This is a true story and a tragic one. It happened this way.
I ran away from home after quitting high school in the middle of my senior year. Eventually, I ended up in San Francisco and its famous Haight-Ashbury District. But there is more to Baghdad by the Bay than Haight-Ashbury. There is the Sunset District, the Presidio, the Tenderloin, the Fillmore, the Marina, and there is North Beach. Ah, yes, North Beach, home of Carol Doda's and all the other topless joints. Home of the City Lights bookstore, Ginsburg's home. There are a few other bookstores around and these are mostly frequented by out-of-towners in dark glasses who lurk furtively in and out of these places. And then there was Enrico's.
Enrico's is gone now, destroyed by fire from what I understand and, while this is not the tragedy I spoke of in the first sentence, it is a tragedy in its own right and should not go unremarked. Enrico's was one of the finest Italian restaurants in America and it had both indoor and outdoor seating. When I began going to Enrico's I decided that the outdoor seating was fine for me. I was underage and was ordering wine that came in these glasses that resembled goldfish bowls. The traffic in the outdoor area was thick and the waiters paid me very little mind, or so I thought.
The outdoor seating area at Enrico's fronted the width of the place and my best seat was in a corner at the left as you faced the place. In this corner I sat at least one evening every time I visited San Francisco then and in subsequent years. And I mean the entire evening. It was too good a spot to give up watching the people show on the passing on the street. Eventually, I became fairly well known to the staff and the regulars. After twenty years away from the place, a bartender still recognized me and remembered my name when Mary and I walked in one day. "Hi, Marc," he said. "How have you been?" Before I got a word out, Mary had turned a funny shade of whitish-red and said, "My God. Those stories are all true." Most of them.
At any rate, going back to my very first visit to Enrico's in early 1967, I sat in my corner seat and watched people, especially a long line of people lined up to go into a place next door. There were men in tuxedos and women in the most fantastic gowns this Michigan boy had ever seen. The women were absolutely gorgeous and I was having the time of my life watching this slow-moving parade waltz (there is no other word for it; it's how they moved) past me on their way to the door that would hide them from my sight. I was so seated that my back was turned to part of the line and I really did not think too much about this as I was getting quite a show as it was. But then it happened.
Someone had pinched my backside and when I turned to see who had done me this outrage (it was the first time this had ever happened to me and I was not yet 18), my outrage turned to amazement as I saw one of the aforementioned beauties fluttering her eyelashes at me and giving me a little wave. Her escort was oblivious and it came to me that I could grab her hand and run off with her right there, him never knowing what happened. It was about that time that my regular waiter came over and we had the following conversation.
Leaning very close in to me and speaking very quietly, he said, "You're not from around here, are you, kid?"
"No, I'm not," I admitted.
"Well, son, you're in San Francisco where not everything is what it seems to be."
I told him I didn't understand.
He finally came out with it and said, "That woman is not a woman."
I looked and said, "Nooooo."
He said, "Yes. Check out her feet and hands. Oh, and the Adam's apple while you're at it."
Next door to Enrico's was Finnochio's, at that time one of the most famous drag clubs in the world and just seconds before I had been all set to be dragged away. Now, scooting my chair as far from the rail as possible, I pondered the possibility of heading back to Michigan. But that was out of the question; I figured there was still more to see and learn. I headed into the night.
2010-03-23
2010-03-22
No. Regrets.
Looking back to another time I realize just what I missed and, like most realizations of this sort, it comes around a bit late to do anything about it. Well, I can do half of it, I suppose and hope to know what the other half is doing in response to all of this. I have a pretty good idea but a rather late life lesson for me has been to learn to not to presume too much.
When Mary and I first met in 1986, we talked all the time. There was all manner of give and take about all manner of things. We did not confine ourselves to the usual talk about others. We talked about ideas and events around us. Some of our greatest times together were spent discussing books we had read and the ideas behind those books. We introduced one another to various authors and writings, ideas and thoughts. Before we were married, I told Mary, a cradle Catholic, that I (a cradle mongrel Protestant would be the best description) would never become a Catholic simply because she was one. Whether she knew it, it was her conversation that got me moving in the direction of the Church I was to enter at the Easter Vigil, 2001. But all that conversation slowed down, at least on my part, and eventually came to a grinding halt.
I do not know why this should have been the case. Another thing I don't understand: It has been just about a week and a half short of four years since she died and in all that time I have found more to say to her than I did in the four years previous to her death. Sometimes I think I hear answers. Not that I hear voices, but more like I have an ear in my mind that picks up on what she might be saying.
At one point I suppose I decided that I write better than I talk. This was long before I met Mary. In fact, it was probably somewhere along in high school when I first noticed this. Much of this may have had to do with home life where all was chaos and it was best to keep silent rather than get caught up in the ongoing fray. I learned early on that opening your mouth could put you directly in the line of fire. This is the training I received that put me on to the smart-ass remark, the witty rejoinder, the snappy comeback or, to put it another way, the secret of communicating while not appearing to do so. By turning everything into a joke, no one would take me seriously and yet my point would be made. Thus I became the class clown at school and at home. Realizing at one point that jokes were not always appropriate, I learned the rest of the time to keep my mouth shut and to lay low.
So, the major regret is that I missed out on all the wonderful things Mary could have and would have told me. Her mind was so alive and willing to share what she had in there and I was alive and willing to share jokes. She used to come home from a day of teaching elementary art saying, as she entered the door, "I need to talk to an adult right now." This was a defensive measure for her, I think, since she got to know that a joke would be coming unless it was forestalled. This is something for which I can never forgive myself. Yes, we did continue to have conversations that were joke-free, but they were too few and far between. I would have been a far richer and wiser man today had I bothered to converse with Mary on a regular basis. The fact that I did not is a crime against her and her memory.
When Mary and I first met in 1986, we talked all the time. There was all manner of give and take about all manner of things. We did not confine ourselves to the usual talk about others. We talked about ideas and events around us. Some of our greatest times together were spent discussing books we had read and the ideas behind those books. We introduced one another to various authors and writings, ideas and thoughts. Before we were married, I told Mary, a cradle Catholic, that I (a cradle mongrel Protestant would be the best description) would never become a Catholic simply because she was one. Whether she knew it, it was her conversation that got me moving in the direction of the Church I was to enter at the Easter Vigil, 2001. But all that conversation slowed down, at least on my part, and eventually came to a grinding halt.
I do not know why this should have been the case. Another thing I don't understand: It has been just about a week and a half short of four years since she died and in all that time I have found more to say to her than I did in the four years previous to her death. Sometimes I think I hear answers. Not that I hear voices, but more like I have an ear in my mind that picks up on what she might be saying.
At one point I suppose I decided that I write better than I talk. This was long before I met Mary. In fact, it was probably somewhere along in high school when I first noticed this. Much of this may have had to do with home life where all was chaos and it was best to keep silent rather than get caught up in the ongoing fray. I learned early on that opening your mouth could put you directly in the line of fire. This is the training I received that put me on to the smart-ass remark, the witty rejoinder, the snappy comeback or, to put it another way, the secret of communicating while not appearing to do so. By turning everything into a joke, no one would take me seriously and yet my point would be made. Thus I became the class clown at school and at home. Realizing at one point that jokes were not always appropriate, I learned the rest of the time to keep my mouth shut and to lay low.
So, the major regret is that I missed out on all the wonderful things Mary could have and would have told me. Her mind was so alive and willing to share what she had in there and I was alive and willing to share jokes. She used to come home from a day of teaching elementary art saying, as she entered the door, "I need to talk to an adult right now." This was a defensive measure for her, I think, since she got to know that a joke would be coming unless it was forestalled. This is something for which I can never forgive myself. Yes, we did continue to have conversations that were joke-free, but they were too few and far between. I would have been a far richer and wiser man today had I bothered to converse with Mary on a regular basis. The fact that I did not is a crime against her and her memory.
2010-03-21
Dangerous Books
Going through a book fan website and checking off books that I have read, books I need to read, panning some books while praising others, there arises a trend similar to the one I spoke of concerning music and its influences on me. There are certain books I am certain that set me on the road for my 20-year jaunt on the road around North America. This includes most provinces in Canada, every state in Mexico and the contiguous 48 states of the United States. Since this roaming began in the middle of my senior year of high school, the time-frame for reading these books can reasonably be set at anywhere between my 8th-grade year and December, 1966 when I hit the road.
One of the earliest read and most influential books for me was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The thought of grabbing a raft and just floating down the river stays with me to this day. When I first read Huck, there was no question in my mind about the language, especially the controversial language, since somewhere along the line I had been alerted to something called, "historical context." Of course, this was before actual history was replaced by something called, "social studies." In other words, someone had managed to pound enough sense into my skull to allow me to read certain words with the knowledge that the manner of speaking in this book was not necessarily the way people in my era were supposed to speak, but that su8ch language may have been perfectly natural in another time. Go figure. I hope I never forget my lessons in historical context.
It was sometime around the 10th grade when I read, The Great Imposter, by Ferdinand DeMara, a man with a knack for impersonating just about anything he wanted to impersonate, including a teacher, a surgeon and I forget what all else. A movie starring Tony Curtis was made about this real-life character. But the main thing is that DeMara traveled a lot and gave me another nudge to hit the road.
The Catcher in the Rye was influential but to me not the great book it had been hailed as by people around me. I know it was the first time I had read the infamous "F" word in print and remember being both shocked and amused at this novelty. Beyond that, the book was not directly responsible for the sand in my shoes, but it did give me a push in the right direction, attitude-wise. And I already had a wise-ass attitude. Congenital, most likely. It ain't me; it's my genes, Your Honor.
Back to Mark Twain just long enough to mention that I read most of his travel books long before I read his fiction. Life on the Mississippi, The Innocents Abroad, Following the Equator and A Tramp Abroad were important to me, especially the first one listed in this sentence. I have always found myself attracted to rivers and lakes. The ocean is okay, but I prefer tamer water, not that you can tame the rivers in this country or anywhere else. Just look at the Mississippi, the Red, the Platte here in this country. Twain's talk of going here and there almost effortlessly helped to hook me on peregrination as a way of life.
There are more books that guided my feet out to US 24 to foolishly head north that stormy December day and I am sure I will mention more in the future. The decisions were all mine and I long past the age of reason, so no one takes any blame for what came after but me. These "dangerous books" were not at all dangerous to me, but I am sure my elders would have found them so if they had known where they might lead me.
One of the earliest read and most influential books for me was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The thought of grabbing a raft and just floating down the river stays with me to this day. When I first read Huck, there was no question in my mind about the language, especially the controversial language, since somewhere along the line I had been alerted to something called, "historical context." Of course, this was before actual history was replaced by something called, "social studies." In other words, someone had managed to pound enough sense into my skull to allow me to read certain words with the knowledge that the manner of speaking in this book was not necessarily the way people in my era were supposed to speak, but that su8ch language may have been perfectly natural in another time. Go figure. I hope I never forget my lessons in historical context.
It was sometime around the 10th grade when I read, The Great Imposter, by Ferdinand DeMara, a man with a knack for impersonating just about anything he wanted to impersonate, including a teacher, a surgeon and I forget what all else. A movie starring Tony Curtis was made about this real-life character. But the main thing is that DeMara traveled a lot and gave me another nudge to hit the road.
The Catcher in the Rye was influential but to me not the great book it had been hailed as by people around me. I know it was the first time I had read the infamous "F" word in print and remember being both shocked and amused at this novelty. Beyond that, the book was not directly responsible for the sand in my shoes, but it did give me a push in the right direction, attitude-wise. And I already had a wise-ass attitude. Congenital, most likely. It ain't me; it's my genes, Your Honor.
Back to Mark Twain just long enough to mention that I read most of his travel books long before I read his fiction. Life on the Mississippi, The Innocents Abroad, Following the Equator and A Tramp Abroad were important to me, especially the first one listed in this sentence. I have always found myself attracted to rivers and lakes. The ocean is okay, but I prefer tamer water, not that you can tame the rivers in this country or anywhere else. Just look at the Mississippi, the Red, the Platte here in this country. Twain's talk of going here and there almost effortlessly helped to hook me on peregrination as a way of life.
There are more books that guided my feet out to US 24 to foolishly head north that stormy December day and I am sure I will mention more in the future. The decisions were all mine and I long past the age of reason, so no one takes any blame for what came after but me. These "dangerous books" were not at all dangerous to me, but I am sure my elders would have found them so if they had known where they might lead me.
2010-03-19
Seven East
There is a form available to patients here at St. Vincent's. The form is called, "You Touched My Heart," and is for reporting an employee's extra efforts, good work above and beyond the call of duty, etc., etc. As a rule, I do not like forms of this nature and the reason for that may be that whenever an employee of any business impresses me to the extent that comment is called for, I generally find their boss right away and let them know in person what a good employee they have on their hands. I remember when Mary was here for one of her frequent visits to the Oncology Unit, she was as always given unstintingly excellent treatment by one and all, from the housekeeping people to the oncology nurses. It seemed as though there was not enough anyone could do for her. That treatment was not reserved for Mary; it was consistent throughout the unit. I went and spoke to the nurse manager and told her what a great staff she had. She was gratified to hear it and I like to think she passed my comments on to those who needed to hear them.
My experience of the care here comes from both sides; I have seen it as a husband watching his wife waste away from cancer and now I am experiencing that care first hand as a patient undergoing treatment for skin cancer. When I first arrived here as a patient on October 31, 2009, I was immediately greeted by several nurses who had treated Mary. The last they saw of me was the day of Mary's funeral, April 5, 2006. It was like I had never left the place. Two of my brothers and a sister-in-law helped me bring flowers over to the unit from the funeral parlor. There were too many to keep (they would not all fit in an eight-foot pickup bed and the extended cab) and this seemed the appropriate place for them. I asked that they be distributed among the patients, but should have given them to the nurses. Clear thinking, never my forté, especially did not come in to play that day, however, and the nurses went home flowerless.
As for specifics there are a couple of areas; performance and personal names. Since this covers every person working on this unit, I will not use personal names. These people know who they are; if they work on this unit, they are the ones I am talking about. That leaves performance.
Difficult patients are no match for the personnel here. I have witnessed a particularly recalcitrant patient hurl his pills across the room while calling the nurse every name in the book. The response was measured, calm and professional. Except for the patient, voices were kept to a low whisper and very soon the incident was over. Personally, I would have used an axe handle, but have been told that sort of treatment is not therapeutically indicated. There seems to be a certain unreasoned prejudice against my methods.
The nurses here also must contend with patients such as myself whose humor has been described as very dark. Jokes about death, the pleasantries attendant on various chemo side effects and disease in general just sort of come pouring out of my mouth whenever an audience appears. This is the direct result of what Mary told me about once. She said that there are all these words in my head and that there is my mouth. She further informed me that most people have a filter between the two locations that saves them from embarrassment, but that I seem to have been congenitally deprived of any such filter. This is what the nurses have to put up with on a daily basis from me. They humor me, but never seem to lose their professionalism.
There does not seem to be a typical day here and the fact that none of the nurses ever seems ruffled is a testament to their adaptability and resourcefulness. They respond to daily, sometimes hourly, emergencies with equanimity, without a flutter. It is pretty amazing to see people perform life-saving actions under stress as if it were all just in a day's work. The truth of the matter is that it is all in a day's work for these special nurses. They do it daily and come back for more the next day.
Gratitude for the actions they perform is not in sufficient supply to go around fairly to one and all, which is why this is being written. Although the words are less than is called for, the address is to the nurse manager, every nurse, graduate nurse, nurse assistant, housekeeper and food service worker who works on 7-East. Thanks to one and all for all you do.
My experience of the care here comes from both sides; I have seen it as a husband watching his wife waste away from cancer and now I am experiencing that care first hand as a patient undergoing treatment for skin cancer. When I first arrived here as a patient on October 31, 2009, I was immediately greeted by several nurses who had treated Mary. The last they saw of me was the day of Mary's funeral, April 5, 2006. It was like I had never left the place. Two of my brothers and a sister-in-law helped me bring flowers over to the unit from the funeral parlor. There were too many to keep (they would not all fit in an eight-foot pickup bed and the extended cab) and this seemed the appropriate place for them. I asked that they be distributed among the patients, but should have given them to the nurses. Clear thinking, never my forté, especially did not come in to play that day, however, and the nurses went home flowerless.
As for specifics there are a couple of areas; performance and personal names. Since this covers every person working on this unit, I will not use personal names. These people know who they are; if they work on this unit, they are the ones I am talking about. That leaves performance.
Difficult patients are no match for the personnel here. I have witnessed a particularly recalcitrant patient hurl his pills across the room while calling the nurse every name in the book. The response was measured, calm and professional. Except for the patient, voices were kept to a low whisper and very soon the incident was over. Personally, I would have used an axe handle, but have been told that sort of treatment is not therapeutically indicated. There seems to be a certain unreasoned prejudice against my methods.
The nurses here also must contend with patients such as myself whose humor has been described as very dark. Jokes about death, the pleasantries attendant on various chemo side effects and disease in general just sort of come pouring out of my mouth whenever an audience appears. This is the direct result of what Mary told me about once. She said that there are all these words in my head and that there is my mouth. She further informed me that most people have a filter between the two locations that saves them from embarrassment, but that I seem to have been congenitally deprived of any such filter. This is what the nurses have to put up with on a daily basis from me. They humor me, but never seem to lose their professionalism.
There does not seem to be a typical day here and the fact that none of the nurses ever seems ruffled is a testament to their adaptability and resourcefulness. They respond to daily, sometimes hourly, emergencies with equanimity, without a flutter. It is pretty amazing to see people perform life-saving actions under stress as if it were all just in a day's work. The truth of the matter is that it is all in a day's work for these special nurses. They do it daily and come back for more the next day.
Gratitude for the actions they perform is not in sufficient supply to go around fairly to one and all, which is why this is being written. Although the words are less than is called for, the address is to the nurse manager, every nurse, graduate nurse, nurse assistant, housekeeper and food service worker who works on 7-East. Thanks to one and all for all you do.
2010-03-05
I baffi é morto Lunga vita al baffi
My moustache came off today. The Erbetux rash got beneath what experienced bushwhackers said was impenetrable scrub and started acting up, causing some significant discomfort. With one brief exception, this moustache has been with me for 42 years, warming my upper lip, gathering crumbs, getting in the way, especially when I forget to trim it. The one brief exception was when Mary lost her hair due to chemotherapy. After telling her I would meet her halfway, I shaved the right half of my moustache the day her hair came out and asked if that was enough. At her suggestion, I shaved the left half as well. Less than two weeks later, Mary was asking me to grow the moustache back again.
In December, 1966, I dropped out of high school in the middle of my senior year (public education has to be stopped somewhere) and ran away from home on the same day. Running off seemed like a good idea since I did not think my parents would take too kindly to having a high school dropout son. Although I was gone for a mere six months, there was nothing mere about the time to Mom and Dad who were subjected to all manner of suspicions concerning my fate. Imagine them finding out in the end that that fate simply meant a vagrancy charge in Las Vegas along with a sentence of what then was known as "thirty days or out of town." You had a choice of doing 30 days in jail or getting out of town. I told them I would just as soon get, but they held me due, I suspect, to a missing person report. My parents' revenge was in not sending me a plane ticket. I rode a Greyhound bus from Las Vegas, Nevada to Detroit, Michigan, reading Lenny Bruce's self-congratulatory How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and a great book by Wilfrid Sheed, called, Square's Progress. Bruce's book I suppose was subversive while Sheed's was simply fun. While I became more of a fan of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, Wilfrid's parents, the junior member of the family always makes me smile with his writing. It was on that bus trip I discovered I would rather be fun than subversive, although subversive fun had and still has its attractions. My subversive life was not nipped completely in the bud, however, since I had fomented a plot to grow a moustache.
Moustaches were not quite in vogue when I left Haight-Ashbury in 1967 on that ill-fated trip to Las Vegas, but I knew enough Old and New Testament history to know that changes in name (Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul) usually indicated a change in life. Why, I reasoned, would a moustache not mark me as a changed man? I was barely 18 and had traveled (hitchhiking) the length of Route 66 (Chicago to Long Beach) long before it was closed by the interstates, been to Haight-Ashbury, smoked some of those left-handed cigarettes (nope; don't do it no more; sorry, can't help you) and could roll my own, drank whiskey and wine out of the bottle, could down a 40-pounder of beer without letting up, stay up half the night and get up first thing in the morning to get it started all over again. I had already roughnecked in the Permian Basin of West Texas and worked as an underpaid loader and unloader of trucks; rough work and sometimes dangerous at long hours for low pay. Always managed to find good people to work for, though, no matter how lousy the conditions. In short, I was a full-grown man and my upper lip was prime real estate to display a proper sign of my testosterone-fueled ego.
It was only later that people began to call my initial attempt a Sergeant Pepper moustache. I never claimed that name for it. Originally, what I was going for is called in the old hairstyle charts a, "chevron." Just a basic moustache stretching the length of the lip and turning down at the corners just a bit. What I ended up with has always been sort of its own creation. It keeps the original basic shape, but goes into free-range mode with the slightest encouragement. Now, moustache maintenance is a critical task, especially to the gentleman who wishes to appear well-groomed, and to maintain an attractive and comely moustache is no mean feat. It takes work and dedication on an almost daily basis. There are those who succeed admirably in this task and they have the growth to show for it. Moustache maintenance also takes a home base and this is where I came up short.
Shortly after returning home, I took off again, hitting the road for what would total 19 1/2 years before settling down with Mary. All those years and beyond, my moustache was one of the first things people would speak of when describing me, usually noting its prodigious growth. Comments ranged from the sarcastic ("Nice moustache") to the envious ("Wish I could grow me one like that"). Usually it was somewhere in the middle with people trying to pass a compliment and that is how I usually took their remarks. But I could also see for my own eyes that life on the road was not conducive to establishing a shining example of topiary on my upper lip. "Brush islands" are those areas in, say, a well-groomed park, where brush seems to simply grow up on its own and sit there. What I ended up with was more akin to a brush island on my face than a moustache. But is was my brush island and I was proud of it. It kept the basic shape of a moustache, but just barely.
Through the years it has been a part of my face, of me. I am not sure it is gone for good. It may just come back on its own but probably not until the Erbetux is all used up. And that's all I have to say about that.
In December, 1966, I dropped out of high school in the middle of my senior year (public education has to be stopped somewhere) and ran away from home on the same day. Running off seemed like a good idea since I did not think my parents would take too kindly to having a high school dropout son. Although I was gone for a mere six months, there was nothing mere about the time to Mom and Dad who were subjected to all manner of suspicions concerning my fate. Imagine them finding out in the end that that fate simply meant a vagrancy charge in Las Vegas along with a sentence of what then was known as "thirty days or out of town." You had a choice of doing 30 days in jail or getting out of town. I told them I would just as soon get, but they held me due, I suspect, to a missing person report. My parents' revenge was in not sending me a plane ticket. I rode a Greyhound bus from Las Vegas, Nevada to Detroit, Michigan, reading Lenny Bruce's self-congratulatory How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and a great book by Wilfrid Sheed, called, Square's Progress. Bruce's book I suppose was subversive while Sheed's was simply fun. While I became more of a fan of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, Wilfrid's parents, the junior member of the family always makes me smile with his writing. It was on that bus trip I discovered I would rather be fun than subversive, although subversive fun had and still has its attractions. My subversive life was not nipped completely in the bud, however, since I had fomented a plot to grow a moustache.
Moustaches were not quite in vogue when I left Haight-Ashbury in 1967 on that ill-fated trip to Las Vegas, but I knew enough Old and New Testament history to know that changes in name (Abram to Abraham, Saul to Paul) usually indicated a change in life. Why, I reasoned, would a moustache not mark me as a changed man? I was barely 18 and had traveled (hitchhiking) the length of Route 66 (Chicago to Long Beach) long before it was closed by the interstates, been to Haight-Ashbury, smoked some of those left-handed cigarettes (nope; don't do it no more; sorry, can't help you) and could roll my own, drank whiskey and wine out of the bottle, could down a 40-pounder of beer without letting up, stay up half the night and get up first thing in the morning to get it started all over again. I had already roughnecked in the Permian Basin of West Texas and worked as an underpaid loader and unloader of trucks; rough work and sometimes dangerous at long hours for low pay. Always managed to find good people to work for, though, no matter how lousy the conditions. In short, I was a full-grown man and my upper lip was prime real estate to display a proper sign of my testosterone-fueled ego.
It was only later that people began to call my initial attempt a Sergeant Pepper moustache. I never claimed that name for it. Originally, what I was going for is called in the old hairstyle charts a, "chevron." Just a basic moustache stretching the length of the lip and turning down at the corners just a bit. What I ended up with has always been sort of its own creation. It keeps the original basic shape, but goes into free-range mode with the slightest encouragement. Now, moustache maintenance is a critical task, especially to the gentleman who wishes to appear well-groomed, and to maintain an attractive and comely moustache is no mean feat. It takes work and dedication on an almost daily basis. There are those who succeed admirably in this task and they have the growth to show for it. Moustache maintenance also takes a home base and this is where I came up short.
Shortly after returning home, I took off again, hitting the road for what would total 19 1/2 years before settling down with Mary. All those years and beyond, my moustache was one of the first things people would speak of when describing me, usually noting its prodigious growth. Comments ranged from the sarcastic ("Nice moustache") to the envious ("Wish I could grow me one like that"). Usually it was somewhere in the middle with people trying to pass a compliment and that is how I usually took their remarks. But I could also see for my own eyes that life on the road was not conducive to establishing a shining example of topiary on my upper lip. "Brush islands" are those areas in, say, a well-groomed park, where brush seems to simply grow up on its own and sit there. What I ended up with was more akin to a brush island on my face than a moustache. But is was my brush island and I was proud of it. It kept the basic shape of a moustache, but just barely.
Through the years it has been a part of my face, of me. I am not sure it is gone for good. It may just come back on its own but probably not until the Erbetux is all used up. And that's all I have to say about that.
Job for Which I May Be Qualified
Did you ever sit and wonder what job for which you just might be perfectly qualified if such a job really did exist? You can bet I have. Otherwise, why would I have brought it up? I like to think of my ideal job as being in the public relations/marketing niche, with my particular corner seeing me as a freelance, independent agent serving all manner of offices and businesses where the public happens to congregate for any period of time. This would include doctors' offices and other medical waiting rooms, restaurants, especially the outdoor type in good weather, bars, and other venues where people do not expect anything out of the ordinary. Herewith, my prospectus.
What I have in mind is my patented Local Color® option to be put in place by my client companies. My role, simply put, would be to sit in the public areas of the various clients and engage their clients in good conversation, witty repartee and, for a slight additional charge, the occasional metaphysical dialogue. As far as the other clients would be concerned, I would just be another person waiting to be served, but with a distinction, and that distinction is the ability to rattle on and on about nearly any subject with a good deal of savoir faire, wit, humor and assumed intelligence.
Let us say someone enters the waiting room and begins, as people will do, to comment on the weather. There is nothing to lower the tone of a waiting room like some buffoon going on and on about the weather a la, "Hot enough for you?" Once that first thunderbolt is off, most people would give up and die of ennui on the spot. That is because they have never been served by Local Color®. "Hot enough for you," is routinely met by me with references to my time in Hell when I was given a personal tour by some of the nastier names in history. Modesty forbids the revelation of those names, but I am sure you would recognize a dictator or two, the man who invented PowerPoint, and one or two Karaoke stars. (Yes, without going into details, I am able to give complete assurance that there is in fact a special Karaoke Hell.) I then give a physical description of the place, very much similar to Dante's depiction in his famous work. By the time I have finished, those still waiting for appointments are trying to sign up for times when I will have a future appointment. I am often asked in these settings, "Hey. Come here often?"
Doctors will be especially interested in Local Color's® special attention to pharmaceutical representatives, especially the pesky ones who never bring lunch. A carefully scripted scenario has been worked out for the specialty of each medical office. Let us take, for example, the oncology office. Now first off, you have a roomful of patients who are none too happy to be there. The next thing you know, some kid, about one third the median age of your patients walks in, dressed in a suit and shoes that cost more than two of your car payments. And you know, along with that crease in his trousers and that shine on his shoes, he has a song on his lips and a sales pitch in his black heart. Well, let's just see how Mr. Pharma Rep handles a routine patient query, such as, "Psst! Buddy! Got any psychotropics? No? Got anything with any street value?"
It is immediately apparent to the astute person the customizable opportunities available to each business and even to specific lines of business within large organizations. Why let your business simply exist one more day when the Local Color® professional is ready to serve you at a moment's notice? Make that call today and put us to work. We need the cash.
What I have in mind is my patented Local Color® option to be put in place by my client companies. My role, simply put, would be to sit in the public areas of the various clients and engage their clients in good conversation, witty repartee and, for a slight additional charge, the occasional metaphysical dialogue. As far as the other clients would be concerned, I would just be another person waiting to be served, but with a distinction, and that distinction is the ability to rattle on and on about nearly any subject with a good deal of savoir faire, wit, humor and assumed intelligence.
Let us say someone enters the waiting room and begins, as people will do, to comment on the weather. There is nothing to lower the tone of a waiting room like some buffoon going on and on about the weather a la, "Hot enough for you?" Once that first thunderbolt is off, most people would give up and die of ennui on the spot. That is because they have never been served by Local Color®. "Hot enough for you," is routinely met by me with references to my time in Hell when I was given a personal tour by some of the nastier names in history. Modesty forbids the revelation of those names, but I am sure you would recognize a dictator or two, the man who invented PowerPoint, and one or two Karaoke stars. (Yes, without going into details, I am able to give complete assurance that there is in fact a special Karaoke Hell.) I then give a physical description of the place, very much similar to Dante's depiction in his famous work. By the time I have finished, those still waiting for appointments are trying to sign up for times when I will have a future appointment. I am often asked in these settings, "Hey. Come here often?"
Doctors will be especially interested in Local Color's® special attention to pharmaceutical representatives, especially the pesky ones who never bring lunch. A carefully scripted scenario has been worked out for the specialty of each medical office. Let us take, for example, the oncology office. Now first off, you have a roomful of patients who are none too happy to be there. The next thing you know, some kid, about one third the median age of your patients walks in, dressed in a suit and shoes that cost more than two of your car payments. And you know, along with that crease in his trousers and that shine on his shoes, he has a song on his lips and a sales pitch in his black heart. Well, let's just see how Mr. Pharma Rep handles a routine patient query, such as, "Psst! Buddy! Got any psychotropics? No? Got anything with any street value?"
It is immediately apparent to the astute person the customizable opportunities available to each business and even to specific lines of business within large organizations. Why let your business simply exist one more day when the Local Color® professional is ready to serve you at a moment's notice? Make that call today and put us to work. We need the cash.
2010-03-04
In and Out and Back Again in Less Than 24 Hours
Danger: Rambling ahead
Speaking of things one cannot get rid of, kind of like dog doo on a Vibram sole . . . Here I am. Out on the first, back on gthe second, and here it is, the fourth. Still at St. Vincent's.
Go figure. You get released from the hospital and go back to the Pharm (called that by me because of the all the drugs the residents are on) only to get put back in the following day for yet more side effects from either the Erbetux or the 5FU. Who knows which one is to blame? In recent entries we have elucidated quite enough on the situation in the lower GI tract, so let us go on to something else. This rash sounds like a good idea.
The rash is caused by the Erbetux and, according to the best information available, is actually a good sign that the Erbetux is doing its job. In fact, the worse the rash, the better the outcome as far as the cancer goes. You must take the bad with the good, it seems. It also seems that part of the bad is going around with at least your face looking like a leper with a bad case of acne who appears anxious to join Job on his dungheap. Scoot over, pass the potsherds and let's get scraping. Feels kind of like someone has worked my face and throat over witht a brand spanking new piece of forty-grit sandpaper and then threw a little itching powder on there just to get things going..
At any rate, I was on what they call Contact Precautions for a while yesterday and today but I am sure they will be calling that off soon. It was more of a precaution for the other patients; just making sure I was not carrying anything around to them. Of course, that also keeps me cxonfined to my room until this is all called off. It would just be nice to get out of here and spend a week or two doing semi-normal stuff. Maybe heading to the library, having a Cafe Americano at Starbuck's. Stuff we too often take for granted. It would be nice to go over and play with my grandchildren. Right now, however, my face might just run them off in the opposite direction. Especially nice right about now would be getting up to walk around without worrying about an IV tube hanging from my chest. Even so and despite the continuous whining, I must say that I seem to have it so much better than a lot of folks here. There are people here who truly are hurting but who do not have this outlet as I do. That is not simply an afterthought as I see it everyday I am here, whether people are being wheeled by my room on their way to a test or a "procedure," or whether I am out (when allowed by the infection control folks) and walking by their rooms, unavoidably witnessing what they and their families are going through. God bless 'em all.
Danger: Rambling ahead
Speaking of things one cannot get rid of, kind of like dog doo on a Vibram sole . . . Here I am. Out on the first, back on gthe second, and here it is, the fourth. Still at St. Vincent's.
Go figure. You get released from the hospital and go back to the Pharm (called that by me because of the all the drugs the residents are on) only to get put back in the following day for yet more side effects from either the Erbetux or the 5FU. Who knows which one is to blame? In recent entries we have elucidated quite enough on the situation in the lower GI tract, so let us go on to something else. This rash sounds like a good idea.
The rash is caused by the Erbetux and, according to the best information available, is actually a good sign that the Erbetux is doing its job. In fact, the worse the rash, the better the outcome as far as the cancer goes. You must take the bad with the good, it seems. It also seems that part of the bad is going around with at least your face looking like a leper with a bad case of acne who appears anxious to join Job on his dungheap. Scoot over, pass the potsherds and let's get scraping. Feels kind of like someone has worked my face and throat over witht a brand spanking new piece of forty-grit sandpaper and then threw a little itching powder on there just to get things going..
At any rate, I was on what they call Contact Precautions for a while yesterday and today but I am sure they will be calling that off soon. It was more of a precaution for the other patients; just making sure I was not carrying anything around to them. Of course, that also keeps me cxonfined to my room until this is all called off. It would just be nice to get out of here and spend a week or two doing semi-normal stuff. Maybe heading to the library, having a Cafe Americano at Starbuck's. Stuff we too often take for granted. It would be nice to go over and play with my grandchildren. Right now, however, my face might just run them off in the opposite direction. Especially nice right about now would be getting up to walk around without worrying about an IV tube hanging from my chest. Even so and despite the continuous whining, I must say that I seem to have it so much better than a lot of folks here. There are people here who truly are hurting but who do not have this outlet as I do. That is not simply an afterthought as I see it everyday I am here, whether people are being wheeled by my room on their way to a test or a "procedure," or whether I am out (when allowed by the infection control folks) and walking by their rooms, unavoidably witnessing what they and their families are going through. God bless 'em all.
2010-03-01
More of Just What Everyone Needs
Looking through the various applications available on Facebook, not that I need any, just more out of curiosity as to what people could possibly want to spruce up pages that already seem a little busy, I found the perfect application for people one hates or, at least for whom one has a certain minimum amount of good old fashioned ill will.
First, I must say that I have sat through numerous unrecoverable hours of my life in various meetings, all of which seemed deliberately designed to put to a slow and torturous death any mental life within a radius of 100 miles. Once I was at a state-mandated all-day meeting, the point of which was to tell us how to hold brief, successful meetings. In my job as the community service labor supervisor for this agency, it was not my custom to call the community service guys in for a meeting. My job was to get them out to the city and state parks and get them to clean them up. That didn't take much meeting time; in fact, all it usually took was an explanation that failure to complete community service hours meant time in jail. Anyway, our "facilitator" at this meeting basically had one message which was that it is a good idea to plan your meeting with others, necessitating, of course what I suppose professional "facilitators" would call a pre-meeting. Hearkening back to the paradoxes of Zeno, I asked where the pre-meetings would end and was met by a blank, unknowing stare. I mean, it simply makes sense that to have a meeting requiring a pre-meeting, the pre-meeting should likewise be preceded by a pre-pre-meeting, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.
Some of the worst meetings to which I have been subjected are the ones that are dominated by the PowerPoint demonstration. What tortured soul in the depths of hell came up with PowerPoint and what demented Prometheus saw fit to give this knowledge to man? I hope his vulture is working overtime ripping out pieces of his hopefully cirrhotic liver as I sit here thinking about it.
PowerPointers all seem to operate under the illusion that their audiences are solely made up by the illiterate and the vision-impaired. Projecting a slide upon the screen, they will read, exactly as it appears, every word of text on that slide and without further elucidation, will proceed to the next. Suppose your PowerPointer has just read through Slide A and has gotten to Slide B. For fun, about halfway through the reading of Slide B, ask a question about Slide A. This will have your PowerPointer skipping back to the previous slide, reading it over and, once again, proceeding without further elucidation. PowerPoint is just one of those tools that makes people feel that since they have done something, they have accomplished something. The accomplishment they feel and the actual results usually are two different things.
This wonderful application I have found for Facebook is a way for folks to share their favorite PowerPoint slides. As a public service, I will include no further information about this application in the hope that people will not be further tempted to give it a try. If you do decide to go down that highway of sin and shame, please don't send it to me. As Huck Finn said about Aunt Polly's plan to "sivilize" him, "I can't stand it. I been there before."
First, I must say that I have sat through numerous unrecoverable hours of my life in various meetings, all of which seemed deliberately designed to put to a slow and torturous death any mental life within a radius of 100 miles. Once I was at a state-mandated all-day meeting, the point of which was to tell us how to hold brief, successful meetings. In my job as the community service labor supervisor for this agency, it was not my custom to call the community service guys in for a meeting. My job was to get them out to the city and state parks and get them to clean them up. That didn't take much meeting time; in fact, all it usually took was an explanation that failure to complete community service hours meant time in jail. Anyway, our "facilitator" at this meeting basically had one message which was that it is a good idea to plan your meeting with others, necessitating, of course what I suppose professional "facilitators" would call a pre-meeting. Hearkening back to the paradoxes of Zeno, I asked where the pre-meetings would end and was met by a blank, unknowing stare. I mean, it simply makes sense that to have a meeting requiring a pre-meeting, the pre-meeting should likewise be preceded by a pre-pre-meeting, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.
Some of the worst meetings to which I have been subjected are the ones that are dominated by the PowerPoint demonstration. What tortured soul in the depths of hell came up with PowerPoint and what demented Prometheus saw fit to give this knowledge to man? I hope his vulture is working overtime ripping out pieces of his hopefully cirrhotic liver as I sit here thinking about it.
PowerPointers all seem to operate under the illusion that their audiences are solely made up by the illiterate and the vision-impaired. Projecting a slide upon the screen, they will read, exactly as it appears, every word of text on that slide and without further elucidation, will proceed to the next. Suppose your PowerPointer has just read through Slide A and has gotten to Slide B. For fun, about halfway through the reading of Slide B, ask a question about Slide A. This will have your PowerPointer skipping back to the previous slide, reading it over and, once again, proceeding without further elucidation. PowerPoint is just one of those tools that makes people feel that since they have done something, they have accomplished something. The accomplishment they feel and the actual results usually are two different things.
This wonderful application I have found for Facebook is a way for folks to share their favorite PowerPoint slides. As a public service, I will include no further information about this application in the hope that people will not be further tempted to give it a try. If you do decide to go down that highway of sin and shame, please don't send it to me. As Huck Finn said about Aunt Polly's plan to "sivilize" him, "I can't stand it. I been there before."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
