nancynall.com » Treadmill as symbolism.
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Treadmill as symbolism.

For a brief shin­ing moment in 2005 or so, Kate and I had a shared TV rit­ual — “Wheel of For­tune” and “Jeop­ardy,” 7 to 8 p.m. in my mar­ket and prob­a­bly yours, too. It was fun, and it was edu­ca­tional. Then she dis­cov­ered “America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos” was on oppo­site, and that was the end of win­ning $400 on Civil War trivia. Although I’ve tried to make the best of it.

“You know when­ever you see a kid, a father and a base­ball bat, something’s going to hap­pen, and it’s going to be a shot to the junk,” I say, fig­ur­ing it’s best to intro­duce film-analysis skills early. (You can say the same about tram­po­lines posi­tioned near bas­ket­ball hoops.) Some par­ents teach their chil­dren what Chekhov said about guns and first acts. We work with the mate­r­ial we have.

It’s amus­ing, isn’t it, how AFV, as it’s called, pre­dicted YouTube? (And how YouTube pre­dicted “Ow! My Balls!”) Did you know there are more than 19,000 YouTube videos tagged “tread­mill?” The tread­mill, any fan of viral video can tell you, is even more pre­dic­tive of wacky hijinks than base­ball bats and fathers. Some­times video mak­ers don’t play fair. This one, for instance. There’s no rea­son for that tread­mill to be on. This is like Chekhov writ­ing a char­ac­ter who says, “May I leave my loaded gun here on this table? Make sure no one touches it. It’s loaded. And it’s a gun.”

Lately, it’s babies. Babies and Bey­oncé.

I blame YouTube for ruin­ing my atten­tion span. It bog­gles my mind when I see peo­ple post­ing web­cam videos of them­selves talk­ing about one thing or another, spec­i­mens that reg­u­larly clock in at eight or nine min­utes. If I know one thing in this world, it’s that no one wants to watch you yak for eight min­utes. Even “leave Brit­ney alone” came in at under three.

Of course, when it comes to viral video, this is the only one you need to watch today:

HT: Sweet Juniper.

Not much for you today. For­tu­nately, Roger Ebert’s on the job, pre­sent­ing his long-awaited rec­ol­lec­tion of O’Rourke’s, his old Chicago water­ing hole:

O’Rourke’s was our stage, and we dis­played our per­sonas there nightly. It was a shabby street-corner tav­ern on a dicey stretch of North Avenue, a block after Chicago’s Old Town stopped being a tourist haven. In its early days it was heated by a wood-burning pot-bellied stove, and ice formed on the insides of the win­dows. One night a kid from the street barged in, whacked a cus­tomer in the front booth with a base­ball bat, and ran out again. When a roomer who lived upstairs died, his body was dis­cov­ered when mag­gots started to drop through the ceil­ing. A man nobody knew was shot dead one night out in back. From the day it opened on Dec, 30, 1966 until the day I stopped drink­ing in 1979, I drank there more or less every night when I was in town. So did a lot of people.

Our place in Colum­bus wasn’t so col­or­ful, but it was pretty fun — the Gal­le­ria. It was on the ground floor of an office build­ing, and you entered through an indoor, well, gal­le­ria. I won’t try to match Ebert, but when I sift through my misty water­col­ored mem­o­ries of the place, I remem­ber Tim May, one of the sports­writ­ers, look­ing through the win­dow to see a home­less man shuf­fling by to use the bath­room. This was in the very early ‘80s, when the pub­lic men­tal hos­pi­tals all closed just­likethat, and sud­denly we were see­ing home­less peo­ple everywhere.

“Some­day I’m gonna write a book about those guys,” he said in his Texas drawl. “I’m gonna call it ‘Wrong Turn,’ ’cause some­where along the line, those guys took a wrong turn.” He never wrote the book, but I still think that’s a tremen­dous title, and if I ever have occa­sion to use it myself, I’m going to credit Tim.

Off to the gym. I did Pilates yes­ter­day, and am still wait­ing for the ab sore­ness to set­tle in. Sit-ups aren’t called sit-ups in Pilates, they’re called roll-ups. That’s because you do them very slowly, one ver­te­bra at a time, and if you think that’s easy, try it some­time. Ouch.

Posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 9:49 am
in Media, Popculch.

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65 responses to
“Treadmill as symbolism.”

  1. coozledad said on September 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am

    We weren’t allowed to drink behind the bar in North Car­olina. Just as well. Ebert’s piece made me remem­ber hav­ing to throw a guy out because he was both­er­ing one of the wait­resses. He was so drunk and frail I could have car­ried him down the stairs, and I only weighed about 130 lbs then. I decided to eject him pri­mar­ily because the wait­ress was prepar­ing to kill him on the spot.
    It would have been unre­mark­able, except for the fact when I got him to the side­walk and he started to walk away, he turned around and said “This ain’t shit. I can always go home and fuck grandma.”

  2. Dorothy said on September 24th, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Cooz why the HELL don’t you write a book? You should be under con­tract to sev­eral pub­lish­ers by now, all the great stuff you put out in the com­ments here!

  3. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:11 am

    We went through a brief AFHV stage. Luck­ily, Myth­busters took over. Unfor­tu­nately, Dirty Jobs, Sur­vivor Man and that show about eat­ing insects, Andrew whatis­name and Bizarre Foods, have joined the list. All these shows make me very queasy.
    A cou­ple of years ago my older son dis­cov­ered How It’s Made. I think that show is on only at weird times here. It’s a Cana­dian pro­gram and it has this nice sooth­ing qual­ity. A few weeks ago we watched how garage doors are made. Video valium.

  4. basset said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:24 am

    We’ve taken to watch­ing the “Big Joe Polka Show” on Sat­ur­day nights and the old Porter Wag­oner shows on Sun­day morn­ings, both on RFD-TV. Try ‘em. Really. With­out irony.

  5. Jeff Borden said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    Hoosier Hur­rahs:

    New fig­ures from the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau show three of the 10 U.S. coun­ties with the high­est divorce rates are in Indi­ana: Floyd, Madi­son and Wayne counties.

    All the dig­i­tal sub-channels are deliv­er­ing a steady stream of great old favorites. I’ve redis­cov­ered the charm of the old “Dick Van Dyke Show,” though the child actor who played Richie Petrie is per­haps the worst ever to appear on TV. Must’ve been the producer’s son? I’m also dig­ging “The Untouch­ables,” which I was not allowed to watch as a kid on the grounds it was too vio­lent. Com­pared with the pro­grams today, of course, it doesn’t seem all that bad. I can under­stand why Italian-American groups hated it, though.

  6. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:41 am

    We used to watch Mule Train­ing on RFD-TV, but I haven’t seen it on the sched­ule lately.

  7. Sue said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    My first reac­tion to the fol­low­ing was: wow, Rep. Can­tor is behav­ing sus­pi­ciously like a death panel of one, in a coun­try that doesn’t rec­og­nize that its health care is already rationed by abil­ity to pay.
    There is no exist­ing gov­ern­ment pro­gram or char­ity hos­pi­tal avail­able to some­one whose assets on paper will dis­qual­ify her for care. She will prob­a­bly not be able to sell her house in this ridicu­lous mar­ket in time (and live where?) to finance her med­ical treat­ment. She will not be able to get insur­ance even if every­one she knows chips in to finance it, now that she has a pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion.
    Rep. Cantor’s reply, as polite as it was, was noth­ing more than a ver­sion of “sucks to be her, doesn’t it”.
    http://​voices​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​e​z​r​a​-​k​l​e​i​n​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​9​/​b​r​e​a​k​_​g​l​a​s​s​_​i​n​_​c​a​s​e​_​o​f​_​h​u​m​a​n​_​b.html

  8. brian stouder said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    IFC is one of my favorite flip-to* chan­nels; although it can be a lit­tle dodgey. You never know what’s going to be hap­pen­ing over there. The other night they had a movie wherein a group of college-aged men and women rent a cabin in the deep woods, and a flesh-eating bac­te­ria begins to attack them.

    I invested a total of maybe 5 min­utes into this (there’s always a chance for gra­tu­itous nudity in such flicks, y’know), over the course of an hour (I was mainly watch­ing MSNBC), and quickly con­cluded that Nancy’s short-film mak­ing crew could have run cir­cles around the mak­ers of this show.

    In one long pan, they showed a dead, flesh­less body lay­ing in a pond, and then our atten­tion is drawn to a pipe in the pond that runs back to the cabin, and up the wall…and then we go into the cabin, where one of the hot young men is fill­ing a glass with water (OH NO!!) which he ulti­mately gives to the hot young woman he’s putting the moves on (love is in the air, despite recent car­nage), and which she gulps down entirely!

    And I’m think­ing — they want us to accept that the drink­ing water is sucked up a pipe from a stag­nant pond? For­get the flesh-eating bac­te­ria, I’d be con­cerned about sal­mo­nella or cholera!

    *flip-to chan­nel: filler dur­ing com­mer­cials while you’re watch­ing some­thing else

  9. Jeff Borden said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    Brian,

    I am embar­rassed to admit that I believe I know the name of that film. It sounds a lot like “Cabin Fever,” which was writ­ten and directed by Eli Roth. This low-budget exer­cise made enough money to move him on to the next level of excre­tion, which were the hor­ri­ble “Hos­tel” movies, often described cor­rectly as “tor­ture porn” because the audi­ence takes the view­point of the tor­turer, not the vic­tim. Now he’s act­ing in “Inglo­ri­ous Bas­terds,” mostly because he’s pals with Quentin Tarantino.

    I gen­er­ally love hor­ror films, though I pre­fer your stan­dard mon­ster, vam­pire, were­wolf, robot, zom­bie, ghost, demonic pos­ses­sion, ancient curse, etc. style fea­ture rather than the slasher movies.

    I’ve cir­cled Oct. 2 for “Zom­bieland,” which looks like a great and gory hoot. Stel­lar cast includ­ing Woody Har­rel­son, Jesse Eisen­berg and the lit­tle girl from “Lit­tle Miss Sun­shine,” Abi­gail Bres­lin. I hope it is half as cool as the trailer.

  10. Sue said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

    Think I’ll watch “Shawn of the Dead” this week­end, now that you men­tion it, Jeff Bor­den. Or maybe “Young Franken­stein”. That’s how I roll, horror-movie-wise.

  11. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    We watched some crappy movie on ScyFy a cou­ple of weeks ago. Seems a black hole had trav­eled to St. Louis and was schlump­ing around town suck­ing things up. I think they killed it with elec­tric­ity or some­thing or sent it back to outer space.
    Judd Nel­son was in it.

  12. 4dbirds said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    Yes Cabin Fever, which was hailed because it brought back naked boo­bies to the hor­ror genre.

    I gen­er­ally love hor­ror pic­tures, except for tor­ture porn. I don’t believe in zom­bies, vam­pires, giant blobs but I do believe in peo­ple who will tor­ture you for fun. Those folks are all too real.

  13. Lex said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:43 pm

    The tread­mill theme dates at least as far back as “The Jet­sons,” and prob­a­bly farther.

    IIRC, parts of “Cabin Fever” were shot around here.

  14. Jeff Borden said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    4dbirds,

    That’s exactly my rea­son­ing. I love get­ting the holy beje­sus scared out of me, but I like to be able to remind myself that there are no such things as vam­pires, zom­bies, etc. You can’t do that with a slasher flick.

    For my hor­ror movie peeps, I highly, highly, highly rec­om­mend a creeply lit­tle Swedish film, “Let the Right One In.” It’s based on a Swedish hor­ror novel of the same name and it absolutely rocks the genre.

  15. Sue said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    I love those ScyFy “orig­i­nal” movies. I believe I’ve men­tioned here before the clas­sic “Pter­adactyl” with the group of peo­ple who get picked off one by one and yet still can’t fig­ure out that they should keep to the tree­line of the field instead of walk­ing across the open mid­dle.
    Favorite stereo­type of course is the touch smart chick who can han­dle seri­ous weaponry while expos­ing the most amount of skin. She is in every ScyFy movie.

  16. beb said on September 24th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    I still love “Wheel of For­tune” and “Jeop­ardy,” AFV not so much, per­haps because, as a man, groin injury isn’t funny. Sadly my daugh­ter has become addicted to police videos. Also to “Horders” a real­ity show about peop­kle who can’t throw any­thing away. The show is dis­turb­ing because at times it seems to cut a lit­tle too close to home.

    c’dad cer­tainly has a lot of sto­ries but I’m not sure how well they’d work as a book since most of them run from a para­graph to no more than a page. I think they work best as blog-bits.

  17. Peter said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:03 pm

    Jeff — I’m with you on the Dick van Dyke — I didn’t see it much when I was a kid, but to watch it now, whoa, that Mary Tyler Moore is HOT.

  18. Julie Robinson said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Wheel of For­tune has always been a guilty secret and per­fect for wind­ing down after the day and read­ing our pid­dly after­noon paper.

    But my new guilty secret is Glee, and I think it’s the first Fox show I’ve ever liked. It’s ridicu­lous and fun with lots of singing and danc­ing. Last night they had the foot­ball team doing that same Bey­once song as the baby above was bounc­ing too. Hilar­i­ous, mind­less, and per­fect for musi­cal geeks.

  19. Dorothy said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Am I the only one who observed that the danc­ing baby in the Bey­once YouTube thing had a string or some­thing around it’s neck? That baby is waaaay to young to have some­thing like a neck­lace on it. I could not see the front of it but it was enough to make me wince.

  20. Jeff Borden said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Amen, Peter, amen. She was smokin’ hot. True trivia fact: Her first appear­ance on TV was sim­ply as a pair of legs. As Sam, a tele­phone oper­a­tor whose voice was heard but whose face was never seen, she inter­acted with Richard Dia­mond, a pri­vate eye played by Davind Janssen the 1957 syn­di­cated TV of the same name.

    MTM began her career as a dancer and always had those fab­u­lous dancer’s legs.

  21. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Wheel of For­tune has some remark­ably stu­pid con­tes­tants. A mem­o­rable one had this much of a name puz­zle showing:

    CAR_ GRANT

    The idiot guessed Carl Grant.

  22. Connie said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    I am lov­ing Glee. Except I hate the wife. My brother the award win­ning bar­ber shop guy told me he loves the show but has to fast for­ward every time the wife is on screen.

    Worst movie of late: I watched some cable channel’s 4 hour mini series called The Storm. I admit a weak­ness for dis­as­ter and post dis­as­ter movies, but this one was bad. I pre­dicted all the story lines, none of which had any con­nec­tion to the other except the storm that was going on. Of course the preg­nant woman went into labor as her house was blow­ing apart around her. Of course her father was trapped by a fly­ing water heater just as the base­ment began to fill up with water. Of course the ambu­lance dri­ver hus­band made it home in time to res­cue them both and deliver his daugh­ter. And I thought the lead sci­en­tist was pretty cute and then sud­denly real­ized he was James Van­den Beek (sp?) from Daw­sons Creek.

    Movie rant over.

    In May of 87 I rode an ambu­lance to Methodist hos­pi­tal in Indi­anapo­lis where I was kept a pris­oner in the high risk preg­nancy cen­ter until my daugh­ter was born at the end of July. (total time in hos­pi­tal, 77 days) We had not had cable, and the exten­sive cable avail­able in my med­ically ordered pri­vate room kept me sane. And it was all new to me. I watched Dick Van Dyke on Nick every day at 1 p.m. I watched lots of VH1 and MTV and can still remem­ber most of the top videos of that year. Includ­ing two by Paula Abdul. And You can call me Al! http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​U​L​j​C​S​K0oOlI

    And I too love the cop and acci­dent videos now being shown all day and all night by TruTv, for­merly Court Tv. Those and the news are pretty much the only things I watch live, every­thing else is TIVO’d.

    I would also note that Methodist Hosp had what they referred to as “our paper boy” (he was at least 70) and every morn­ing by 8 a.m. he cruised through the hall and sold me an Indi­anapo­lis Star for 50 cents every day. If I got pulled out for test (con­stant fetal stress tests which after the first week I had fig­ured out and was allowed to run by myself!) I left the change on my table, and he left me a paper. Day in and day out I read every word in the Star, includ­ing the clas­si­fieds and the Billy Gra­ham column.

  23. Rana said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    LAMary — I also find How It’s Made weirdly sooth­ing. I think some­thing about the jux­ta­po­si­tions (this episode — easy chairs, plas­tic waste bas­kets) is amusing.

    I like Dirty Jobs too, though some­times it is indeed quite dis­gust­ing. I enjoy learn­ing how things like bricks or made, or how wind­mills are ser­viced, and I love how the host/guinea pig is so cheer­ful about play­ing the clue­less new­bie to the old hands (the old hands seem to enjoy it too).

    Another odd lit­tle show that’s a blast to watch is Cash Cab. Partly it’s the host, who is quite charis­matic and vaguely reminds me of my brother, but it’s also the com­bi­na­tion of trivia game plus watch­ing the inter­ac­tions of the ran­dom folks who end up in the cab.

  24. Sue said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    I remem­ber the Wheel of For­tune con­tes­tant who had the whole phrase up on the board — The Impor­tance of Being Earnest — and couldn’t get it; he obvi­ously had never heard of it. He even­tu­ally read it very slowly, pro­nounc­ing earnest as ear nest, and won. It was bizarre and I felt sor­rier for him than I do for the ones you can excuse as being ner­vous or overex­cited or something.

  25. Dorothy said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) is incred­i­bly sexy, despite the goo and muck he’s sur­rounded by all the time. That smile — those eyes!!! Hubba hubba!

  26. Catherine said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Thank you Con­nie and Julie for being the first to admit that you love Glee. I am addicted to that show! I kept the record­ing of the first one just so I can watch that Kanye num­ber over and over… and over. The down­sides are 1) the wife is hor­ri­ble and dif­fi­cult to watch; 2) it’s not appro­pri­ate to watch with my kids (the celibacy club, just for starters).

    Any­one else going to see Fame this week­end? I will be reliv­ing 10th grade. I’m going for the tri­fecta: the Han­nah Mon­tana movie, Band­slam and now Fame.

  27. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    Cash Cab is great. Again, a tough show to find at times if you work away from home, but some­times on the week­end I see it.

  28. John said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Rob and Laura Petrie had sin­gle beds, wore paja­mas (pre­sum­ably with under­wear), had dress­ing gowns, and full length robes. It’s a mir­a­cle that Ritchie was ever born.

  29. Connie said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    John all mar­ried TV cou­ples had sin­gle beds in those days, includ­ing Lucy and Ricky.

  30. 4dbirds said on September 24th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

    Jeff, I have heard so much about “Let the Right One In.” and can’t find it. I’m hop­ing it makes it onto cable soon!

  31. 4dbirds said on September 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Sue there are so many stereo­types to choose from in a ScyFy movie.

    Aging sci­en­tist (Judd Nel­son or C. Thomas How­ell) who made an error in judge­ment sev­eral years ago and can fix the cur­rent calamity if only his peers and the Pres­i­dent trusted him.

    Hot babe sci­en­tist who must have started her under­grad­u­ate work when she was 5.

    Evil mil­i­tary guy who wants to set off a nuke.

    Old Rich guy who fund­ing the project.

    Aging Scientist’s kid, who has to be saved.

    Aging Scientist’s ex-wife who is remar­ried to a com­plete ass.

    Local hick who car­ries a shot­gun and either saves the day or has to be killed.

  32. Sue said on September 24th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    4db — you got it! Pass the popcorn.

  33. adrianne said on September 24th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Son Jack and I bonded over Cash Cab at our vaca­tion place on Cape Cod. The host is hilarious!

    Nance, best news­pa­per bar was Henry’s in Fort Wayne, where every­one knew your name and cus­tom­ary drink order.

  34. Joe Kobiela said on September 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Guilty Plea­sure,
    Fam­ily Guy!!!
    The dog Brian cracks me up every time.
    Pilot Joe

  35. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

    Joe, don’t take this per­son­ally, but I just don’t get Fam­ily Guy. My son likes it. I can’t watch it.

  36. 4dbirds said on September 24th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    I don’t want to like Fam­ily Guy but I do.

  37. paddyo' said on September 24th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Pilot Joe,

    Me, too, on “Fam­ily Guy.” The mind of cre­ator Seth McFar­lane is bril­liant, pro­fane and just plain funny most of the time. The bit they did dur­ing the Emmys, which no doubt hor­ri­fied half the audi­ence (or more) with its bloody-but-slapstick vio­lence between eru­dite tod­dler Stewie and cool-cat Brian the Dog, was typical/vintage/classic.

    And, really, Brian and Stewie are total crack-ups …

    My only quib­ble is that the lit­tle sight-gag/slapstick asides — some­times the fun­ni­est stuff in each episode — on occa­sion go on about 10 – 15 sec­onds too long, to the point of beat-it-into-the-ground … but on bal­ance, ter­rific. It’s an R-rated “The Simp­sons” for the 21st century …

  38. Dexter said on September 24th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    Dorothy: Last month I walked into my neigh­bor­hood con­ve­nience store and the mid­dle aged attrac­tive lady clerk and the store owner lady talked over me as I paid for my soda, “…oh wow! Have you seen him with his SHIRT OFF? !!! Oh, MAN !“
    “[gig­gles}“
    As I left the owner asked what his name is, you know, the Dirty Jobs guy.
    “Mike Rowe”.

    Ebert loved his old bar, as we read. I can’t top those inci­dents he related either, even though I loved to visit seedy bars all over the coun­try.
    Other that the bar-long uri­nal trough that angled from the door end of the bar to a drain in The Phoenix Bar in Cincin­nati twenty years ago, which I told about here last year, the weird­est inci­dent hap­pened in Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion ‚NYC.
    I had Amtrak’d it there to do a few things I never had in my pre­vi­ous trips, mainly see­ing a game in Yan­kee Sta­dium. As our trip ended, we had a cou­ple hours to kill at the bar in the sta­tion. A man came in from the street to a warm wel­come; I remem­ber the bar­tenders called him Bobby.
    Bobby started shak­ing hands with the bar­tenders and cus­tomers he knew, and hand­ing each one of them a $100 bill!
    A new bar­tender was intro­duced, and Bobby slipped him $50. Bobby was severely alco­hol poi­soned, I believe he gave about one of every three peo­ple at the bar a C-note.
    I asked my bar­tender what the HELL?
    Bobby was an oil exec, sta­tioned for six months at a time in Saudi Ara­bia.
    He didn’t drink at all in S.A., of course, but when he got to Lon­don he started and did not stop, so by the time he got to NYC, he was really plas­tered.
    Well, he gave all his cash away, and wanted a drink, and tried to get the bar­tender to take some Eng­lish pound notes. The bar­tender sent him across the street to a bank. Our train was called. I never saw Bobby again.

  39. del said on September 24th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    I find some of the shows men­tioned above sooth­ing too; Dirty Jobs, How It’s Made, Myth­busters, every­thing on the Food Net­work. My kids Love Cash Cab. Every­time a cou­ple gets in the car they get all excited — “Don’t you know you’re get­ting in the CASH CAB?!” They want to go to New York to see it.

  40. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

    Dorothy, do you know that Mike Rowe used to be one of the pitch­men on QVC?

  41. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Mike Rowe was also an … Eagle Scout!

    Con­nie, i remem­ber the paper “boy” at Methodist — for­tu­nately for you, we would not have met: i spent May-August 1987 in CPE at Methodist, work­ing the Hos­pice floor and ER. But that was a vivid mem­ory, the fel­low with the Stars and the rolls of quarters.

    It was the most remark­able maze of inter­con­nected build­ings i hope to ever work in.

  42. brian stouder said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    Dorothy, do you know that Mike Rowe used to be one of the pitch­men on QVC?

    Now THERE’s a ‘dirty job’!

    Think of all the lonely peo­ple who call up and blow their Social Secu­rity money on that crap!

    Maybe this can be the new TLC series — Dirty White (and pink)-Collar Jobs.

    See insur­ance com­pany lawyers screw the hell out of peo­ple and their puny claims; watch bankers fore­close on hap­less home­own­ers, and then flip on their shades and whizz away in their SLK.

    Any big city would have a thou­sand dif­fer­ent well-paid peo­ple who do crappy things every sin­gle day

  43. LAMary said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    JTMMO, I feel slightly smug about know­ing what CPE is. I sit next to the recruiter who han­dles spir­i­tual care.

  44. Jean S said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    but wait.…am I the only one here who ever went to O’Rourke’s? I read Ebert’s piece and had a com­plete flash­back to a Sat­ur­day night in 1979 or so. The place was jammed; Sina­tra on the juke­box. And yeah, those really were crappy booths. But, Sinatra!!

  45. Jeff Borden said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:39 pm

    By the time I got to Chicago, O’Rourke’s had relo­cated to Hal­sted Street, just north of North and Clybourn. Same juke­box. An ancient bro­ken TV in the cor­ner. Huge por­traits of famous Irish writ­ers along the wall. It was pop­u­lar with the folks from Step­pen­wolf The­ater, which was almost across the street.

    When the owner decided to quit the busi­ness, he had an auc­tion. One of my pals bought the enor­mous photo por­trait of Oscar Wilde. Can’t remem­ber the price.

  46. Laurie said on September 24th, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    Nancy, I appre­ci­ate your direct­ing me to Roger’s blog some months ago, which I have really enjoyed.
    I have been on a TV fast since June 12 (a date that shall go down in infamy – in my more para­noid moments I won­der whether it was a con­spir­acy by the cable and elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies). I haven’t been able to get my cheapo con­verter box to work, I don’t have cable or an elec­tron­i­cally inclined per­son around the house, so I sort of gave up for a few weeks…and got to doing things like read­ing more books, tak­ing more walks, writ­ing more let­ters, and lis­ten­ing to the radio.
    Life in the 1930s is pleas­ant, although I do miss out on the water­cooler chat. The DVD player still works so it is a nice event to take out a movie and watch that.
    I may be “in recov­ery.” I rented an apart­ment sev­eral years ago that came semi-furmished, includ­ing with a TV whose screen was as big as a Hum­mer, HD, with top-of-the-line Direct TV. Between being a film and com­edy buff and reliv­ing the shows of my child­hood, I grad­u­ally regressed to almost no sleep, pros­thetic remote at the end of my arm, chin on my chest, drool­ing á la Homer Simp­son, and vir­tu­ally no atten­tion span from surf­ing 800 TV chan­nels plus XM Radio. I vol­un­tar­ily entered rehab by my 6-month lease end­ing, and, speak­ing of water­ing holes, was glad to get away as well from the two elderly alco­holics over­head who would get plas­tered and enter­tain nightly into the wee hours. When I met them (the own­ers), I thought, “These are nice old peo­ple. I bet this place is a tomb after 9 p.m.”
    Tread­mills are a dis­tress­ing exis­ten­tial sym­bol to me.

  47. Danny said on September 24th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    I don’t want to like Fam­ily Guy but I do.

    That prob­a­bly sums up a lot of peo­ples’ feel­ings around here regard­ing me. Come to think of it, my wife may have uttered some­thing sim­i­lar once or twice…

  48. Rana said on September 24th, 2009 at 6:47 pm

    Maybe this can be the new TLC series  —  Dirty White (and pink)-Collar Jobs.

    Heh. That sounds a lot like temp work. Fil­ing for abu­sive bosses at a phone book com­pany who forced their work­ers to come back even though the air qual­ity was dan­ger­ous due to wild­fires, the life insur­ance com­pany that had all kinds of rid­ers in their forms, the poorly run tech­ni­cal school that treated dis­as­ters like a party.… I was always glad I wasn’t at any of these places for very long.

    I don’t know how enter­tain­ing it would be as a show, however.

  49. MarkH said on September 24th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    Danny, my wife has said exactly that, about me, mul­ti­ple times.

  50. Connie said on September 24th, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Jttmo, we were both at Methodist for the same period in 87. Too weird. I was sit­ting in a wheel­chair out­side on the “deck” out­side the pub­lic cafe­te­ria in a wheel­chair and got to expe­ri­ence that strange but true Indi­anapo­lis earthquake.

  51. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 24th, 2009 at 9:01 pm

    Yep, i was on the 5th floor of Wile Hall, where the chap­laincy offices were, look­ing at my cof­fee and think­ing “they must be pile dri­ving in the park­ing garage across the street,” then won­der­ing if the end build­ing that the heli­port sat atop was already get­ting work done.

    Mary, thanks for the reminder to play nice in the acronym sand­box — Clin­i­cal Pas­toral Edu­ca­tion is the full name of CPE, a train­ing pro­gram some clergy choose to go through to get inten­sive, super­vised train­ing in pas­toral care. Fas­ci­nat­ing to hear there’s a recruiter for it; we were screened and all, but there wasn’t much struc­ture for it. They’d take any­one will­ing to do the work (who passed the basic psych screen­ing, that is).

  52. beb said on September 24th, 2009 at 9:53 pm

    I used to like Fam­ily Guy but over the last year or so it’s become unwatch­able. I find it obscene, per­verted and unfunny. And I usu­ally like the first two.

  53. Dexter said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:28 pm

    My radio “bud­dies” came to the aid of a broke for­mer co-worker …a small loan was given…this is “Black Earl Dou­glas”, so named because he only, always, wears black. I love the eyeballs…just like Geico!
    http://​rfeast​side​dave​.pos​ter​ous​.com/​e​a​r​l​s​-​g​e​i​c​o​-money

  54. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 24th, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    No, the psych screen­ing wasn’t that thor­ough, Dexter.

  55. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:02 am

    My last com­ment now makes no sense, but i think it was wise to remove that par­tic­u­lar link.

  56. Dexter said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:21 am

    yeah, Jeff…see, I was pulling a guy’s leg who had just Face­booked that “I am no longer a sushi vir­gin!“
    I then posted that link , which fea­tured the opened skull of a per­son with a brain that was infested with “brain worms”.
    That was not sup­posed to have appeared here…my bad…
    Now , in case I have aroused more curiosity…just Google Image “sushi brain worms”.

  57. crazycatlady said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:37 am

    Mike Rowe is so Sexy!!! I wish he’d come to the Nurs­ing Home I work at. I have a very dirty job he can do for us… Or maybe as a for­mer Opera singer, he could just enter­tain my patients.

  58. moe99 said on September 25th, 2009 at 2:17 am

    fyi, my friends:

    http://​moesmisad​ven​tures​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​9​/​a​t​-​t​o​p​-​o​f​-​r​o​l​l​e​r​-​c​o​a​s​t​e​r.html

  59. Dexter said on September 25th, 2009 at 2:30 am

    crazy­cat­lady! You are so awful! ha ha! Well…Bruce Spring­steen says it takes a red­headed woman to get a dirty job done…c’est la guerre.

  60. Deborah said on September 25th, 2009 at 6:23 am

    Moe, I’ve been think­ing about you ever since I read your post a cou­ple of days ago on your blog. I’m glad you linked to your site here. I wanted to com­ment at NNC about what you’ve been going through but didn’t think it was appro­pri­ate for ME to do that. It’s weird how one can be con­nected through this vir­tual world. If there is any­thing we can do please let us know.

  61. brian stouder said on September 25th, 2009 at 8:11 am

    Moe — I espe­cially never liked the ride up the first hill on a roller coaster (although things get fun and excit­ing once the ride got going in earnest!)

    If you’re ahead of any of us on The Big Ride (and who knows!), our eyes will be on you, and our hopes and prayers will be with you

    Here’s wish­ing you and yours strength.

  62. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 25th, 2009 at 8:26 am

    Moe, may every bless­ing on the shelf and out of the store­room be yours. It’s been true for some time that one of the most impor­tant pieces of pas­toral care that clergy need to do and get –zippo– train­ing for is help­ing shyer, qui­eter, more def­er­en­tial folk (espe­cially those less edu­cated or more def­er­en­tial to author­ity) to get their due out of the med­ical sys­tem. I was both inspired and infu­ri­ated to read your descrip­tion of how you got your Fri­day appoint­ment made, and i hope you don’t mind if i for­ward that along to a batch of clergy training/education folk i work with. But bless you for push­ing through the indif­fer­ence or mechan­i­cal­ness or weari­ness or what­ever of that sched­ul­ing staffer and get­ting your pro­ce­dure done NOW and not another two weeks later.

    My prayers are with you, and i will be very inter­ested to hear/read what it takes to make a med­ical co-op work for you, hope­fully with a min­i­mum of blud­geon­ing (but you blud­geon, lady, when you need to!).

  63. Julie Robinson said on September 25th, 2009 at 8:59 am

    Moe, I am so sorry to hear about your diag­no­sis. Your voice is still strong even though the phsy­i­cal part is weak. I join oth­ers in prayer for you.

  64. LAMary said on September 25th, 2009 at 10:48 am

    Moe,the com­pany I work for has a lot of hos­pi­tals in Wash­ing­ton. Which hos­pi­tal are you going to? I might know some folks there who can get you the nice room with the view or something.

  65. Rana said on September 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

    moe, you’re in — and will con­tinue to be in — my thoughts. *hugs* if you want them.

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