Observances

Today a woman (and I use that term loosely) approached me while dancing a lemur-like dance, with her arms waving in the air as she seemed to leap and fling herself with her hips, all while singing. Others in the room were heard as if their speakers were on a two or three, and her voice was booming at nine, causing me to recoil. It took effort not to protect my ears, as my hand instinctively wanted to do. My eyes decided to make up for it by blinking so rapidly that it nearly caused me to have a seizure. She roared and laughed out this story about how her parents only ever played 50s music when she was growing up, some 25 years after the 50s I should add, and she still loved it to this day. In fact, things in life all somehow corresponded back to various songs in her memory bank, and often she is overcome with the need to sing the appropriate song for the occasion.

All I could think about was how I would really like to punch her right in the nose.

You do not behave this way in public, and you certainly don’t walk up to a group of complete strangers singing, dancing like a rhythmless white girl, and then telling everyone around about your childhood music experiences, and how they turned you into a raving lunatic.

She was way too goddamn happy. Drugs? Mental illness? In need of a good ass kicking? Some pampered princess who has never experienced life? What? What makes someone this freakishly happy? Whatever it is, we must seek the cause and kill it. People like her shouldn’t be allowed to walk around behaving this way. And if they are truly this happy, they should be forced to keep it to themselves.

Singing when there’s no music? Um, no. This is why people like me hate musicals. Only deranged, drugged or damaged people do this. Dancing, and very badly at that, when there’s no music? Even worse. In public, surrounded by strangers? Oh boy. Stand back. And then telling them half your life story? Euthanasia is the only option.

Happy, loud people who share too much: hate them.

* * *

On Monday, I had a series of appointments with multiple doctors scheduled back to back to back, and the first took far less time than anticipated, so I found myself driving around Bannockburn, Illinois, wasting time until my next appointment.

Bannockburn lies among the other North Shore suburbs like Highland Park and Lake Forest, notorious for their wealthy residents. I’m not a huge fan of the rich. I worked in Highland Park too long and was treated so poorly by much of the clientele that I have a bitter taste in my mouth each time I drive through the area, even 13 years later. However, I had time to kill and I decided to take a gander at how the rich and famous live.

Do you know what? Most of those houses were fugly! Big, square, obnoxious monstrosities! Some had these hideous metal sculptures in their front yard, as if to give passersby the impression that the owner had avant-guard flair, which translated to me as a wealthy version of pink-fucking-flamingos. Tacky. My eyes threatened to sprain from rolling so much. Who the hell takes themselves this seriously? There were some gorgeous homes, don’t get me wrong, because not everyone who has money is totally in love with himself and is trying to persuade others to feel the same. How insecure can you be? Why would you live in a home that has only three windows and is shaped like a psychotic architect tried to incorporate every conceivable shape into different rooms in the same house? I couldn’t help but laugh.

It made me realize that we aren’t so different from the rich. They’re just as moronic and garish as we are, trying hard to be noticed. The only difference is they have more money.

Yet I did notice a few more differences.

For one, they had hardly any for-sale signs. If you drive through my neighborhood, there are easily two or more houses for sale on every block, and these don’t include the ones that sit empty, nor do they include the ones recently foreclosed. Everywhere you look, homes are for sale by me, and they remain for sale for months on end, until the signs rot and fall over on the lawn. So, unless the rich sell their mansions in a way that doesn’t include public signage, it seemed to me that the folks in Bannockburn aren’t struggling with the same economic problems we are.

Another thing I noticed was the street names. Tennyson, Keats, Kipling, Malory, and Shelley. No matter how ugly your house is or what nasty metal atrocities you install on your front lawn, you are automatically filled with self-importance when you live on Bentley Drive. This is in direct contrast to my ‘hood, where we live on streets like Misdemeanor, Pimp and Smack. There is no Masters Lane in my town, no matter how you interpret that. And there is no Martin Luther King Drive in the wealthy areas. There is no irony there. It’s just kind of sad.

Something that gave me a little bit of comfort was the fact that gas is a full dollar per gallon higher in Bannockburn than it is an hour away by my house, which is still 20¢ per gallon more than our neighboring states. Go ahead and speculate on what drives gas prices and if we ever should’ve been paying more than we are now, which is still too much.

* * *

While visiting my favorite doctor, I had a little conversation with him about drugs, because the meds I’m on are causing so much trouble for me. The anti-malarial drug is a chemo med, so in addition to the digestive disruptions, nausea, hair loss, fatigue, bruises with no known cause all over the body, and muscle weakness, the medication somehow interferes with whatever it is that tells the bladder to hold the urine until it’s full, so I have to pee about every 2 hours, around the clock, day and night. Boyfriend Extraordinaire thinks I’m having hearing loss as well, though I’m not convinced of this yet. All this doesn’t even touch on what the steroids do, which I’ve actually become accustomed to suffering from at this point. My doctor shook his head and was grateful that my other doctor discontinued the Plaquenil and gave me a diuretic to help with the fluid retention in my neck, hands and feet. However, he warned me that the diuretic will make me pee even more, which I thought wasn’t possible, but he was right.

He looked so distraught about my side effects that I felt I had to comfort him a bit.

I said, “Meh, all drugs have side effects. What I don’t understand is why are they all negative? Why do medicines make you nauseated? Or make your hair fall out? Or make you have to pee every 90 minutes? Why don’t any of them have a single GOOD side effect… like… whitening your teeth… or… making your boobs perkier?”

He laughed and said, “Oh, wait! There’s Rogaine! That was designed for something else and someone started noticing that people were growing their hair back.”

I replied with surprise. I had no idea Rogaine had other intended purposes.

He continued, “And there’s Viagra!”

I piped up, “Oh yeah! That was a cardiac medication, wasn’t it?”

“Yep, a cardio-pulmonary drug that had this interesting side effect. Hehe, and then they just changed the dose by a few milligrams, and charged A TON more money for the specialized dose, and that’s what Viagra is today. A total marketing scam!”

“Ugh, of course,” I moaned.

“I get male patients who beg me to prescribe it and say it’s for their pulmonary problems so that they don’t have to pay the high price for it, but no, I can’t do that.”

I giggled and said, “Darn, you should, and stick it to them!”

Then I paused, thinking of the great pun I unintentionally made and we both started laughing again.

I have faith that this doctor does not live in one of those geometric homes with sharp protrusions of oddly shaped rooms, tiny windows, and unsightly sculptures on his lawn. He’s way too cool for that.

* * *

Tonight, the premiere of “Celebrity Rehab” aired and I am already emotionally invested in some of the addicts. I desperately want Rodney King to do well, make friends, and have a good life. Steven Adler, I’m afraid to see where things lead him because he looks like he’s too far gone to save. I want the rest to do well, of course, particularly Jeff Conaway because I can’t stand the idea of him being back over and over. However, there are two characters (and I use that term accurately) who are going to make me have violent outbursts just watching them. Jeff’s girlfriend is one of them, and I actually hate her so much that I wish she’d just overdoes already and be out of the picture. The other is Gary Busey, but I think that if he hangs out for a few more days, the rest of the people are going to kill him. THAT will be a good episode to watch! Dr. Drew might even join in, and my crush on him will only intensify. Damn this show for hooking me all over again!

Lessons From an Unlikely Source

As hard as I try to avoid watching Gene Simmons: Family Jewels, not only do I seem to end up turning my television on right when it airs (and I don’t even know when that is), but the other cable networks choose to air things I don’t want to watch at the same time, so I end up watching it again and again. And much as I hate to admit it, I really enjoy it.

Last week I caught an older episode that had me laughing out loud repeatedly. What you have to understand if you’ve never watched the show is that Gene Simmons is not the same character he was in the 70s and 80s. He’s a putz. He’s the only one in the family without a wicked sense of humor, and most of the time he’s actually the butt of the jokes being told. As his daughter describes him, he’s usually in his “onesie” by 7 p.m. and asleep by 8. He could easily be the most un-fun person on reality television, who just happens to be surrounded by people who are really fun.

So, this episode I caught saw Gene and Shannon go to Vegas to attend her sister’s wedding. First they all attended a show by the comedian (and I use that term loosely) Carrot Top. When the show was over, the girls had a bachelorette party and Gene went backstage to hang with Carrot Top.

I need to interject something first. I haven’t seen Carrot Top in a good decade or so, and when he appeared on this episode, I almost threw up. Here is a man in his mid-40s wearing gobs of makeup and so grotesquely muscular in the chest and shoulders area that he looks like a clown on steroids. The more I looked at him, the more I felt certain he was going to go into a ‘roid rage and turn into the clown from It. Just when you think the freakish can’t get freakier…

Gene and Carrot Top cavorting around were as funny as watching paint dry. Perhaps the two unfunniest people in the same zip code had teamed up to entertain reality T.V. watchers, and for some reason, the camera operators didn’t fall asleep while on assignment. But then, something happened that I like to think was unscripted because it was hilarious.

Carrot Top was creating one of his dumb props, which he said was supposed to represent Paris Hilton in jail. It was comprised of steel bars and he was attaching long, silver vibrators to them. Dumb. But Carrot Top walked away, and fluffy-headed Gene wandered over and picked up one of the vibrators. A moment later we all find out that this vibrator has epoxy on it and it is now glued to Gene’s hand.

Twenty or thirty years ago, this would’ve been a good shot of a gratuitous lifestyle epitomized by a rockstar who helped define the sex, drugs, & rock ‘n’ roll era, but this is 2008, and he is so far removed from being a cool, hip, wild rockstar that seeing him holding a vibrator was funny enough, but to know one was adhered to the palm of his hand was hysterical. They’d show him standing there, annoyed, insisting it be referred to as a “back massager”, whining about the pain of his skin being stuck to this sex toy, and the dead-pan delivery of it was so convincing that I can think of no one worse for this to happen to. That’s how unfunny this guy has become. However, he could not get the vibrator off his hand. The hotel nurse tried to pick away at it, but he whimpered about the pain so she gave up. The next day he had to attend Shannon’s sister’s wedding with his jacket held over his arm because the vibrator was still stuck to his hand, and what’s worse was he didn’t want to tell Shannon about it because he thought she’d be furious. How does someone as unfunny as Gene Simmons hide from the world the humiliating fact that he’s accidentally glued a vibrator to his palm?

Anyway, he finally came clean with Shannon and ended up at his plastic surgeon’s office to have it removed.

I wouldn’t have even mentioned how funny that episode was if it wasn’t for the fact that the one I saw before that one was so incredibly moving. I never would’ve imagined this silly show would be so emotional.

Sophie had a paper due on the military, and after a pathetic and unsurprising look at how Gene performed in some bootcamp exercises, he and Sophie visited a veterans hospital, where Gene talked with some of the patients to hear their stories and thank them for their service. The stories were absolutely heart wrenching. One soldier said he volunteered to serve in the military so no one in his family would ever have to, and here he sat in a wheelchair in a VA hospital. I was choked up just listening to their stories, and then Gene started talking to an older guy who was a veteran of the Vietnam War, and in an attempt to thank him for everything he gave and everything he did, Gene started to cry and had to take a moment to collect himself.

By then I was sobbing because I was thinking of how seldom these people probably hear any kind of thanks for their service, and no matter where the motivation to do this came from, Gene seemed to be genuinely moved by how very much it costs each individual who joins the military. You hear statistics about how many people have been killed or wounded in the War in Iraq, but you don’t get to see what those numbers mean, which I think is largely a political ploy to ensure support of the war. Seeing the aftermath is a whole different experience, and while I know plenty of people who have served in various branches of the military, they’ve all managed to come through intact. However, there are plenty who don’t, who won’t ever live normal lives again, and it’s difficult to think about what that means to them.

As much as I hate to admit it, this episode really got me thinking about how forgotten the wounded soldiers become and how much they sacrificed to answer an honorable call.

Here we are, about to enter Memorial Day Weekend, which is more about grilling out than remembering and paying tribute, and I’m thinking it’s about damn time I stand up and say something.

Thank you to all the folks who are currently in the military and all the folks who have been in the military. Thank you for your sacrifice, for your service, and for doing all of this despite the lack of appreciation you receive from most of the civilians. Thank you to the families of servicemen and servicewomen who support their loved ones and take care of one another in their absence so that they can do this job that is too great for the rest of us to do. Thank you to the doctors and nurses who could make a lot more money in the civilian world, but choose to devote their careers to helping our military when they need it. And as weird as this sounds, thanks to Gene Simmons for bringing this home to some of his shallower fans, who might never have thought about what a huge commitment it is or what it can cost people, and to his non-fans who sometimes forget all this.