The doctor is not in

If you ever watched Hee-Haw, you probably remember the skit where the old guys would sing the sad-sack song, “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me,” which featured the line, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”

Well, I’m in one of those streaks. In the past 10 days, an overflowing toilet destroyed my house, a computer virus wrecked my home computer, and a mechanic told me he thinks my beloved chick-magnet Plymouth mini-van needs a new engine. Just call me Job. It’s a miracle my dog hasn’t died yet.

I have gone through all this while dealing with incessant abdominal and back pain, so last week I put aside my stubbornness and reluctantly went to see a doctor. Did you know that there are a lot of “judge” shows on TV in the afternoon? I didn’t either, but I endured four of them back-to-back-to-back-to-back in the waiting room. I tried to ignore it, but they had the volume cranked up to just below the level of an Iron Maiden concert.

What a lovely time I had in the waiting room. I spent two-and-a-half hours of thumbing through an old Golf Digest and the latest copy of some Jehovah’s Witness magazine. I now know how to handle short putts, and I understand how dinosaurs existed even though they’re not mentioned in the Bible. Finally I was called back to see the doctor – or so I thought.

First of all, when you go back they weigh you, which is patently unfair. I stepped on the scale wearing work clothes, heavy shoes, a sports coat, and I had keys, a cell-phone and a blackberry in my pockets. So I dispute the findings of that scale. I told the nurse, “You know, I usually weigh myself naked.” She threatened to call security and led me into the examining room.

I sat in the cold, windowless examining room for a while, feeling like a criminal suspect awaiting interrogation and amusing myself with a tongue depressor. Finally, the door opened, and in walked not a doctor, but a “physician’s assistant.” This is a trend I don’t care for. What is a physician’s assistant, anyway? Is it somebody who goes to WebMD a lot, or watches “House”? Why aren’t they actual doctors?

When this physician’s assistant walked in, I realized why I had been forced to wait so long for her. Apparently she had to wait until algebra class was over, and then catch the school bus over to the doctor’s office. Seriously, she looked like she was maybe 15 years old. The “Hannah Montana” stethoscope gave me pause. I feared that if she asked me to drop my pants, Chris Hansen and a “Dateline NBC’ camera crew would burst into the room.

I suppose you could say I’m mildly sexist in a couple of ways. OK, in a lot of ways, but I prefer male doctors, and I want them to be older than me. How could this child diagnose me? I have bunions older than her.

Well, I’ll give her credit. She had some blood drawn, ran some tests, and when I went back the next week she said that she believes I have pancreatitis. She gave me some medicine and told me what to do, and so far I feel a little better. I had actually diagnosed myself before going to see her, and her opinion agreed with mine, but since I’m not allowed to write prescriptions (wouldn’t that be awesome?), it was necessary to go to the doctor’s office for confirmation.

The female Doogie Howser also told me that my cholesterol was bad, so she has me taking something for that, too. I’m taking more pills than Judy Garland now, so in a couple of weeks I should either be much better or checking myself into rehab. That might not be such a bad idea – maybe when I get out, my house, car and computer will all be fixed.

Flushed away

Our current president, and the most recent one, have both gone on the record promoting the idea that as many Americans as possible should be homeowners.

To which I say, are we sure about that? Because I’m not so sure that home ownership is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Do you know what home ownership is about? Well, I can sum it up in two words: toilet repair.

About 50 percent of your time as a homeowner is spent repairing or unstopping toilets. They are the most poorly engineered, badly constructed parts of any house.

The basic toilet design has gone basically unchanged for, what, a hundred years? In that time, great strides have been made in computers, televisions, space travel, and even blankets you cover up with on the couch (I desperately want a Snuggie). But there apparently has been very little research done on toilets, which are used by every one of us.

Apparently my builder got hold of some toilets that couldn’t pass inspection in Uganda, bought them at a bargain-basement price and installed them in my house. I have replaced every moving part of every toilet in my home at least 5 times. I’ve spent more time on my knees in the bathroom than George Michael.

An old favorite is the “running toilet,” in which the water continues to flow even after the flushing process. There’s a very scientific method to fixing a running toilet, known in the trade as “jiggling the handle.” Then you have the leaks, the broken handles, the bad seals, the busted seats, and the occasional overflow, which is never pretty.

I know this because I just had an upstairs toilet overflow. The kids were at home, and apparently neither of them noticed until my son thought he heard the shower running, only to discover the water he heard rushing was not from the shower, but from the CEILING FAN downstairs. The bright side is, we’re getting new ceilings, carpet, walls and paint for nothing but the deductible on the homeowners’ insurance.

The down side is, our house looks like Hitler’s bunker in the final days of the war. For three days there were giant wind machines running throughout the house trying to dry out the walls. Every time I walked downstairs and the fan hit me, I looked like I was in an Aerosmith video.

All of this has made me wish for simpler times, when the bathroom was out in a separate building in the back yard, and a man never had to worry about replacing a flapper, or a valve, or a ballcock (don’t go there). Those, my friends, were the good old days.

Worlds colliding

I read with interest an article this morning that makes the case that, with a new presidential administration in place that’s very different from the last one, music will be impacted.

The writer’s view is that, without an evil president to protest, we’re headed for an era of bland pop music, similar to the early ’60s.

It became quite fashionable during the past 8 years for artists to write and record their obligatory “Bush sucks” songs. Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, various rappers, Madonna – it seems like everybody spoke out except Britney Spears, who said, “Who’s George Bush?”

Apparently even Pink has a Bush is bad song. Well, that had to be devastating news for the former president. When you’ve lost Pink, you’ve lost the country.

I saw Joan Jett on the “Henry Rollins Show” one night, and learned that she has an anti-Bush, war-is-bad song. That was the second-most shocking thing I learned watching that show, the first being that Joan Jett is still alive. She had been feeling this way for some time, she said, and she felt like she had to get it out. I’m sure that was very influential on the people who are still buying Joan Jett CDs – both of them.

I am of the opinion that music and politics don’t make good bedfellows. Yes, there were some political songs in the ’60s and ’70s that have a lasting impact, and were actually good songs, but those were different times. And I suspect that for every Blowin’ In the Wind, there were 50 more like Eve of Destruction.

Quick, what’s your favorite Dylan song? I’m betting you didn’t say Masters of War or Just a Pawn in Their Game. Just a hunch.

Has anybody ever gone to a Springsteen concert and shouted out, “Play 41 Shots!” I doubt it. And I much prefer Steve Earle’s beautiful elegy for Townes Van Zandt (Ft. Worth Blues) than that song he wrote about Condi Rice. I suspect I’m not alone here.

And my dislike of political songs extends to both ends of the spectrum. Listen, I love America as much as the next guy, but if I go another 10,000 years without hearing Lee Greenwood’s God Bless The U.S.A., it still won’t be long enough. I’m right there with you on the sentiment, Lee. But the song sucks.

I remember not too long after 9-11 and some country singer released a song with the lyrics, “And you say we should forget about Bin Laden, but have you forgotten.” I really don’t think anybody was saying that. I think pretty much every Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and everything in between in America still wants that bastard dead.

Of course, everybody has a right to write and sing about whatever they want to. That’s the beauty of America. But, like George Costanza, I don’t like it when my worlds collide, and that’s what happens when I hear political songs. I like songs about drinking, and women, and loving, and loving women who drink – you know, the important stuff in life.

Bad timing

So I walk into the bathroom this morning, nod a curt hello at a guy who was exiting a stall, approached the urinal and got ready to do my bidness.

Then, in mid-stream, I realize the guy has not left the bathroom, but is standing behind me. I didn’t turn around, but I could sense his presence. Guys know these things.

Plus, I’ve been a little bit on-edge in that bathroom since there was an “incident” some months back. A maintenance worker claimed that he “surprised” a couple of fellows sharing a stall very early one morning. I have no more details, and we’ve been assured that neither fellow works on our floor, but I think it goes without saying that the situation calls for a heightened state of alertness.

Anyway, I realized that the guy – I don’t know him well, but I recognized him as somebody who works on our floor, but in a different department – is speaking to me. I think I’ve made my position clear on talking in the bathroom – I’m agin it. Perhaps a casual “How you doin’?” or “How about those Braves?” comment is OK, but nothing serious, and certainly no work talk is allowed.

So this guy says, “I may have heard wrong, but I was told that you were against us leveraging third-party resources to get our message out.” I swear, I’m not making this up.

I wondered how to respond to this fellow. First of all, not only am I not against what he said, I don’t even know what it means. He must have had me mistaken for somebody else. So I said, “That doesn’t sound familiar. Are you sure it was me you heard that about?”

He said, “I’m pretty sure it was you.” Well, there’s no chance in hell that anybody ever heard me say such a thing. But I was wearing my badge, and I caught him looking down at it, so it must have been my name that he was associating with this position on the third-party resources. Perhaps he misheard it, or maybe it was something close, like “Marty Wilson.” I wasn’t sure.

I decided the best thing to do was to play along. “Well,” I said, “I generally don’t have a problem with us leveraging third-party resources, as long as they stay on point. We don’t want them getting off the reservation, you know.”

He laughed and gave me a knowing look, and nodded in assent with my sage assessment. “Exactly,” he said. “Maybe I heard wrong, because I was surprised you would have a problem with that. It really helps our business case to have them out there, as long as we take care of the legality of it.”

“Absolutely,” I said, and by now I had convinced myself that I knew what we were talking about, even though I still didn’t. “Listen, there’s a time and a place for everything, but on this one, I say we go full-steam ahead. Strike while the iron’s hot, you know? We can’t afford to stay on the sidelines on this one.”

He smiled again, patted my shoulder, and said, “Without a doubt.” Then he turned and walked back down to his office to continue doing whatever it is he does for a living, and I went back to my desk, glad I could help out. With, you know, whatever it was.

It's gotta be the shoes

A friend told me the other day that she believes that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their shoes.

I told her that was nonsense, but then I did a little research (i.e., typed “what do your shoes say about you” into Google), and I found out that it is an actual phenomenon – there are people out there who form their first impression of others based on the shoes they’re wearing.

I’m not sure what my shoes say about me, other than “This guy shops at Famous Footwear during 'buy one, get one free' sales.” I don’t wear cheap shoes, but I don’t wear expensive ones either, and I probably wear them a little longer than I should. And I do wear black shoes with brown pants, but I’m partially color-blind, so you can’t hold that against me.

Shoe talk seems to be almost entirely confined to women. One day, the office hens were fluttering about because they said one of the women on our floor was wearing stripper shoes. I had no idea what they were talking about. Ask most men what stripper shoes are, and they’ll say, “Strippers wear shoes?”

Most of us don’t care, and we can’t understand why women walk around in those high-heeled torture devices they call shoes. I have heard it said that women tend to dress to impress each other, not men, and I tend to believe that’s true, especially when it comes to their feet. It’s not the part of women’s bodies that men tend to notice.

I mean, that’s what I hear.

I suspect that I am like many men who, quite frankly, only want shoes that won’t hurt their feet. I’d wear bedroom slippers to work if I could get away with it. And I think the idea that you can judge people by their shoes is preposterous. Who cares what people put on their feet?

During my exhaustive five minutes of research into this, I came across one “shoe expert” who said, “If his shoes consistently are unraveled, frayed or distressed, you might want to ask yourself the question, 'Where is he is unraveling, fraying or distressed?” Wow, I guess I’m coming apart at the seams and didn’t even know it.

The expert also said men who wear nice shoes care more about things and themselves and what people think about them. You know who was real particular about his shoes? O.J. Simpson. You know who didn’t care a whit about his shoes? Jesus.

I rest my case.

You know all of these Wall Street titans and bankers who were collecting huge bonuses while running our economy into the ditch? I bet you they all wear expensive, shiny, designer-brand shoes. And Imelda Marcos – way into shoes. Are these the people you want to be associated with?

So please, if you meet me, please don’t look at my feet and try to form an opinion about me. As a famous guy who didn’t care about shoes once said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

Here and there

I went down to the little snack shop on the bottom floor of my building had no regular Cheez-its today, only the “hot and spicy” and “white cheddar” varieties. What the hell? Why would they even make such things? Cheez-its are the absolute perfect snack food, designed by God. Why would someone alter or mess with such a thing? It’s like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, or making Salma Hayek wear sweatpants. It’s not necessary.

* * *

Springsteen tickets went on sale, and for the first time in a few years, I did not buy any. I’m a little put out with him right now – the Super Bowl show with that stupid “referee” running out, the Wal-Mart deal, and it’s hard to drop a couple hundred bucks on a concert with the way things are going. But he’s still my hero and I’ll probably be on Craigslist just before the show trying to find a ticket.

* * *

I read a story today where Cher said that 8 years of Republican rule “almost” killed her. Great – yet another failure by W.

* * *

I see a lot of people are going to get money from the government if this “stimulus package” is passed. Well, here’s a group that’s being left out that needs a few billion dollars – parents of teen-agers. The public school system is sucking money out of me like a Shop-Vac.

* * *

It looks like another winter with no snow here in Georgia. I remember as a kid, the few times it snowed, being so excited to run outside and play in it. But we weren’t equipped with the proper clothing, so it got old in about 15 minutes. Putting loaf-bread wrappers around your shoes was no substitute for galoshes, and those little thin wool gloves were worthless.

Sometimes in the winter, my mother would look up at the sky on a cloudy day and say, “Those are snow clouds.” She was born in Hawkinsville, Ga., and grew up in Cochran, Ga., and never lived north of Griffin, Ga. a day in her life. How would she know what “snow clouds” looked like? But I never disputed her. She wasn’t a big fan of being disputed.

* * *

I like that Tennessee’s new pretty-boy football coach called Florida’s Urban Meyer a cheater. Even though what Meyer did – calling a recruit while the kid was on his visit to Tennessee – wasn’t cheating, it was the sort of classless thing you would expect from a humorless jackass who writes about himself in the third person. But I didn’t like Lane Kiffin’s lame apology – “If I offended anyone, I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intent.” Of course it was his intent.

But this is a man who moved to Knoxville and named his child “Knox,” so I don’t expect him to be super-smart. It’s hard to take sides when Tennessee and Florida are fighting, anyway. It’s kind of like the Iran-Iraq war. I want them both to lose.

This and that

I was standing at the checkout line at Walgreens last night, buying some milk, AAA batteries and sugarless gum, and I saw something that caught my attention.

There was a black woman in front of me, probably around my age, and she was buying a couple of CDs from the $2 bargain bin. I noticed that she bought one entitled “Motown Favorites”, and then she plopped down “The Best of the Moody Blues.”

Well, that surprised me. Even white people think The Moody Blues are kind of square. I thought that maybe she didn’t know what she was getting. Maybe she likes the blues, and she thought it was a CD full of sultry blues tunes that would set the mood.

Perhaps she went home, lit some candles, and told her husband she had some special music for them and popped it in the CD player. But then they were unable to truly get in the mood because by the time they got to the spoken part at the end of “Knights in White Satin,” he had taken the CD out of the player and stomped on it until it shattered.

But who knows? Maybe she’s a big Moody Blues fan. Maybe she met the man of her dreams at party while “Tuesday Afternoon” played on the radio. Maybe she hears “In Your Wildest Dreams” and gets the urge to rip off her smock and dance in the rain. As they said in Raising Arizona, it’s a crazy world. Somebody ought to sell tickets.

Sure, I’d buy one.

* * * * *
Here are a few random snapshots from a day at the office:

I overheard this conversation on the elevator:
Guy 1: They need to get their ducks in a row.
Guy 2: They don’t know anything about ducks. They are ducks.
Guy 1: Ducks that don’t have any feathers.
Guy 2: We need to teach them some things about ducks.

Honestly, I don’t think they were actually talking about ducks.

--

I’m not really one for talking on the cell phone while in the bathroom. Today, a guy walked in the bathroom while in the middle of his conversation, sidled up to the urinal next to me, stared peeing, and never missed a beat. And I could tell that he was talking to his wife. Then he didn’t even bother to try and disguise the flush. That’s a big bowl of wrong, is what that is.

--

I’m going to buy the woman in the cube next to me a new CD. She listens to the same one every day, loudly, and it apparently only has a few songs on it. I swear I heard “Dancing in the Street” six times in one day last week. I wonder if she’d like The Moody Blues?

--

I was on a conference call where somebody used the word “apple-carting.” He said, “We are apple-carting our communications approach.” Other terms used during the call included “50,000-foot view,” “organizational agnostic” and “economies of scale.” Then the guy said, “We’re going to try to limit these meetings to two hours, because after two hours people begin to lose focus.” Two hours? I was surfing the Web after two minutes. Thank God for the mute button.

Facts are stubborn things

Boy, that was some amazing story a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it, when that plane crash-landed in the Hudson River and nobody got hurt.

It reminded me of a story about my family, one I’ve told many times. It seems my dad was supposed to fly out of New York one time, way back before I was born, but he gave up his seat on the plane and decided to take a later flight.

Then that plane – the one he was supposed to be on – crashed shortly after takeoff into the East River, and everybody died. Had he been on the plane, I would have never been born.

(Anybody who just said to themselves “Too bad he didn’t get on” will have to answer to God for that!)

I’ve relayed this story many times. My daughter once told her Girl Scout Troup about it. It comforts me in times of trouble, when I’m feeling worthless, and makes me think that maybe I’m here for a reason. Fate had intervened long ago to make sure that I would come into the world.

So I went to see my dad Saturday, and I brought that story up – and he just looked at me. I said, don’t you remember, you were supposed to get on a plane that crashed?

Oh yes, he said. He told me the plane took off and got up in the air, but soon after one of the engines caught fire, and the pilot had to make an emergency landing and they all got off the plane, including him.

“Got off the plane?” I said. “No, no, you never got on. It crashed into the East River.”

He said, “It didn’t crash. And it was in Hawaii. I was coming back home after World War II.”

This stunned me. Wait, I said, are you sure? After all, he is 81, and maybe the memory is starting to fade. He said, “I’ve been to New York twice in my life, and both times I drove back.”

Ok, this didn’t make any sense. That story was part of my autobiography. And now I’m hearing that it isn’t true?

So I asked my dad if he knew somebody who had supposed to have been on a plane that crashed into the East River. He said nope, had never heard of it. Later on that day, I asked my brother if he recalled anything about that story. He said he hadn’t.

Well, where in the world did it come from? Did I dream it? I did some research, and sure enough, in 1959, a plane DID crash into the East River, killing almost all of the passengers on board. But it was flying into New York, not out. My dad did admit that he flew INTO New York once, to help his brother move back to Georgia. But he couldn’t remember the year, and he has no recollection of almost getting on a plane that crashed. Surely that would stick in your memory.

And it’s not like my dad’s mind is going. On that same visit he told me of his father taking off a dog (that’s what they did in the country back then) when he was a boy, dropping it off almost 15 miles from home, and three days later the dog trotted back up into the yard. My grandfather apparently decided that since the dog had gone through so much to get back home, this time he’d let him stay.

But that story happened more than 70 years ago. If my dad recalled that, he’d recall a near-death experience. And yet, somehow that story got in my brain, and has lived there all these years, and now I feel like a little bit of a fraud. Maybe fate didn’t intervene to save me.

Although, there was one time when I was a teenager, and I was riding in a car with a friend, and we were behind a truck from an electric utility company. Suddenly, one of those gigantic wooden spools that they wrap wire around broke free from the truck, and came bouncing down the road, headed straight toward us. At the last minute, it took a big hop and went right over the top of his car, sparing our lives. Fate or God or something had again intervened to save me, or so it seems.

If I ever find out THAT didn’t really happen, then I just give up.