ANXIETY HELL

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time screaming yourself awake in the afternoon as day terrors involving the loss of either one or all of your eyes rock you to your very core. As you bolt upright in your work hammock, pausing only to rub your forehead after smacking it on the Skipper’s buttocks encased in the net bunk above you – I’ll never understand why he has to sleep directly above the skinnier hutmate – you touch both your sockets and thank the sweet Lord that they are still full of functioning eye matter.

Half convinced the Sadistic Eyelash Curler from Hell was real or one day could be, you decide to celebrate the gift that is your ability to see. In honor of your incredible luck at not having gone blind yet, you opt to enjoy the one thing that makes life almost worth living: the 1984 classic film, The Brother from Another Planet.

Oh, you’re not aware of this stunning cinematic achievement? Well, then. I guess you’re not like me after all. Allow me to introduce you to the best synopsis of all time. What follows is almost exactly what was written in the Netflix text blurb, give or take some words on account of my Xanax intake at the time I read and attempted to memorize it.

An adult humanoid slave from outer space lands on Earth and must evade bounty hunters while attempting to win over his would-be adopters with his technical wizardry. The Brother From Another Planet is a heartfelt look at race and belonging.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Sybil, why is it so important that I maintain my eye health so that I might enjoy this ’80s blockbuster?”

And to you I might say, “Why ask such obvious rhetorical questions when so many more important queries exist. Queries such as, How can I reach the Brother’s level of technical wizardry so that I, too, may one day fix a broken arcade game with the touch of my hand? What set of skills must I acquire so that I, also, could regenerate my three-toed foot after crash landing on another planet and sustaining serious injury to my walking pod region? These are the important inquiries one must focus on at the present moment.”

“I see,” you say.

“And a good thing that is, sir/madam. Because if you could not see, you would have no idea what the fuck was going on in The Brother from Another Planet. And that is because the Brother is mute. He is a bona fide anti-talker. This dude is communicating on a level Scooby Doo can’t decipher. Elephants cannot hear this man. His screams of pain and longing are in freaking capable of being perceived by the human ear.

That’s right; you better thank your lucky Russian spy satellites that you can see, because if you were blind, you’d be looking at one hour, forty-nine minutes, and twenty-seven seconds of confusion. Well, literally, you wouldn’t be looking at anything, of course, but the real bummer is you couldn’t even get a mind picture of what the hell was happening on screen. Your ability to hear any kind of plot in this film is rendered moot since the protag makes less sound than my grandma’s debarked collie.”

So, I think we’ve all learned something here today. Appreciate your most important sense (the one you ALWAYS choose to keep in a game of Would You Rather) and by God, do not waste another minute using it to gaze at anything besides the most entertaining display of technical wizardry to hit the screen since Short Circuit 2 robot rolled into town.