Does This BM Look Funny to You?
The Fears of a Clown
Last week in the news there was a story about a recently held Brazilian congressional election which was won by a clown. Not clown in the punny easy politician joke sense, but an actual clown. His name is “Tiririca” which translates as Grumpy and he ran with the campaign slogan “it can’t get any worse”. He admitted freely that while he is not exactly sure what a congressman does, he would find out and tell the public how elected politicians actually spend their time. And he won. By a lot. From a pundit’s perspective the story seems almost too good to be true. “Yes We Can” vs. “I’m Supposed to What Now?” The more I thought about it the more it made sense. Sure, the red state/blue state CNN visuals are pretty, but when it comes down to it, most of our opinions probably combine into something closer to a shade of purple. Except when it comes to clowns. I can’t think of any other issue as divisive as clowns. No one is on the fence when it comes to clowns. You either love em or you hate them. In this age of governmental disillusion and apathy I think American politicians should pounce on this hot button topic and incorporate it into their party platforms.
Personally conducted research supports my hypothesis. In the fall of 1995 I found myself with a cum laude degree in Political Science and Criminal Justice and the very number of job opportunities you might expect to go along with such a degree. With my graduation savings draining quickly I was, well, let’s say, extremely motivated to find work. I was living with my parents who live about half a mile from a very popular well known pumpkin farm. Every fall the farm transforms itself into a Halloween festival. Pumpkins, haunted houses, rides, bouncy houses, face painting, $4cups of hot chocolate, and a barn stuffed full of various Halloween accoutrements for sale. Since my legal department has advised against me using its real name, I’ll just refer to it as Cloudy Hectares and let my three western suburban readers put two and two together. One day I saw a sign saying they were hiring seasonal help. Two days later, after bouncing a check to the public library for overdue book fees, I chewed and chewed and chewed until pride swallowed, I filled out an application.
I arrived for the interview and while pleased to realize I would easily land the gig couldn’t ignore the knot of failure tightening in my stomach. Is this why I stayed up until 3:00 am finishing my last research paper on East Germany and the military industrial complex? The owner began to review the farm’s employment policies and then, with a bright smile, told me I qualified for two important benefits. The first was that as a college graduate I was entitled to a higher pay grade. Furthermore, since I was over 21 I was qualified to hold positions that required the handling of money. Suck it 401K plan and health insurance, I’m in the pumpkin business now! No hauling wheelbarrows of gourds and petting zoo goat feed for this honor student. I’m handling money! I take it all back Mrs. Petersen. Even though you ate hard-boiled eggs all throughout the fourth grade and once sent a note home to my parents after you caught me drawing E.T. during math, I will give you this. You were right when you said that math counts. This meant I was sure to get assigned to a cushy indoor gig ringing up wax lip fangs, grainy fudge and $5 caramel apples in a climate controlled environment on cash registers stacked upon folksy hay bales.
The one condition of employment was straightforward. There was a strictly enforced dress code. And that dress code was costume. Every employee, regardless of assignment, age, seniority or sense of dignity had to report to work in a full Halloween costume of our choosing. So off to Target I went with my dwindling funds and faster dwindling self esteem. The costume choices seemed to reflect my current career choices. There was the gratuitous French maid uniform, the ‘sexy’ convict (complete with- wink wink- handcuffs) and a scant flouncey and feathery getup with the vague title “Olde Time Barkeep”. Was that Old West code for prostitute? After some consideration I settled on a clown suit. It was roomy, easy to layer and best of all, came with make-up that would allow me to scowl openly at the customers and my fate while appearing to be grinning from ear to ear. While my other classmates were spending their money accessorizing new suits with interview appropriate pearls and Clinique makeup, I was deciding between an oversized pacifier and squirting flower. I had no idea at the time what truly large large shoes I was about to step into.
I arrived on my first day in happy clown makeup. First impressions are everything after all. I was all set to take my place in the cider café when they told me what my assignment was going to be. Instead of wrapping pumpkin muffins and plastic swords I would be selling tickets for the Spinning Apples ride alone in what amounted to an outhouse sized shack with a stool, padlocked door and chain link fence for a window. It was a relief to know that all that time spent studying for my Soviet American Relations final was finally paying off.
My nearest coworkers were not even human. They were equine. And based on the glazed dead eye heroin chic ‘80’s supermodel/old hooker stare the riding ponies shared, I could tell we all felt the same about our opportunity for upward mobility at this company. However based on their generous breaks and hour long lunches, they clearly enjoyed the benefits of unionization. Norma Hay indeed.
Walking to my station on that first day it became immediately clear that my choice of costume held epic consequences and near royal authority. It took only took seconds for me to realize who in the crowd loved clowns and who amongst the crowd was terrified of clowns. The farm was like a highway with me at the center of a giant gaper’s delay. I was greeted with an odd welcome. A combination of parents clutching their children and turning away in a wild eyed panic mixed with a chorus of “Hey clown! Look! A clown! Clown can I take your picture?”
Bending to pose with a little boy he turned to me and asked “What’s your name?” Name? Um, I hadn’t thought about that. “Uh...” I stalled “…Beth?” “So are you a real clown? What can you do?” he pressed. Real clown? Wasn’t that an oxymoron like plastic glasses or jumbo shrimp? The manager said a costume was required but actual character development was not discussed. I was no Meryl Streep. I had no method. James Lipton was never gonna give me the blue note card interview. I had not developed a persona or insisted on wearing my clown costume around the house to help develop my character’s authenticity. And name? Did I need a clown name? What constituted a clown name? At that point my inner clown could only produce the most inappropriate of suggestions: Boozy the Clown, Stabby the Clown, Parolee the Clown.
The situation back in the Spinning Apple ticket outhouse wasn’t much better. Something about the combination of the tiny booth and anonymity of the clown makeup triggered a confessional nature in parents that I was thoroughly unprepared to manage. “You know how much this day has cost me?” demanded one father, as though we were at a “Guess Your Weight” booth at a carnival. “Twenty seven dollars for ONE pumpkin?” He thundered. “These aren’t even my kids….I’m here with my girlfriend and I worked 70 hours this week so I could take the day off to come here”. Who did he think I was? The farm’s owner? As if I had any clout, any juice whatsoever, I would chose to be folded up like an origami crane in a sweaty box next to a paddock of highly ‘regular’ ponies. Handing him his tickets and change I said “I received the highest grade ever given in my college’s Anglo-American Politics class. Happy Halloween”.
Lunch breaks became a nightmare. The employee break room was located on the opposite side of the farm and its time limit strictly enforced. However, it was nearly impossible to make it there in the allotted time while in costume. I was constantly surrounded by throngs of kids and camera wielding parents. No one seemed to understand or care that I was not being employed as an actual clown but merely a ticket taker. They demanded all sorts of favors. Posing for goofy pictures, commands to ‘do something funny’ (oh how my inner clown struggled with that one), even to act as disciplinarian. “Tell him he has to brush his teeth more” shouted one father from behind his camera lens. Another mother murmured through unmoving lips “just say she and her brother need to stop fighting so much”. Some parents even asked me to falsify knowledge of or alliance with various childhood deities. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, even the Tooth Fairy. Who knew a clown’s authority and affiliations were so vast and connected? No wonder half of the crowd hated me. I was the reason they had four cavities at their last checkup and didn’t get a Green Machine for Christmas in 1982.
One customer even made a clumsy overture towards me asking what I wore underneath my clown costume. Really dude? Hitting on a caged clown? At a pumpkin patch? In broad daylight? With your wife and kids waiting behind you? Shouldn’t even one of these question marks be enough to require that you be escorted by Chris Hansen while on company property?
Another woman, although upfront and apologetic about her fear of clowns, asked me to pose for a picture with her son. While her husband readied the camera she melodramatically held her hands in front of face and turned her head as though merely looking me in the eyes could turn her to stone. That day I happened to be in sad face makeup and so right before he snapped the shutter I bobbed my head slightly thus ensuring the resulting picture would show a grinning toothless first grader with the menacing and blurred pale face of Cackles the Clown.
Never in my life had I wielded nor witnessed the power to instill simultaneous joy and fear in a crowd of people. I had to admit, it was at time intoxicating. I wondered if this was how movie stars, famous athletes, ruthless dictators, mobsters, alderman and Oprah felt. Eventually I discovered that the only way I would ever enjoy my 20 minute lunch and two allotted 10 minutes breaks would be if I ran. And it worked. Turns out, love them or hate them, nobody messes with a running clown.
Though on a different plane, Tiririca clearly knew this too and I suspect it may explain his successful congressional bid. Perhaps this is what America needs. Let’s do away with red states and blue states, elephants and donkeys. Let’s go confetti state. We’ll make it simple. No more getting bogged down in fiscal reform, healthcare debate and the role federal government should play in state’s rights. It’s about Bozo. You’re either Pro-zo or No-zo. Hold the debates above dunk tanks, get Tom Bergeron to moderate and watch the text votes rack up. Let’s see…it’s text B-L-A-G-O….
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Someone Somewhere Wishes They Had This BM
Coming to terms with living with chronic health issues is very similar to the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In the beginning it is very easy to deny. Depending on your particular symptoms and the fact that patients often enjoy sustained periods of remission make it easy to forget you are sick. The disease itself is something of a specter, a shape shifter who shows up at the most unexpected of times and circumstances.
In the most basic of terms lupus is a disease of the immune system. Essentially the body’s immune system becomes hyperactive. In its diligent defense it loses its ability to distinguish between legitimate foreign antibodies and healthy living cells, tissues and organs. In an ironic and darkly comic way it could be viewed as the ultimate in self loathing since the body literally turns on itself and becomes its own worst enemy. In its most minor form, a patient can experience periods of mild joint discomfort, fevers, rashes and fatigue. In its most severe form, it can be fatal.
The double whammy about the grief cycle and lupus is that it can feel a little like the movie Groundhog Day. Because of its Madonna like image reinventions and Cher concert costume changes you find yourself revolving through the grief process again and again with each large flare or set of new complications. Instead of becoming easier to deal with over time, it often seems to become more difficult to face the now familiar and dreaded stages. You find yourself angrier, sadder, more brash, even reckless and bold with denial. And you develop a flair for deal making that would drop jaws at a used car salesman convention. “I promise I’ll eat better, sleep more, take all my meds as prescribed….on an empty stomach, on a full stomach, one hour before eating or two hours after, with juice, without juice, not within two hours of taking an antacid, one hour before bedtime, I’ll go to church, volunteer my time to the underprivileged, volunteer my time to animal shelters, donate money to charity, sponsor every 5K running coworker, neighbor, friend, family member, run a 5K, have my oil changed religiously every 3000 miles, learn how to change my own oil, teach underprivileged kids how to change oil, sponsor homeless animals to run in 5Ks supporting oil change awareness."
A lot of time you spend as a patient is spent waiting….waiting for your name to be called, waiting to test results, waiting for a bed to open, waiting to be admitted, waiting to be discharged, waiting for the technician/doctor/nurse/nurse practitioner/physician’s assistant, fill-in-the-blank-ologist/resident/ fellow/attending/surgeon, waiting to get better, waiting to get worse. And to be honest, the environs are anything other than stimulating or comforting. Through the years I’ve had to learn to pass the time, muddle through and just plain soothe my fussing inner baby.
Hospitals remind me a bit of the Caribbean during hurricane season in that it combines the possibilities of breath stealing beauty and miracles with the threat of absolute devastation. A mix of the best and the worst life has to offer. Each time I am there it occurs to me that this is the best day and the worst day of someone’s life. While I’m waiting to pay $4 for a cup of coffee and the hospital Au Bon Pain while wondering which expressway to take home, someone has just received news that will change their life. This day may blur into the week, into the month, into the season for me but for someone else, this day will forever be branded as “The Day Such and Such Happened”. I’ve also worn the hospital socks on the other foot and found myself wanting to scream “DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME!?” at the man who has pressed three different floors in the parking garage elevator because he knows he’ll remember what floor he parked on when he sees the lobby color.
Eventually a mantra of sorts evolved out of my experience. Whatever the symptom, the discomfort, the pain or the procedure I began to think no matter what, someone, somewhere wishes they were me. Someone somewhere is worse off than I am and might even consider me lucky. I concentrate and repeat this phrase with the conviction of a monk. Someone somewhere wishes they were me…someone somewhere wishes they were me… someonesomewherewishestheywereme…so_____ some____ w_____ ___ ___ _e….sosomewe…So Some We. So Some We.
In the months prior to my wedding, (The most photographed day of your life! According to one particularly enthused photographer hopeful), my hair began to fall out. A side effect of a medication I was taking, I felt my hair drift like tumbleweeds down my back as the days leading to our wedding blew past. How much is going to fall out? When will it stop? How will I clip my beautiful veil to a head with no hair? So Some We…Someone somewhere is wishing they had someone to spend their life with.
When the gruffly apologetic paramedics struggled to carry me down to the ambulance from my third floor walk up in a wheelchair stretcher, bobbing and weaving in what was perhaps the worst freestyle version of “Hava Nagila” ever… So Some We. Someone somewhere is uploading a Hava Nagila disaster video to YouTube much to the horror of the star celebrant. Someone somewhere is pausing, phone in hand, wondering how they will pay for an ambulance ride, a taxi ride, a bus ride to a hospital.
In the ER at 1:00 AM, after the frowning and rheumy eyed pulmonary consult became tangled in my IV lines and tripped, tearing the IV straight out of my arm and clear across the room where it landed with a splat like a water balloon on a hot summer driveway… So Some We. Someone somewhere has been haggling for months with their HMO, begging for a referral to a pulmonologist.
During a broncoscopy, a procedure in which the patient is sedated while doctors examine and biopsy the lungs with a long scope, I found myself way too far to the left on the sedation spectrum. Bustling with energy and the efficiency of choreographed routine, the doctors and nurses did not notice that their star performer, layered in sheets, tubes and wires was in fact wide awake. Rendered mute by a mouth full of props, cotton, instruments and cameras my mind reeled as I tried to come up with a way to signal the nurses.
Reaching over sheets and waving my one free arm around the theatrically lighted table I got the attention of a nurse. Unable to talk I tried the only thing left…sign language. I whipped up the sign for stop but the nurse misread it as a wave and returned the ‘wave’ with a thumbs up and a “you’re doing great!” I tried again. This time with letters. Flipping through a mental dictionary I searched for the fastest way to sign my distress. Ow! Ow! OW! O.W. Slowly and meticulously I signed a large O and three fingers representing the ASL symbol for the letter W. I held my breath waiting for a reaction. At which point the well intentioned nurse smiled brightly, nodded and said “Oh yes, OK, we are almost done. You’re right. Just three or four more minutes”. MINUTES?! I dug deep that day but found my So Some We. Someone somewhere is literally waiting with bated breath for a lung transplant.
The first time I slipped on my oxygen cannula only to discover I had developed calluses behind my ears where the plastic rubs the skin, my face suddenly burned with embarrassment. So Some We...Someone somewhere wishes they had ears?
Just a few months ago my Better Half and I found ourselves at the ER for the umpteenth time after a standard issue lupus flare exploded like a late summer wildfire into a full blown attack. Within a matter of hours all of my joints from my jaw down to my toes had swollen to the point where I could just manage a mummy walk and saw stars when I tried to sit or lay down. Lying on the ER gurney waiting for IV steroids and pain meds I rocked from left to right to give each side a one second rest from the pressure. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes rolled into an hour. Apologetic doctors and nurses poked their heads in periodically to assure us we had not been forgotten. The ER was swamped and the pharmacy was backed up and they were doing the best they could. I fantasized about the pain relief to come…how instantaneous my body’s response would be, how quickly it would try to rebound once the cycle of inflammation and pain was broken.
I turned to my Better Half and began the familiar refrain. A game he had played with me on many occasions. “But someone…” I slowly sniffled, “…somewhere”- He cut me off. Standing to kiss me lightly on my forehead, the one place he knew wouldn’t hurt, he said “No Hon. No one wishes they were you”. And there it was. Acceptance. To the casual listener he probably sounded like a total asshole. “Hey did you hear what that jack hole in Bed #8 just said to his poor wife? She’s in there crying her eyes out and this douche just told her no one would ever want to be her”.
But his words were a release. His words said that acceptance of my disease did not equal defeat. I could lose a battle here and there and still win the war. Not looking at the bright side did not mean I would wilt in the dark alone. Allowing myself to plunge to the depths of despair might just mean that the rise back to the top would be all the more warm and buoyant.
For many years So Some We was a comfort. A consolation. And it still is on some days. Things could always be worse. But I had failed to consider the flipside of So Some We. That occasionally things couldn’t be better. Now on better days So Some We is not just a rally cry offered to motivate a shell shocked infantry. First spoken shyly to myself through a blush, I’m slowly learning that So Some We can also be a boast. Sitting here on my deck, in the languid sunshine of a gorgeous late summer afternoon. Enjoying pizza Friday and a Netflix delivery of Dexter with my husband. Inhaling the decadent scent of a crisp hardcover book. Snuggling our new fuzzy black and white kitten on my lap as I sort through the day’s mail…Someone somewhere wishes they were me.
In the most basic of terms lupus is a disease of the immune system. Essentially the body’s immune system becomes hyperactive. In its diligent defense it loses its ability to distinguish between legitimate foreign antibodies and healthy living cells, tissues and organs. In an ironic and darkly comic way it could be viewed as the ultimate in self loathing since the body literally turns on itself and becomes its own worst enemy. In its most minor form, a patient can experience periods of mild joint discomfort, fevers, rashes and fatigue. In its most severe form, it can be fatal.
The double whammy about the grief cycle and lupus is that it can feel a little like the movie Groundhog Day. Because of its Madonna like image reinventions and Cher concert costume changes you find yourself revolving through the grief process again and again with each large flare or set of new complications. Instead of becoming easier to deal with over time, it often seems to become more difficult to face the now familiar and dreaded stages. You find yourself angrier, sadder, more brash, even reckless and bold with denial. And you develop a flair for deal making that would drop jaws at a used car salesman convention. “I promise I’ll eat better, sleep more, take all my meds as prescribed….on an empty stomach, on a full stomach, one hour before eating or two hours after, with juice, without juice, not within two hours of taking an antacid, one hour before bedtime, I’ll go to church, volunteer my time to the underprivileged, volunteer my time to animal shelters, donate money to charity, sponsor every 5K running coworker, neighbor, friend, family member, run a 5K, have my oil changed religiously every 3000 miles, learn how to change my own oil, teach underprivileged kids how to change oil, sponsor homeless animals to run in 5Ks supporting oil change awareness."
A lot of time you spend as a patient is spent waiting….waiting for your name to be called, waiting to test results, waiting for a bed to open, waiting to be admitted, waiting to be discharged, waiting for the technician/doctor/nurse/nurse practitioner/physician’s assistant, fill-in-the-blank-ologist/resident/ fellow/attending/surgeon, waiting to get better, waiting to get worse. And to be honest, the environs are anything other than stimulating or comforting. Through the years I’ve had to learn to pass the time, muddle through and just plain soothe my fussing inner baby.
Hospitals remind me a bit of the Caribbean during hurricane season in that it combines the possibilities of breath stealing beauty and miracles with the threat of absolute devastation. A mix of the best and the worst life has to offer. Each time I am there it occurs to me that this is the best day and the worst day of someone’s life. While I’m waiting to pay $4 for a cup of coffee and the hospital Au Bon Pain while wondering which expressway to take home, someone has just received news that will change their life. This day may blur into the week, into the month, into the season for me but for someone else, this day will forever be branded as “The Day Such and Such Happened”. I’ve also worn the hospital socks on the other foot and found myself wanting to scream “DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME!?” at the man who has pressed three different floors in the parking garage elevator because he knows he’ll remember what floor he parked on when he sees the lobby color.
Eventually a mantra of sorts evolved out of my experience. Whatever the symptom, the discomfort, the pain or the procedure I began to think no matter what, someone, somewhere wishes they were me. Someone somewhere is worse off than I am and might even consider me lucky. I concentrate and repeat this phrase with the conviction of a monk. Someone somewhere wishes they were me…someone somewhere wishes they were me… someonesomewherewishestheywereme…so_____ some____ w_____ ___ ___ _e….sosomewe…So Some We. So Some We.
In the months prior to my wedding, (The most photographed day of your life! According to one particularly enthused photographer hopeful), my hair began to fall out. A side effect of a medication I was taking, I felt my hair drift like tumbleweeds down my back as the days leading to our wedding blew past. How much is going to fall out? When will it stop? How will I clip my beautiful veil to a head with no hair? So Some We…Someone somewhere is wishing they had someone to spend their life with.
When the gruffly apologetic paramedics struggled to carry me down to the ambulance from my third floor walk up in a wheelchair stretcher, bobbing and weaving in what was perhaps the worst freestyle version of “Hava Nagila” ever… So Some We. Someone somewhere is uploading a Hava Nagila disaster video to YouTube much to the horror of the star celebrant. Someone somewhere is pausing, phone in hand, wondering how they will pay for an ambulance ride, a taxi ride, a bus ride to a hospital.
In the ER at 1:00 AM, after the frowning and rheumy eyed pulmonary consult became tangled in my IV lines and tripped, tearing the IV straight out of my arm and clear across the room where it landed with a splat like a water balloon on a hot summer driveway… So Some We. Someone somewhere has been haggling for months with their HMO, begging for a referral to a pulmonologist.
During a broncoscopy, a procedure in which the patient is sedated while doctors examine and biopsy the lungs with a long scope, I found myself way too far to the left on the sedation spectrum. Bustling with energy and the efficiency of choreographed routine, the doctors and nurses did not notice that their star performer, layered in sheets, tubes and wires was in fact wide awake. Rendered mute by a mouth full of props, cotton, instruments and cameras my mind reeled as I tried to come up with a way to signal the nurses.
Reaching over sheets and waving my one free arm around the theatrically lighted table I got the attention of a nurse. Unable to talk I tried the only thing left…sign language. I whipped up the sign for stop but the nurse misread it as a wave and returned the ‘wave’ with a thumbs up and a “you’re doing great!” I tried again. This time with letters. Flipping through a mental dictionary I searched for the fastest way to sign my distress. Ow! Ow! OW! O.W. Slowly and meticulously I signed a large O and three fingers representing the ASL symbol for the letter W. I held my breath waiting for a reaction. At which point the well intentioned nurse smiled brightly, nodded and said “Oh yes, OK, we are almost done. You’re right. Just three or four more minutes”. MINUTES?! I dug deep that day but found my So Some We. Someone somewhere is literally waiting with bated breath for a lung transplant.
The first time I slipped on my oxygen cannula only to discover I had developed calluses behind my ears where the plastic rubs the skin, my face suddenly burned with embarrassment. So Some We...Someone somewhere wishes they had ears?
Just a few months ago my Better Half and I found ourselves at the ER for the umpteenth time after a standard issue lupus flare exploded like a late summer wildfire into a full blown attack. Within a matter of hours all of my joints from my jaw down to my toes had swollen to the point where I could just manage a mummy walk and saw stars when I tried to sit or lay down. Lying on the ER gurney waiting for IV steroids and pain meds I rocked from left to right to give each side a one second rest from the pressure. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes rolled into an hour. Apologetic doctors and nurses poked their heads in periodically to assure us we had not been forgotten. The ER was swamped and the pharmacy was backed up and they were doing the best they could. I fantasized about the pain relief to come…how instantaneous my body’s response would be, how quickly it would try to rebound once the cycle of inflammation and pain was broken.
I turned to my Better Half and began the familiar refrain. A game he had played with me on many occasions. “But someone…” I slowly sniffled, “…somewhere”- He cut me off. Standing to kiss me lightly on my forehead, the one place he knew wouldn’t hurt, he said “No Hon. No one wishes they were you”. And there it was. Acceptance. To the casual listener he probably sounded like a total asshole. “Hey did you hear what that jack hole in Bed #8 just said to his poor wife? She’s in there crying her eyes out and this douche just told her no one would ever want to be her”.
But his words were a release. His words said that acceptance of my disease did not equal defeat. I could lose a battle here and there and still win the war. Not looking at the bright side did not mean I would wilt in the dark alone. Allowing myself to plunge to the depths of despair might just mean that the rise back to the top would be all the more warm and buoyant.
For many years So Some We was a comfort. A consolation. And it still is on some days. Things could always be worse. But I had failed to consider the flipside of So Some We. That occasionally things couldn’t be better. Now on better days So Some We is not just a rally cry offered to motivate a shell shocked infantry. First spoken shyly to myself through a blush, I’m slowly learning that So Some We can also be a boast. Sitting here on my deck, in the languid sunshine of a gorgeous late summer afternoon. Enjoying pizza Friday and a Netflix delivery of Dexter with my husband. Inhaling the decadent scent of a crisp hardcover book. Snuggling our new fuzzy black and white kitten on my lap as I sort through the day’s mail…Someone somewhere wishes they were me.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
I, Beth Alison, Take This BM
I, Beth Alison, Take This BM...
Early this fall my Better Half and I will celebrate ten years of marriage. The magnitude and significance of this has been marinating in my brain lately and I find myself awed on so many levels: logistical, statistical, emotional…all the big ‘als’.
Getting married is just about the only life event that we as a society consider so risky, so statistically inadvisable, that we literally applaud any couple who agrees just to try it. Virtually no other life choice commands a party at the beginning of the endeavor. With a failure rate of nearly 60% I cannot think of any other activity of equal risk which we sign up for as willingly as marriage. Here, enjoy this crystal punch bowl now because in six years one of you will smash it into the marble fireplace during an argument about the validity of the text message as an acceptable form of ‘checking in’ or the arm-touching coworker who just rubs you the wrong way and you know that so why did you still invite them to our BBQ.
Marriage vows are a bit melodramatic with their sweeping, yet generalized proclamations of for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Growing up I thought marriage might be something like one of those Sissy Spacek/Sally Field/Mel Gibson/Kevin Costner vs. Mother Nature movies where husband and wife are forced to persevere in the face of hardship. Holding hands against the building storm/the impending foreclosure/the poor crop yield, they are held together by their love, gumption and pioneering spirit. But I’ve found that in reality, the richer and poorer, the sickness and in health….those are sometimes the easier parts of marriage. When something bad happens to us, we naturally circle the wagons and come together. Instinct tells us where to head for shelter and comfort does not need to be articulated. Conversely, when something wonderful happens we turn again on reflex to those same people to celebrate and hug.
It’s the in between that is tricky. It is the day to day wear that snags and loosens the threads of the tapestry we weave while falling in love. Anyone can congratulate me on a promotion at work or offer condolences after the passing of a loved one. The larger challenge is who can tolerate the fact that I am incapable of brushing my teeth without somehow somewhere getting toothpaste on the mirror for the next fifty years. Or put up with my ridiculous insistence on sitting in an aisle seat at the movies no matter how empty the theater or how much better you know the sound would be in the middle. And for that matter, can I tolerate that haz mat of a case you call a down pillow that continually wheezes Asian bird flu feathers and undoubtedly violates at least three EPA regulations. I will if you will. So after consideration I offer below a revised take on marriage vows. Less romantic? Perhaps. But I’m lookin to buck the odds and no one ever rolled a parachute by candlelight.
1) The answer to the question “did you notice my FILL IN THE BLANK?” is always YES and the answer to the question “did you notice her FILL IN THE BLANK?” is always WHAT? NO.
2) Appear to take into serious consideration his assertion, made while emboldened by a dozen beers and a roaring fire pit, that Rush is not just a band, it’s a philosophy.
3) Agree with enthusiasm the ‘fact’ that given the right timing/money/connections he could have had a real shot at becoming a professional athlete/rock star/astronaut.
4) Maintain a straight face when she suggests you invest in head shots for her guinea pig Gus (RIP Gus Gus) as she believes his extraordinary cuteness could very well earn him a future in Hollywood.
5) Always praise highly and emphatically his fierce caveman like ability to both build a fire and cook raw meat over it.
6) Support any endeavor that promotes that universally revered male pleasure of the outdoor daytime beer.
7) Take appropriate care in timing your ‘uh huhs’ to maintain the appearance of interest in any conversation about a coworkers character flaws, an episode of any show on Bravo, YouTube videos featuring drowsy kittens or what a pity it is that so-and-so cut her hair short because she doesn’t have the bone structure to pull off the Farrow.
8) Never, ever, question the status of a diet, exercise regimen or lifestyle overhaul no matter how loudly, tearfully, “I’m serious” the proposed changes were made. Just pick up the ice cream like she asked. She has her reasons and you would know what they were had you asked appropriate follow through questions earlier in the evening.
9) Maintain your position that your partiality to Hugh Jackman lies solely in the fact that he reminds you of your husband and seems like a genuine family man. In return he will support previous declarations that most Hollywood actresses are too skinny and even gross. He much prefers ‘curvy’ actresses like Kate Winslet. Don’t worry. It’s like Santa. She wants to believe.
10) Concede that your wife does a pretty good Pacino… for a girl.
11) Indulge her request for at least one slow dance at any wedding reception attended regardless of your opinion of the clichéd song that is playing (i.e. ‘Lady in Red’? Seriously?) Yes. Seriously.
12) In that same vein, while we all agree that Valentine’s Day is a hokey, contrived and Hallmarky marketing driven holiday, you will nut up and make arrangements for an original, yet tastefully expensive bouquet be delivered to her at work in full view of her snarky gossipy coworkers.
13) Be a good sport when she wants to play “Guess How Much This Cost?” upon returning from TJ Maxx and then praise her savvy bargain hunting/internet shopping prowess. It is one of her secret vanities.
14) Listen to her when she asks for one of these http://www.minidonkeys.com/ . She has some valid points and they really are adorable. Be the first on your block!
15) Accompany him, without complaint, to the early premiere of any LOTR based, Star Wars related or DC/Marvel hero based film. You’re participating in cinematic history after all and those DVR’d episodes of The Real Housewives aren’t going anywhere.
16) Do not ask prying questions as to why you keep paying for Cinemax when you’ve never once seen him watch it during the day. A man’s got needs. In this case, a need to know what those Co-Eds are doing Confidentially.
17) Make occasional but consistent eye contact with her when separated at social events because while she may appear to be merely returning your glance, she is in fact actually communicating her current mood, opinion of the event and requested course of action on your part.
18) Grant him the occasional Dutch oven. Yes, we all know his air deuces smell like fumes from an Oscar Mayer processing plant and settle like mustard gas in a WWII foxhole but c’mon, you have to admit, it’s a little funny. And by the way, your’s don’t exactly smell
like a meadow after a spring rain so you know, that whole glass houses thing.
19) Finally, she will, without a doubt, invent any number of embarrassing, emasculating nicknames for you during the course of your marriage. Respond to them in private and they will remain private. Ignore them and you will next hear them over the intercom at Home Depot.
And you know what my big strong hug…uh,I mean my Better Half, I still do. I do I do.
Early this fall my Better Half and I will celebrate ten years of marriage. The magnitude and significance of this has been marinating in my brain lately and I find myself awed on so many levels: logistical, statistical, emotional…all the big ‘als’.
Getting married is just about the only life event that we as a society consider so risky, so statistically inadvisable, that we literally applaud any couple who agrees just to try it. Virtually no other life choice commands a party at the beginning of the endeavor. With a failure rate of nearly 60% I cannot think of any other activity of equal risk which we sign up for as willingly as marriage. Here, enjoy this crystal punch bowl now because in six years one of you will smash it into the marble fireplace during an argument about the validity of the text message as an acceptable form of ‘checking in’ or the arm-touching coworker who just rubs you the wrong way and you know that so why did you still invite them to our BBQ.
Marriage vows are a bit melodramatic with their sweeping, yet generalized proclamations of for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Growing up I thought marriage might be something like one of those Sissy Spacek/Sally Field/Mel Gibson/Kevin Costner vs. Mother Nature movies where husband and wife are forced to persevere in the face of hardship. Holding hands against the building storm/the impending foreclosure/the poor crop yield, they are held together by their love, gumption and pioneering spirit. But I’ve found that in reality, the richer and poorer, the sickness and in health….those are sometimes the easier parts of marriage. When something bad happens to us, we naturally circle the wagons and come together. Instinct tells us where to head for shelter and comfort does not need to be articulated. Conversely, when something wonderful happens we turn again on reflex to those same people to celebrate and hug.
It’s the in between that is tricky. It is the day to day wear that snags and loosens the threads of the tapestry we weave while falling in love. Anyone can congratulate me on a promotion at work or offer condolences after the passing of a loved one. The larger challenge is who can tolerate the fact that I am incapable of brushing my teeth without somehow somewhere getting toothpaste on the mirror for the next fifty years. Or put up with my ridiculous insistence on sitting in an aisle seat at the movies no matter how empty the theater or how much better you know the sound would be in the middle. And for that matter, can I tolerate that haz mat of a case you call a down pillow that continually wheezes Asian bird flu feathers and undoubtedly violates at least three EPA regulations. I will if you will. So after consideration I offer below a revised take on marriage vows. Less romantic? Perhaps. But I’m lookin to buck the odds and no one ever rolled a parachute by candlelight.
1) The answer to the question “did you notice my FILL IN THE BLANK?” is always YES and the answer to the question “did you notice her FILL IN THE BLANK?” is always WHAT? NO.
2) Appear to take into serious consideration his assertion, made while emboldened by a dozen beers and a roaring fire pit, that Rush is not just a band, it’s a philosophy.
3) Agree with enthusiasm the ‘fact’ that given the right timing/money/connections he could have had a real shot at becoming a professional athlete/rock star/astronaut.
4) Maintain a straight face when she suggests you invest in head shots for her guinea pig Gus (RIP Gus Gus) as she believes his extraordinary cuteness could very well earn him a future in Hollywood.
5) Always praise highly and emphatically his fierce caveman like ability to both build a fire and cook raw meat over it.
6) Support any endeavor that promotes that universally revered male pleasure of the outdoor daytime beer.
7) Take appropriate care in timing your ‘uh huhs’ to maintain the appearance of interest in any conversation about a coworkers character flaws, an episode of any show on Bravo, YouTube videos featuring drowsy kittens or what a pity it is that so-and-so cut her hair short because she doesn’t have the bone structure to pull off the Farrow.
8) Never, ever, question the status of a diet, exercise regimen or lifestyle overhaul no matter how loudly, tearfully, “I’m serious” the proposed changes were made. Just pick up the ice cream like she asked. She has her reasons and you would know what they were had you asked appropriate follow through questions earlier in the evening.
9) Maintain your position that your partiality to Hugh Jackman lies solely in the fact that he reminds you of your husband and seems like a genuine family man. In return he will support previous declarations that most Hollywood actresses are too skinny and even gross. He much prefers ‘curvy’ actresses like Kate Winslet. Don’t worry. It’s like Santa. She wants to believe.
10) Concede that your wife does a pretty good Pacino… for a girl.
11) Indulge her request for at least one slow dance at any wedding reception attended regardless of your opinion of the clichéd song that is playing (i.e. ‘Lady in Red’? Seriously?) Yes. Seriously.
12) In that same vein, while we all agree that Valentine’s Day is a hokey, contrived and Hallmarky marketing driven holiday, you will nut up and make arrangements for an original, yet tastefully expensive bouquet be delivered to her at work in full view of her snarky gossipy coworkers.
13) Be a good sport when she wants to play “Guess How Much This Cost?” upon returning from TJ Maxx and then praise her savvy bargain hunting/internet shopping prowess. It is one of her secret vanities.
14) Listen to her when she asks for one of these http://www.minidonkeys.com/ . She has some valid points and they really are adorable. Be the first on your block!
15) Accompany him, without complaint, to the early premiere of any LOTR based, Star Wars related or DC/Marvel hero based film. You’re participating in cinematic history after all and those DVR’d episodes of The Real Housewives aren’t going anywhere.
16) Do not ask prying questions as to why you keep paying for Cinemax when you’ve never once seen him watch it during the day. A man’s got needs. In this case, a need to know what those Co-Eds are doing Confidentially.
17) Make occasional but consistent eye contact with her when separated at social events because while she may appear to be merely returning your glance, she is in fact actually communicating her current mood, opinion of the event and requested course of action on your part.
18) Grant him the occasional Dutch oven. Yes, we all know his air deuces smell like fumes from an Oscar Mayer processing plant and settle like mustard gas in a WWII foxhole but c’mon, you have to admit, it’s a little funny. And by the way, your’s don’t exactly smell
like a meadow after a spring rain so you know, that whole glass houses thing.
19) Finally, she will, without a doubt, invent any number of embarrassing, emasculating nicknames for you during the course of your marriage. Respond to them in private and they will remain private. Ignore them and you will next hear them over the intercom at Home Depot.
And you know what my big strong hug…uh,I mean my Better Half, I still do. I do I do.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Stare At This BM
Stare At This BM
Fred the Oxygen Man is coming today. He is coming to refill the water heater sized container of liquid oxygen that quietly hisses continually from our hall closet and fills my portable oxygen containers. On a good day the constant sighing is a comforting white noise. On a bad day it is the whispering snicker of junior high girls. And while Fred does not realize it, today marks a dubious distinction. It is the six month anniversary of my doctors’ decision to put me on supplemental oxygen. And by supplemental oxygen I do mean THAT kind of oxygen. The kind with the plastic tubes up the nose (cannula) and the rickety metal canister dragged behind on a cart. The kind you see hanging off the faces of old guys standing outside VA hospitals with cigarettes sticking out of their trachs or on soap opera stars during their “for the Daytime Emmy Academy’s consideration” Terms of Endearment scenes. It’s an awkward device to say the least and while my doctors have gently suggested that I will need to accept this device as a permanent lifestyle accessory I have decided it will be a temporary fix. Just until my lungs get their sea legs back. Because as an accessory it, in a word, sucks. It is neither trendy, nor sparkly, nor slimming. It’s never going to be all the rage, “Seen & Heard” in Star magazine, nor its allegiance hotly debated by tweenage girls (Team Edward! No, Team Jacob!).
When I first started wearing the oxygen in public I knew it would garner some stares. And I was right. What I didn’t anticipate was how good children have become at staring and how bad adults would be. Back when I was a girl there was no technique to staring. No finesse. You just stood there; slack jawed, with eyes glazed. But I am impressed with today’s youth. They have definitely upped their game and elevated staring to an art form. While waiting in line at the post office yesterday I encountered a girl who actually pirouetted around her mother, slowing down almost imperceptibly each time she neared me to stare at my apparatus. I rewarded her ingenuity by taking the portable tank off my shoulder and placing it on the floor in front of me so she could take in the full picture while staying en Pointe.
Surprisingly, I’ve found adult women to be the worst and most obvious starers. The most common reaction seems to be to stare into my cart as though it will yield some clue to the series of undoubtedly poor lifestyle choices I made to earn myself this predicament. Usually the favored method is the glance-look quickly away- then slowly return gaze as though nothing is out of the ordinary all while offering a conciliatory head tilt and sympathetic (no, I’m not going through my mental rolodex of Lifetime television movie plots/TLC show that start with “I Can’t Believe I…”/Anything on Discovery Health ailments) smile. Others swerve their carts out of my path like I’m the monkey from Outbreak. And still others feel a compulsion to blurt out ‘sorry’ for no reason as though offering some kind of cosmic karmic apology as they hustle their carts past me.
A recent trip to the Home Depot garden center proved most telling. I think some people stared into my cart expecting to see it packed with tobacco plants and hydroponic growing equipment. Others, upon seeing my rows of perennials, nodded encouragingly and then quickly turned away as if to say “perennials…so brave…she must be a real fighter”.
Sometimes people are just downright hilarious. Last week I headed to Petsmart for my monthly stock up on supplies for the Hintz herd. When the middle aged female cashier saw me approaching her register, she raced around the register, grabbed my cart and began pulling it to her station announcing “I got it!…I got it…it’s okay…I got it!” like she was helping navigate the landing of a Hope Flight ER helicopter. As I began to unload my purchases onto the belt she again intervened urging “you don’t need to do anything…you just take care of you”. After declining her repeated offers of help out to my car she began a spiral into awkward rambling that, like a newly mobile toddler running, I knew could only end with a spectacular crash. She prodded “well, I’m sure you’ve got a husband at home to help you get these things in the house right? And I’m sure he’s happy to help with this sort of thing. And with other things…like…like” At which point I gently cut her off with an assurances of a willing and able bodied husband at home. Flustered, she continued “but I’m sure it’s fine and he never minds because I’ll just bet he thinks you’re a great cook!” Oh Brenda, I wish I had a spare shovel. It would make this hole you’re digging go so much faster. Anxious for the exchange to end I considered lying but choked and accidentally admitted that he does tend to do more of the cooking as well. Poor Brenda. Her face reddened visibly and she sputtered “well….well…I’m sure you’re good at…I know you’re good at….SOMETHING!” Clasping the receipt into my palm with both of her hands she finally crashed with “have a good day ma’am…and a good tomorrow…I just know you’re going to have a lot of good tomorrows”. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and surreal that once again, I left thinking that a tweaked out Ty Pennington or one of those bland Canadian HGTV hosers would spring out from around the corner to reveal me as the winner of some kind of room/pet/personal/makeover. But nay.
You know, for the most part I get it. Chronic illness is awkward. Most people aren’t sure what, if anything, to say to me. One common refrain is “I don’t know how you do it…if it were me I just don’t know what I would do”. While I know it is meant as a compliment, I always find this comment curious. Because it somehow implies or assumes that I chose this for myself. As if I overslept on the day of physical trait registration so that by the time I got to the registrar’s office the ‘long legs’ and ‘hyper metabolism’ traits were full and I had to scramble to sign up for something so I didn’t get stuck with some far worse like ‘chocolate allergy’ or ‘George Lucas jowls’. I’ll be honest. Though I don’t consider myself bitter, I’m also not one of those types who goes around preaching about how lupus has changed my life for the better…made me stop and smell the roses…appreciate the little things in life. And if I had to do it over again I’d pick this lot again blah blah. Bull. Truth be told if I could unload this onto anyone I would. A stranger, a neighbor, a friend, a blind nun pedaling a rickshaw full of orphans holding puppies in a hurricane. If I could ‘hot potato’ this thing or fling it randomly like a handful of crap at a crowd of gawkers like those awesome chimps at the Lincoln Park Zoo I so totally would.
As comforting a thought it may be, I doubt God has the time to sit around matching personal skill sets with health afflictions or assigning personality, mood and energy points like a giant game of The Sims. A world where everyone gets to work on time, chats with their neighbors, pays their bills and enjoys aquariums and pool tables bought with Sim dollars. I suspect He’s more of a ‘big picture’ guy, keeping his eyes on the road with a 18 wheeler of genocide and famine rumbling behind him.
I suspect the reality is a little closer to the way that I play the Sims. Which is that I spend great care and time selecting my outfit and the pattern of my sofa, go to work a few times, and then start getting complaints from neighbors for not bringing in my newspapers, lose my job for being late, start a fire in my microwave and eventually collapse into a pile of my own urine because I neglected my ‘hygiene’ indicator while I was busy dancing to my record player. (Apologies to anyone who reads this and has not played the game the Sims. You will have no idea what I’m talking about but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it probably indicates the opposite; you are a high functioning member of society with a healthy pallor and active social life. I bet you used to be into Pilates, but now favor birkram yoga. And you undoubtedly know your red wines.)
Or maybe structuring our lots in life is kinda like organizing the seating chart at your wedding reception. You start out carefully analyzing each guest’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. ‘I think Karen should sit at the same table as Tom because they both went to Northern and are from the southwest suburbs’. But by the end of the night, broken down from a night of reception chess, you just want it to be over so you can watch Letterman and go to bed. That’s how you end up with your cousin Catherine (Sister Catherine) at the same table as the handsy photographer and the guy from your intramural softball league who didn’t even know your first names until he got the wedding invite in the mail (‘Hintz…Hintzer….Hintzer marrying F-Bomb….’).
I think sometimes there is a misconception that by nature of having dealt with illness at a younger age than most, I possess some kind of oracle- like wisdom or insights about the world and its machinations. But I think wisdom comes from time, not just ‘old’ experience. So I probably can’t offer you bucket list suggestions for your creative writing workshop at the COD adult learning annex. Save that for Mitch Albom and Nicholas Sparks. I can, however, tell you confidence is key when peeing into a tiny plastic cup, laughing hurts less than crying and if anyone ever says something might ‘sting a little bit’ they mean it’s going to burn like a salted hemorrhoid .
Fred the Oxygen Man is coming today. He is coming to refill the water heater sized container of liquid oxygen that quietly hisses continually from our hall closet and fills my portable oxygen containers. On a good day the constant sighing is a comforting white noise. On a bad day it is the whispering snicker of junior high girls. And while Fred does not realize it, today marks a dubious distinction. It is the six month anniversary of my doctors’ decision to put me on supplemental oxygen. And by supplemental oxygen I do mean THAT kind of oxygen. The kind with the plastic tubes up the nose (cannula) and the rickety metal canister dragged behind on a cart. The kind you see hanging off the faces of old guys standing outside VA hospitals with cigarettes sticking out of their trachs or on soap opera stars during their “for the Daytime Emmy Academy’s consideration” Terms of Endearment scenes. It’s an awkward device to say the least and while my doctors have gently suggested that I will need to accept this device as a permanent lifestyle accessory I have decided it will be a temporary fix. Just until my lungs get their sea legs back. Because as an accessory it, in a word, sucks. It is neither trendy, nor sparkly, nor slimming. It’s never going to be all the rage, “Seen & Heard” in Star magazine, nor its allegiance hotly debated by tweenage girls (Team Edward! No, Team Jacob!).
When I first started wearing the oxygen in public I knew it would garner some stares. And I was right. What I didn’t anticipate was how good children have become at staring and how bad adults would be. Back when I was a girl there was no technique to staring. No finesse. You just stood there; slack jawed, with eyes glazed. But I am impressed with today’s youth. They have definitely upped their game and elevated staring to an art form. While waiting in line at the post office yesterday I encountered a girl who actually pirouetted around her mother, slowing down almost imperceptibly each time she neared me to stare at my apparatus. I rewarded her ingenuity by taking the portable tank off my shoulder and placing it on the floor in front of me so she could take in the full picture while staying en Pointe.
Surprisingly, I’ve found adult women to be the worst and most obvious starers. The most common reaction seems to be to stare into my cart as though it will yield some clue to the series of undoubtedly poor lifestyle choices I made to earn myself this predicament. Usually the favored method is the glance-look quickly away- then slowly return gaze as though nothing is out of the ordinary all while offering a conciliatory head tilt and sympathetic (no, I’m not going through my mental rolodex of Lifetime television movie plots/TLC show that start with “I Can’t Believe I…”/Anything on Discovery Health ailments) smile. Others swerve their carts out of my path like I’m the monkey from Outbreak. And still others feel a compulsion to blurt out ‘sorry’ for no reason as though offering some kind of cosmic karmic apology as they hustle their carts past me.
A recent trip to the Home Depot garden center proved most telling. I think some people stared into my cart expecting to see it packed with tobacco plants and hydroponic growing equipment. Others, upon seeing my rows of perennials, nodded encouragingly and then quickly turned away as if to say “perennials…so brave…she must be a real fighter”.
Sometimes people are just downright hilarious. Last week I headed to Petsmart for my monthly stock up on supplies for the Hintz herd. When the middle aged female cashier saw me approaching her register, she raced around the register, grabbed my cart and began pulling it to her station announcing “I got it!…I got it…it’s okay…I got it!” like she was helping navigate the landing of a Hope Flight ER helicopter. As I began to unload my purchases onto the belt she again intervened urging “you don’t need to do anything…you just take care of you”. After declining her repeated offers of help out to my car she began a spiral into awkward rambling that, like a newly mobile toddler running, I knew could only end with a spectacular crash. She prodded “well, I’m sure you’ve got a husband at home to help you get these things in the house right? And I’m sure he’s happy to help with this sort of thing. And with other things…like…like” At which point I gently cut her off with an assurances of a willing and able bodied husband at home. Flustered, she continued “but I’m sure it’s fine and he never minds because I’ll just bet he thinks you’re a great cook!” Oh Brenda, I wish I had a spare shovel. It would make this hole you’re digging go so much faster. Anxious for the exchange to end I considered lying but choked and accidentally admitted that he does tend to do more of the cooking as well. Poor Brenda. Her face reddened visibly and she sputtered “well….well…I’m sure you’re good at…I know you’re good at….SOMETHING!” Clasping the receipt into my palm with both of her hands she finally crashed with “have a good day ma’am…and a good tomorrow…I just know you’re going to have a lot of good tomorrows”. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and surreal that once again, I left thinking that a tweaked out Ty Pennington or one of those bland Canadian HGTV hosers would spring out from around the corner to reveal me as the winner of some kind of room/pet/personal/makeover. But nay.
You know, for the most part I get it. Chronic illness is awkward. Most people aren’t sure what, if anything, to say to me. One common refrain is “I don’t know how you do it…if it were me I just don’t know what I would do”. While I know it is meant as a compliment, I always find this comment curious. Because it somehow implies or assumes that I chose this for myself. As if I overslept on the day of physical trait registration so that by the time I got to the registrar’s office the ‘long legs’ and ‘hyper metabolism’ traits were full and I had to scramble to sign up for something so I didn’t get stuck with some far worse like ‘chocolate allergy’ or ‘George Lucas jowls’. I’ll be honest. Though I don’t consider myself bitter, I’m also not one of those types who goes around preaching about how lupus has changed my life for the better…made me stop and smell the roses…appreciate the little things in life. And if I had to do it over again I’d pick this lot again blah blah. Bull. Truth be told if I could unload this onto anyone I would. A stranger, a neighbor, a friend, a blind nun pedaling a rickshaw full of orphans holding puppies in a hurricane. If I could ‘hot potato’ this thing or fling it randomly like a handful of crap at a crowd of gawkers like those awesome chimps at the Lincoln Park Zoo I so totally would.
As comforting a thought it may be, I doubt God has the time to sit around matching personal skill sets with health afflictions or assigning personality, mood and energy points like a giant game of The Sims. A world where everyone gets to work on time, chats with their neighbors, pays their bills and enjoys aquariums and pool tables bought with Sim dollars. I suspect He’s more of a ‘big picture’ guy, keeping his eyes on the road with a 18 wheeler of genocide and famine rumbling behind him.
I suspect the reality is a little closer to the way that I play the Sims. Which is that I spend great care and time selecting my outfit and the pattern of my sofa, go to work a few times, and then start getting complaints from neighbors for not bringing in my newspapers, lose my job for being late, start a fire in my microwave and eventually collapse into a pile of my own urine because I neglected my ‘hygiene’ indicator while I was busy dancing to my record player. (Apologies to anyone who reads this and has not played the game the Sims. You will have no idea what I’m talking about but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it probably indicates the opposite; you are a high functioning member of society with a healthy pallor and active social life. I bet you used to be into Pilates, but now favor birkram yoga. And you undoubtedly know your red wines.)
Or maybe structuring our lots in life is kinda like organizing the seating chart at your wedding reception. You start out carefully analyzing each guest’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. ‘I think Karen should sit at the same table as Tom because they both went to Northern and are from the southwest suburbs’. But by the end of the night, broken down from a night of reception chess, you just want it to be over so you can watch Letterman and go to bed. That’s how you end up with your cousin Catherine (Sister Catherine) at the same table as the handsy photographer and the guy from your intramural softball league who didn’t even know your first names until he got the wedding invite in the mail (‘Hintz…Hintzer….Hintzer marrying F-Bomb….’).
I think sometimes there is a misconception that by nature of having dealt with illness at a younger age than most, I possess some kind of oracle- like wisdom or insights about the world and its machinations. But I think wisdom comes from time, not just ‘old’ experience. So I probably can’t offer you bucket list suggestions for your creative writing workshop at the COD adult learning annex. Save that for Mitch Albom and Nicholas Sparks. I can, however, tell you confidence is key when peeing into a tiny plastic cup, laughing hurts less than crying and if anyone ever says something might ‘sting a little bit’ they mean it’s going to burn like a salted hemorrhoid .
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Hey Dummy, Here's Your BM
A BM for Dummies
Yesterday I read somewhere online about the discovery of the dead body of a woman along a river on the East coast. She had recently been reported missing. The body was discovered by a man on an early morning walk with his dog. In speaking to the authorities and the press the witness expressed his shock and disbelief at finding the woman who was partially submerged in water and covered by debris. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…I thought I was looking at a mannequin until [my dog] ran up to it”. This story caught my eye because of the dummy. The presumed mannequin that is. I have heard this story before and I don’t know if I consider it a testament to the optimistic nature of humankind or the naiveté of our citizens in the belief that there are legions of naked mannequins being dumped along highway underpasses, soggy riverbeds and forest preserves.
I’ve read enough newspaper stories, seen enough Bill Kurtis narrated crime shows and watched enough horror films to know that, along with the standard issue cautions against answering the phone, going into the basement, and helping men in Styrofoam casts find lost pets, the body you are seeing is never a mannequin. Yes it’s a sad commentary on crime in America, however, not once have I heard a lead or read a headline that said “AREA MANNEQUIN REPORTED MISSING”. I have never seen a news conference wherein a department store official pleaded to the cameras “Sportswear needs you! Door buster sales start Friday at 9:00!” or seen flyers describing a blonde woman, 5’7”, size 4, wearing a jumper (really? are those a thing? not many people can pull that off) Last seen standing on her toes and holding a striped towel from House wares. And when you stop to consider the logistics of mannequin removal, transport and disposal there is little wonder.
The first hurdle Andrew McCarthy would face would be acquiring a mannequin. Presumably, as a mannequin predator, he would cruise the local malls and department stores looking for potential victims. Upon finding a vulnerable mannequin, alone, perhaps in an isolated area by the clearance rack full of size 00s, with painted on come hitherance, the actual mechanics of moving Emmy would come into play. During the Christmas season of 2006 I was scolded by a security guard at the Gap for merely trying to remove- and pay for- the last striped Gap scarf in the Chicagoland area which happened to be sported by the storefront window Kim Cattrall. Not a full layer of outerwear…not a festive pair of boxer shorts….a simple cold weather accessory. I can only imagine the repercussions I would have faced from the Blartforce had I tried to make off with the entire ensemble.
So how do you move a mannequin? They aren’t exactly designed for, well, abduction? To get her out of the store you would have to hoist her under your arm like a surfboard or up in the air like the come from behind hero of a sports movie then wrestle your way through double sets of slamming doors. Or you could pull her close and try baby stepping the two-in-one-look-how-in-love-we-are-we-can’t-even-bear-to-be-apart-for-ten seconds revolving door move or lastly, the dreaded automatic timed handicapped door, during which time she will lean heavily against you for support as though she were a sloppy ex-girlfriend who called you to meet for drinks at Houlighans ‘and just catch up’ but during which she downed one too many poma-apple-mocha-Patrone-accino-Jack-tini’s, clutched both your hands in hers and through gulped burps slurred ‘but we were so good once weren’t we?’
Fast forward through all the creepy Lars and the Real Girl stuff and you’ve now got a mannequin sporting the latest in fall fashions (omg! tights are still in?!) to dump. Again, we tackle the issue of manneuverability. It once took my friend Rory and I over half an hour to portage a canoe- with a guide- 100 feet from a van down to the Fox River on a worn dirt trail marked “CANOE ACCESS”. So I don’t know how anyone is getting Kristy Swanson (thanks IMDB!) to the river’s edge. The moral of this story, well the stream of consciousness behind this story, is that the next time you are walking along a river and think you’ve found a Mannequin you’ve most likely found a Weekend at Bernie’s.
Since I am on the topic of dummies I’d like to take advantage of this natural segue way to applaud Comedy Central on its decision to cancel The Jeff Dunham Show. I don’t normally root for failure nor do I approve of sweeping generalizations. However, I make exceptions in certain circumstances and here is one. I cannot stand ventriloquists. I hate dummies. There I said it. It’s on the record. Any future political aspirations dashed. Any ABC Family pilot scripts rejected. Any spokesmodel gigs lost to Brooke Burke. But I feel so much better now for having admitted it. Like Meredith Baxter Birney when she purged after that huge binge scene in Kate’s Secret. I don’t get it. But I do get it. And that’s part of what bugs me. Hang on a second while I scramble my way up to the top of this soapbox……and away we go.
I think the first thing that bugs me about ventriloquism as a form of comedy is that it’s…not…funny. The material is awful. A combination of recycled borscht belt jokes and playground humor wherein the comedian is essentially telling jokes at himself, about himself, by himself. The equivalent of being grabbed by a bigger older comedian who yells “why are you hitting yourself? why are you hitting yourself?”. But then there’s always the innuendo part of the act where the puppet makes a vaguely lascivious comment involving hands, laps and pockets and then makes a clumsy pass at a moderately attractive woman sitting in one of the front rows. Not to mention the obvious “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” display of the dummy’s machinations. We sit there like we’re at Wimbledon looking back and forth from the ventriloquist to the dummy and the whole time we can see the hand up this dummy’s bum. It’s like going to see an action film but instead of cool special effects you are given a green screen, a copy of the script and encouraged to imagine along. Or hearing a mime’s cell phone ringing.
Though I suppose the freshness of the material is on par with the craftsmanship of the actual dummies themselves. I mean, in 1979 I had a doll who could wet a diaper. Madame Tussaud has a wax Howie Mandel so realistic looking I almost open hand slapped it across the face and screamed “bank that Mandel!” And this year a hospital in Europe transplanted an entire HUMAN FACE. So why do all these ventriloquist dolls still look like old timey minstrel show props or puppet projects from “101 Crafts for a Rainy Day”? Forget Locks for Love. I’ll start the Follicles for Folly project if it means this group of yuk yuks will up their game. I could probably get all psychological on this issue and say the primitive appearance of the dummy furthers the distance between the ventriloquist and his prop thereby offering the comedian more freedom to express his creativity and innermost thoughts through the relative anonymity of the doll blah blah thesis blah. But honestly all I want to say is that ventriloquists are all a bunch of dummies.
Yesterday I read somewhere online about the discovery of the dead body of a woman along a river on the East coast. She had recently been reported missing. The body was discovered by a man on an early morning walk with his dog. In speaking to the authorities and the press the witness expressed his shock and disbelief at finding the woman who was partially submerged in water and covered by debris. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…I thought I was looking at a mannequin until [my dog] ran up to it”. This story caught my eye because of the dummy. The presumed mannequin that is. I have heard this story before and I don’t know if I consider it a testament to the optimistic nature of humankind or the naiveté of our citizens in the belief that there are legions of naked mannequins being dumped along highway underpasses, soggy riverbeds and forest preserves.
I’ve read enough newspaper stories, seen enough Bill Kurtis narrated crime shows and watched enough horror films to know that, along with the standard issue cautions against answering the phone, going into the basement, and helping men in Styrofoam casts find lost pets, the body you are seeing is never a mannequin. Yes it’s a sad commentary on crime in America, however, not once have I heard a lead or read a headline that said “AREA MANNEQUIN REPORTED MISSING”. I have never seen a news conference wherein a department store official pleaded to the cameras “Sportswear needs you! Door buster sales start Friday at 9:00!” or seen flyers describing a blonde woman, 5’7”, size 4, wearing a jumper (really? are those a thing? not many people can pull that off) Last seen standing on her toes and holding a striped towel from House wares. And when you stop to consider the logistics of mannequin removal, transport and disposal there is little wonder.
The first hurdle Andrew McCarthy would face would be acquiring a mannequin. Presumably, as a mannequin predator, he would cruise the local malls and department stores looking for potential victims. Upon finding a vulnerable mannequin, alone, perhaps in an isolated area by the clearance rack full of size 00s, with painted on come hitherance, the actual mechanics of moving Emmy would come into play. During the Christmas season of 2006 I was scolded by a security guard at the Gap for merely trying to remove- and pay for- the last striped Gap scarf in the Chicagoland area which happened to be sported by the storefront window Kim Cattrall. Not a full layer of outerwear…not a festive pair of boxer shorts….a simple cold weather accessory. I can only imagine the repercussions I would have faced from the Blartforce had I tried to make off with the entire ensemble.
So how do you move a mannequin? They aren’t exactly designed for, well, abduction? To get her out of the store you would have to hoist her under your arm like a surfboard or up in the air like the come from behind hero of a sports movie then wrestle your way through double sets of slamming doors. Or you could pull her close and try baby stepping the two-in-one-look-how-in-love-we-are-we-can’t-even-bear-to-be-apart-for-ten seconds revolving door move or lastly, the dreaded automatic timed handicapped door, during which time she will lean heavily against you for support as though she were a sloppy ex-girlfriend who called you to meet for drinks at Houlighans ‘and just catch up’ but during which she downed one too many poma-apple-mocha-Patrone-accino-Jack-tini’s, clutched both your hands in hers and through gulped burps slurred ‘but we were so good once weren’t we?’
Fast forward through all the creepy Lars and the Real Girl stuff and you’ve now got a mannequin sporting the latest in fall fashions (omg! tights are still in?!) to dump. Again, we tackle the issue of manneuverability. It once took my friend Rory and I over half an hour to portage a canoe- with a guide- 100 feet from a van down to the Fox River on a worn dirt trail marked “CANOE ACCESS”. So I don’t know how anyone is getting Kristy Swanson (thanks IMDB!) to the river’s edge. The moral of this story, well the stream of consciousness behind this story, is that the next time you are walking along a river and think you’ve found a Mannequin you’ve most likely found a Weekend at Bernie’s.
Since I am on the topic of dummies I’d like to take advantage of this natural segue way to applaud Comedy Central on its decision to cancel The Jeff Dunham Show. I don’t normally root for failure nor do I approve of sweeping generalizations. However, I make exceptions in certain circumstances and here is one. I cannot stand ventriloquists. I hate dummies. There I said it. It’s on the record. Any future political aspirations dashed. Any ABC Family pilot scripts rejected. Any spokesmodel gigs lost to Brooke Burke. But I feel so much better now for having admitted it. Like Meredith Baxter Birney when she purged after that huge binge scene in Kate’s Secret. I don’t get it. But I do get it. And that’s part of what bugs me. Hang on a second while I scramble my way up to the top of this soapbox……and away we go.
I think the first thing that bugs me about ventriloquism as a form of comedy is that it’s…not…funny. The material is awful. A combination of recycled borscht belt jokes and playground humor wherein the comedian is essentially telling jokes at himself, about himself, by himself. The equivalent of being grabbed by a bigger older comedian who yells “why are you hitting yourself? why are you hitting yourself?”. But then there’s always the innuendo part of the act where the puppet makes a vaguely lascivious comment involving hands, laps and pockets and then makes a clumsy pass at a moderately attractive woman sitting in one of the front rows. Not to mention the obvious “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” display of the dummy’s machinations. We sit there like we’re at Wimbledon looking back and forth from the ventriloquist to the dummy and the whole time we can see the hand up this dummy’s bum. It’s like going to see an action film but instead of cool special effects you are given a green screen, a copy of the script and encouraged to imagine along. Or hearing a mime’s cell phone ringing.
Though I suppose the freshness of the material is on par with the craftsmanship of the actual dummies themselves. I mean, in 1979 I had a doll who could wet a diaper. Madame Tussaud has a wax Howie Mandel so realistic looking I almost open hand slapped it across the face and screamed “bank that Mandel!” And this year a hospital in Europe transplanted an entire HUMAN FACE. So why do all these ventriloquist dolls still look like old timey minstrel show props or puppet projects from “101 Crafts for a Rainy Day”? Forget Locks for Love. I’ll start the Follicles for Folly project if it means this group of yuk yuks will up their game. I could probably get all psychological on this issue and say the primitive appearance of the dummy furthers the distance between the ventriloquist and his prop thereby offering the comedian more freedom to express his creativity and innermost thoughts through the relative anonymity of the doll blah blah thesis blah. But honestly all I want to say is that ventriloquists are all a bunch of dummies.
Monday, May 10, 2010
My First B.M.
I know what people are going to think when they first see this blog. You are going to say “Really? Still with the blogs? Yet another blog bandwagoner who thinks we all want to read about how Caribou screwed up her coffee order this morning , what an un-be-live-able bargain she snagged at Nordstrom Rack or her marginally informed musings on American foreign policy. Blogs are so 2005. She’s a day late and a dollar short. In fact, as we speak, she is probably out getting the birth certificate for her Cabbage Patch Kid notarized, scheduling an appointment for a spiral perm and drinking Zimas while waxing her convertible LeBaron, filling out MadLibs and wondering when Mr. Mister will release a new record”.
By some accounts you would be correct. It’s late in the game. The blogosphere is littered with cyber junk: abandoned New Year’s resolution blogs, fudged food journals and lousy drunk poetry full of stanzas that all rhyme with fate. The world’s demand to know what a royal bitch that Janice from work can be or how much your friend Carolyn is like Miranda from Sex and the City and why Matt from your co-ed slow pitch intramural softball league doesn’t dump that bitch girlfriend of his already since everyone hates her with her giant Olsen twin sunglasses and ridiculous rhinestone iPhone case is no match for the supply. But don’t blame me. Blame the Facebook Man with his fascist creatively stifling limit of 424 characters per status. Verbose. I am. There, I said it. And so I must blog it out.
So that is what brought me to here. And now that I have made the commitment I’ve learned that there are responsibilities associated with creating a blog. We’ve gone past pithy updates clickety clacked from waiting rooms and traffic jams. There are background colors (and patterns!) to chose, font sizes, jpegs to upload, bios to write, banners, and font colors all coordinated in a way meant to adequately reflect my sitcom grandpa misanthropic side as well as highlight my whimsical aw shucks- hey look how I just threw this blog together nature. Heady decisions. Expect revisions.
So the other day after returning one of our Netlix rentals I decided to log on to our Netflix account to QC our ‘queue’ to make sure Cannonball Run 3 or ALF Season 2 (Disc 1) hadn’t snuck to the top of the list while we were enduring the ‘short wait’ for Inglorious Basterds. When I logged on and began browsing I noticed that Netflix had already created a list of recommendations for me. Normally this kind of presumption (I’m looking at you Amazon.com) would elicit a mild ‘harrumph’ from me and some grumbling about Big Brother and cookies and data mining and other scary sounding computer-y words. Data mining? Dangerous work. Best to take a canary with you.
But Netflix had taken it one step further. Not only had they come up with a general theme of recommendations, but they had reduced it to a very specific and somewhat unnerving sub-theme. According to Netflix authorities, my taste preferences indicate that I favor “violent and mind-bending” movies that feature “exciting revenge”. Really Netflix? What gave me away? My recent rental of “An Education” or was it “Thirtysomething Season 1? Exactly what kind of formula or algorithm does Netflix employ to create such sweeping character judgments? Because it sounds like something Homeland Security should know about. Or at a bare minimum local neighborhood watch groups. And what exactly characterizes ‘exciting revenge’? Does that mean they have ‘boring revenge’ genre full of Soupy Sales pie-in-the-face classics and videos of high school girls calling each other fat?
If Netflix is that keen an observer perhaps they should join forces with eHarmony or Match.com. MetFlix may haps? It could go something like this, “Dear Steve, based on your fondness for walks on the beach at sunset as well as your recent rental of the movie Marley and Me we think you will favor the following women”….Or they could join forces with Myers Briggs to help screen potential job candidates. “We are impressed with your qualifications and background Jenny but we see here that you rented three Steve Guttenberg movies over the past eighteen months and now aren’t quite sure you possess the appropriate judgment and decision making skills that we here at Vandalay Industries demand of our account executives. You may want to consider adding a few documentaries to your Netflix queue.”
And what kind of company am I keeping in the ‘exciting revenge’ category? A bunch of middle-aged guys with three names who wear big plastic framed glasses, still live with their mothers, work in creepy clerical government jobs no one really thought existed and peep on kids making out in cars at forest preserves. I feel like I should contact Netflix to correct this potential character assassination before I wind up on some TSA ‘no fly’ lists. Perhaps I should pad my queue with less vengeful titles. Animated films full of wise-cracking yet good natured animals or any movie featuring an oafish muscular male lead in an unlikely occupation. “What!? HE’S the nanny? How on earth will that work??” I guess it comes down to a matter of respect and reputation. Would I rather Netflix fear me (“she’s asking for ‘Carrie’… AGAIN!) or pity me (“sigh…again with the Curly Sue?) I’m sticking to my guns. My violent and mind-bending guns. And so if the next red envelope from Netflix also contains an order of protection requiring me to view the movie from no less than 100 feet at all times so be it.
By some accounts you would be correct. It’s late in the game. The blogosphere is littered with cyber junk: abandoned New Year’s resolution blogs, fudged food journals and lousy drunk poetry full of stanzas that all rhyme with fate. The world’s demand to know what a royal bitch that Janice from work can be or how much your friend Carolyn is like Miranda from Sex and the City and why Matt from your co-ed slow pitch intramural softball league doesn’t dump that bitch girlfriend of his already since everyone hates her with her giant Olsen twin sunglasses and ridiculous rhinestone iPhone case is no match for the supply. But don’t blame me. Blame the Facebook Man with his fascist creatively stifling limit of 424 characters per status. Verbose. I am. There, I said it. And so I must blog it out.
So that is what brought me to here. And now that I have made the commitment I’ve learned that there are responsibilities associated with creating a blog. We’ve gone past pithy updates clickety clacked from waiting rooms and traffic jams. There are background colors (and patterns!) to chose, font sizes, jpegs to upload, bios to write, banners, and font colors all coordinated in a way meant to adequately reflect my sitcom grandpa misanthropic side as well as highlight my whimsical aw shucks- hey look how I just threw this blog together nature. Heady decisions. Expect revisions.
So the other day after returning one of our Netlix rentals I decided to log on to our Netflix account to QC our ‘queue’ to make sure Cannonball Run 3 or ALF Season 2 (Disc 1) hadn’t snuck to the top of the list while we were enduring the ‘short wait’ for Inglorious Basterds. When I logged on and began browsing I noticed that Netflix had already created a list of recommendations for me. Normally this kind of presumption (I’m looking at you Amazon.com) would elicit a mild ‘harrumph’ from me and some grumbling about Big Brother and cookies and data mining and other scary sounding computer-y words. Data mining? Dangerous work. Best to take a canary with you.
But Netflix had taken it one step further. Not only had they come up with a general theme of recommendations, but they had reduced it to a very specific and somewhat unnerving sub-theme. According to Netflix authorities, my taste preferences indicate that I favor “violent and mind-bending” movies that feature “exciting revenge”. Really Netflix? What gave me away? My recent rental of “An Education” or was it “Thirtysomething Season 1? Exactly what kind of formula or algorithm does Netflix employ to create such sweeping character judgments? Because it sounds like something Homeland Security should know about. Or at a bare minimum local neighborhood watch groups. And what exactly characterizes ‘exciting revenge’? Does that mean they have ‘boring revenge’ genre full of Soupy Sales pie-in-the-face classics and videos of high school girls calling each other fat?
If Netflix is that keen an observer perhaps they should join forces with eHarmony or Match.com. MetFlix may haps? It could go something like this, “Dear Steve, based on your fondness for walks on the beach at sunset as well as your recent rental of the movie Marley and Me we think you will favor the following women”….Or they could join forces with Myers Briggs to help screen potential job candidates. “We are impressed with your qualifications and background Jenny but we see here that you rented three Steve Guttenberg movies over the past eighteen months and now aren’t quite sure you possess the appropriate judgment and decision making skills that we here at Vandalay Industries demand of our account executives. You may want to consider adding a few documentaries to your Netflix queue.”
And what kind of company am I keeping in the ‘exciting revenge’ category? A bunch of middle-aged guys with three names who wear big plastic framed glasses, still live with their mothers, work in creepy clerical government jobs no one really thought existed and peep on kids making out in cars at forest preserves. I feel like I should contact Netflix to correct this potential character assassination before I wind up on some TSA ‘no fly’ lists. Perhaps I should pad my queue with less vengeful titles. Animated films full of wise-cracking yet good natured animals or any movie featuring an oafish muscular male lead in an unlikely occupation. “What!? HE’S the nanny? How on earth will that work??” I guess it comes down to a matter of respect and reputation. Would I rather Netflix fear me (“she’s asking for ‘Carrie’… AGAIN!) or pity me (“sigh…again with the Curly Sue?) I’m sticking to my guns. My violent and mind-bending guns. And so if the next red envelope from Netflix also contains an order of protection requiring me to view the movie from no less than 100 feet at all times so be it.
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