An Outsider's Look at "A Man From The Inside,"

 

1.       Just how much TV needs to be made to convince boomer fixtures like Ted Danson and Kelsey Grammer, they’ve still got it? (Even if I thought they did, which, not exactly. I’ve seen a lot of Cheers for not really liking it, though, and it doesn’t really hold up once you’re old enough that hearing the word “horny” doesn’t make you feel naughty.) It’s not really about them, so much as the sense from the industry that there are, tops, maybe 100 people that America still wants to look at. It’s frustrating, even when you didn’t really have the hope of being one of them or seeing yourself in one of them…who’s better out there that we’re not seeing to give him this?

2.      Even at his best, Danson isn’t exactly one of those chameleon actors like David Straithairn or Toni Collette. I mean, to me, he’s just “Kind Of” guy. Kind of attractive, got decent timing, doesn’t make you feel things that are too intense for you to get your full eight hours…which, okay, I’m too much of a sitcom junkie not to occasionally understand this appeal (or watch Danson crab on “Becker” repeats) but maybe he’s too famous to pull off some other character who’s grief-stricken and adorably befuddled. I’m not sure if it’s Danson or the writing, but somebody is reaching *so hard* for adorable that  instead of my feeling touched, I’m more irritated.

3.      Is there assisted-living out there that’s really that free and fun? I kind of hope so, but I don’t really believe it (Or think maybe to get that kind of respect and attention, you’d have to be richer than God.  Which, I’m sorry, is an issue for someone like me watching this.  Let’s not trivialize exploiting elders to make everything madcap, all right? I mean, I wish it could be fun for everybody, but I doubt it. Also, they are never short-staffed?  I call bullshit.)

4.      I know this thing has a good heart in the right place (sincerely loving the NorCal locations) and maybe it’s some contrarian-bitch instinct that makes me resent this show so much. But I don’t feel as bad about that, even if it’s true.   America’s general instincts…aren’t making me feel all that great, right now. Also, as any troll might tell you, nothing like a bit of disgust to make a lady’s keyboard start tapping, much as I wish love did the same.

5.      A doctor that tells you to be positive, that you have a lot to live for? Another fantasy element.

6.      Corporate ownership and consolidation in medical facilities is a real issue—the answer isn’t staff going into their pockets for salt shakers.

Abled People Are Still Obsessed With Wiping...

 Not that I want that to be what you think I took away from Jamie Foxx's netflix special, which was as singular an outpouring from audience and performer since Richard Pryor was on the Sunset Strip--I also wish I knew what that connection to a Creator felt like, but I don't.

And my teenaged self is cringing right now, because, as much as she read ahead, she also pretended that if she didn't allude to gimpy things, nobody would notice.  Spoiler alert:Everyone noticed, constantly.The only person I ever fooled with all that denial is myself.

But here goes:

I have been to college, published my writing, halfway learned a second language, and have never, truly, wiped my own ass. I never knew it was such a transcendent power and whatnot.  Frankly, if I had a vote, what came out of us would be more like the paper shavings that come out of the shredder than what we get. Much like if I lived in Texas, they didn't give me a vote on that and nature doesn't have a Beto, so I'm sorry.

Part of me would love to go all-in in spirituality and self-love right now and say this never sucks, that the only reason people worry is ableism(ableism is part of it) but some of the things I end up sharing...well, I'd rather not. But even I can't be ashamed multiple times a day. But I'm not quite yogic enough to be like "I'm helping them, by keeping them in touch with elemental truth," and so forth. I tried that on, but it never fit properly. Yoda, I'm not. Though I ended up playing him on the playground many times.

ETA:"Let me explain...no, is too much, let me sum up." In one sense, it's not a big deal.If it happened to you, eventually whatever you feel about naked butts would lose some of its potency--which isn't so great for bringing one's inner sex kitten outer--or, at least, it keeps you from thinking about bringing a hot stranger home, but one problem at a time...people can and do adapt, is my point.It sucks when they miss, right?Which may be the real part people don't want to confront, and it's not secretly beautiful. but it's only part of your day. That doesn't have to be a reason to kill yourself, though I wish I could say that nothing would be.

In another sense, it's the biggest deal ever that caregiving gets low status and low wages. It's a very big deal if there's nobody around that you trust, to say, do the honors(you don't really have to call it that, but you can, if you'd like--that much is still up to you!)

"I Don't Agree, But I(Kinda) Understand"

The Baltimore Banner and others paint a haunting picture of the suffering of alleged gunman  Luigi Mangione. While I do not recommend or endorse solving one's frustrations, no matter how chronic, at the point of a gun, no matter how many, say, lawyer jokes flash through my head(What do you call a car-full of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? Answer: A good start.) as I read about it. I feel how even one year of constant struggle can make someone feel that there's no hope. Maybe he had tunnel-vision too severe to consider things like chiropractic or acupuncture, which working-class people might quickly run out of money for, unlike someone like Mangione.(Have to admit, though, despite my all-too-American urge to forensically roll up my sleeves on his and our culture's behalf--this America, man-- there's plenty of pain and suffering that is undiagnosed and untreated as I sit here and type this right now. I have no idea if this man's pain was in that group.

Bureaucracy may as well have eaten my 2012.And not because I was reaching for something I shouldn't have had, just me trying to keep what I had in the face of my state's Medicaid trying to tighten my belt for me. Even the moments not spent trying to document our needs, including knowing that strangers would read about constipation or incontinence, were ruined by a gradual tunnel vision that made it hard to think or talk about anything that wasn't in those rapidly-swelling evidence folders.  (Of course, some evil people benefit from the fact that Medicaid beneficiaries are generally too messed-up to strike back lethally.) But if I were in more pain than usual, I couldn't say what might have gone through my mind, but maybe there is a blessing as well as a curse in the fact that I have known from my earliest beginning how little I could do alone. Reaching out tends to be what saves me, to the extent that  I'm ever saved.

Who Nobody Missed, At All...

 

Maybe there are things I would have liked about. or at least had in common with, murdered insurance executive Brian Thompson, although it would appear that everything from geography to the United States’ invisible systems of class and caste would keep us apart in almost every way.  We are the same generation, though, if that counts for anything.  Maybe it’s not hard to imagine that he quoted George Carlin (he had a lot more “stuff” than me, though, I bet,) or that his grandma had a picture of the old guy with the praying hands, too.  Maybe he also used “The Ref” to close out his holiday season, too, although I kind of want to think that somebody who knows what a nightmare it would be to “kidnap my fucking parents’ would be more compassionate.  Maybe there is a relic like that that reminds him of a youth that was supposed to end up differently, even though it seems like he had everything a suburban kid was taught to want, and exponentially more, besides.  There is money and clout in presiding over Americans’ health nightmares. 

Certainly, far more than there is in wanting those nightmares to end.  This is where some right-winger would channel somebody’s nightmare junior-high mother and say the real problem is that I’m jealous.  I’m torn up because I don’t get to use my education to deny hundreds of claims every day (I may be upset that what I do is considered less valuable than that, but that is another posting…many other postings, actually, that many of you here have already read, I imagine.) Point being, though, Brian Thompson was just a guy.  Like many activists, I’ve read off and on about the “banality of evil” without fully reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann book, but when I saw Thompson’s chubby-cheeked photo, I thought maybe I had a homegrown example. He still looked enough like somebody I might have met that I could picture him having a minor victory lap from choosing the salad over some option with gravy on the last hotel dinner of his life, because statins don’t work if you don’t change your diet, Brian. Guess it wasn’t worth it, though.

(I should say that maybe they would…there is a split right now, among ordinary people on the right, about how much suffering really is enough. Third-string MAGA have been on hold with health insurance claims in their own rights. Even in trying to see something in Thompson, I’m still tempted to ask his widow to fax some thoughts-and-prayers request form in triplicate and reject it a few times, just so she can see how it feels. But whether Mrs. Thompson was sweet or bitchy, torturing her wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.)

They had some choices, but it’s the system they are cogs in that is the real problem.

This reads as both fiction and nonfiction...

 (Still working on something more topical, but thought I'd share how I'd surprised myself over "Wedded Twist", the novel I'm believing in against every trace of what's sensible in me, but...

Part of me had always halfway hoped that all the struggle of my early years would culminate in some amazing opportunity, but if it were going to, the opportunity hadn’t arrived yet. Eventually, I figured I’d settle into what was really there and stop looking, but it was clear that moment hadn’t arrived.  At least, not as far as my brain knew.  I wasn’t sure which would be sadder: Giving up too fast, right now, or trying really hard to be fresh-faced at eighty and telling everyone who might listen (Who would those people be, while I was having that thought) that it would be my year. I shrugged, though at that time of day, nobody was there to watch me act out confusion, and concluded it was all fairly tragic.  Maybe I should admit to being over my head, let Tommy treat me like a child for a year or two, and then rebound once I aced the “Jeopardy” test.   Stranger things had probably happened; they probably all turned out like me, though.