This and That

This concerns Ted Williams the anointed "Golden Voice Homeless Guy." Is it just me, or did no one else see this coming?

He was homeless for a reason. No matter much I people bleeding hearts tell me "If only someone had given him an opportunity..." when referring to some homeless person; I still know there is a segment of the homeless who've down more than fallen on hard times or couldn't catch a break. Ol' Ted fell on some hard times. He never seemed to have caught a break. Now he's caught a whole shitload of breaks, and what does he do? He blows them. Ted has a myriad of issues the least of which is being homeless. That didn't occur overnight, it took many months, and by the look of him, years of fucking up to get to where he did.

The bigger issue here is his drinking and drug problem. As far as all of the companies that came out of the woodwork to jump on this exploitative marketing and publicity gravy train, did they not see the forest for the trees? How many people looked for employment at these firms only to be turned away because they couldn't pass a pee test or a background check? How many current employees has human resources had to put into rehab, or worse yet fire due to addiction problems. Yet resume-less, inexperienced, and untrained Ted Williams gets more job offers without as much as a query.

Shame on Kraft and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Why don't you consider the people who've toiled for years in the background working toward the kind of breaks you threw at Ted Williams just to get some PR. Why not interview any number of experienced, college graduates that would kill for the opportunities companies waved in front of Ted Williams like so many dollar bills. And in this economy, with this many talented people out of work. Again I say shame on them.

I hope Ted can overcome his demons for the sake of Ted, not because of his possible future employment status, that has been precarious at best. The other shit if he doesn't get a handle on it can send him back to jail, or worse kill him. The story of "The Golden Voiced Homeless Guy" be just that, a human interest story. That was why it was filmed. Just a homeless man doing some radio schtick, nothing more.

That nut case that decided things weren't going according to the order of the universe he perceived shot some people. Which from what I've studied, always brings clarity to those who may be confused as to the purpose of it all. Are you fucking kidding me!? The idea that no one suspected things were taking a drastic turn on the loony front is what confuses me. It makes about as much sense as offering a homeless alcoholic, drug addict, and petty criminal gigs worth six figures.

This past Sunday I watched the 60 Minutes expose on the Arizona shooter (I refuse to denigrate this piece with his name which already has made its infamous imprint on history). The people interviewed all concurred that he had gone around the bend, yet no one brought this to the attention of his parents, police, anybody that could have acted as a stopgap before it culminated in the tragedy that played out in front of a Safeway supermarket. One of the shooters classmates even said that she took the seat nearest the door just in case this mentally unstable individual decided one bright sunny day that it would be a good time to take out some fellow students.

Is our collective memory really that short? Did the persons responsible for his dismissal from Pima Community College not recall the horror of Virginia Tech no so long ago? Was someone afraid of violating this asshole's civil rights? And now folks are making all kinds of bizarre reactionary suggestions about what sort of legislation can be passed to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Are the people we elect really that stupid?

I'm not a big fan of guns. However, I do believe in the second amendment as it was written and the purpose for which it was written; to arm Americans against hostile invaders of our shores. I'm sure had the Founding Fathers foresaw what that amendment would one day wrought, perhaps it would have been worded a little differently. But the idea of outlawing the sale of Glock handguns, and making a law that limits the amount of bullets a clip can hold is not only superficial, but asinine. Do these people really think that's going to stop someone from shooting another? Do these type of laws address the real issue here, which is mental illness?

Our society has been reactive as opposed to pro-active since the first settlements. These groups finally realized they should prepare themselves for harsh conditions, and even harsher winters. No one figured that out from the correspondence from the first early settlers?

Christ, we were the last nation to do away with slavery. What were we waiting on then?

9/11 is a perfect example. Other capitalist nations had already endured multiple terrorist activities. What made us think it wasn't going to happen to us? Information became known that something was brewing even before it happened. Why do we think we're exempt?

And now, with government funding for studying and treating the mentally ill who may be prone to violence abysmally lacking, legislators are looking to pass more laws that infringe on the rights of those who aren't several fries short of a Happy Meal. That makes sense...not.

Since I'm still mid-rant; you know what else doesn't make sense? The way the NFL playoffs are turning out. Before they started, it looked as if New England was going to make another Super Bowl appearance. No one else in the AFC was playing remotely close to their level. Each team in the NFC looked as if they were playing not to lose. Suddenly, Green Bay seems to be peaking at just the right time. Chicago is playing opportunistic football. It looked like one of the two of them was going to give New England a run for their money...until the Jets beat them. So much for that. Jet versus Steelers is anybody's guess, and don't give me that shit about home field advantage, even for the kicker, who also has to kick off that cow pasture.

Green Bay at Chicago is just as perplexing. They play in the same division. They're two of professional football's oldest franchises. They both play similar styles. They both frequently play in shitty weather. I'm not making any predictions, but I think for the pure randomness of what has already transpired has made me me much more interested in watching than I thought I'd be. Oh yeah, by the way, for those of you who are regular readers, fuck Pittsburgh

A Weighty Issue, or A "Wadie" Issue

By the title, you may think I'm about to get on my soapbox and get into some long winded diatribe about the obesity problem in America. Not so. The only weight problem I'm here to tell you about is my own. Though I do think we are becoming a society of fat fucks.

I was once a fat kid. I was never the fat kid by the time I went to grade school, nonetheless, I may have been considered "heavy" periodically. As an infant, well that's a whole other matter.

When my son Cory and I were out visiting my father a couple of years ago, an old Jonathan Dayton Regional High School yearbook of my father's was unearthed. As Cory thumbed through it, an old photo of me and my sister fell from it's pages. My sister was holding my hand. I was no more than eighteen months old. I know this because I couldn't walk until I was eighteen months old. My sister would have never magnanimous enough to held my hand under any circumstances without some sort of dire threat from my parents. I obvious needed assistance. I would have tipped over. Hence, no picture could have been taken, leading to my father's wrath. So my sister got stuck holding my hand.

I was fat. No two ways about it. My head was as big as a basketball. Better legs had been seen on grand pianos. If a stranger had seen me at this stage of my life, they were liable to utter under their breath "look at that poor child with hydrocephalus." (Note: When looking up "hydrocephalus" I noticed Hubert Humphrey's picture next to the definition for "Humpty Dumpty).

Fortunately, my fat stage didn't last long even though I ate copious amounts of junk food. Ring-Dings, Twinkies, Sno-balls, a never ending supply of Charles Chips. There Fritos with Lipton onion dip, all washed down with enough Coca-Cola or every imaginable flavor of Yukon Club soda that I should still have a horrendous case of acne to this day. But somehow I was fortunate enough to avoid every teenager's nightmare. My weight was nothing playing outside everyday and a little hyperactivity couldn't take care of.

My mother would often threaten that all this shit I was eating would spoil my dinner. I still have trouble grasping the concept of anything spoiling what has just been freshly prepared. Not only did it not spoil my dinner, my ingestion of all that junk just seemed to grease the skids so to speak. At dinner I was often reprimanded for the amount I was consuming. That I "couldn't possibly still be hungry." I wish my parents could make up their minds. Do you want me to eat or don't you?

My eating habits accelerated just before I hit high school. Ed and Fred Kane was unfortunate enough to invite me to dinner one evening when I was in the seventh grade. A family outing to "The Pit Stop" a local burger joint. The events of that evening have so scarred the Kane brothers (god only knows how it effected Mrs. Kane) that when they "friended" me on Facebook a couple of years ago, the memory of that eating rampage was the first communication that came to mind nearly forty years later. I made reference to this fact, and they promptly "un-friended" me.

By the end of my sophomore year, I could eat a whole large pizza myself. I ate five Whoppers at a sitting. An innocent trip to McDonald's cost my mother a month's car payment. Two Big Macs, two Quarter-Pounders (no cheese), a large fry, an apple pie or two, and a large whatever shake. After eating that I found it necessary to go to Dairy Queen to have a little dessert. In June I was 5'10" and weighed 175 pounds. Come September when Junior year started I was 6'3" and weighed 215 pounds. You do the math.

After high school my weight fluctuated. I went through my cocaine induced "Redi-Kilowatt" phase where I was now shade taller than 6'4" and weighed 150 pounds. A brush with the law altered my diet dramatically. When I started acting school back in 1981, I weighed in at 180. I stayed around that until my first wife and I moved in together. I was laboring for a mason at the time and went to the gym frequently. I was tipping the scales at about 215 again, but arranged completely different than the high school 215. And then I had my motorcycle accident.

In the short space of 27 days, I lost 83 pounds. They cut off around 15 or so I was told. I was 132 and looked like a reject from some third world impoverished nation. So I went back to the gym, went back to eating everything that didn't eat me first, and got my weight back up to 215 where it staying until drinking replaced eating.

From 1993 to 2000 my weight hovered between 170 and 180. By 2001 I had quit drinking and decided to return to school; where, after six years of being pretty much sedentary, my weight ballooned to 257; it had finally caught up to the size of my head. My body was now proportionate except I needed to look into a full length mirror to see my nuts. On my wife Helen's suggestion, I returned to the gym for a third go around, and the trips there have been a regular part of my weekly regimen for the last three and half years.

My adult weight was finally stable. For 22 consecutive months I remained at 230 give or take a pound...until three months ago. My prosthesis started to give me grief. After twenty-six years as an amputee I've developed a symbiotic relationship with my what's left of my left leg. The first troubleshooting I did was step on the scale, I had been lulled into a false sense of security after so long at the same weight. When my weight fluctuates, my leg acts up. Lo and behold, much to my amazement I had lost six pounds. I still ate as if I was going to the electric chair. Yet, the stayed off.

I am not an alarmist but I was alarmed. Cancer. That was my first thought. I've smoked for over thirty years, but that wasn't it. My blood work is that of someone in their late twenties, so says my doctor. But I was feeling a bit weaker. A tapeworm, yeah, that's it! What am I, fucking loony, I don't live in a third world country. And then yesterday I got on the scale at the gym. A sense of dread washed over me. Here I am, in a predicament many overweight people would die for -ugh, bad choice of words- and I was concerned. The scale didn't lie, 229. Whew! What a load off, no pun intended. Maybe I'll watch what I eat from now on. Only kidding.

"Is It Safe?"

For anyone that's seen the movie Marathon Man, you'll never forget that line. Sir Lawrence Olivier is playing a character that was at one time a dentist for the Nazi regime. Olivier has Dustin Hoffman strapped to a crude facsimile of a dentist's chair when in an attempt to extract the information he believes Hoffman character is privy to, he says, "Is it safe?" Hoffman doesn't have a fucking clue as to what Olivier is talking about, referring to, etc. Nevertheless, while Olivier hums "Edelweiss" or some fucking inane ditty as he preps the instruments used by an oral surgeon, he continues to query Hoffman over and over, "Is it safe?" Finally, when Olivier doesn't get the answer he's looking for, he proceeds to drill into a live tooth of Hoffman's without the aid of any anesthetic. Oh joy, oh rapture.

Like the movie Jaws and its alarming effect on ocean swimmers the summer it was released, dental practices around the country saw a downturn in business. Normally regular customer appointments went wanting. I'm not quite sure if I became paranoid about going to the dentist after seeing Marathon Man, but perhaps somewhere buried between Dracula and local Long Valley urban legend "The Hooker Man," is the specter of dentists everywhere congregating, drinking beer, and thumbing their collective noses at the part of The Hypocratic Oath that states "to do no harm."

Needless to say, I dislike going to the dentist immensely. An already unappealing prospect to begin with, made infinitely worse first, by my move to Florida seventeen years ago, and compounded by the nature of a health care beast so disruptive, by the time I finally muster the nerve to go to the dentist, the fucker no longer takes whatever dental insurance I happen to have at that time.

My angst knows no bounds. It wasn't always that way. As a child, I adored Dr. Gould. He was my first dentist, and I continued to go to him right up until I got married...the first time. I was twenty-six years old. Dr. Gould did me no harm. Even though like Howard Stern's mother, my mother insisted Novocaine wasn't to be used under any circumstances, even when filling a cavity. I didn't know any different. My mother was obviously mentally unstable.

Then, urged on by my wife, her benefits package, and the knowledge that driving forty-five minutes to the dentist was incredibly stupid, I made a switch. The new dentist, Dr. Levy, was wonderful. He was in the same building where I got my haircut. That was all the information I needed. Frank and Tony wouldn't have a quack for a tenant. Dr. Levy took my insurance when my wife became my ex-wife. All remained calm in my dental universe. And then I moved to Florida.

I had to select a new set of professionals to attend to my bodily needs. A new doctor, now referred to as a "primary care physician." I needed to find a prosthetist I was comfortable with, I had only dealt with Richie Guizzone since my amputation. He understood me. He knew what I needed. He listened to me. Christ, he was an amputee himself, so he even knew what I was going through. I needed a new person to cut my hair. Tony Gentile had been cutting my hair for over twenty years. I needed a new dentist. Yuck. I had to find a pediatrician for Cory. A dentist for Cory. His selections turned out much better for him than mine for me. Or, maybe he just adapted better.

I have lived in Florida for seventeen years now and I am now on my seventh dentist. And I don't go to the dentist all that frequently due to the frequency I am forced to change them. It's not like deciding on which supermarket to shop at. Most of the dentist's in Florida I've had the pleasure of doing business with have been ...how shall I say this delicately?...butchers. I could do just as good a job with an awl, a Dremil, and a mirror, and it would be half as painful.

Why the fuck do they ask if you can feel -whatever it is they jamming into your jaw seeming at any moment it's going to come out the top of your head- when you respond you can, they tell you "Oh, that can't be possible!" while they chortle lightly. "Hey Doc, while you're at it, can't you shove a catheter up my penis so that pain will take my mind off the pain you're causing in my mouth?" The only redeeming feature of one of my Steve Martin Little Shop of Horrors impersonator was, Marilyn Manson also went to the same guy. Occasionally we'd bump into each other. That was a plus, I'm a big Manson fan.

This time there was no more putting it off. I already broke one tooth and let it run it's course several months ago, now another had broken due to lack of proper attention and care. I had to go to the dentist. Number seven it is. Mr. Berstler do you have any last requests?

I based this selection on the fact they had Saturday hours, and both husband and wife graduated from the University of Florida, my son's alma mater. She was nice, efficient, and sympathetic. I was just pathetic. My palms were so sweaty it looked like I peed on my shirt when the hygienist took my apron off. The sad news was, my dentist had to refer me to an oral surgeon. Shit, more uncharted waters.

I decided to take the bull by the horns. Upon arriving home, I immediately made an appointment to have two teeth extracted. The kind, nice, sympathetic lady on the other end of the phone said "You can come in tomorrow if you want. We have an opening at 11:00." Before my brain had a chance to survey the mental landscape of such a devil may care decision, I said "Ok." I hung up the phone and stared at it as if I was hoping she'd call back to say someone had booked that time slot without her knowledge. No such luck.

I arrived on time. I waited nearly an hour before I saw the oral surgeon. And when I did, he said he was sorry for the wait so many times I thought he may very well have been some sort of android with a faulty communication chip. I will save you the Bill Cosby-like analysis, but I'm here to tell you, while it was not painless, it certainly was fast and efficient. Two teeth in and out in less than ten minutes (once the Novocaine took hold). After listening to the speed reading version of aftercare recited by the dental assistant, I was on my way. I told him I didn't need any painkillers for when the Novocaine wore off. I must have been delirious.

Yesterday, I did not blog due to my state of discomfort. I find it hard to focus while St. Vitus is River Dancing inside my mouth. The next time I go to the dentist -there will be many more appointments in my future- and they sit me down, I'm going to ask her "Is it safe?" If she gets it and laughs, number eight won't be very far off.