Reform School

While the politicians are bashing each other in Washington, D.C. over healthcare reform, a little known incident occurred at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine that underscores the inequities of our healthcare system. I know this because I found online a colored photo of a gold-masked Egyptian mummy being rolled into a six-slice CT scanner.

A team of cardiologists and Egyptologists had carefully scanned 22 mummies from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. Each mummy was at least 3200 years old. The doctors and researchers found that more than half of the mummies had cardiovascular disease. The co-investigator of the study, cardiologist Dr. Michael Miyamoto said, “Our findings remind us of the value of preventative medicine.”

The mummy study demonstrated that healthcare is already available to every American man and woman if they only wait long enough.

I can hear your protests now: why should Egyptian mummies have better healthcare than the American public? Our Congressional leaders have discussed that issue as I discovered in my recent review of the news.

John Boehner, the current Republican house minority leader, interviewed in Mother Jones Magazine: “The Republican healthcare plan, when we have time to knock one out, focuses on innovative wellness programs to help avoid serious and costly illnesses. All that’s required for those Egyptian mummies is end-of-life care. That’s it. Just a little hand-holding and some Tylenol. Under our planned plan, this means great savings for the typical American taxpayer who, by contrast, has a shitload of pre-existing conditions.”

He added “Imagine how long those mummies would’ve waited for their CT scans if there’d been a public option. They would’ve been dead by now. Those mummies show what we mean by death panels.”

Harry Reid, interviewed on FOX news, angrily stated “Look who funded the mummies’ CT Scans. Siemens Healthcare and the National Bank of Egypt. Once again an international mega-corporation and financial institution control who gets good healthcare: Mummies– the wealthiest old patients. Do you know how much those mummies are worth, individually? Of course they could afford the best American healthcare. Talk about rationing of care!”

Boehner, quoted in Ms. Magazine: “Harry, there you go again. The mummies’ CT scans were actually done in Egypt. By outsourcing our healthcare in this way, costs are substantially lowered. What difference does it make if your prostate exam is performed in Pakistan rather than Peoria?”

“What you’re saying is nonsense, Mr. Minority Leader,” Harry Reid stated, speaking before the World Clown Association. “You claim there shouldn’t be unnecessary medical tests. So why did those mummies undergo prostate exams?”

“I’d like to interject something here,” said Senator Joe Lieberman, addressing the International UFO Congress. “I was in favor of the mummies receiving the CT Scans. Then I was opposed to the mummies receiving the CT Scans. Now I’m inclined to favor a motion to proceed to oppose a motion to favor a filibuster to oppose a motion to favor or proceed to permit the mummies continuing to be part of our healthcare system, but I expect to vote against my vote.”

“Joe, it’s time to take your pills,” Hadassah Lieberman said to her husband, during an interview with Vanity Fair’s reporter Leslie Bennetts in the November issue.

“Harry Reid can’t get beyond the liberal pressures from his party,” House Minority Leader John Boehner stated to attendees at the National Association of Cat Therapists. “While it’s true we’re against paying for healthcare for foreign people, these Egyptian mummies will not be emigrating to the United States. No sir. For humanitarian and research purposes, America examined and treated them in Egypt. We’ll give them palliative, end-of-life care. And if they ever die again, we’ll make sure they’re given another proper burial in some cave.”

“As Senate Minority Leader, I want to thank John, the House Minority Leader, for his wise words,” said Mitch McConnell, as reported by Brian Ross of ABC news, covering the annual convention of the Goldfish Society of America. “Because I’m Senate Minority Leader, it’s my job to see that healthcare reform is possible by not passing healthcare reform. I know John’s been saying the same thing. And I know he’ll keep speaking out about this in the other House, where he belongs. As the Senate Minority Leader, I urge you to remember the most important thing about healthcare reform: I’m the Senate Minority Leader.

Harry Reid, in a recent article in Glamour Magazine: “I’d like to see how John Boehner would like it if he didn’t have our Congressional health insurance plan, and finally developed skin cancer from all his tanning booth sessions.”

Interviewed by Beauty Editor Alyssa K. Hertzig of Allure Magazine, John Boehner stated “Harry Reid just doesn’t get it, when it comes to healthcare. Just like he doesn’t get that my skin tone is my natural color. When I was born November 17, 1949, that day there was a high level of geomagnetic storms and solar activity—you can look it up—so my skin tone is a result of that exposure. I am permanently bronzed. What right does Harry Reid have to bring my skin color into this discussion on healthcare? He looks like he posed for Grant Woods’ American Gothic. All he needs is a pitchfork.”

“Whatever.” (Harry Reid, quoted in Playboy Magazine, November 2009.)

Itsy Bitsy Spider

            “You wouldn’t believe what walked into the kitchen a few days ago.”

             My friends Susan, Ruth, and Caryn lean forward expectantly over their mocha almond fudge sundaes waiting for my answer, their eyes wide, mouths slightly agape which explains in Susan’s case the dark trickle of hot fudge, like a night crawler emerging from its hole, dribbling down her chin.

            We’re sitting around my kitchen table ignoring the drone of CNN from the nearby television.     

            “A wind scorpion.” I announce, “crawling right across the floor here.”  They gasp.

            “Well, you’ll never guess what showed up in our yard,” Caryn counters. “A disgusting snake. Orange and red and brown. I’m sure it was a coral snake.”

            We murmur our horror, aware there are no coral snakes in California, and privately convinced that because it’s Caryn, who refuses to wear her glasses and possesses an unlimited supply of costume jewelry, the “snake” was probably a coral bracelet dropped in her yard.

            “That’s nothing,” Ruth says. “When I was outside watering the plants, I almost brushed up against a black widow spider.”

            I’m conjuring up an even more disgusting insect or snake story when the television suddenly blares an ad about erectile dysfunction. I fume.

            I don’t want to know if Bud can get it on with Sally, if the mood is right or if, after four hours, Bud has to call his doctor because even soaking his erection in liquid fabric softener isn’t working.  The clamor from the television has drummed out of my head a great bug story of how poor Patrick Swayze, staying at Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley while we vacationed there years ago, was bitten on the behind by a scorpion concealed in his bath towel.

            In disgust I switch channels and there’s bearded Billy Mays, apparently on leave from his grave, thunderously hawking “Jupiter Jack!” a device that turns your car radio into a handsfree phone.

            I pick up the remote, pretending to heave it at the television.

            “Go ahead,” somebody says.

             Instead, I mutely mute the set.

            Every few years or so, commercials reach the point of maximum volume as advertisers figure out how to get around existing regulations of volume. California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo has, in fact, introduced a bill to once again regulate the volume of commercial interruptions.

            The aggravation caused by blaring commercials is exceeded only by deafening movie trailers. It’s bad enough movie trailers are effectively Cliff Notes of each film, showing in a succession of scenes the entire movie plot and denouement.* But the dunnn dunnnn dunnn dunnn of orchestra drums, earsplitting whooshes, slams and explosions punctuating the rapid edits of flickering scenes lead me to question whether I want to see the film at all, or if it’s simpler and cheaper to sit alone in my darkened car at night lighting a series of cherry bombs.  

*denouement- French for “to untie,” meaning that part of a film where all the tied up and gagged characters get untied, which occurs always after the hideous-looking villain has returned with a chainsaw that, when the chain is pulled, doesn’t work, and has motivated him to go looking for WD-40 which allows the heroes to finally realize that if they rub against each others’ ropes, a small fire will start, singeing their bonds as well as stocks, and permitting them, despite being tied up and immobile for three days, to scramble and sauté their way out of the villain’s basement.

             Why do humans get such a kick out of shattering noises disguised as “entertainment,” whether movies, television, ads or music? Compare, if you will, the typical modern-day explosion-packed trailer with the original trailer of, say, Universal’s 1955 science fiction classic film, Tarantula, about a spider given radioactive flu shots and although growing to 100 feet, doesn’t succumb to influenza. Instead of an annoying narrated film clip, Tarantula’s black and white trailer displays startling white headlines: “Bullets Can’t Stop It!” “Dynamite Can’t Kill It!” “Crawling Terror 100 Feet High!” “Exclamation Marks!”

            Granted, the film has multiple explosions, two instances of gun violence, a jet dropping napalm, and a tarantula hissing or growling loudly as it attacks and eats several people, cows and horses. But minus a Dolby Sound System, the blasts of the weapons are tolerable, and Tarantula gnawing bones is concealed by shadows and camera angles. An effective way, in fact, to enhance scenes of the 100 foot spider chewing up a human is to watch and simultaneously crunch on M and M Peanuts.

            I have to admit a special fondness for Tarantula. After viewing  it as a child, I had screaming nightmares for several months that awakened the entire household. This was well-deserved retribution for my parents’ allowing me, at my insistence, to see the film.

            The movie is effective, not due to explosions and jarring sounds, but because Universal used a real tarantula to simulate the sky-high arachnid. Even the film’s town sheriff remarks after his first glimpse, “Jumpin’ Jupiter!” Unfortunately this line dates the film, since no one talks that way any more. Except Billy Mays when he’s alive, hawking the Jupiter Jack. 

            One of the most spectacular parts (literally) of Tarantula occurs when the gigantic arachnid is napalmed by a jet pilot. The movie, incidentally, is also notable because it is the first film with Clint Eastwood, who is listed in the credits as Tarantula’s stand-in.

            At the end of Tarantula, the audience is moved by the horror on the faces of the townspeople silently watching the incinerated spider, all eight 100 foot legs upright and sizzling. We know the stunned townsfolk are thinking one thing: what now?

            In a modern version of Tarantula, this scene would be deleted, and reluctantly I admit, its elimination is for the better. Townspeople who’ve barely missed being appetizers shouldn’t be standing around silently pondering the spider’s charred skeleton. This is not the time for 1950s film quietude and inaction. In the re-made Tarantula, townspeople would leap up to detonate additional explosives and blow the spider’s remains to hell. Then they’d recycle that mother. 

Down the Toilet

Listen up, you in your 20s, 30s, and 40s….Your time for this project is approaching… 

Sampling Errors

 

             I passed by a large white plastic basket, about the size of a children’s wading pool, on my way out of Kaiser’s Flu Shot Clinic. Thinking it contained sample soap bars or skin creams, I jammed my hand into it and found I was clutching a Fecal Occult Blood Test Kit, the one that tests for blood in your poop.

            Before I go any further, I promise not use the words “stool,” “feces,” “b.m.,” “poop,” the “s” word, or even technical terms like “caca” and “doodoo” in this post. For the sake of gentility l will call the substance to be tested by the occult blood test the arbitrary name of “Lester.” I’m not trying to denigrate anyone named Lester who might be reading this, though I’m alarmed why my mind instantly jumps to the name Lester, the 291^st most popular name in the U.S. and the sum of whose alphabetical letters in the name equals 79. This is a significant find, since 79 is the population of Epping, North Dakota (2000 census).

            After bringing home the test kit, I avoided using it for a few weeks, particularly after I read through the instruction sheet which, like all instruction manuals, was best ignored to stave off panic. My first reaction to the list of instructions was how cumbersome it was. After all, fraternity boys in college have a long history of collecting samples of Lester in a paper bag, setting it afire, and leaving it on the doorstep of a friend. By contrast, I was provided a large collection tissue paper to lay inside the toilet bowl on top of the water. There was no assurance the paper would not sink, but I presumed the manufacturer of the kit knew what it was doing.

            I’m certain, before the product was even released to healthcare practitioners, the company CEO, president and vice presidents all took a kit into their private bathrooms and, with their administrative assistants taking notes and explaining the seven-paragraph procedure, tested the kits. This is how the modern corporation operates, always for the good of the consumer. Officers are personally involved in quality control whether we’re talking mortgage-backed securities or condoms.   

            In addition to the large tissue paper and a small absorbent pad that, the instructions warned me, wasn’t to be confused with the large tissue paper lest Lester be sunk, I was provided a sampling bottle that looked suspiciously like an emasculated syringe. I was to open the bottle and not spill the interior liquid identified as a preservative to keep Lester around for 45 years or so.

            Next I was to use a three inch green probe attached to the sampling bottle cap to scrape across Lester. The instructions specified that, BEFORE taking the probe with Lester and putting him back inside the sample bottle, I must “flush the toilet.”

            I only have two hands, manufacturer.  You want me to hold onto Lester—by now on the tip of the probe, held aloft and uncovered—and flush the toilet BEFORE I put him away?  When you were testing the kit, gentlemen (and I KNOW you were gentlemen because no woman would have devised this kit), did you ask your administrative assistants to hold the probe with Lester and then flush your toilet? Or did you in reality give them permission to first jam Lester into the sample bottle with all deliberate speed? 

            But o.k., I go along and first flush the toilet.

            Suddenly I’m stunned to realize that the opening of the sample bottle where I’m to insert the probe tip covered with Lester is the diameter of two toothpicks. I’d previously chased Lester (and parts of Lester) around and around the sinking collection tissue paper to collect him, and now I’m holding the green plastic probe with a much larger quantity of Lester than will fit through the miniscule bottleneck.

             An ethical crisis arises: do I try to delicately remove more Lester from the probe tip? Dump Lester and end up chasing him around the bowl again among the flotilla of Lesters? Dump the entire kit? This was already, I’m ashamed to admit, my third try at using a Lester kit. When I’d asked Kaiser for two additional kits, I’d received a long stare. I know they were thinking, “Yes, here at Kaiser we want our patients ‘To Thrive,’ but in your case we’ll make an exception.”

            This is the part where, in a film, they jump to another scene so you can only imagine the barbarism that just occurred. I did manage to do an editing job on Lester and pushed him (protesting) down into the sample bottle. The instructions next requested I wipe off the outside of the bottle before mailing, although it didn’t specify what to use. Ultimately I used a handful of Kleenex followed by three packets of Cottonelle hygenic cleansing wipes; anti-bacterial Dial hand-pump soap; cotton balls soaked with alcohol; a paper towel immersed in Betadine, and a Q-tip dipped in Frontline.   

             I filled out an accompanying form with the date of Lester’s collection and other information. The instructions insisted I write the same information on the sample bottle. This was taxing since that sample form wrapped around the bottle resisted several pens, then intentionally smeared my scrawled words. All this time I could make out Lester clinging to the side of the bottle, pleading.

            When I finally assembled the kit and sealed it, I drove at excess speed to the closest post office, leaped out of the car and shoved the envelope with its enclosures into the mailbox. Then I remembered I’d forgotten to write the return address on the envelope. What if the lab wanted to send the sample of Lester back to me for, say, additional postage because I exceeded Lester’s weight limit?

            I hope my fecal occult blood test comes back negative. This is an important test that shouldn’t be mocked. Next year I’ll avoid the errors I made in this year’s preparation: I plan to bring my collection of Lester directly to the lab’s doorstep, secured in a brown paper bag. If they refuse the sample, I’ll be carrying matches.    

Twitterpated fans

Stretch of the Imagination

 

            “Tansy Wilcox” is following this blog. Also “Peaches Forney,” “Angel Barry,” “Tawny Du,” and “Cherry Thorn.”

            I know this because I received a separate Twitter from each one of them announcing they were following Tygerpen. This is the beauty of Twitter, that I can be notified personally by my fans, including female fans with exotic names who thoughtfully accompany their Tweet to me with generous photos of themselves in various stages of undress while assuming body-challenging positions that draw attention to their dexterity and other organs.

            While I don’t think these photos are really necessary or informative, they remind me how the bodies of young people are capable of amazing contortions previously impossible for older generations. It can’t be from yoga poses like Downward Facing Dog because these young women probably don’t get their exercise from yoga, and no self-respecting dog has ever been seen with his nose on the ground, legs tilted forward and ass uplifted like a furry telescope. My standard poodle would never assume a position resembling an inverted “V,” even for a jumbo milkbone.

            So how do these partially clothed young women arch their backs, stretch, twist and sprawl in poses worthy of permanent chiropractic care? Credit for must go to corporations such as JanSport, the world’s leading manufacturer of backpacks, for marketing to schools and parents the health benefits of weighting children’s spines with the equivalent of the 32 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica or any book by Robert Caro.

             After 12 years of backpacks, children’s spines are like supermarket twist ties, capable of being maneuvered in any direction except straight up. They’ve developed either a graceful permanent sway back or an attractive premature dowager’s hump. Their spinal configurations enable them to eventually get jobs that feature heavy lifting like stocking inventory, or sitting for extended time such as working as a glaucoma tester for cut-rate strip mall optometrists, blowing into patients’ eyes.

            Backpacks are one subject where parents repeatedly lie to their children as a way to influence their behavior, consistent with the recent UC San Diego study which examined “parenting by lying.” I’m familiar with this principle: When I was young my mother would tell me we were “taking a drive,” as if to a toy store. A half hour after we began the drive, she’d steer the car to the brick-covered Children’s Clinic and I’d be marched inside for a shot I’d hoped she’d forgotten, like for polio or rabies. Today some moms and dads lie to their children who complain about the humungous backpacks. With straight faces these parents insist the book loads aren’t harmful, that their student will get used to carting around for twelve or more years the equivalent of a wine barrel.

            Fortunately, my two sons cut often school enough so that backpacks weren’t an issue.

           Last week a young man I know showed me with considerable pride his brown Labrador retriever named “Mack” who was wearing a DOG BACKPACK. Mack was to accompany his master on a camping trip to the Sierras. Rather than a carrying a loaded backpack stuffed with dog food, however, Mack was carting his master’s beer.

            This is one more indignity heaped on dogs. It’s bad enough children are told that schlepping backpacks designed for pack animals is healthful. But dogs, particularly poodles, have over the past few years already experienced abuses like bizarre breeding that produces hybrids with tongue-twisting names— Labradoodles, Goldendoodles, PugaPoos, ChiPoos, SharPoos, Bossi-Poos, Bich-Poos, Foodles, Rottles, and Schnoodles (Giant Schnauzer/Poodle mix  sold with sour cream).  

            I recently saw an unusually fluffy dog with the ingenious name of Fluffy coiled under an outdoor table at Starbucks intensely and disturbingly licking its lower quarters as if a mocha frappuccino had spilled there. His master said Fluffy was a combination of Cocker Spaniel, Labradoodle, and Goldendoodle, or as it is better known, a Cockadoodledo.

            With this insane hybrid dog breeding, my standard poodle Nigel has taken to hiding out of fear I will mate him with a beagle to produce a “Poogle,” which looks like the two dogs’ DNAs beat each other up. Nigel also fears an arranged date with a female Saint Bernard that might produce a “Saint Berdoodle,” a hulking though well-groomed 180 pound dog that slobbers, follows directions well enough to prepare its own microwave dinners, but barks incessantly, thinking it hears an avalanche.

             At least with the Saint Berdoodle a backpack makes sense to replace the iconic brandy barrel that hangs from the dog’s throat, like oversized costume jewelry or a chronic goiter. By contrast, you won’t see cats wearing backpacks, even though feline backpacks are available. Yesterday a black cat dashed across the street in front of my car. I didn’t have bad luck because a few hours later a brown and white cat crossed in front of my car, which, by Superstition Law, officially nullifies the first cat crossing. Had the previous black cat been wearing a bulky backpack, for sure it would have been road kill.

            Cats know this. After observing human children with their backpack humps, cats can’t be suckered into wearing this medieval apparatus. Cats also don’t need their spines stretched by backpacks since they go to yoga class where they learn Cat Stretches. These yoga classes foster agility that enable cats to arch their backs, twist and sprawl, just like the young women who send me their revealing Twitter photos.

             But cats, at least, when they Tweet me with a photo, have the good taste not to be wearing a string thong.

The Joy of Extinction

             I’m lying on the padded table with my feet up in the fuzzy pink sock-covered stirrups when my gynecologist, who’s been using what resembles a giant microphone to investigate, declares, “Well, everything looks fine on the ultrasound, except I can’t find your right ovary.” She chuckles.

            She proceeds to explain that as one ages, those little devils, the ovaries, shrink to the size of raisins or similar dried fruit. 

             I know better.

            “Will you please find my ovary?” I ask plaintively. Or plaintiff-ly, depending on whether I decide this is worthy of a medical malpractice suit.

            She can’t.

            She dons her miner’s hat and explores, using a solar-heated speculum on a day the sun wasn’t shining. On my urging she presses on various body parts to see if the ovary is hiding in my abdomen, along my spine, in my buttocks, down my throat. Nada.

            I know the ovary wasn’t very happy with me, since I pumped ten years’ of hormone replacement therapy into it. And many times I would’ve traded it in for a testicle, considering the advantages. But an ovary shouldn’t just disappear, especially since I wasn’t making any more demands on it for baby-making. Why couldn’t it just retire gracefully, appreciate its surroundings, join AARP?

            A chill came over me. The disappearance of my ovary is one more proof that human extinction is occurring.

            Researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) recently reported that vulnerability to extinction runs in certain species and that some human activities threaten “some…lineages of living vertebrates more than others.”  Now I’ve known for years that my body is evolving faster than the average person’s. For example, my teeth are the size of baby white corn. A dentist told me that the evolutionary change in teeth is toward smaller teeth so even though my gums appear to be sucking up my teeth, I’m actually ahead of the evolutionary curve. My eyelashes have almost disappeared as well. I stopped using an eyelash curler after I was routinely curling my eyelids. It’s depressing buying Maybelline’s Great Lash Mascara and realizing it only works for you as a shoe polish.

            Other evidence of my body’s fast-track evolution: my right big toe extends way farther out than the others; my right breast droops lower than the left; and my right arm is an inch and a half longer than my left.  This is when I’m grateful not to be a guy, endowed with a sagging right ball requiring a sling. 

            There is hopeful news about this evolution-leading-to-extinction theory. Within a few generations, if scientists such as at Walnut Creek’s local Joint Genome Institute speed up their investigations and finish sequencing genes (i.e., putting them in order in a giant Rolodex), they might determine which of our unpopular relatives’ descendents will soon be extinct! I think about my Uncle Howard who walked out on my wedding reception because he thought his table seating was too close to the restroom; my aunt Betsy whose hand-me-downs to my sister and me included stained underpants; an uncle who used to grind out his cigarettes on our carpets; a well-heeled lawyer-cousin who gifted us with a used Huckleberry Hound chip-and-dip bowl; my mother’s niece who told my mother to never darken her door again, especially in Sherwin-Williams’ high gloss black.

            The descendents of these relatives do not deserve to continue the inherited policies of their ancestors. I am not certain what Creationists are doing to cull or glean the cadres of relatives who show up to family dinners or drop by to stay at length on summer visits. Praying for an obnoxious or abrasive relative to be a “no-show” rarely works, and it’s only a short-term solution. I’ll take my chances that science will uncover how long these lines of relatives will continue to inflict their special torture, like bringing to dinner the same fruitcake that requires a chainsaw to slice, or demanding personal information (“Your Timmy is such a sweet two-year old. Do you suppose he’s got a good disposition or that he’s gay?”).

            When I consider that, without warning, my favorite lipstick stops being manufactured; my favorite flavor of ice cream (Marshmallow Tuna Swirl) is discontinued; and the one-and-only bra that fits—the popular #78261525552a —is no longer available, I look forward to the time all screwball relatives will have been phased out by evolution. Quietly disappeared.

            Like my ovary.

Chaos Theory

            I’m hurrying down the hall of our home wearing a thin cotton robe when I’m suddenly seized at the hip by an invisible object that propels me back like a human rubber band and slams me into the side of a doorway. Jarred but still with my wits, I carefully lift off the piece of my robe trapped on the door jamb strike plate—the metal plate thingie affixed to the door jamb.   

            This mishap occurs every day of my life. When I was younger, I foolishly believed my clothes were chronically catching on door jamb strike plates because at my 5’8 height, my hips are at the same level of every door jamb strike plate across America. Then one day I was bending down in the shower to pick up a bar of soap that had seemingly leaped from my grasp and fallen to the floor. I suddenly remembered, as I carefully reconnoitered the shower stall floor to pick up the soap and not slip, that the phenomena of tumbling soap had occurred with almost the same frequency as the door jamb strike plates’ grabs at my clothing.

            I kept secret what I realized: that inert objects have a lifelong attraction to me, and despite their seemingly dormant nature, they look gleefully for any opportunity to poke at, harass or humiliate me, particularly in my bathroom.

            I’m now standing before the mirror, lit by an upper border of Hollywood lights that peer down on the brown-tiled countertop with its wide sink. Below the tile countertop I’ve meticulously organized four bathroom drawers by contents: ointments (drawer 1), hair products (drawer 2), razors, lint brushes and shower caps (drawer 3), and  new, unused toiletries (drawer 4).

            Six perfume bottles—disdained by my 24-year-old son Jordan and husband Alan who reject all fragrance in favor of Lysol Bathroom Spray—-line up at the bottom of the mirror, smirking. I ignore them, knowing that before I’m finished in the bathroom, one or more of them will have tipped over—even though I never touched them. I’m supposed to believe it’s because the brown tile is slippery. Ha!  

            I lift up my toothbrush from its holder. The toothbrush goes flying and lands in the sink. Gritting my teeth—I know what’s coming—I open a 16-oz plastic bottle of alcohol housed in the bathroom closet, and grab a Kleenex to wipe down the toothbrush. The alcohol tips over and spills down the outside of the four bathroom drawers.

            I open up the first drawer to see if alcohol has spilled onto the ointments. This can be catastrophic if an ointment has thrown off its cap, which ointments often do when they become sickened by the smell of the contents. I also grimly realize the drawer of ointments have been invaded by one of my hairbrushes, which I lift out and slam into the hair products drawer. I never thought the ointments would collaborate with the brushes and combs. You learn something every day.

             In the “new products” drawer I discover the missing tops to my two hairsprays. I lift the tops out and refasten them onto the hairsprays, which instantly fall over, roll off the tiles and crash onto the floor. I bend over and discover two pill bottles hiding under the sink cabinets on the floor.

            From over on the bathroom closet shelves I hear the sharp clink of at least two items—pill bottles?—that have fallen and are being held captive behind the floor-to-ceiling accordion doors. I retrieve the pill bottles and replace them on the closet shelf.

            “Are you through?” I ask all the toiletries, vainly controlling my fury. No one answers. I pick up a pink perfume bottle (“Pollen” by Chanel) and feign throwing it at the bottles, creams, and ointments. “You think I don’t know what this is about?” I shout.

            My blow dryer, hanging high on a hook alongside the sink, has been watching all this. I like to believe the blow dryer is above the fray. But sometimes during the night—for that’s when it’s most effective—the blow dryer will intentionally slam onto the floor, passing itself off as a minor earthquake.

            Alan and I wake up, hearts racing.

            “Don’t bother,” Alan says, as I throw back the covers. “It’s just the blow dryer.” 

            “This is the last time you’re going to pull that!” I shriek, grabbing the blow dryer by its base, what I perceive to be its throat.

            The hand mirror, who’s observing this, tries a diversion. It drops off the countertop with, to my relief, only a sharp rattle. Long ago the hand mirror gave up its neutrality to join the other toiletries in their quest to persecute me. The hand mirror is the most powerful of all of the bathroom inhabitants, because it will, like its predecessors, give up its life to save the others from my wrath. I’m talking about the hand mirror’s ancestors, the other broken mirrors, who purposely cracked themselves when they slipped to the floor and punished us with the legacy of seven years’ bad luck.

            I try to pacify the hand mirror, holding it gently by its water-ski tow-like handle, expressing my concern and asking why, when the mirror starts out the week so clean and sparkly, it always ends up with smudges, smears, and dried drippings. A glass of impenetrable fog. The hand mirror tilts coyly, reflecting the potential carnage around the bathroom. It looks at me. I find myself staring back.

            I put the mirror down and go to the closet. I reach for a bottle of Valium.

            The toiletries are quiet. I gulp a pill and troop out of the bathroom, glancing back.

            I know when I’m gone, the bathroom scale will agree to land on a preposterously high number the next time I weigh myself.

            The toiletries especially love it when I’m fatigued, naked and vulnerable in the morning. They show no mercy. Overnight they’ll have coaxed the toothpaste to switch places with an ointment. They wait with barely-concealed merriment for me, their permanently helpless, outwitted prey, to start brushing my teeth with zinc oxide.

Film Zombies

             The most horrifying local news in Walnut Creek is that our downtown Blockbuster Video is closing. The rent is too expensive, they said. This is puzzling. Most of Blockbuster’s aisles are crammed with popular horror DVDs like Saw (Saw I, II, III through Saw LXXVI), The Ring (Ring 1, Ring 2, Ring 3, Lord of the Ring), Friday the 13^th (11 films), Drag Me to Hell, Drag Me Shopping, and Final Destination, in which a group of friends who narrowly missed being crushed by a falling Acme Company anvil are stalked by a psychopathic coyote.

            Finding quality films at Blockbuster has never been a problem. The last time I was in Blockbuster, for example, I checked out three honored classic American films– Gigli, I Know Who Killed Me, and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. 

            Seeing “Zohan,” I was reminded that Andy, my 22 year old UCLA Theater School graduate, has been playing basketball at John Wooden Center for the past couple of years with Zohan’s director and lead actor, Adam Sandler. They do have several things in common—–both are actors, Jewish, and love basketball. Adam’s second daughter is named Sunny. Andy had a pet rat named Sunny. Both Adam and Andy have actually seen You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.

            The two don’t talk much when they play. Andy’s been timid about schmoozing with Sandler.  (“I don’t want to be an annoying fan.”) Recently, however, Andy became determined to break the ice.

             Andy’s usual icebreaker is to describe how he injured his shoulders; how he acquired scar tissue from torn tendons in his legs; how many years he’s lived with chronic leg pain; how he may have fractured his nose recently when a player elbowed him in a game; and the number of times his throat has been scoped for vocal cord polyps. Andy can also graphically relate his history of having a major uni-brow.

            A few days ago Andy returned to play basketball after a several weeks away from the UCLA Campus, including three weeks at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert where, to his delight, he acquired an interesting upper thigh rash following fecal contamination from the sand.

            As Andy practiced shooting hoops, he saw Adam Sandler stroll into the Wooden Center gymnasium.   

            “Hey, Adam,” he said, approaching Sandler with a cool saunter. Andy put  the saunter down because it was too cold. “Do you remember my big white ass?”

            [Editor’s note: This is an actual quote and clearly an untested Andy Icebreaker.]

            Sandler said he remembered Andy. He didn’t mention Andy’s big white ass. He continued dribbling and shooting.

            “I just graduated UCLA’s Theater School,” Andy said cheerfully, “and I’m trying to find a manager or agent. Oh, and I’m looking for an apartment and a job. Also, I have plantar fascitis.”

            “Well, I graduated from NYU’s Tisch School,” Sandler said, referring to the drama school that considers itself better than UCLA’s theater school. He looked up at the rim, aimed, and scored more points. “And as far as getting a job, I just hired my three nephews for my film company.” He did not disclose any personal physical defects.

            When the basketball game ended, Sandler turned to Andy and said, “Danny, send me a resume and a headshot.” Andy thanked him profusely and then, anxious to prolong the conversation, described a troubling lower bowel disorder.

            Andy didn’t mention that he has no current headshot. His resume lies buried within the computer stored in his weather-beaten 1996 Chevy Caprice, along with most of his worldly goods, as he drives around and around L.A. looking for an apartment that’s close to possible jobs and medical facility with a trauma unit.

            Both Andy’s and his older brother Jordan’s interest in acting was sparked by the (pre-Blockbuster) films I showed when they were young. I carefully selected classic movies and avoided ones that might cause nightmares and permanent trauma. Then they’d go a neighbor’s home with its floor-to-ceiling screen along one wall and state-of-the-art Dolby sound system, and watch acclaimed children’s films like The Land Before Time in which a sadistic Tyrannosaurus attacks and kills a mother dinosaur.  

            Jordan, now a junior at San Francisco State University, enrolled in a Theater class this semester called “Movement I: Developing the actor’s free and responsive body.” Andy took a similar movement class at UCLA’s Theater School, and “the free and responsive body” he developed led to his lengthy nude performance in The Devils. Jordan was just bumped from the Movement I class because of class size limitations. This was good news. It is a well-established medical principle that a mother can have only one son appear nude on stage during her lifetime.  

            With Blockbuster now departing, and the boys generally living out of the house, I watch Netflix-rented movies with Alan and friends. Selecting movies for friends can more difficult than for children. Caryn refuses to watch westerns because “there’s too much dust.” Sylvia can’t stand violence, which eliminates 95% of films. Susan enjoys only romantic films or films about animals, particularly cats. This may be because as a child, Susan discovered a dead cat frozen stiff under her house. She laid it carefully on an aluminum foil-covered tray which she shoved into a preheated 325 degree oven in order to bring the cat back to life or to roast, depending on which occurred first.

            Hollywood has already optioned that story to make “a classic children’s film.”

 

 

 

Working Out with Boobs

            I passed my annual mammogram test yesterday. The radiologist’s office uses new digital mammogram equipment, so rather than placing your breasts in the old, painful waffle-iron type machines, the technologist artfully positions you snugly, aided by the latest equipment, a recycled car crushing machine. When I was finished, the technologist, as part of the more patient-friendly attitude, expressed appreciation for my bravery and told me I could keep the new personal Patient Spatula used to scrape breasts off the bottom breast tray.

            As is my custom, I tied my temporarily flattened breasts together, and drove over to the gym so I could use 24-Hour Fitness Breast Resuscitation equipment. Not all 24-Hour Fitness gyms carry these, which operate like jacks for changing car tires. First, however, I got on the stationary bike that I try to use three or more times a week. The bikes are the only pieces of equipment in the gym that don’t require you punch somebody first in order to claim one, unlike the popular treadmill and elliptical machines.

            People like me on stationary bikes stare serenely at the overhead television or at a book they brought. Treadmill and elliptical users are intense and sweaty. They can’t understand why, after running or stomping 45 minutes to an hour, they’re still standing in the same place. They actually believe, because some faulty monitor on the machine tells them so, that they’ve completed two miles or more. When they’re finally thrown off their machines for going over time limits, they can’t understand why they’re still at 24-Hour Fitness, rather than two miles away at Starbucks.

            My doctor told me I should do the treadmill or elliptical machine for my cardio. This was bad advice: From working my ass off and getting nowhere, I developed high blood pressure.   

            As I pedal away on the bike, a parade of big-muscled jocks (male and female) pass by me on their way to the back room of equipment. I’m reminded why I’ll never really fit in 24- Hour Fitness: each person sports a tattoo. I’ve never been one for body piercings or body art. When, decades ago, women began to pierce their ears, I used to pretend mine were pierced, too. I’d clip on my ear lobes those metal book rings used for binder notebooks. They looked good except for the attached notebook paper.  These days I buy clip earrings at department stores, which, aware there are four remaining women in the U.S. without pierced ears, simply recycle the same clip earrings every year. I can choose between plain gold or silver loops, which oddly enough resemble metal book rings.

            When tattooing became popular, I naturally wrinkled my nose at the thought. During my youth, the only people I saw with tattoos were Navy servicemen or ex-cons. We understood that being confined too long can make you either color your skin permanently or kill someone.

            What began at my 24-Hour Fitness as nubile 20 year olds flaunting a few cute tattooed flowers and butterflies became a gym epidemic of dark blue web-like designs covering entire arms, legs and backs of both genders. Why is there this need to make oneself a human road map? A poll in 2003 showed that a third of Americans with tattoos said it made them feel “more sexy.” In other words, the larger the tattoo the sexier one feels. People covered with tattoos are close to spontaneously combusting. If this isn’t frightening enough, they will also be denied medical coverage for being, to use a bank term, “Overdrawn.”

            When tattooers run out of skin and body piercers need new ideas for piercing placements, they can advance to Body Suspension. In Suspension, a supposedly sane person agrees to have approximately twelve hooks pierce his skin around the shoulders, upper arms, back, and behind the knees, then be lifted by machine off the ground a foot or two where he remains motionless or dead, depending on how he feels. The hooks most commonly employed for flesh suspension are deep-sea fish hooks, normally used for fishing sharks and octopi. 

            Suspension has been credited to, or blamed on, the Mandan Indian tribe which hosted Lewis and Clark in 1804 during their trip west. While history does not recount Lewis and Clark agreeing to be suspended by hooks, independently or in tandem, the Mandan Indians could scarcely be faulted if they suspected Lewis had an unhealthy fixation with Body Suspension: for the Expedition, he brought along 125 hooks and gave away many as “presents.”  

            While I have not had tattoos or piercings, I’ve tried Modified Body Suspension: this occurs when the cowardly mammogram technician leaves you suspended from the digital x-ray machine hanging by your mashed breasts while she, unwilling to watch your Suspension, races away to take the x-ray behind you.  

            By the time I’m released from the rigors of the mammogram’s Modified Body Suspension, and driving to 24- Hour Fitness for breast resuscitation, I remember with satisfaction the late British actor Richard Harris in the film A Man Called Horse.  His character is suspended by his chest in an Indian ritual known as “the Sun Vow and Breast Enhancement.”  He also endures the extreme pain of Suspension, but for his bravery he wins the hand of a beautiful Indian maiden whose only flaw is a sadistic fetish for sagging male breasts.         

Burning Woman (Part One)

            Andy’s skipped town (L.A.) and will be in Reno for a few days, interrupting his current acting gig as part of a clown troupe. That’s just as well, considering he created a clown character called The Naked Clown. (Don’t ask.)

            After Reno, he’s headed to Burning Man, the temporary city near Gerlach, Nevada that erupts like chicken pox across the belly of the northern Nevada desert. Burning Man is a temporary community of five square miles in the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno, on a mini-dry lake-bed playa. More than 50,000 people who value artistic self-expression and popular pharmaceuticals will pitch their tents to camp in extreme heat, freezing cold, dust and dust storms. At the end of the festivities a four story tall wooden man is burned to symbolize Burning Man’s major significance——to provide the fire for 50,000 s’mores.   

            This year’s theme is Evolution. The majority of attendees, who enjoy creating costumes, are expected to dress up as Charles Darwin, Clarence Darrow, monkeys, plant cells, human cells and sleeper cells. The remainder come dressed as Gideon Bibles or God.

             There is no water at Burning Man, but there are 400 port-a-potties, which in my book is more important. It is not commonly known that Nevada, (“The Sagebrush State,” “The Silver State,” “The Battle Born State,” “The Dust Mite State”) has, since it was first admitted to the Union in 1864*, lacked sufficient numbers of 20^th century restrooms.  

         * [State of Nevada expelled from Union in 1865, wait-listed 1866-68, re-admitted by doctor’s excuse in 1869]

            Oh, I know what you’re thinking: places in Las Vegas have gargantuan hotels with ornate bathrooms like the one in the Venetian Hotel’s opulent world-renowned Zeffirino Restaurante, which recently won fourth place for “America’s Best Restroom.” The contest is sponsored by the Cintas Corporation, maker of bathroom hygiene products, which looks for nominees in answer to questions such as “What makes the experience of using a public restroom something special?” “Is it style? Is it elegance?” “Is that restroom so clean you are almost ashamed to go home?”

            Zeffirino’s restroom includes spacious men and women’s rooms that feature custom-made mosaic tile artwork, marble floors and private restroom suites where patrons using the toilets may simultaneously dine on Zeffirino’s House Speciality, Tuna Noodle Casserole with Peas. 

            This is fine for big-city folks, but in less populated areas— the major part of Nevada—- restrooms are limited, if they exist at all. When I was young, I took the Greyhound Bus several times with my mother and sister from Portland to Las Vegas. Going by bus, at least, we had access to restrooms in the Nevada towns of Beatty and Tonopah. During these rest stops, nickels or dimes were not for slot machines but for pay toilets. Yes, children, for those of you unfamiliar with the name “Nik-O-Lok,” it was not a candy bar but a bar to your ability to use a  public toilet unless you put money in the steel slot. This was country-wide. Generally all but one stall required a nickel or dime to use. For those unable or unwilling to pay, a free stall was provided, recognizable by its hay-covered floor and mucking rake.

            Fortunately, the courtesy developed to hold the stall door open when you exited, so the next person could go in, gratis. If you didn’t like the looks of the person next in line waiting for you to leave, you could hold the door open until she came close, then allow the locking door to slam shut in front of her while uttering “Oops!” to avoid being beaten.

Burning Woman (Part Two)

            Children like me were trained from toddler days to climb under the pay stalls to use the bathroom and open the door for family. To this day, I can adroitly slide under a locked stall door, but I’ve found this disturbs the current occupant.

            I understand the concern because I vividly remember my own shock whenever children’s faces suddenly stared up at me from under the stall door. As a woman, I found it uncomfortable as well to use a narrow stall’s toilet while listening to crying children next door to me, and to hear from the nearby free stall an occasional whinny.

            When Andy was young, I rarely required him to slide under a stall door unless it was accidentally locked. He accompanied me, of course, to the women’s room—mothers know what I’m talking about. A few times I’d get disgusted glares and mutterings from insensitive women because Andy was then slightly tall for a ten year old.

            The last time Alan and I drove from Las Vegas to Portland on Highway 95, I was accompanied by nasty, burning stomach flu that required urgent bathroom stops along the way. In the five hour drive across the Mojave Desert from Las Vegas to Tonopah in central Nevada, I found one good restroom in the town of Beatty. We tried stopping at the ghost town of Goldfield, slumbering under a blanket of spring snow, but at the only open business, a Chevron station, the restroom was locked because the pipes had frozen.

            One hundred miles from Beatty, we arrived at Tonopah. [A Native American word, variously translated as “greasewood water,” “greasewood springs,” “little water,” “brush water,” “brush water springs,” “water brush,” “water for you,” “water for us,” “not much wood little water,” “water with only a little ice please,” or “tonopah”.] I was treated at the Nye General Hospital’s emergency room where the bearded young doctor assured me his pills would see me home comfortably.

            “Don’t worry,” he added, “you’ll find plenty of restrooms from here to Reno. Hey, this is modern Nevada.”

            According to Nevada experts, there still aren’t any restrooms in the 100 miles between Beatty and Tonopah, and Goldfield no longer has its gas station. Had I traveled two and half hours north from Tonopah to Austin, Nevada, instead of Reno, I could’ve found the remote but interesting restroom at St. Augustine, Nevada’s oldest Catholic church. The church’s steeple bell can only be run by pulling on a rope located in the men’s restroom, which, in local parlance is known as the “dong ding.”

            I’m certain Andy won’t have similar Nevada restroom issues at Burning Man. Not with 400 port-a-potties standing by, adorned with beacon lights and car sirens for night visits. The organizers, two of whom majored in history of bathroom hygiene, are determined that Burning Man be a “Leave No Trace” event. Andy and his friends would do well to comply. I’m thinking particularly of the final caveat found in the list of Participant’s Responsibilities:

      Please Do Not Defecate On the Playa