Oh, God

I'm at work. Cha left BWI for Chicago around 5:30 and was to arrive around 7. And I see this online.

Update: I just talked to her on the phone--they missed that flight and are still at BWI waiting for another. Whew! Talk about a freak-out.

duh

Another Towson undergrad:

Him: Uh, I tried all three payphones in here and none of them work. Can I use your phone?

Me: Is it a local number?

Him: No, it's long distance.

Me: What did you dial on the payphones? It's weird that all of them would be down at once.

Him: I dialed a 301 number, but it just gave me a busy signal.

Me: Did you dial 1 first?

Him: Yes.

Me: Did you put in any money?

Him: No.

Me: YOU HAVE TO PUT MONEY IN THE PAY PHONES FOR THEM TO WORK.

Comfortably Numb

I stopped taking my pain prescription about 30 hours after my teeth were extracted, and was troubled to find myself achy and stiff in all my joints and in my back. At first I thought this was some effect of the pain in my jaw, but then I realized it was simply how I feel all the time, and the painkillers had masked it briefly.

Getting old sucks.

Ingenious

After Monday's tooth extractions I have three miserable throbbing wounds in my jaw. It hurts to breathe, let alone to bray great hearty gails of painful laughter. And for long stretches of this short collection I did nothing but laugh, laugh until I was crying, laugh until my liver hurt and my sphincter shook and my jaw felt trampled. And yet I finished it in one sitting, wiping away tears and doubled up so dramatically I actually fell off the couch.

I chuckled a few times reading Me Talk Pretty One Day; George Saunders is infinitely funnier than David Sedaris, and his book is as significant thematically as anything by Vonnegut or Kundera. I haven't laughed so hard in ages--perhaps ever.

It's fitting that my laughter was painful, that it reopened the stitches in my gums--Saunder's satirical view of late model Western capitalism is as troubling as it is hilarious. Highly recommended.

On TCM tonight

I do like Scorcese's version as an experiment in lavish cinematic excess. Cady alone makes the remake is a classic; DeNiro hams it up as one of film's great cartoonish villains.

But for a more pure, more sinuous creepiness, try the original Cape Fear if you've never seen it. Bob Mitchum is one scary mofo. Nobody else can menace young children with such elegant vileness. I think his Cady is more substantial than DeNiro's, and is scarier even than Mitchum's other horrifying role:

Stunning

Danny Smiricky is a Czech ex-pat teaching American Literature at a Canadian college. As he lectures about Poe, Hawthorne, Twain, Fitzgerald, Conrad, and Lovecraft, he recalls life as a laborer for the Third Reich during the occupation, life as a sabateur against the Reich, life as an enthusiastic Marxist after the Reds "liberate" Czechoslovakia, life as a disillusioned Marxist, and finally his escape to the West where he finds entirely new disillusionments. Sexy, sad, and often hilarious, The Engineer of Human Souls is exquisitely crafted, and--while an "academic" novel of the first order--is as entertaining as it is challenging. I'll definitely be looking for more Skvorecky.

Le Weekend

Friday

Pierrot Lunaire called me about a free medievial/Renaissance/Baroque concert at Peabody, and that there's some of my favorite shit. The band was a half 'n half faculty and students, and they were sublime. About 12 vocalists, including a fantastic Asian male falsetto specialist whose voice made the hair on my arms stand up. Several lutists and flutists and a dude whaling on the precursor to the oboe made my night. The entire performance was on period instruments or period replicas, and nothing beats that intimate warm sound.

Unfortunately I had to ditch the second half (Messe de Minuit) because I was catching a ride with Kw'ali and Klezma to Flexible Head's going away party. They were kind enough to drive me to Fell's Point where we had a good meal and several Guinuesses. I didn't really get to chat much with anyone because Pierrot showed after set two and we talked classical music for two hours. Flexible Head and his buddy bought a building in Geneva NY and are opening a restaurant/bar. There goes my favorite Libertarian punk rocker.

Saturday

Got up early to visit Gramps. He's 85 and has started to do what 85-year-old guys often do, namely fall down and hurt himself. He banged up his shoulder leaving Bible study by falling in the driveway. In a way it's a good thing because now he can't drive and that's the only way to keep him off the road, but I worry because the pain has his spirits low; this is a guy who almost always has a twinkle in his eye and a joke to tell. When I got to the house he was asleep in his recliner. "I lived longer'n anyone in the family," he told me. "'Cept for Uncle George who made it to 92."

"You'll be there before you know it," I replied, and he said "Not with this kind of pain. I don't need to be settin' any records feeling this way. I'm none too happy."

His second wife, Hazel, is 92, and she's barely coherent. They need someone to check on them every day now, but try getting them into a home or to move in with one of us. Even their cat, beaten badly in a fight by another to the point it has neurological damage, is a mess. It walks awkwardly, falls over, has seizures, and then comes to and runs around like crazy. I checked their supplies and realized they had no food in the house, so ran over to Gettysburg and bought a bunch of stuff, including hot lunches of chicken and beans and mac and cheese which were greeted with wonderment. They really think supermarket buffet fare is "fancy."

I called my Mom and told her we needed to install handicapped handles and bars in the bathroom and bedroom if they're going to stay at the house. Gramps told me "the FBI" had been out twice that week, once because he couldn't get off the "commode," the other time because he fell getting out of bed. Hazel said "it's not the FBI, it's the watchamacallit with the three numbers."

He was sad because Cha couldn't make it. "I look at her picture every day," he told me. "She is nice to look at," I answered, to which his reply was "You're not-a kiddin'!" Cha loves Gramps because she never knew hers. I was very fortunate to know all my grandparents, and even a great-grandmother, into my late teens. Here I am creeping up on 40 and I still have one left. Unfortunately he lives 2 hours away. But I got to eat lunch with the old guy, and listen to him say Grace with that sweet earnestness I remember from childhood: "Lord, thank you for the beautiful day and for this food. Bless the hands that have prepared it."

Mission Accomplished

Dr. A is from Jamaica. His cell phone rings reggae from time to time, and after I was on the gas for a minute he started to dance around and asked if I was "getting into a pretty groovy place yet." His assistant had been telling me horror stories about previous extractions (at my prompting). I suspect she hits the gas from time to time herself.

And people wonder why I like to be awake during these procedures.

I enjoy speculating about the mind/body problem when I can feel someone destroying my jaw but it doesn't hurt. The sensations are peculiar, robbed of any emotional effect. Tooth one was gone in less than 30 seconds. Tooth two--lower right, and never grown in--took more than ten minutes of hammering, drilling, sawing, chiseling, and Dr. A's lame jokes about guinea pigs before it gave up. That's the one that hurts now, as I sit here with a mouthful of bloody cotton gauze. Tooth three was a cakewalk. "At your age the bone density is really a problem. You might feel this tomorrow," Dr. A said. "I think I'm going to hit oil before we're done." I'm on some really loopy painpill but I still occasionally get an urgent missive from the lower right of my jaw. I wish I could eat.

I'd never had the gas before. That shit's the bomb. I could see today's snowstorm swirling behind Dr. A's head, Peter Tosh blasting through the ceiling speaker. I drifted.

Now I've got a roaring fire on the hearth, some DVDs and books, 20 pills and 2.5 days off.