Hello, Friends!

GREAT NEWS!  I am very excited to announce that my novella, HOME has a new home!  I have just signed a publishing contract with Triskaideka Books. Stay tuned for details about when and where it will be released.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.  Please scroll down to read this week's random silliness regarding doctor visits.

THE DANCE RECITAL

I recently had the misfortune of being dragged to a recital given by the dancing school to which my seven-year-old neighbor, Melissa, belonged.

If you've never been to one of these extravaganzas, I strongly urge you to make every effort to retain your aesthetic virginity.

In short, it was a horror show, surpassing even the imaginations of Roger Corman, Wes Craven, and John Carpenter…put together.  Though there was no blood on the walls, by the time this travesty concluded, I really wanted to put some there--mostly the gore and entrails belonging to the people who had talked me into this fabulous outing in the first place--Melissa's parents.

The first number was performed by the preschoolers.  They danced (if you could call it that) to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers," though their interpretation of it was more like "Waltz of the Pot-Bellied Pigs."

OK.  I got through it with my lunch remaining just above my belt.

This was not to last, however.

The first graders were next and cavorted across the stage to Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bald Mountain," a piece of music I liked very much until that moment.  I still have flashbacks to a stage covered with urchins flailing about in a mad attempt to appear graceful, in spite of each child's having six legs and no sense of rhythm whatsoever.

The second graders--finally!  It was Melissa's group.  They came out dressed as zombies and treated us to an interpretation of "Thriller" that made Michael Jackson look positively normal.  It was unforgettable…no matter how hard I tried.

Good!  Number over.  I got up to leave and quickly discovered that God hadn't quite finished torturing me yet.  I was expected to stay for the entire thing!  Another whole hour!

So there I sat, gamely smiling through dances so hopelessly out of sync that I was suffering from mal de mer halfway into the program.  During this exercise in futility, we witnessed three children falling off the stage, six running into the wings in tears, and one who just stood front and center and waved to her mother.

And those were the talented ones.

At last, it ended…or so I thought.

No such luck.  Now it was time for the awards presentation!  This went on for another hour.  I spent most of that time desperately searching for something sharp to throw myself upon to put a swift end to the torment.

I tuned out most of the ceremony because every single child received a Medal of Excellence.  To this day, I maintain that the audience was more deserving of such awards than the children.  Stamina like ours is hard to come by and deserves to be recognized.

I had decided that I would not lie to Melissa if she asked me if I enjoyed the recital.  I was hoping she'd be way too excited about winning her first dancing medal to even notice me, cowering like the craven poltroon that I am, in the back seat of her parents' car.  But if she did ask, she would get the pure, unvarnished truth.

I was just praying she wouldn't ask.

When she jumped into the vehicle, she gazed upon me with eyes joyfully aglow, gave me a big hug, and asked, "Wasn't it great?"

"I loved it, sweetie," I replied, hugging her back.  "I just can't wait for next year's recital!"

What can I say?  I've always been a sucker for eyes joyfully aglow.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FLESH-EATING PLANTS

Think you can just water your plants, put them in the proper light, sprinkle plant food over them occasionally and they'll pretty much take care of themselves?

Think again.

I have a greenhouse full of plants…carnivorous ones…every type there is…and they're all huge!

As I'm sure you can guess, they have rather different nutritional requirements than your run-of-the-mill begonia, since they need meat.  Oh, they'll eat hamburger…grudgingly; but what they really prefer is live bugs, their favorite being flies.  I have so many plants that buying flies (yes, there are places where you can actually purchase these pests) has become cost prohibitive, and catching them on my own just doesn't cut it.  If I nabbed 50 flies in a day, I was lucky.  However, that would only be enough to feed one of my largest plants or three of the smaller ones.  

So I raise my own…flies, I mean.

If there is anything more perverse and absurd than actually raising houseflies, on purpose, I defy anyone to find it.

Fly husbandry isn't easy, either, let me tell you.  I have four 5' x 5' x 5' mesh cages for my colonies.  There are thousands of residents, and the inside of my house sounds like Amelia Earhart just turned up in my living room.  And not only do I have to deal with the unsettling feeling that my house could be hijacked to Cuba at any moment, but there's the odor, too.

"Oh, but flies don't smell bad," you say.

Not the flies.  Their food.  A fly's optimum diet is rotten meat, which it not only eats but lays eggs in, as well.  I started with over 75,000 of the little beasties, so you have some idea of what I'm up against.

"Try air freshener," you say?

You think I haven't?

Air freshener, once sprayed, takes a single sniff of the current "bowels of Hell" aroma pervading the house and heads, screaming, for the nearest open window.  Baking soda bursts into tears.  Lysol puts on a gas mask.  Nothing helps.

And I take quite a bit of abuse for it, too.

My neighbor calls me "Legion."

I keep finding reversed pentagrams drawn on my doorstep.

Any mail addressed to "The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse" is delivered to me.

All because I love my plants!

Well, at this point, they're so large that perhaps "respect" would be a better word.

Or maybe, "fear."

I don't know what they'd do to me if I cut off their fly supply. But I suspect that becoming the plant version of a granola bar might be involved.

I do much more for them than just feed them, though.  I must mist them all, four times a day, because they like it humid.  I must monitor the heater constantly to be sure it is at the exact temperature they prefer.  I must pipe in "gangsta" rap music for them to listen to during the day.  They're hostile plants with bad attitudes, and they seem to feel that this sort of music indicates that someone, somewhere, truly understands them.  I know, because I tried them on country/western and all I heard was vomiting noises…for hours.  They hate opera (especially Wagnerian, for some reason), expressing their displeasure by snapping at me if I get within range.  And I don't even want to discuss what happens when they hear Barry Manilow.  Just mentioning his name sets them off!

Lately, the larger plants have taken to locking the greenhouse door and cranking up ZZ Top at three o'clock every morning.  My neighbors don't even complain anymore.  The first time they did, I told them that there was nothing I could do about it…that my carnivorous plants were behind it all and had locked me out of the greenhouse.

Even the police don't come around anymore.

I've also noticed recently that I haven't been receiving the invitations to neighborhood parties that I used to.  The babysitting that I was formerly in such demand for seems to have inexplicably dried up, too.  I guess that means that people are spending more time at home with their families, and that’s a good thing.

Well, I'd like to continue this, but I have to get back to the greenhouse, now.

It's time for their bedtime story.

OH, THE HORROR...

Have you ever gone to the doctor just because you didn't feel quite right, but weren't sure exactly what was wrong with you?

Prepare yourself.  A problem that would have been cured in your grandmother's day by a strong dose of tonic will now cost you in the neighborhood of three months' salary, the antique clock in your dining room, and all the fillings in your teeth.

There is no such thing as a GP anymore.   The General Practitioner has been reduced to bones in the La Brea tar pits, along with the rest of the dinosaurs.

"I'm feeling weak and tired," I told a Doctor of Internal Medicine.

He put his hand on my wallet and told me to cough (Henny Youngman wasn't kidding!), after which he recommended that I see a heart specialist.

"That's it?" I cried.  "No blood work?  No EKG?  No stress test?  Just 'go to a heat specialist'?"

"Yes," he replied, while counting out my life savings.

So I went to a "heart man,' as he's known in the biz.

He presented me with a bill before he even examined me, then said, "You have six months to live."

I looked at the bill.  I'd never seen so many zeroes in one place before in my life.  "I can't pay this!"

"OK, then I'll give you another six months." (Did Henny Youngman go to medical school?)
"Oh, and I'm sending you to a respiratory specialist," he said.

When I showed up there, the respiratory specialist sent his secretary out to give me my bill in the parking lot!  On it was scrawled the name of a neurologist and the time of my appointment.

The neurologist's office called me and gave me my bill total over the phone.  I was then told to report to the ICU.

At the hospital, still not knowing what was wrong with me, I was placed inside an oxygen tent and put on suicide watch.  When the doctor finally came in, he looked just like Henny Youngman.

I took one look at him and said, "Take my life...please."

BATHING SUIT SHOPPING...NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

There is no worse psychological trauma a female can endure than swimsuit shopping prior to going on a spring cruise.  After winter, we've all put on a few pounds and nothing reminds us more of that than trying on a bathing suit.  And the styles we have to choose from!  Take it from me, you'll get more coverage if you just wear the money.

I made the mistake of slipping (after greasing my entire body with bear fat) into some of this season's newest designs, all of which are made specifically for twenty-year-olds with perfect bodies.

The first suit I managed to get into (after 20 minutes of trying...and it was MY size) immediately cut off the circulation to all my vital organs.  The dressing room attendant found me on the floor, blue and gasping.  The paramedics had to have a surgeon on the phone to talk them through getting me out of the thing!  But did I take the hint and go home?

Oh, no.  Not me.

I tried on another one.

It was called "Palm Tree," I think because if you take one look at yourself in it, you'll want to hang yourself from the nearest one.

Next was the "Chaplin" model.  If you don't feel like a little tramp in this number, then you have no shame whatsoever.

Then there were the suits with push-up bras.  I tried on one of these and it made me look like I was suffering from some sort of weird glandular condition.  I flashed back to that commercial, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" because if I ever fell over in that thing, the floor would be my home.

Conversely, there are suits that have built-in "bottom shapers."  I'd be afraid to swim in one of those for fear I'd be molested by any number of large seagoing mammals.  And the manatee look wasn't quite the image I was going for, anyway.

I finally gave up on the two-piece suits and switched to one piece.

These were no better.

The first one I tried had so many straps that went in such a multitude of directions that it would have made a better macrame plant holder than a piece of apparel.  Who designs these things?  A dominatrix with a grudge?

At last, I'd had enough.

When the clerk came to check on my progress, I reached out, grabbed her by the throat, and yanked her into my dressing room.

"Arrrrgh," she remarked pleasantly.

"OK, listen up and listen good," I growled in my best Edward G. Robinson. "I'm going to hold you hostage here until I get a bathing suit that fits me, see?  I want a suit that hugs my body, not bitch slaps it senseless, see?  I want contours, not contortion, you mug!  I WANT TO LOOK LIKE I BELONG AT A RESORT, NOT AT A CONDEMNED BUILDING!"

"Arrrrrrgh!" she replied.  I released my choke hold.

"Well, we do have suits in plus siz.....ARRRRRRGH!"

"Wrong answer!" I shrieked, renewing my grip.  "I am a size EIGHT, not eighteen!"

In the meantime, the department manager had arrived to extricate his clerk from my clutches and the dressing room--in that order.

"Ma'am?  Why don't you put down the clerk and we'll give you what you want?"  So now I had plus sizes and a manager cum hostage negotiator.  Apparently, while I wasn't looking, I had become both John Dillinger AND the Hindenburg!

Oh, yeah.  This was gonna be a good day.

After the clerk recovered enough to demand, and get, an immediate transfer to another department and the manager located a comfortable suit in my size (from a dusty box labeled, "Retro Suits--1960) I moved on to the shoe department to find a pair of nice looking sandals.

Now understand that I have rather unusual feet, so shoe shopping is not much better than bathing suit shopping.  My shoe size is 8 AAAA.  My feet are so narrow that I can pick locks and butter toast with them and they are always the headache of the day to the salesperson unlucky enough to draw my custom.

But this salesperson was the unluckiest--it was the clerk from the swimsuit department.  She took one look at me advancing on her and, grabbing the two handiest shoes, formed a protective cross and held it before her.  I think she may have thrown some holy water in my general direction, too, before legging it out of there.

Oh, well, I can always go barefoot.

My shopping list, far from satisfied, included hats, lounge wear, formal wear, lingerie, and casual wear, so I made my way to the appropriate departments.

From the way the salespeople reacted, I surmised that the swimsuit clerk had paid each a warning visit prior to my arrival.  They were all decidedly edgy and either pretended not to notice me or had urgent business elsewhere.  I sighed, tore my list to confetti, then moved on to a department I hadn't planned to visit.

And now, here I am, enjoying the sun and the Mediterranean-blue water, a drink within easy reach.

How did I get here?

The refund I got on my cruise ticket paid for the above ground pool I ordered from the Outdoor department on my fateful shopping trip.  I also bought a little ocean liner toy boat to float at the opposite end.  With a little imagination (and if you squint), it looks like a cruise ship anchored off shore.

If I've learned anything it's that, though a strong constitution is required to deal with sea travel, it is nothing compared to the constitution needed for the pre-cruise shopping trip!

BOMBS, BIG MACS, AND NUCLEAR GOLF

Born on March 14, 1879, it is a little known fact that Albert Einstein spent several years as a conductor, especially in early childhood, during which he passed many happy hours wetting his index finger and inserting it into the nearest live outlet.

After his formative years in the ICU, Albert "Short Circuit" Einstein attended university to pursue his interest in electronics in Earnest--a small town outside of Oslo.  Early in his college career, he demonstrated a bent for invention when he discovered that he could light up an entire room merely by leaving it.

Following his expulsion from university, Albert was hired by Kirschenwassenstrassegottedammerung, Inc., in Germany, by representing himself as the reincarnation of Thomas Edison.  This confused many people, since Edison had not yet died.  Shortly after joining the company, Albert's inventiveness reasserted itself and he came up with a procedure for creating life from dead, sewn-together corpses, using lightning as a life-giving catalyst.  Unfortunately, the chairman of the board of directors, who was also clairvoyant, shelved the project, explaining that "one Henry Kissinger is all we'll ever be needing, thank you very much!"

Disheartened, Albert moved his lab to America and took up residence at M.I.T., where he proceeded to create such popular items as the hand-held atomic cyclotron, an electron microscope the size of three city blocks, the joy buzzer, wind up clacking teeth, and a car seat that, when the ignition key is turned, delivers a 2,000 amp jolt of electricity that fuses the colon shut in less than two seconds…a real plus for those long road trips.

One day, while preparing a wiener schnitzel, he jotted down what is now called the Theory of Relativity, or E=mc².  Though its usual interpretation is: Energy=mass x constant squared, it was actually a lunch order for his secretary, and, properly interpreted, means:

Ethel wants 2 Big Macs (Ethel hated wiener schnitzel!)

This, once again, serves to prove that behind every man's success stands a good woman…one with a rather large appetite who had a butt you could show drive-in movies on, but a good woman nonetheless.

Once the alternate interpretation was explained to him, Einstein saw big possibilities in using it to create a product for blowing that huge stump in his back yard out of the damned lawn for good and all, and for getting rid of that Rottweiler down the street that crapped on his newspaper every single morning before he even got a chance to read it.  He felt that it also had potential as a cure for constipation.

However, the world had a wider application in mind.

Since the majority of world conquerors have been diminutive, such as Napoleon, Caesar, and Dr. Ruth, the US government felt that this formula could prove useful in dealing with future conquerors.  On December 7, 1941, Japan volunteered to be a test subject, thereby saving millions in research costs and long distance telephone bills.

Watching in horror as the bombs were dropped, Einstein immediately took steps to see that nothing like this ever happened again.

He fired Ethel.

Einstein is best remembered for a computer game called, "Nuclear Golf."  This was a huge financial success until, due to a programming glitch, parents kept finding their children burned to a crisp in front of video screens flashing, "You Lose!"  Even the damage control move of packaging the game with an air freshener and a stain remover failed to turn Albert's fortunes around and after all the lawsuits were settled, he died in penniless obscurity.

 

CREATIVE INSANITY

I've discovered something awful about myself.

I am not a deep person.

There are puddles deeper than I am.

I had this epiphany by way of a trip of the Museum of Modern Art's annual show-and-sale in New York (MOMA [pronounced "MOE-Ma"] to those "in the know").  I was accompanied by an excruciatingly bohemian friend of mine, and was anticipating my first foray into modern art with all the excitement of a five-year-old about to meet Mickey Mouse.

Now, I have always favored Renaissance and Flemish art, and I must say that, despite my eagerness for exposure to new things, the trip was less an outing than a rude awakening.

The first room we ventured into contained a huge pink faux marble Formica slab, just leaning against the wall.

"Come on," I said to my companion.  "We'd better go to another room.  They're renovating in here."

"Oh, just look at that!"

"At what?"

"That incredible statement about isolation. Doesn't it just speak to you?"

"WHERE?"

She pointed at the pink monolith.  It was incredible all right.  I sure didn't believe it.

"That?  The only thing that says to me is that someone is getting ready to install a counter!"

My comment was met with an indignant huff.

After she had spent the requisite amount of time drinking in the beauty and profundity of this "creation," we proceeded to our left where, in a trail on the floor, were a dozen or so large, pieces of slate.  I, of course, walked on them.

"Please, Madam!" a distressed museum guard shouted, running up and grabbing me by the back of the coat.  "Don't touch the exhibit!"

"The exhibit?"

"Yes!  The exhibit!"  He pointed to the floor.  "This piece is worth $250,000!"

I gingerly stepped off the stones and made a mental note to go home and cash in my sidewalk.  My friend and tour guide was nowhere to be seen, obviously fearing for her bohemian status in SoHo, should she be caught undead, with a pleb like me.

Bemused, I wandered on alone.  The next exhibit was a glass ball on a pedestal in the center of the room.  That was it…for the whole room!  It looked like the scene of a séance suddenly abandoned.  The descriptive card read, "Universal Teardrop," an apt name considering that the price tag on this baby would have brought not one, but many teardrops to the eyes of any self-respecting universe.  Shaking my head, I moved on.

The next exhibit was called, "Black Lemons."  Certain that I would find my former Camaro on display, you can imagine my surprise upon discovering hundreds of lemons--the fruit, that is--painted black and suspended from nylon filaments attached to the ceiling.  There were screens with black lemons painted on them.  There was a giant one in the shape of a chair.  There was even one that had a television set inside it.

It was beyond my comprehension that people would pay good money to see something that I could easily duplicate in my refrigerator after three or four weeks.

But the final exhibit…the piece de resistance, if you will, was the creation called, simply, "Cans."  The room was so littered with empty soda pop cans of every description that it reminded me of the trash compactor scene in "Star Wars."

After I recovered from the assault on my aesthetics, I noticed that this display was a favorite of the homeless people in the area; most of whom were clustered around the barred windows, undoubtedly toting up what they could get for it at their local redemption center.

According to the card, this pile of litter was purported to be an artistic representation of the creation of the world.

Ohhhhhkay.

The other people in the room--the arty-fartsy Greenwich Village crowd, loved this stuff.  Some of the comments I overheard were:

"It was a good idea…a really good idea…but it isn't conclusive, is it?"

"Not conclusive?  How can you say that?  Look at it!  Have you ever seen a more succinct explanation of the origin of the species?  It's all right there in that arrogant arrangement of the Pepsi and Mountain Dew cans!"

"Oh, don't you just adore Steinputz?  I think this is the most meaningful thing he's ever done!"

God, I felt sorry for Steinputz.

While I was standing there, a MOMA official whisked in and announced that this exhibit had just been sold for $45 million!  There was respectful, subdued applause.

I wondered if they'd deliver it in a garbage truck.

Fed up, I decided to try a little experiment.  I stood in front of a steel door with an EXIT sign above it, and just stared at it.  After a while, someone walked up to me, looked at the EXIT sign, then at me, then at the EXIT sign again.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

"Only the clearest explanation of death I've ever seen!" I replied, never taking my eyes off the sign.

He looked again.  "Why, yes, you're right!  I can't understand how I could have missed something this fabulous!  Oh, Enid, come over here and look at this.  It's magnificent!"

In less time than it takes Andy Warhol to sneer at Andrew Wyeth, I had been joined by an army of creative cognoscenti, all babbling about this "masterpiece" before us.

I thought I had seen everything until people started bidding on it.

I heard later that the door and the EXIT sign sold for $1.5 million.

There is no doubt in my mind that somewhere P.T. Barnum is rolling on the floor, laughing himself sick.