Channel Surfing with Dr G and Mary Louise

How come Dr. G doesn't have a Christmas Special?

Our intrepid forensics pathologist could be decked out in candy striped scrubs, perhaps a dead-but-decorated tree in the corner of the morgue (one of last year's models).  And holiday-themed corpses rolling in on twinkling-lighted gurneys, all set for their holly jolly standard Y incision.

A little eggnog with your Yuletide autopsies?  Why thank you!

And who're we wheeling under the mistletoe for the good doctor?  Perhaps a department store Santa who drops dead of a heart attack right in the middle of some little tyke sitting on his lap rattling off his Christmas wish list?  Or a guy who electrocutes himself while attempting to string up his outdoor Xmas Lights?  A man impaled when one of his roof-top reindeer decorations comes crashing down onto him, antlers first?  For the kids, how about a baby mauled to death by a barnyard goat during the manager scene of a church Christmas pageant?  Ho-ho-ho!  I think if anyone could make this work, our Dr. G could.  Medical Examiners celebrate the holidays too, I'm sure.  In their own special way.

Switching from Dr. G ...

I ended up watching a great Mary Louise Parker flick from 1994, Naked In New York.  I'm always thrilled when I stumble across a Mary Louise movie I haven't yet seen.  It's the next best thing to being there, as an AT&T commercial once explained.  Eric Stoltz and the Karate Kid are also featured in this b-movie and they're both likable enough.  Eric's been in some great movies over the years (Mask, The Waterdance, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pulp Fiction, Hi-Life), and of course Ralph Macchio had his one-two punch of Outsider Johnny and Karate Kid that cemented his place in the pantheon of 80's schlock greatness. (By the way, you can neatly tie together Ralph's work through references made by Matt Dillon characters.  As Dallas Winston in the Outsiders: "Let's do it for Johnny, Man!" - through to his role as Pat Healy in Something About Mary: "You know the classics - like Harold and Maude and the Karate Kid?".  But I digress.  And my Member's Only Jacket is clearly showing.)


These clowns are merely fodder, though; props to give my gal something to do, someone to interact with.  But Mary Louise ... man.  She continues to slay me.  I would kill for her.  Christ ... I sound like John Hinkley. (Jodie Foster?  Really, John?  Maybe 1990 Silence of the Lambs edition but certainly not the 1976 Taxi Driver model.  And as it turned out, you didn't stand a chance, even if she had been into insane loner killers.  She'd probably pass you by for Aileen Woornos.)  

Of course, my devotion is just good old fashioned healthy lust.  And I wouldn't literally kill for her.  After all, I don't own a gun and don't much care for knives.  So I speak of course only metaphorically.  But I would totally give somebody a real piece of my mind for her.  A real tongue lashing.  For sure.

Proactive Procrastination

Ahh, December.  The month of lists - the best and worst of the year ending and predictions for the year to begin.  It's also the month where many of us begin to take stock of personal accomplishments (or lack thereof) and to devise goals for the new year.  And of course many come in the form of the dreaded New Year's Resolutions.  As for me, there are definitely some things I need to get straight in my mind and then translate to action come 2010.

For instance ...

Cherry Coke Zero is not water, despite containing it.  It is not nearly as good for me, especially when consumed by the gallon on a daily basis.  Though probably much better than gin or beer or rat poison, certainly at the volume we're talking about here.  So I'm getting closer but have some work to do still.

Watching A&E's Sell This House does not constitute actually going about selling my house.

Vitamins provide no nutritional value unless I actually ingest them (glancing at the bottle sitting on the windowsill of the bathroom each morning doesn't qualify).  Vitamins are generally overrated but given my piss poor diet, they certainly can't hurt.

Though technically "exercise", traversing the "treacherous" staircase connecting the first and second floors of my house is not exactly scaling Everest.  Though to be fair, I have no Sherpa to guide me and generally make the journey without aid of supplemental oxygen (thus far).  Still, I need to develop and stick to a regular - and more importantly, real - exercise regiment.

Really I'm just being proactive in devising my list of New Year's resolutions I plan on subsequently ignoring, rather than waiting until the last minute to do so, as is my normal M.O.

Anyway, I usually throw up my Chinese New Year dodge when January 1st arrives, giving myself another several weeks of guilt-free procrastination.  Sort of like the groundhog seeing his shadow - it means ~six more weeks of last year.  Then the dragons dance down Arch Street in Chinatown here in Philly, the firecrackers explode, The Year of the Something turns the page to The Year of the Something Else and the guilt kicks in full stride: the gym not joined, the junk food not trimmed down, the house not repaired/cleaned/sold (or repaired and cleaned so that it might be sold).

But I will get a haircut today.  So there's that.  And I did go for a run yesterday (well, more a trot).  Baby steps.

And the upcoming year will be different!  After all, Chinese New Year 2010 is the Year of the Tiger and so was 1962, the year I was born.  That surely means something (it only happens every 12 years, according to the last menu I read).  Plus it falls on Valentines Day and that's gotta be some sort of sign too (besides the introduction of the Vermont Teddy Dragon - or Teddy Tiger - to complement their Teddy Bear).

The end of this god awful "00s" decade means it's time to start fresh.
Who knows?  I might just go crazy and get a hair cut and go for a run every month next year.

Sunday's Best ... (Okay - Sunday's Dreck)

The first snowfall of the year here in Philly - really, more a sleet/snow mix. It was quite lovely to look at and thoroughly miserable to be out in. So I did more of the former and avoided the latter (easy to do when you're stuck working all day, as I was Saturday in an effort to prepare for the upcoming week off). But work is now done and I can turn my attention to more pressing matters. Whatever they might be. I'm sure I have some. Maybe not.

The hard physics problem I was grappling with yesterday while trying to juggle work and a football game? How to reach into the television with my jumper cables and attach them to the testes of the nitwits calling the SEC title game.

I was in an especially dark mood but I think with these clowns even Rachael Ray would be screaming "god damn babbling, yammering morons with special needs turrets - shut the fuck up or drop dead!" Or something to that effect. Then again, maybe that's her modus operandi whenever she's planted in front of the tube.  Folks with sunshine beams flying out of their asses 'round the clock are always suspect in my book.

But I'm meandering off track, as I'm wont to do.  Perhaps in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that I got nothing "on track".  I'm exhausted from the madness of the week's corporate chaos - mentally drained and in no shape to wax poetic on life's amusing follies.

Now it's Sunday and I'm listening to more brain-dead motor mouths calling the pro games.  Cables clamped on car battery, other end clamped to your testes, then I climb behind the wheel and rev the engine.  Call that play, dickhead. Verbal diarrhea in need of binding.  Eat some cheese, shitheads.

Clicking around the dial I see on Pay Per View "Jerry Springer/Big-Breasted".  Hmm.  Springer *and* breasts?  Intriguing. Tell me more.  Well, for just 9.99, you can see Jerry "shine the spotlight on the most-magnificent mammaries ever to grace his studio in this titillating collection of clips."  Clearly for the most discriminating tastes only.  Personally, I think that selecting "buy" for this fine selection should trigger an alarm in the local firehouse, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of a fire-engine full of bruisers  at your doorstep, there to kick the living shit out of you (they'll first allow you to pull your pants back up, if you're lucky).

Boy, I'm really filled with vitriol this weekend.  That's not such a bad thing.  Vitriol - it does a body good.  Maybe it's all the coffee I've been slugging down.  Too much caffeine with me leads to bad skin and a pissy mood.   I should probably go for a run or something.  Get my frustrations out.  Fucking Michael Vick scores a touchdown in Atlanta.  And the crowd is filled with people cheering him.  A plague on all their houses.  I'm definitely going for a run.

Okay, this post is way too long for such drivel.  Perhaps I'll be inspired later.  A run with Dylan on the iPod might do it.  No, I need more anger.  Black Flag, perhaps.  Rage Against the Machine, maybe.

Until then, I apologize for any of you who've made it this far.  They're not all this bad.  Not all of them.  

I've started five books in the past month and have no desire to finish any of them.  I need to get my hooks into something really interesting as my A.D.D grows more severe with age.  Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is the one next on my list.  Perhaps that will do the trick.  Meanwhile, after the run, I think I'll re-read Ginsberg's Howl, just for the fuck of it (it's one of my coffee table books that isn't about coffee tables).  That will also help dissipate some righteous indignation percolating through my psyche.  Just trying to find the release valves where ever they might be before it all erupts (usually on undeserving innocent bystanders for all the wrong reasons).

And so I'm off into the chilly late Autumn afternoon to slap shoe to pavement and drag my frustration along for the ride (hopefully, I can give it the slip in the bargain).

Sometimes kicking off the holiday season is a real Hasselhoff

The Hasselhoff clan enjoyed a fine start to the holiday season this weekend, David being rushed to the hospital for what most folks assume is another case of alcohol poisoning and his ex-wife arrested for a DUI.

Ahh, the sights and sounds of that most magical time of the year - it really takes me back to those days of yore growing up. What says Christmas more than the holiday colors of the ambulance and police siren lights in your driveway? Perhaps only the evergreen shade of Dad's vomit splattered on the yule log and his snow white stubble grown over the course of a five day bender.  Eggnog, anyone?

Ho-ho-ho!

That's as good a pratfall into this holiday season as any - thanks, David.  Perhaps someone ought to pick him up a casket on walmart.com for Christmas - might be a timely gift.  Whatever Santa brings you, I'm sure it'll be appropriate.

Seems even the perfect Tiger Woods was having a bit of a rocky domestic go of things this weekend as Black Friday bleeds into Cyber Monday.

Speaking of Cyber Monday, I've got a week of mad craziness at work before I take a break for a few days, and I'm expecting the asylum to be especially loony on a number of levels.   So I'm hanging up my blogging shoes for the next five days unless something truly significant compels me to post (even then, I may hold off until Friday).

So I'll finish off the evening in typically schizophrenic fashion, clicking incessantly between Frost/Nixon (the parallels between Hasselhoff and Nixon are eerie), Gladiator, Apocalypse Now, HBO's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert and Animal House. Mostly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame show.  Lou Reed and Metallica doing Sweet Jane!  That made my weekend.  And U2, Springsteen and Patti Smith doing Because the Night (Patti's version)!  Made my weekend twice.  Patti and Lou.  Is anything more New York?

Catch you on the other side.

Secretary Lapre?

My mentor Don Lapre once said "Small ads equal big profits."

Actually, that was pretty much the only thing he said, but he managed to do it in many and varied ways, always with an enthusiasm normally only seen from coke fiends on a four day jag.

This guru clearly provides sage advice in any era but it's especially profound given today's economic climate.

I see you cringing.  "Steve!",  you exclaim.  "Don Lapre is a has-been and when he did have a TV presence on those 3am Making Money infomercials in the 90's, he was a transparently cartoonish huckster.  His utterances were pure nonsense."

My reply is simple: That's the point.  That's his genius.  

And don't forget his good works in the 21st century: "Greatest Vitamin in the World!"  They were some pretty good vitamins, I hear (better even than Flintstone Chewables or - dare I say - Lucy's Vitameatavegamin).

Mr. Lapre is a man whose time has finally come.  Two dimensional (really, closer to 1 1/2 dimensions) and so cartoonish he makes Roger Rabbit seem like Edward R. Murrow.  A guy whose catchphrases - indeed, almost everything he has said or written, including the contents of his Making Money package  - are filled with more mumbo jumbo than Alice through the Looking Glass.

And I know: I bought Making Money back in 1998.  I did it not so I could make money for myself - it was clear it wouldn't be much help there - but to help Don make money.  It was the Pet Rock of Get Rich Quick schemes, minus the rock.  It was magnificence unbounded - truly a sight to behold.  Mainly, I did it out of curiosity and I was most definitely not disappointed.

This is precisely why Don's more essential than ever.  We live in a world where the goings on of our nation's financial industry resemble nothing so much as a Road Runner re-run strained through the worst sort of acid trip and topped with unbridled brilliance in the art of idiocy.

Folks are calling for Tim Geithner's head.  He's a sharp numbers guy, but he's pretty light on charisma, on camera presence, on pitching lumps of shit and making the world see diamonds.   That's Don's sweet spot.  We need to sell small ads to countries with deep pockets and gullibility to spare (not an all that uncommon combination).   Like Don did, we'll start out from "our tiny one-bedroom apartment" at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  Ship those All American Making Money packages at 50 mil a pop of pure profit.  If anyone can sell it, our boy can.

I say let's welcome Treasury Secretary Don Lapre to the cabinet.

Andy's Art, Dollars and Nonsense, Talkin' with Walken

An Andy Warhol painting went for 43+ million last week at Sotheby's.  Valuation of art is a strange and complex thing, playing out quickly or over millennia.  In many ways, it is precedence driven, and there's currently a chain reaction of ballooning Warhol worth.

I dig Andy's work fine but geez, that's a lot of mula for a picture of a lot less mula (200 $1.00 bills, to be exact).

And I like Andy's stuff a lot more when it lives within its proper context (the Factory, Edie and Co., the Velvets, the swinging 60's, etc.).  It loses its pizazz flowing through  Richie Rich Sotheby's auction house and into C. Montgomery Burns' vault.





Otherwise, give me Ralph Steadman,Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock.

You want real art?

How about Christopher Walken's recent interpretation of Lady Gaga's Poker Face?  Now, that's something to behold. Walken is the king of the single scene, from his debut in Annie Hall, to True Romance and Pulp Fiction, and on to SNL's Southern Colonel Angus ("He's heading down South") and Blue Oyster Cult Producer ("I need more Cowbell").  Ya can't beat him with a stick.  Oh!





Needs more Cowbell, though.

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