Category Archives: Uncategorized

It has just been pointed out to me that I titled the post before last "Sunday Morning Hotel Blogging." I thought I was typing "Sunday Morning Hospital Blogging." I don't know how my fingers made that mistake because this place is definitely not a hotel. At a hotel, they don't serve you rotten food, make you sleep in uncomfortable beds, have people screaming in the hallways in pain, or stick you with needles. Except in Vegas at the Imperial Palace.

A lady in the next room went hysterical early this morning. I don't know what it was about because the nursing staff had a shift change before I could ask anyone…not that it was really any of my business, anyway. From what I could hear, it was a relentless stream of bad news that got to her. One new nugget was delivered and it was one grief too many. She began crying and screaming and taking it out on the staff here, which of course is thoroughly professional and in no way responsible for any of the woes that have befallen this poor woman. I mean, I assume she was not wailing about the stingy servings of apple juice.

She yelled and cursed and at one point, she pushed my door open and tried to come into my room, thinking (I guess) that it was some sort of exit or way out of her misery. The nurses gently steered her back to her room and kept her there until someone arrived who had her relocated. Within an hour, her room had been cleaned and someone else was wheeled in. I mentioned to one of the women who come in periodically to jab pins into me that it was a rapid turnover and she said, "I'm surprised it took an hour. They're jammed up down in Emergency and they're out of beds. People are waiting six, seven hours then getting told to go somewhere else for treatment."

I said, "That's awful. Is there some sort of epidemic going on?"

"No," she said. "It's like that most of the time." Then she stuck a needle in me and left.

As I mentioned, being a patient in a hospital is altogether new for me. I've logged many hours in these buildings visiting friends or tending to parents. Apart from my appendectomy, this is my first time in the embarrassing gown and the uncomfortable adjustable bed.

I have a fair amount of memory of having my appendix out when I was a small lad. The event did not scare me but it scared my father, who was as compassionate and kind as any other man who was never up for sainthood. (If they gave Jews equal consideration, he'd be a shoo-in.) But he was a nervous man and the fact that he was nervous convinced me I was supposed to be. I remember that, I remember being wheeled into a big room and put to sleep and I remember waking up in a different place with the odd sensation that while closing my incision, the surgeon had absent-mindedly sewn me to the blankets and sheets.

This was, of course, a kids' wing of a hospital. There was a little playroom and as soon as I could walk, I was encouraged to go in there and play with the toys that were there, none of which interested me. That was until I found a small stash of 78 RPM records and a little parti-colored record player (remember record players?) on which to play them. They were all lame fairy tales except for one record, which was by Paul Winchell, who was already one of my five-or-so favorite people to watch on TV. On one side, he and Jerry Mahoney sang, "When You Come to the End of a Lollipop" and on the other, he and Knucklehead Smif warbled a little ditty called, "Run Little Rabbit, Run." For the next two days, until they let me go home, I played the hell out of that record. It wasn't so much that I liked the songs as that I liked the sound of Winchell. He made me feel like I was still in touch with my real world. I think the hospital may even have checked me out a bit prematurely because the nurses in that ward couldn't stand another chorus of "Run Little Rabbit, Run."

Where I am now, I'm in a private room. I have a TV with a pretty good array of channels but, alas, no TiVo. As much as I moan about the cuisine, right now if you gave me my choice of Dr. Hoggly-Woggly's ribs or the ability to pause, rewind and record shows for later viewing, I might opt for the latter. Spoiled by TiVo is what I am. Last night, I tried to watch A Fish Called Wanda on TCM but every time someone came in to take my blood pressure, check my blood sugar, check my oxygen, reinsert my I.V. needle, start a new I.V. drip, deliver the evening snack, etc., I had to turn the TV off for a few minutes and I finally gave up. I made it about as far as the scene where Kevin Kline dangles John Cleese out the window and that was it. When I get home, I'll haul out the DVD. I have watched a number of shows here I ordinarily do not watch and have been reminded why it is I never watch them. Exactly when was Bob Barker replaced with an audio-animatronic with one facial expression?

I also have my laptop here. That helps. And visitors.

I had an uncle once who wouldn't go near hospitals; not until they had to put him in them. He saw hospitals as negative places, buildings filled with pain and suffering and people with no hope. I see them as just the opposite: Places where everyone is committed to prolonging and saving lives. (Okay, have it your way: Everyone but the kitchen staff.) Somewhere on this weblog, I may have mentioned a friend who's an emergency room doctor at another hospital, the one to which I often take my mother. He's been there 20+ years and had many chances to be promoted out of the pace and messiness of the department. Which is exactly what he doesn't want. He thinks that job is what doctorin' is all about, dealing with an endless variety of real crisis situations and seeing some immediate good come out of his efforts. I lack a good 98.6% of the skills you need to be a doctor, starting with the ability to look at blood and injuries without diving for the vomitorium. The only three things I think I'd be good at would be bedside manner, taking Wednesdays off and billing. Whenever I'm around doctors and sense people going out in better shape than when they arrived, I think about how satisfying and blessed the job must be.

This afternoon at the WonderCon in San Francisco, someone went up to a friend of mine and said, "Have you heard anything about Mark? It says on his weblog that he's having major surgery." My friend panicked and raced to phone me. I assured him that I'm just in here with an infection which is being treated with intravenous antibiotics (I have an I.V. line in my arm as I'm typing this so it would be very insensitive to write in and point out typos). As you can see by scrolling down, I posted no such thing here but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Almost every political posting here brings an e-mail from someone with the same level of reading comprehension.

Really, I'm doing well with this. The lower right leg is now almost the color of the old Crayola light orange crayons and we may see patches of flesh by morning. I'll write more about this stay when I'm not working on a laptop balanced on a tray over my thighs…but the hospital staff is terrific and the room is not depressing and, hey, dinner even tasted like one of the four basic food groups. I don't know which one but it was definitely one of them. Apart from the endless parade of women coming in to stick needles in me, it ain't that bad. I've worked on cartoon shows that were more unpleasant than this.

Even from a hospital bed, I can link to a good article by Michael Kinsley on the upset over those allegedly blasphemous cartoons.

I'll get the important stuff out of the way first: The food has gotten a little better but only because Carolyn brought me a bag of ketchup packets that she scored at a Jack-in-the-Box on her way here. Last night, I had brisket that could best be described as duct tape with a little marbling. For tonight, I ordered the chicken tenders and a dish of canned pineapple and with luck, I may be able to tell which is which.

Now then. To the less important matters…

• My system seems to be responding well to the medication. My lower right leg is no longer the color of Pepto-Bismol. It's more like Bazooka Bubble Gum that's been chewed so long that it's lost all its flavor. If what they're telling me is so, I may be home-blogging by Monday.
• Thanks to all who've written with good thoughts, including the e-mail signed "Pat Robertson" who wrote that this was God's way of punishing me for not supporting George W. Bush. My laptop is configured to read e-mail but not to answer any of it. (I was reinstalling software to take my little Toshiba to WonderCon with me when this inflammation occurred.) I will write back to all of you when I can.
• As I am lying here in bed typing this in an awkward position, lovely flowers have just arrived from the newlyweds, Paul Dini and Misty Lee. Thank you, Misty and Paul.
• Biggest laugh I got so far here: Friday night, they had me on a gurney in a corridor of the emergency room for about an hour. You can imagine how comfy that is…it's like trying to levitate on a tongue depressor. So I'm lying there as people scurry and roll past and just to get my mind off the ordeal, I'm saying silly things to most of the nurses and patients that pass. Two firemen wheel in a guy, also on a gurney, who looks like he's been through something that makes my infirmity seem like a paper cut. His clothes are torn, he's scuffed and bleeding and parts of him are taped up or in temporary splints. Most of all, he just looks deeply depressed and I find myself head-to-head with him with each of us on our respective gurneys. I look at him and he looks at me and I feel like I should say something. So I say, "Race ya to the end of the hall!" There's a beat and then the guy, who I guess at that moment didn't have much in his life to smile about, starts laughing. He thanks me for that before they wheel him off for major reconstruction. But what he doesn't know is that the moment, especially his response, did as much for me as it did for him. I haven't felt a bit depressed myself about being here since then.

I'll try and post again tomorrow. If I don't, it'll probably be because I couldn't get the wi-fi here to work, not because the news is bad. Thanks again to everyone, including the total strangers and even you, "Pat Robertson."

So it turns out I don't have a sprained ankle. I have something much nastier called Cellulitis which does not come from, as one might imagine, using a mobile phone too much. Matter of fact, they don't seem to know what causes it but it does make your lower legs swell up and turn the color of Pepto-Bismol. I am actually posting this from a hospital bed — the second one I've inhabited in my life. The first was when I had my appendix out at age nine and I think the meal they served me for lunch today was left over from my previous stay.

I'll probably be here 'til Monday at least so don't expect much posting for a while. Lunch aside, I am in no pain and my condition is already responding to treatment. No "get well" e-mails necessary. I intend to get better even if no one writes. Bye for now!

Change of plans. I won't be at that Quick Draw! event tonight in Santa Cruz but don't let that stop you from attending. We have a Plan B that should make for an entertaining event without me.

I seem to have sprained my right foot or pulled a muscle or I don't know what I did but it hurts like hell. I was lying down, taking a nap when it hit yesterday afternoon. One minute, everything was fine. The next, things were swelling and turning lovely shades of aquamarine. Ice and ibuprofen have helped a lot but I don't think you'll see me this weekend at the WonderCon in San Francisco. Not unless there's a miracle cure by morning. Others are being drafted to assume my moderating duties and I'm sure it'll prove how expendable I am.

Okay, I'm going to hobble back to bed. Good night.

Some Republicans are moaning that the funeral of Coretta King turned political. They're outraged that certain folks "exploited" the occasion to bash poor George W. Bush, who had to sit there and endure it and later be civil to those who'd bashed him. There's some truth to that but so what? The late Ms. King was a political activist and the people who turned out for the event sure seemed to love it. A funeral is for the friends and family of the deceased and if they think something's appropriate, no one else's opinion should matter, especially folks who didn't much like the Kings to begin with. I might buy the argument that a heavily-politicized funeral is unworthy of free television time but that's a separate issue…one that has to consider that the folks who decide to broadcast such events can't be sure of their political content before the fact. Certainly it isn't the fault of the speakers that the event is on C-Span, nor should they depart from what they think is appropriate just because there are cameras present.

For good or ill, the funeral of a political person is going to be a political event, even if no one gets up and issues calls to activism. Some of the speakers who showed up at the Coretta King memorial surely did so after consideration of how it might help them with black voters just to be there, regardless of what they said. I'm not sure people like George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton order a pizza without studying how it might impact their poll numbers.

Critics of that funeral — and I think there's something unceremonious just in being a critic of a funeral — have likened it to the tribute when Senator Paul Wellstone died. I actually watched all 3+ hours of the Wellstone Memorial and I thought the characterization of it as a political event was a gross and probably deliberate exaggeration. Perhaps ten minutes of it went over the line, some of it directed at Jesse Ventura who raced to the talk shows to pout that some people in attendance didn't like him. You'd think a guy who made his living for so many years getting booed could cope with that.

The Wellstone Memorial was inspiring to some Democrats because it included Democrats talking the way a lot of Democrats wish prominent Democrats would always talk. I think that's why a few Republicans felt the urgency to misrepresent and discredit it. At the San Diego Con a few years back, I got into a loud hallway argument with someone who called it a disgrace based on the 90 seconds or so of it he saw on Fox News. I kept urging him to watch a little more of the video (which was then up on the C-Span site) and he kept saying, "I've seen all I need to see." A lot of demagogues on both sides count on the eagerness of some to believe the worst about the opposition and to avoid evidence that might upset their worldview.

Watching clips of the Coretta King event, I actually felt a little sorry for George W. Bush. Like his father, he's not good at concealing when he's bored or restless with an event that isn't serving his immediate interests. He seems especially uncomfortable in front of audiences who aren't eager to believe every word he says. Frankly, I think it was nice that Bush was there, if only because that meant six or eight hours that he wasn't back in the White House, working for some legislation that Martin Luther King and Coretta would have opposed.

To my loved ones — assuming I have any left by the time I go — I say this: If there's a memorial, say or do anything you think is right or that will give you comfort and closure. If you all want to show up in clown suits, get out of one tiny car and spray the coffin with seltzer, that's fine with me. The only thing that would be inappropriate would be for someone to criticize what you want to do. It's not their event.

You probably know how this works by now but for the benefit of those who came in late, I'll go through it. We have here links and descriptions to five websites. Four of these are real, meaning that if you click the link, you'll be redirected to the site described — unless, of course, it's overloaded with traffic due to its being listed here. That has happened. One of the descriptions is bogus. Phony. Not real. We made it up. If you click on that link, you'll move to a page that will tell you so. Ergo, your mission is to figure out which is the website that ain't real. Go for it, dude.

• Call It Macaroni – How many different shapes of macaroni have been produced around the world? More than you'd imagine.
• Name That Candy Bar! – Can you identify popular candy bars just by looking at photos of their innards? Here's a website where you can hone this vital skill.
• Bad Sweater Guy – A fellow models ugly sweaters he acquired while working at Marshall's, which is apparently the place to go when you want an ugly sweater.
• The Loincloth Site – Want to make a loincloth? Pose in your loincloth? See other people in loinclothes? This is the site for you.
• The Virtual Corkscrew Museum – Someone has actually amassed a collection of vintage corkscrews…and they're nice enough to share them with us.

This time around, the real but fake-sounding websites were suggested by Tony Isabella and Kevin Aitchison. They receive our thanks and nothing else, but the thanks oughta be enough for them. Thanks for playing There's No Such Website!

Just to remind you all: Tomorrow (Thursday) evening, if you're in Santa Cruz in Northern California, there'll be a new edition of Quick Draw! at the Veterans Memorial Building on Front Street. Sergio Aragonés will be drawing. Scott Shaw! will be drawing. Bill Morrison will be drawing. Batton Lash will be drawing. I, with the help of the audience, will be telling them what to draw. Details are here, and a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

June Foray's appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, announced for tomorrow, has been postponed. They're covering the Olympics and the Grammys and they have no room for the woman who voiced Rocket J. Squirrel at the moment. It'll be rescheduled, they say, and you'll read about it here when it is. Might be a month or so.

David Cook reminds me that in North by Northwest, the mother of Cary Grant (who was born in 1904) was played by Jessie Royce Landis (who was born in 1904).

Jim Newman reminds me that in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the father of Dick Van Dyke (born: 1925) was played by Lionel Jeffries (born: 1926).

Galen Fott reminds me — well, actually informs me since I didn't know — that in the original New York company of The Fantasticks, 30-year-old Kenneth Nelson played Matt ("The Boy"), while 24-year-old Jerry Orbach played the older, wiser narrator El Gallo.

And Erik Peek, Eric Newsom, Steve Darnall and Alexander Pascover all remind me that in The Manchurian Candidate, Angela Lansbury (born in 1925) played the mother of Laurence Harvey (born in 1928).

Fred Kaplan parses the defense budget for us.

A couple of folks have written to me to say they don't think I made it clear that even though Attorney General Gonzales wasn't put under oath, he can still be prosecuted for lying to Congress if it's determined that he did. Frankly, I think Gonzales could get up there and insist he's Captain Marvel and can fly around the room and there's zero chance of the Republican majority doubting him, let alone allowing a prosecution. But what I don't get is the argument for not treating him (or those oil company execs a few months ago when another committee leader waived the swearing-in) like anyone else. Why are some people put under oath and not others? Aren't they all supposed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Why are there two classes of witnesses?

Here's another thing I don't understand. Gonzales kept talking about how Franklin Roosevelt and other past presidents had conducted very extensive electronic surveillance. Okay, that might be a good argument for why a president of the U.S. needs to do that. But the question before this committee and this country is whether Bush's actions violated the FISA law established in 1978. So I don't get how anything before that is particularly relevant. It's like they passed a law banning smoking in restaurants, and then someone got caught smoking in a restaurant and his defense was, "Yeah, but look how many people smoked in restaurants before that law."

It seems to me that the Bush administration position is that they think the '78 law was unwise and maybe, by their definition of the responsibility of the Chief Exec, even contrary to the Constitution. I don't know that I'd agree with that but it would be a more coherent, and perhaps more honest stance. But for some reason, they don't want to suggest the law is wrong; only that they can ignore it if they so choose. I don't think that's how this kind of thing is supposed to work.