(The following handwritten prayer journal thoughts were found recently among discarded speech notes by a cleaning crew after Sarah Palin had deplaned in Nashville to speak before the National Tea Party Movement on Saturday, February 6th. We told Otto to not add his own elements to the prayer, but he insists he had nothing to do with the language)
Dear L
ord, God of the good people of Alaska and the other 48 states. Please, I beg you, help me to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan as I go down to speak my Tea Party supporters in Nashville. Not the old Ronald Reagan from the TV, but the one that we always talk about. The powerful Reagan who wiped out the liberals and had them all sent to live in those nasty camps before that wimpy Bill Clinton had them liberated. I ask you, God, to persuade these Tea Partyers that I am to be their leader. They need a strong, Reagany leader like me and Todd. Right now they’re just clingin’ to their guns and you and their teabags. Oh Heavenly Father, you alone know that I’m the right woman to save these Tea Party folks from four more years of bad old Washingten politics. Please allow me to be the one to help the Tea Partyers spread their message-that Mr. Obama isn’t one of us, but an uppity democrat from a land far away. You know, Lord, that I went to college in that far away land of Hawaii and it sure as hell ain’t on American soil (sorry God. Sometimes I just get so mad at these Washingten inciters and their fancy ways of trickin’ us good folks you put on earth to do right).
God, I’ve sinned in my heart and don’t deserve to lead the Tea Party nation. I had this dream. You know all of my dreams, but this one was just sooo dreamy. You remember the dream about Scott Brown? He was so oily and hunky and came to pick me up on his Yamaha sled? I don’t know where Todd was in the dream. Probably off shirtless and hot, plowing the driveway or making a bed for me out of cash and 2012 champaigne campaign posters. I’m sorry. Please tell me, of Lord, what to read in order to help me not sin and I’ll have my staff go and get copies. I just want to be a good leader to the American moms and the dads who are out there workin’ to make this a great country. When you make me President, I’ll take over that Hawaii and have them worship you, too. George W. Bush already got Texas for the Americans and look how great that’s worked out! You are a good God! I’m having thoughts about Rick Perry, please please help me with that, too.
One last thing, oh dearest God of all the people in America (except Rahm Emanuel, because, despite his holy name, he ain’t an American and someday I’ll have him and the other illegal alien liberals depted deposited sent back to where they came from). I saw you from the plane window today. There you were, all majesty-ey and God-like. You sort of looked like Ronald Reagan. Seriously, just a little Grecian Formula and you’d look like the God I’ve always imagined-somwhere between Reagan, Todd, Scott Brown and Dan Rather (darn that Perky One!). Amen, from Sarah.
Super Bowl 44 (an NFL tie-in with Vicks, because the game also helped people get much needed sleep) gave the world a few moments to think about. Moments of slight pause and eye twitch, between handfuls of chips. The game and surrounding hype have been a national holiday for some time. I drove through the empty streets of my town on g
ame afternoon and marveled at the way we choose to celebrate a football game, some commercials and a Roman festival of eating (drinking, heartburn, acid reflux and vomiting). After a great time at the home of friends (trying to hear the game over screaming kids who hadn’t even noticed there was football being played), I came home with some thoughts. Unusual to have coherent thoughts, so I’d better note them:
→Queen Latifah sang America The Beautiful during the pre-game festivities. The queen looked and sounded good, but enough with the torchy, over enunciated anthems. She was ably assisted by the South Florida School For The Tone Unaware Chorale. For decades viewers have been treated to the gyrations of Up with People and Michael Jackson (accompanied by confused children). Could some entertainer just sing the song in under 7 minutes, without a sea-sick choir? The Queen was followed by Carrie Underwood with The Star Spangled Banner. Ms. Underwood was a weird alien vision. A skinny white girl from Oklahoma suffering from Stockholm Syndrome after being kidnapped by George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. Her outfit was neat-0. I liked the no-skid surface blouse she had underneath the jumpsuit. She could jump 24 cars with Bo and Luke and then celebrate with a night at The Boar’s Nest.
→Heisman Trophy Winner and Florida Quarterback Tim Tebow and his mom starred in a commercial produced and paid for by Jim Dobson’s Focus on the Family early in the first quarter. Amazingly, the world didn’t end with the running of this commercial. The ad featured Mrs. Tebow holding up a picture of Tim, telling the story of not aborting him and smiling. She’s an attractive woman with a story. Who doesn’t like that? Finally, demonstrating all he’s learned in health classes, young Tebow tackled his mother to illustrate where babies come from. Suddenly, Mrs. Tebow became an eight foot demon snake and hypnotized 4.8 million viewers into becoming pro-life and spit venomous fire from her evil fangs. Okay, she didn’t. Honestly, Madam Tebow didn’t do much else, either.
→The game itself was Saintly, thanks to the Colts defense being on the field for 70 minutes straight while Peyton Manning watched the game without having to buy a ticket. There’s no way to win when an offense just keeps plugging for down after down and you can’t stop ‘em. The game became an escape from the commercials, which were over-reaching this year. The best of the ads was a 30 second spot featuring David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno. leave it to curmudgeonly old Dave to move the Super Bowl along. What was the deal with all the ads with guys in ugly underpants? The one with the actors marching in a field featured an actor who looked like he’d had an accident (his shirt was all stained). My grandmother used to advocate buying new shorts when they turned “tell-tale” gray. Tell-tale gray might sum up the game, the ads and C.B.S.’s approach to the Super Bowl.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcEx767TIas
Today was my last day with the ladies (for several weeks, anyway) and I was charged with making Chef Pierre pies. These cheer
fully boxed pies, with their illustration of old, sepia-toned Pierre on the back, turned out to be acceptable dessert facsimiles. Oh, I’m such a snob. As Agent Dale Cooper used to say, “That’s damn fine cherry pie” and they were. The trick to making them, of course, is simply remembering to push the button on the oven every 108 minutes, lest the pies should implode and tear a hole in the space-time continuum. Yes, too many television tie-ins for one paragraph.
My monthly dose of guilt, Men’s Health magazine arrived at the house yesterday. The thing is, I’ve stopped seeing it as just the preacher of hellfire, brimstone and flabby abs and have started to embrace the good advice tucked between Jimmy The Bartender and the Spring style guide. The arrival of MH each month is a kind of holiday with its own weird rituals. I always start with the article about how to date some unfathomable, beautiful woman and what turns her on. This month features Sofia Vergara. Seeing the article elicited a similar reaction to that of my wife’s grandmother when we used to take her to the movies. Even before the previews had finished, she’d faint away with “Oh Lord Jesus, its Brad Pitt!” The stuff in the middle of MH is what makes me take a half hour and just sit down (and shut up) for a while. This month was a continuation a theme: anti-cynicism.
Mike Zimmerman has interviewed dozens of celebrities for the magazine over the years and notes in the article Why Men Fail that the success stories in entertainment, athletics and business have had the common thread of refusing to bow to cynicism. A simple field test of Zimmerman’s theory on why successful men don’t let themselves get bogged down in negativity is to watch several hours of the Biography channel. Oh sure, you’ll see bios of Johnny Cash burning down forests while high and lots of rock drummers partying in heaven (still trying for more cowbell), but the bios of people who’ve made a lasting impact on the culture are most telling. These are generally people who dreamed, gambled, lost, dreamed, got rich, lost it all, got rich again, and rocked success into their old age. Zimmerman keys into the phenomenon of the modern success and find the same story. I could ramble on about how the truly successful sincerely believe in their dreams, but I’ll leave the last word to Mike Zimmerman:
“But recently, I have chosen to drink the Kool-Aid. Trust me, it’s not easy to swallow. My favorite sport is scoffing. I fight the bitterness in me every single day the way an alcoholic fights the minute-to-minute urge to chug. And yet I rely on this catalog of past encounters with successful men to keep myself oriented. I’m not saying ‘think positively’ or ‘be optimistic’ or some other self help nonsense. I’m not saying I have a sincere belief in myself or my talents or the American Dream. I’m saying I have a sincere belief in belief. I’ve seen it work too many times for it to be a coincidence. Cynics are fakers. But to keep pushing yourself in the face of failure, that’s real.” (Mike Zimmerman, Why Men Fail, Men’s Health, 3/10, page 99. used without permission).
Part of the joy of becoming a food service professional was never having to get up in the morning. No such thing as morning. Morning was that time before dawn when I’d return home from a shift and the after-shift libations. Oh, sure there were the days when I’d open kitchens, but I never chose to be the breakfast guy. I enjoyed taking my slam well after noon. Even the burger flipping life didn’t start until after the sun had been up for several hours, gotten bored and wandered off to hook up with some clouds. The good times are over for me it seems. I asked for responsibility and apparently that entails getting up at 4:30 in the morning and going off to join the ranks of the ambitious. My first job in the world of the responsible has been to go work for the ladies.
My employer operates a café in one of it’s local outpatient surgery and rehabilitation centers. The café is tiny and cramped, with no means to fry hamburgers. The café is run by four women who sell sandwiches grilled on electric irons along with soup, chips and an assortment of other goodies. The clients are almost all female. Most of the guys in hospital nutrition won’t take shifts there, because the café is a little too estrogen-y. Cute pie, cute sandwiches, nice older women who serve with a smile. I don’t fit in, being a confidently male, all cranky, burger bastard. Despite the nature of the establishment, I go work there without hesitation. The ladies are all my friends of several years and its like old home week to take shifts at the café.
This morning found me questioning my culinary school credentials. Many times in this profession, I find myself able to make fabulous food from virtually nothing, but baffled by scientifically engineered boxed products. Today’s project was to make soup from frozen bricks. I spent years of my life having snarky little Frenchmen yell things at me like “Ahhh! Your chiffonade is ooor eee bleh!” Frozen soup shouldn’t be a problem. I dumped a frozen brick of noodlegoo into a hotel pan only to have great barfy chunks blow back on me and into my clothes. So now I wore the distinctly musky scent of Axe and chicken soup. Broccoli cheese soup was marginally better. I finished the soup by beating the daylights out of it with a ladles (more chunkage). This is the quick service cook’s motto: when in doubt, beat the food down. Another week and a half with the ladies and then back to my regularly scheduled life.
Today there is a fun article on MSNBC.com about 7 dead or dying auto brands with a poll as to which one readers miss the most. While I think Saturn and Saab left this world too early, some of the old badges were dogs and deserve to be forgotten. O
ne of the brands that writer Dan Carney waxes nostalgic about is AMC. The cars of American Motors in the 70’s and 80’s were bad and no amount of ink should be expended pining about the loss to the landscape following the disappearance of these automobiles. Even the Jeep C.J.’s of AMC’s later years were scary bad. My first car was to be a very used, piss yellow (and wood grain paneled) Pacer Wagon. This was not the beloved fishbowl of Wayne’s World, but death on four unbalanced wheels. On the last trip I took in the old pee-bee, the floor boards gave way and I found myself riding north from Kalamazoo to Plainwell staring at U.S. 131 going by underneath me. Of course, I was sixteen and thought owning any car, even one with no floor, would be “cool.” It was like the episode of Bionic Man in which Steve Austin sticks his bio-robot foot through the floor of a pickup while accelerating. Mercifully, the pee-bee never made it back to our driveway. So, thanks Dan. I don’t think any of us who lived through the death car era will miss many of those vehicles which helped put the U.S. auto industry under. Onward and upward.
Pha. I angered the headache gods and got saddled with a sonoffabitchin cranial malaise that lasted 18 hours. What to the ever. This morning I was watching the now classic stop-motion video by Noah K (and it’s tribute parody featuring The Simpsons). If you’re a neophyte like me, you may have not heard of everyday, which is posted on Vimeo. The concept was that Noah took a photograph of himself every day for nearly six and half years and assembled them into a video montage of his life during the time between 2000 and 2006. The spare piano score by Carly Comando serves to add drama and import to the distilling of six years of the man’s life into five minutes of changes. The idea is a good one and most people aren’t able to document their lives in such detail (while not revealing a lot of details). Admittedly, I found myself thinking absurd little things during the video (“Oh! He got a new apartment”). I’ll give you the Simpsonian version, but seek out the real one for yourself. Worth a look.http://www.vimeo.com/776824
The knocking begins with kicks to the inside of the forehead at around 2:30 in the morning.
“Cut it out. I’m not getting up.”
By 4:00 the knocking has become a rhythmic assault between the eyes.
“Get bent. I need to sleep.”
Around 5:00 a.m. I give up. Too tired to deal with anything but the migraine, I go put on the coffee. My only hope on migraine days is that I’m just right enough to go to work that day. This is the story of my thirties, putting up with headaches that range from the benignly dull ache grinding itself out over a day (or more recently, three) to the full-blown, blinding carnival of nauseating pain that leaves me asleep on the bathroom floor. The battles have been fierce, but I feel a change in the war. There’s been a subtle shift in wind and I’m coming out of the season of the migraine. Less meds (o.t.c. and otherwise), less episodes per week and rarely any of the nausea. My last serious migraine was a week and a half ago and I awoke as if someone had flipped a switch and simply shut the headache off (and left the bed to write “What Can You Say About…”). I’m only beginning to understand migraines and my body. Help is coming from others who’ve had the headaches before me.
A Brain Wider Than The Sky (A Migraine Diary) recently published by Andrew Levy (Simon and Schuster) chronicles 
the authors battles with debilitating migraines and chronicles the history of thought on headaches. Levy is an English Department Chair at Butler University, essayist and author of the renowned 2005 book The First Emancipator. I’m absorbed by this poetic, slim little volume in which Levy ponders the migraine and deals with the way it impacts his life and that of society. While the book could be seen as self-indulgent, a publication of one’s musings on the nature of life with a massive headache, there are a lot of universals that migraine sufferers can share with Levy. The onset of migraine, the triggers, auras, nausea. The fact that because of rebounds we only get eight pills a month (in his case Imitrex. In mine, Treximet). There are more laughably subtle anecdotes about the way we weakly combat migraines, like keeping a bowl of white rice and a fork beside the bed. Other tragic consequences, like the inability at various times to parent, play themselves out throughout the book and over the course of our lives. Levy writes in language that makes hacks like me stare at the page and re-read the same passages several times. In other words, he writes in English.
A Brain Wider Than The Sky has at least got me thinking about the migraines again, and not simply wandering through life miserably. I’m simplifying this year and living a subtle, monastic life. Rather than giving up my headache triggers over and over, I’m choosing to live simply so that I can simply live. If I lose weight, lower my cholesterol and control my blood pressure, well that’s just icing on the migraine free life. Onward and Upward.
There is quite a bit of “scuttlebutt” on the googles today as to whether actress Anna Torv will leave the Fox series Fringe, killing off the show’s protagonist Olivia Dunham. Scuttlebutt is what we science show geeks do when any small ripple appears in our isolated entertainment universe-we scuttle around on our bums looking for clues as to the direction of our stories. Often we may pick fights with Eliza Dushku scuttlebutts, or Battlestar Galactica fans, but we’re generally content to watch our shows and search for clues (I was an MST3K scuttlebutt for years. Yep. A grown man watching puppets critique bad movies). The real question for fans at the mid-season finale (i.e.-American Idol break) is not whether any of the actors will leave, be it Torv, Joshua Jackson, or John Noble. They are the franchise and will more than likely see the show out. No, it’s a question of whether Fringe will rebound and recapture its quality form next season. There is quite a lot lacking in the episodes that have aired since the end of the World Series and it would be nice to see a rebound to earlier form.
Earlier this year I wrote a post about my excitement at the return of Fringe for the Fall (“T.G.I.Fringe: The Return of T.V.’s Sharpest Drama” 9/18/09). I was and still am enthused about the show, despite the fact that it has not lived up to the quality of season 1. This is the expected sophomore slump. Season 2 started out with FBI agent Dunham returning from/to the alternate dimension and confronting William Bell (Leonard Nimoy). Viewers were treated during the first season to an episodic creschendo building up as Dr. Jones worked to bridge the gap between parallel earths and bring super soldiers into this world. This season, after a few Fall episodes, the story thread (the Pattern) was left behind and viewers are left with to stand-alone shows for much of the season. Often good stand-alone shows, but not part of the overall story arc. Little disappointments are creeping in. Has anyone seen the Man in the Hat since one his brethren was killed earlier this season? What of director Broyles? After his one episode back story revelation, he’s also been relegated to the ancillary character file. Now, there is a “pattern” that each episode follows rigorously and some of the fun of the show is gone. No more Walter-isms. No mention of Massive Dynamic. No, each week follows another one of Dr. Bishop’s attempts to reconcile one of his misbegotten creations as it causes havoc in the world.
Sadly, the problems started with cost cutting at Warner Brothers and Fox. Kirk Acevado’s character agent Charlie Francis found himself thrown into a furnace by a dimension crossing shape shifter early this season. The reality, as Acevado has publicly fumed about, was that his firing (along with core staff) as part of a budget purge. Charlie was brought back, to the confusion of many, in a re-heated leftover episode that didn’t even make the season 1 DVD cut. Killing Charlie was the start of poor Fringe writing and formulaic episodes designed solely to have something in the can. So, we’ve now reached finale time and next week’s show looks like a barn burner. Still, a show that gave us a freshman season of barn burners could have done better all along.
(A very grateful thank you to everyone who has written a comment on the blog over the past few months. Due in part to my being a noob at this, and to the reliability of the filters on Word Press, I have only just discovered some of the things readers have said recently. As always, you all are valued more than anything and constantly keep me honest {and not writing in a vacuume} )
During my bright college days in the mid-nineties, I had this vision of channeling the spirit of Forrest Gump. The tag line from the famous film was “You’ll never see the world the same way once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump.“ The tag was right. I suppose every person has a movie that informs and manages to elucidate their character in certain ways and Gump was mine. The fifteen year old argument will persist that Pulp Fiction should have gotten all the laurels that Forrest Gump received as it result of its universal success. It is also true that Gump spawned many unnecessary cultural touchstones (never mind the chain restaurants and the fact that Dubya lists it as his favorite movie). I just wanted to live the Gumpian life. I saw the picture in theaters more times than all the Star Wars movies combined. Forrest Gump was my depression buster, the movie that made me want to get out of college and go live life. It is only now as I live my ponderous existence that I realize just being alive often forces us down the Gumpian path. This is not a post, in fact, about the fictional novel/film character, but about my Grandfather, myself and the road of life we not-so-aimlessly run along.
My Grandfather, George Stanley Robinson, passed away last night. He was 87 years old. By all rights, this is not a day for posting some cheeky little blog note. I found out an hour and a half ago and have tried to see the world through his eyes for some of that time. Grandpa embodied all the 1990’s cliches-both that of Gump and Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation ones. Just by virtue of being born in 1922 he managed to live through nearly every great upheaval of the 20th Century. He was a post-Armistice baby and suffered polio (which showed in his mangled thumb, a childhood fixation of mine). Grandpa, forced by the Great Depression and the greater need of his family quit school during the eighth grade. He lived his childhood during the rise of Michigan’s auto industry. A native of the Flint area, he secured a “good” job on the line at General Motors. When war broke out in Europe, He was forced off the assembly line and drafted into the Army. During training with the 82nd Airborne, due to insolence, Grandpa’s managed to get his rank stripped and bumped out of the first wave to land at Normandy. Most of those he trained with didn’t live through the experience. He eventually did land in France and wound up in Belgium at the Battle of the Bulge. He described the horror of war to me as “waiting in the snow for a week at Christmas, hoping to not be killed by Hitler’s troops.” Grandpa came home, met and married my grandmother within a year. They raised three daughters together, one (my mom) severely handicapped. They managed to see three teenage girls through high school years during the late 1960’s. He worked as a metal finisher, machinist and truck driver, retiring in the 1980’s. By the end of the 90’s he was facing that one last upheaval for so many Americans of his century: seeing my Grandmother through Alzheimer’s Disease. He spent the last few years making himself sick, not letting on how ill she really was. He went with her to the nursing home over Thanksgiving. Partly to take care of his congestive heart failure, but more (I suspect) to make she Grandma’s needs were care of.
Life is not necessarily what happens while you’re making other plans, but what happens to you while you’re living. So it was for Grandpa, so it is for me. Life will never be the same now that I’ve seen it through his eyes (and my own).
The following is a preview of Wednesday, January 27th’s State of The Union Address by President Barack Obama:
- “America is better a
nd stronger than it was just twelve months ago. With the help of Congress, we’ve seen job growth in vital industries such as escort services and pharmaceuticals for middle-aged men.” - “We’re saddened to see Press Secretary Robert Gibbs leave his post to take a job at an Illinois Chevy dealership. He couldn’t sell you health care reform, but Gibbs might be able to get you a sweet deal on a gently used Cavalier.”
- “In order to counteract the budget shortfall, all government agencies are to be outsourced to Mexico.”
- “The Boy Scouts of America will now be fully absorbed into The Department of Homeland Security. The Scouts will now be helping old ladies through airport security and guarding our port system against the threat of bears.”
- “I’ll be retiring following the end of this press confer…oh, wait. I thought this was my Minnesota Vikings speech.”
- “American scientists have made great strides this year. Our Six Million Dollar Man program has produced bionic soldiers for just under forty billion dollars apiece.”
- “Its taken a year, but we’ve found a collar Dick Cheney can’t knaw through.”
- “Pants on the ground…yeah, I know that was so two weeks ago, but it just gets stuck in your head!”
- “In lieu of stimulus checks this year we’ll be sending out cigarettes. Mmmm….smooth, rich, American made cigarettes.”
- “James Cameron will replace Ben Bernacke as Federal Reserve Chairman, since Cameron is the only person in America with a clue about money.”
- “E pluribus unum will be changed on all American coinage to ‘Watch Your Back’.”
- “Thanks for coming out tonight. We can’t validate your parking, but feel free to take a handful of Watch Your Back nickles!”
Every third wee
kend I’m in charge of the hospital cafeteria. Since we have very few customers during the off-peak days, the job becomes like curating a food museum. Physicians don’t schedule any elective procedures on Saturday or Sunday and that is just as well. After all, who’d want to have a gallbladder removed or false eyelashes excised by a doctor who can’t concentrate because he’d rather be home watching the Pro Bowling Tour on ABC? The last sentence shows that I get all of my medical knowledge from endless games of Operation. So, I put pans of vulcanized eggs out for the skeleton crew along with lots of Sea-Monkey bacon and go about polishing all the door handles for eight hours a day. Every once in a while I find myself running the food museum on a weekend in which we have a larger number of staff members and the E.R. is jumping. You never hope for knife fights to break out locally, but they do promote job security and bolster the economy. This past weekend was an example of this. The temperature in the region had risen to a balmy 40 degrees and there were lots of people in the Emergency Room. You can’t just leave your house after a month of heavy snow and expect to not get into a brawl. At least not in southern Michigan. This extra staffing, by the way, is how I found myself having to tell a nurse to not eat from the cafeteria trash cans.
My cafeteria is overseen by a managed food service I’ll call Gigantor Industries (a division of Gigantor Laundry Services). The company managers insist that we display real food at all times to give the consumer and idea of what our specials that day might be. Unlike plastic food, the real stuff deteriorates rapidly. This doesn’t stop random people from walking by the displays and eating them. Disgusting displays that have been out for 6 to 8 hours. Doesn’t matter. Some people have purchased the displays and eaten them. At least once, a visitor has taken the entire display and run out the door. People honestly don’t care what they ingest. This seems to apply to trash, too. Yesterday, I threw away products that had passed their expiration two weeks ago. A genius float pool nurse dug to the bottom of the can and brought the items to the counter. When I explained the harm in selling them to her, she took the spoiled goods and bragged to a doctor that she’d gotten free food. Someday I’ll get a grown up job, I swear.
During some posts it may seem that I enjoy making fun of nurses. To the contrary, I think that nursing is one of the most demanding and often heart wrenching professions a person can give their life to. Most of the nurses I know are dedicated, extremely intelligent and ultra decisive. Nursing is not for the weak-one of the many reasons I’ll never take it up. I concede that there are happy garbage diggers in every profession, including mine. I just hope she didn’t immediately go and treat patients. Onward and Out of The Trash.
>>Fierce snowstorms cover East Coast. Toyota wins support back by equipping recalled Prius models with snow plows.
