Here comes Oprah Claus! Here comes Oprah Claus! Right down Oprah Claus Lane!

It's Christmas time in Hollis Queens

Mom's cooking chicken and collard greens 

Rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese 

And Santa put gifts under Christmas trees

Ahh, the traditional sounds of the Holidays.  But I'm not feelin' it yet, even with the harmonies of Reverend Joey Simmons and Darryl McDaniels warbling through the stereo speakers. (Whose house? Run's House!)  Maybe I need the weather to turn colder.  Perhaps once Thanksgiving is past us.

I miss the wise counsel of The Most Interesting Man in the World.  He seems to have drifted off the page, so to speak. And when he does make an appearance, it's only to let me know where I've been, not where I must go next. Thanks to him, I know the after party is the one you want to go to. But what should I do after that?  In some ways, he represents what's true and real about Christmas.  A Santa Claus for the new age, kind of.  A Dos Equis-drinking (though, he reminds us, "not always"), womanizing, partying, adventuring Saint Nick.

Speaking of Saint Nicolas, maybe Nicolas Cage can provide some yuletide guidance in his new flick The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I was a big fan of the first Bad Lieutenant film when it came out back in 1993, that one showcasing an under appreciated Harvey Keitel performance to my mind as good as his more acclaimed romps through Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, etc.

There are some real rave reviews for this Bad LT "sequel" (its only relationship to the original is the title character's profession, rank, and corruption).  Many have proclaimed this Cage's best performance since Leaving Las Vegas, his wicked lieutenant sharing much with the protagonist of that film (tortured soul, substance abuser).  Unlike the earlier Keitel crime drama, this new one isn't a brutally serious NYC-based fallen angel/Catholic guilt parable but rather a brutally bleak black comedy, set in post-Katrina New Orleans.   Maybe it'll put me in the holiday spirit!

Meanwhile the pop culture world is a blaze this week with Oprah putting the kibosh on her gabfest after 25 years and vampire fever striking the tweeny-bopper crowd (and those older folk with similar sensibilities).  Personally, just give me Ed Wood's friend Bela Lugosi and Lily Munster, thank you very much. You can keep yer twlight's last gleaming and yer honest plasma.

Speaking of the Divine Miss 'O', Oprah's next act appears to be her own network (the Oprah Winfrey Network, natch), rolling out in 2011.  It's supposed to "replace the Discovery Health Channel."  Forget government takeover of Healthcare, I'm way more concerned about the Oprah machine taking over my Discovery Health.  She's got ten times the juice of our puny government and I depend on my friends at Discovery Health to get me through the day a lot more than I do my PPO lately.

Oprah, what the fuck are you trying to pull?  You trying to put Liberator Catheter Lady (I call her "Cath") and Activia Jamie Lee in the poor house?  Don't screw with my favorite network.  I need my Dr. G fix and can't afford to fly down to Florida each week to watch her work in person.  I've got Medical Mysteries to solve and Life in the ER to live (there are Untold Stories in there yet to tell, I hear ... er, tell).   This concerns me greatly.

Oh well, that's a couple of years from now.  Be kind to us, oh great and powerful 'O'.  Oprah, perhaps more even than the Most Interesting Man, represents the true embodiment of Kris Kringle - new cars for everyone!  Oprah Claus.  All I want for Christmas, Dear Oprah Claus, is that you take pity on my fav Discovery Health shows and allow them to live on when your network takes over.

And with that ...


RUN-DMC - Christmas In Hollis (Official Music Video) - Click here for more free videos

Fear and Loathing on the Autopsy Table - The other Dr. Gonzo, her Forensic Follies and Liberation from the Pain of run-of-the-mill Catheters

For every time you "cath" - Liberator. I guess folks that need to pee through a tube constitute at least part of the target demographic for Dr. G. Medical Examiner, though thankfully that's not me just yet.

A Dr. G Sunday afternoon marathon hits the spot after three hours of scrambling around on the tennis court in high humidity with a group of people many years my junior and I'm guessing many gym visits up on me.

Oddly, though, I feel a lot better now than I remember feeling after much shorter Sunday tennis excursions in the late 1980s.

How could that be?

It might have something to do with my lifestyle back then: Wednesday and Thursday evening, most of Friday afternoon and evening, and all of Saturday being generally spent in an alcoholic haze.

I recall thinking back then that with a bit of normal exercise on a Sunday, I'd trick my body into forgetting the pummeling I'd given it the rest of the week. My body wasn't fooled, but that never stopped me from trying. What's that definition of insanity? Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Something like that.

Anyway, back to the Morgue!

Man, Good ol' Doc G. is SO enthusiastic about finding some sort of hidden, ruptured vein deep within a supposedly healthy brain or an unknown spray of tumors in the colon of an apparent accident victim. Yek! Fun stuff! I don't see with all that digging around in cadavers that she has any time to investigate crime. I don't remember Jack Klugman doing much poking around on the autopsy slab - he was more apt to be poking around in the holes of your alibi, because every case was criminal in his world.

Hey, there's Vince with his ShamWow! Guess the Dr. G target demo needs a ShamWow or two: changing catheters can be a messy business, I'd imagine. Though Vince doesn't mention "caths" specifically, you can tell he'd readily agree that the ShamWow could handle that situation for you with class and dignity.

Followed by a Cadillac commercial? That seems out of place. Unless it comes with an available in-seat cath tube. That'd be sweet.

Activia - now we're back on track with the shut-in/piss-on-yourself target audience and in fact are entering the wing of this exclusive club that I hang out in. My kingdom for a bowel movement! Thanks, Jamie Lee! You've come a long way from Trading Places and Perfect!

Meanwhile, back out of the Yogurt and into the "standard Y incision" (love the animated graphics). Dr. G is narrowing down the root cause of the corpse in her charge.

Excited delirium resulting from ... Maybe drugs? Oh, oh. She's got those monster rib separators and is digging into the chest cavity. Nothing there. No anatomical smoking gun as to the ultimate cause of death - no trauma. It could be an overdose or cardiac arrhythmia. I'm on the edge of my seat! Oh, darn, more commercials - the toxicology results await!

Another Liberator commercial! Man, I must be keeping company with a lot of defective urinary tracts! Almost makes you wish yours was fucked up too, just so you could enjoy Liberator's fantastic product! I haven't yet seen a 'Depends' commercial here but it's just a matter of time (which reminds me of the one bright spot in an otherwise all-too-typically-unfunny SNL repeat last night: Chewable Pampers).

[Postscript - 6pm, several hours deep into the Dr. G Marathon - I feel I'm ready for the pathologist board exam and whattayaknow: A 'mega-depends' commercial for home delivery of all your incontinent supplies with HDIS. It shows an embarrassed elderly lady wheeling up to the checkout counter, her shopping cart stuffed full of nothing but bladder control products. I'm surprised they didn't pan down to a trail of shit and piss tracking her path through the store, followed by a quick shot of the disgusted patrons, finally landing on a close up of our red-faced protagonist. This could be you! Why chance going out into public! Let us ship this shit to your door! Discovery Health Ad execs didn't let me down.]

Back to Dr. G.

The results are in! Dr. G. says, 'The tox screen will speak to me'. And the tox-screen says ... Cocaine, not O.D. level. The process of elimination answers: 'Cardiac Arrhythmia!' Wow.

Oh, and the Phillies seems to be beating the shit out of the ball again today. Feast or famine with that crew.