes.com. “Paul” is scoring a still-respectable 74 percent, which is about what I’d give it. Still, it was a hoot and I recommend it.

• In a confounding deal they signed when he was over-the-hill in 2000, The New York Mets are obligated to pay former Met (and Pirate) Bobby Bonilla $1.2 million every July 1 through 2035. He was a fine Pirate -- I guess in at least one way he still is -- back in the early 1990s. I remember the Pirates in ’91 offered him $25 million, a then jaw-dropping sum. Bonilla declined and said he had to “take care of his family.” The line prompted this memorable outburst from manager Jim Leyland, “Heck, for $25 million you could take care of Guam.”

• Just saw reports that a Knoxville air traffic controller is extending the snoozing pilot tracker scandal after getting busted napping in the tower for five hours. I don’t sleep five hours in my own bed. Maybe I should apply for his job.

• While “Paul” was enjoyable, “Hop” must be avoided at all costs. We have two young ‘uns and enjoy supporting the local family-owned theater so we make an exception and will see what we’re certain will be crap there. We were right. It’s awful. Yet, it was made by the people who made “Despicable Me” and included many talented people. At some point, somebody had to realize that they were filming a charmless stinker. This will surprise critics of this blog, but I pull the plug on some topics when I think it’s not worthy of my feisty band of reliable readers. Does my blog have more integrity than Hollywood? Apparently.

• Last week I played the world’s worst April Fool’s Day joke on my daughter, 10. Told her I was offered a prestigious full-time job that would require relocation. She thought it preposterous.

• Oprah’s ending her show on May 25, four days after Christian group declares scripture says the world is going to end. Coincidence or just more evidence of Oprah’s business savvy?

• If grandma truly has a heart of gold, you might want to re-think that organ donation. It’s worth about $14,860.

• Americans should be required by law to watch at least one Alfred Hitchcock movie every six months. We just enjoyed “Strangers on a Train.” Wonderful. I guess my favorite Hitchcocks are “Dial M for Murder” and “Rear Window.”

• HBO cast Ed Harris to play Cheney in the mini-series. It could be fatal to Harris: Only Cheney can play Cheney. The role will kill lesser mortals, not to mention many innocent bystanders.

• Boutique urban lodging places that were once brothels and are now trendy spots for business travelers to stay should be called ho’ tels.

• I’m embarrassed by my ignorance of Libyan geography, but will rebels need to go through Singoli and Douboli before getting to Tripoli?

• Josie, 10, is getting old enough to watch some of the great PG movies that we hope will show her there’s more to entertainment than iCarly and “High School Musical.” It’s working. We recently let her to stay up late to watch two of our very favorites, “Sneakers,” and the rarely remembered Stephen Spielberg/Leo DiCaprio film, “Catch Me if You Can.” “Sneakers” is a cerebral 1992 Robert Redford caper flick with an outstanding ensemble cast that includes Sidney Poitier, Dan Ackroyd and the late River Phoenix. “Catch Me If You Can” from 2002 is the true story about impostor con man Frank Abignale. Josie loved ‘em both. She may be lax about cleaning her room, but that kid’s going to have good taste.

• I’ll try and post a reminder, but I have a funny story due to run tomorrow on MSNBC.com. It’s about Lake Jackson, Texas, the most confusing town in America. It has streets named This Way, That Way, Any Way, Which Way, Circle Way, Center Way, etc. The city manager told me it’s not uncommon to give directions that include “Go three blocks on This Way, then make a left on That Way and bare right on Any Way.” When the confused motorist inevitably asks, “Which Way?” they have to say, no, that would be the wrong way.

• As previously, mentioned the aggregate totals on www.rottentomatoes.com are a reliable gauge about a movie’s worth. That’s why I felt immense relief when I checked to see that critics are thinking about the Russell Brand re-make of “Arthur,” another favorite of mine. It is currently tracking at 8 percent. Japan is dealing with a nuclear nightmare and news of another earthquake. Still, if they offered to take Russell Brand off our hands in exchange for their woes, I’d consider the swap.

• More random tweets can be found @8days2amish.

Go Bucs!

Read this then go straight to sleep

Many fine Americans are eager to stand up and fight against perceived flaws they believe are harming the nation.

Me, I’m about to lay down and nap over one.

The stigma against sleep is costing America. No one is getting enough of it. It’s obvious in our stress, our productivity and our spiraling ethics.

Well-rested people aren’t prone to violence, sloth or felonious business practices.

We should be inviting sleep, not fighting it. If sleep beckons, we should obey, the exception being people like train conductors and airline pilots.

We’ve all heard hyper-productive Type-A busybodies brag about needing just four hours of sleep per night, but you never hear anyone bragging they enjoy 10 hours of sleep each night.

My nights are interrupted by two tiny sleep bandits, woodsy creature noises and the nervous yipping of a dog with a BB-sized bladder capacity.

I’m on a quest to get everybody under my roof to go to bed two hours earlier and get up two hours later.

The kids would be asleep by 8 and would wake up at 9. Sure, Josie would miss her first hour of fourth grade, but nothing important happens in school until 10 -- and I don’t mean 10 a.m.

I mean 10th grade.

My wife and I would be undercovers by 9:30 p.m. and up at 8:30 a.m.

Doesn’t that sleep schedule strike you as nirvana?

It does me.

Not Val. She got mad at me recently for dozing off at 9:30 in our bed after reading to one of the kids and just, ahhh, staying there like a sedated mental patient clear through the next morning.

For the first time in months, I reached the most hallowed state of sleep. Yes, I hit pillow puddlin’ slobber sleep.

In sleep terms, that’s like bowling a 300.

To her, it seemed like a waste of time. She thinks we should stay awake so long we become actual zombies so we can enjoy adult shows about things like fictional zombies.

In an ideal world -- and in any ideal world, there are no children -- we’d have about an hour of bedtime unwinding, reading, TV or couple cuddlin’ from 9 to 10 p.m. each and every night.

But years ago we made the cheap-skate mistake of not getting a DVR for our bedroom.

Without the bedroom DVR, we are forced to stay awake in the living room long enough execute a series of maneuvers similar to what happens in far flung U.S. Army outposts around the globe.

We need to secure the fireplace, check the perimeter and do a quick head count before finally getting to bed at 11 sharp in time to watch a 1996 episode of “Seinfeld” we’ve only seen 114 times before.

It’s so bad it took us four nights to watch one 2 hour, 45 minute movie. We’d recorded the outstanding 1959 Alfred Hitchcock movie, “Anatomy of a Murder,” starring Jimmy Stewart.

We both kept falling asleep during key segments and would spend breakfast trying to unravel plot lines and determine if we’d spied the Hitchcock cameo he so cleverly asserts into each of his films.

It wasn’t until the movie finally concluded we realized it would have been Hitchcock’s most clever cameo ever.

Because in our sleep deprived state, neither of us ever realized it was an Otto Preminger movie.

Everything would improve if we got more sleep.

Our families would have less time to bicker. We’d all get more done in less time. 

Me, I’d have time to dream up better story ideas and, thus, would start receiving a better class of rejection letters from more prominent sleep-deprived editors.

Sleeplessness is often confused with physical virtuosity. It’s a quality we’ve always sought in our elected leaders and a keystone critique of those right now tromping around desolate Iowa.

It should be the other way around. 

So wake up, America!

And go right back to bed.

We’ll all be better off.

From sea to shining zzzzzzzzz . . . .