[ubernostrum]

almost everything is a method

Not "almost". Just "everything is a method", in terms of function calls. Even user-defined standalone functions. Consider:

    def my_func(arg):
        return arg + 5

The following are equivalent, and show how things work:

    my_func(3)

and

    my_func.__call__(3)

and

    types.FunctionType.__call__(my_func, 3)

[xapata]

I'm not certain, but I think the C API can avoid that. I've learned to say "almost" because every time I say Python can't X, someone shows me it can.

[ubernostrum]

There are a few functions in the C API to let you call things, depending on the type of thing and set of arguments you feel like providing, and they rely on the Python API to handle the calling for you. I imagine if you really wanted to, and knew enough about the structure and expectations of the Python object you were working with, you could "manually" call without going through one of those C API functions, but I don't know that I'd recommend trying it...