HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2022

Some words of holiday advice:

1. You can survive your fucking annoying family. And if they piss you off too much, just remember that one day they will be dead.

2. Don't drink and drive, 'cause that shit's for amateurs and assholes. Stay at home to tie one on; why do you think Thanksgiving's an all-day festival of football, parades, movies, dog shows and marathons of classic TV reruns? It's a dazzling cathode ray cornucopia of stuff to keep the wasted off the streets and at home, puking, fucking and fighting right where they belong.

3. When seeing your old high school pals for what's probably the one time you'll see them all year, do not comment on how fat and/or old they look. That shit goes two ways, bunky...

4. If you must go to church during the holiday, make sure to go as hungover and reeking of booze as possible, that way next year they'll think twice before forcing you out of bed and into a place choked with incense and festooned with pictures of Jesus looking at your ass.

5. If your family gathering has a kiddie table, make sure to sit there and serve as a bad example to the next generation. Tell age-acceptable off-color jokes and stories. Teach the kids the lyrics to "The Diarrhea Song" (especially the version recorded by distaff punk/metal band Betty Blowtorch) and have them sing it loudly halfway through the meal. Introduce them to "pull my finger." In short, do your part to ensure your status as the fave older relative from the start; that way the kids won't feel so awkward in later years when they need somebody to take them to get an abortion or bail them out of jail without their parents being any the wiser. And believe me, they will pay back your "cool relative" kindness somewhere down the line.

6. Always, ALWAYS eat the turkey's tail. It's the perfect amount of dark meat, fat, and skin in one concentrated morsel and if slathered with the right amount of gravy it's a thing of joy forever (well, at least until it's digested and re-manifests itself as the next morning's enormous post-Turkey Day turd).

7. The true bombardment of Christmas-themed TV commercials commences right around Thanksgiving, so feel free to let loose with the Ribald Songbird action and desecrate the classic Yuletide tunes that have already been corrupted for TV adverts, only make them super dirty with usages of words like "cocksucker," "shit," and "pussy fart." Since you're gonna hear them a million times between now and the new year anyway, you may as well have some fun with them.

8. If you have to suffer through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade — the Thanksgiving moment I dread most — don't try to be an asshole and bring to your aging parents' attention the fact that it's nothing more than a saccharine, three-hour commercial. They like it for the marching bands, big-assed balloons, and celebs lip-synching, and do not give a fuck about it's true purpose, so let them have their fun. And you can always have something to look forward to, namely the hope that the guy playing Santa at the end of the show will either be drunk or have a visible hard-on.

9. If you're staying at your parents' house with a significant other, try to remain as silent as possible if having sex under your folks' roof. I don't know why, but the idea of their kids having sex, even us grownup kids, seriously fucks with the heads of our progenitors. Then again, maybe you should fuck like monkeys on crack while at home...Aah, what the hell? Make 'em remember how it's done! And if they bitch about it, remind them of all the times they nagged you for grandkids and ask them if they forgot where said grandkids come from. That'll shut the geezers up in no time.

10. If the friends and loved ones you miss most can't be there this year, think of them fondly and rest assured that they're probably every bit as miserable as you are.

And with that, Happy Thanksgiving, and may the pecans in grandma's cookies actually be pecans and not roaches. (She doesn't see that well anymore, you know.)

DEALING WITH LOGISTICS AND THE ONGOING MENTAL STRAIN OF BEING IN THE PERPETUAL DIALYSIS CYCLE

During yesterday's treatment, I approached Linda (the dialysis center's transportation booker) about changing to another car service, as I am fed up with the serially poor showing of the one assigned to me by the center. Perpetual lateness both ways, double and triple pickups to save money, rude drivers or drivers who cannot communicate in English, a driver who had a newspaper in one hand while the other hand was on the wheel as he read the latest Russian news, and of course the "Liquor Man," a driver who's a blathering and delusional sex pervert, all add up to a lousy customer experience (you should see the service's Yelp reviews), with, to be fair, the Liquor Man at least being sincerely friendly. Linda told me to find out what my insurance covers and we could take it from there, so I called my insurance's transportation section. I'm shit out of luck because my insurance only provides a limited number of rides per year, exactly twelve to be precise, while I require six per week, so so much for that. I'm stuck with Masada car service and all of its many drawbacks.

Today's day off from dialysis was marked by taking care of some business via phone. I spent most of the morning on the phone with my insurance company, searching for nearby dental offices that take Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and I have it narrowed down to the dental facilities at NY Langone hospital. Unfortunately all I could get was their answering machine, but I persisted and eventually got through. With my initial questions answered, I now have to suss out when I can go in for a checkup. Probably not until sometime next month.

The rest of today was marked by some minor grocery shopping before I collapsed into light depression sleep. Being trapped in the cycle of dialysis has really been getting me down, as my life is controlled by my treatment schedule, with no deviations allowed, but better this than a slow death.

After the sleeping, I was given inspiration from a woman's account of meeting the god Shiva while on a mushroom trip. She said that her mushroom connection with Shiva allowed her to grasp that anything can be a prison if you allow yourself to be sucked into the negative realities, and that if she just let go maybe she could move forward in a way that she could be happy with. Her words have inspired me to try to strive to let go of the here and now of my situation and just ride through it. It's going to be difficult, but I must do it of simply go mad. Wish me luck.

Lastly, nurse/spirit of benevolence Shaunda has arranged for me to be in on next Friday's first shift so I can leave early for the weekend, as mom is postponing Thanksgiving until I am done with dialysis for the week. (Same for Christmas.) That means I will be up at 4am for a 5am pickup, with treatment starting at 6am. Oh, yay...

CLERKS III (2022)

Art imitates life.

So, I finally got around to watching CLERKS III (2022), a film that makes it a score of 3 for 3 in the trilogy of CLERKS movies, by which I refer to the continuing streak of quality. The trilogy is now complete, after a sixteen-year gap between installments, and the characters still have not exceeded their sell-by date.

Writer/director/actor Kevin Smith mines his own experiences with having had a heart attack and funnels them to the screen through the eternally assholish Randall (the superb Jeff Anderson), who, upon surviving "the widowmaker," is hit with a creative epiphany that spurs him to write and direct the story of his and Dante's (Brian O'Halloran) experiences as video store and convenience store clerks. It's all an excuse to recreate the making of the first film, but what makes it sing are the emotional beats, of which there are plenty. CLERKS III delivers hear-rending (pun intended) gut punches while also depicting the heart attack ER experiences with 100% accuracy, and I say that with authority because I have been there. No lie, I teared-up several times during the the film, and I intend to watch it again.

The always welcome return of Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith).

Hilariously profane (as expected) and genuinely touching, this brings the humble CLERKS story to a full-circle end, tying everything in the neatest of bows. RECOMMENDED, though you absolutely have to have seen the previous two installments, as it is loaded to the rafters with narrative callbacks featuring situations and characters from CLERKS and CLERKS II.

Poster for the theatrical release.

THE FUN CONTINUES

I just heard back from my gastroenterologist. He told me that my issues with serial hiccuping and vomiting appear to be severe acid reflux, and on a scale of 0 to 4 with 4 being the worst, my reflux is Level 4.

My esophagus is fine, but a feature of my stomach’s entrance is not functioning properly and is not allowing food to pass into my belly. Instead it backs up and is pushed out, and the hiccuping is part of that.

Consequently, I have to go in for a manometry test on Thursday, December 1st, and that will entail a camera being shoved down my throat for a look around in my stomach while I am awake. Not fun, but we’re getting closer to a solution.

THE ONGOING FUN OF DIALYSIS AND ITS ATTENDENT CAR SERVICE TRIBULATIONS

Today was pretty much a shitshow across the board.

My car to dialysis is nearly an hour late. I called the dispatcher and they said it was a fuckup on the driver’s part. Another car was sent but no ETA could be given. I finally got picked up at 10:05, and the driver took different route “because traffic,” but we ended up stuck crawling on 3rd Avenue thanks to delivery truck gridlock. I didn't make it to the center until nearly 11, which meant that once I was prepped and the dialyzer was in action, my projected end time was for 2:40pm but it didn't end until nearly 3.

Along with my car being over an hour late for my morning pickup, the center was understaffed to a ridiculous degree. I have no idea why, but there were only four nurses to handle thirty patients, and I fell into the care of a visibly harried Tanya, as Shaunda was absent. She had several others to attend to before me, so my finish time would be close to 3pm. I endured the usual 3 hours and 49 minutes on the machine, and just before it was over I noticed goopy, coagulating blood on the mat below my fistula arm. 

I did not call for assistance as my treatment time was about four minutes from the end, but when she saw the blood, Tanya felt terrible. As she took care of it and cleaned me up, she admitted to half-assing my prep, having forgotten to apply the gauze wadding the goes over the band-aids that comer the needle entry points before binding ahead of the dialyzer starting up. She been so harried by running around from patient to patient, she simply forgot. I told her it was not big deal, but the poor sweetheart was beside herself.

Then, once released, I ended up in the downstair lobby and called the car service to inquire about when my ride home would arrive. I was told ten minutes, but when twenty had elapsed, I called again and was once more told ten minutes. The car ended up being forty minutes late, and I was positioned in the front passenger seat because I yet again got stuck with a triple pickup. Those are always awful, as they take forever because they always take the other passengers deep into Crown Heights of Flatlands and I am always the last to get dropped off, but also, especially when ludicrously late like today, the car ends up encountering the start of rush hour traffic, and god help us if we have to take the highways or any of the major avenues in my area. Needless to say, we were subjected to slow-moving congestion, a state made all the worse by the fact that one of the two passengers behind me was strongly redolent of stale urine.

After dropping off the other passengers in Crown Heights, the driver made his way to my neck of the woods, but the queue of cars waiting to take the exit for Park Slope's 3rd and 4th Avenues was about a half-mile long, so he instead opted to drive to industrial Gowanus and make his way to my area. I'm glad he did because while on the way we passed a building on some street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues called "The Vulcan," and its black entrance was decorated with what to the untrained eye looked like filigree decoration, but I, a geek, immediately recognized it as the Vulcan font from STAR TREK. I have no idea what it said, as I do not read Vulcan or any other fictional language, but now I intend to eventually swing back over there and photograph it so I can use a guide to translate it. It likely just reads "the Vulcan," but I am curious to have a concrete answer...

RIDIN' IN THE JESUSMOBILE

In the cab on the way back from this morning's esophageal barium test (to help determine the cause of my serial hiccuping and puking), the driver had the radio set to a Christian station that played some of the most treacly songs I have ever heard. We're talking stylistically arrested in the era of "You Light Up My Life," only the songs are recent.

The song that was playing when I entered the car went on and on about how "God is in the details" and no matter how horrible your life is, he never fails you. Then a deejay came on and said "Did you ever see something and just start talking to God?" He then went on at length about how he owes his mother for his ability to just spontaneously go on about God when faced with something horrific and/or distasteful. But then it was time for a commercial break, so he had to leave, but he promised to read us the letter he recently wrote to God about something he saw at Walmart. My ride home was brief, so I did not get to hear any of his missive. In the cab on the way back from this morning's esophageal barium test (to help determine the cause of my serial hiccuping and puking), the driver had the radio set to a Christian station that played some of the most treacly songs I have ever heard. We're talking stylistically arrested in the era of "You Light Up My Life," only the songs are recent.

 

The song that was playing when I entered the car went on and on about how "God is in the details" and no matter how horrible your life is, he never fails you. Then a deejay came on and said "Did you ever see something and just start talking to God?" He then went on at length about how he owes his mother for his ability to just spontaneously go on about God when faced with something horrific and/or distasteful. But then it was time for a commercial break, so he had to leave, but he promised to read us the letter he recently wrote to God about something he saw at Walmart. My ride home was brief, so I did not get to hear any of his missive. 

 

AS the car pulled up to my building, I thanked the driver, and she responded in a monotone that reminded me of the sound of someone who had been smoking bonghits of quality Indica. Oh, and I was shocked to note that the Christian station was WPLJ, perhaps THE rock station for the Tri-State Area during my youth.