And Other Emergencies

I go to the ER sort of a lot.  I used to work with this woman, Rosalba, who also went to the ER a lot -- she said she once went two times in one week, one particularly bad week in which she had abdominal pain on Tuesday and fell and broke her tail bone on Friday.  We were both so embarrassed for ourselves (but kind to each other) at being that type of person.  It was surprising to me that she'd ever feel embarrassed by anything.  She was so charming it was probably a pleasure to take her blood pressure.

I have a good friend who also goes a lot, as the method of being admitted to the hospital for her condition.  I just finished reading a biography about Edie Sedgewick, who actually seemed to like Emergency Rooms, hospitals and damaging procedures performed on her under the guise of masculine professional help.  I think Sedgewick was into it for the pills, but also, maybe, the comfort of knowing you're being watched over, even if it's only by strangers.

When I used to work with Rosalba, I was in my early twenties.  I'm a bit mysterious but not near as charming, and whenever I went to the ER I was always suspected of having caused my ailments myself, through drugs or alcohol, which was aggravating in one sense, to be judged off the bat like that, but it was also sort of flattering that they'd assume that about me, because I've always thought of drugs and alcohol as being glamorous, despite knowing from experience that they aren't at all -- but even though I know a lot about them being consumed when one is home all alone and lonely just watching TV and waiting to get sleepy enough for bedtime -- I can't help but associate drunkenness and highness with having fun out with friends, being enjoyed and enjoying the night.

Sometimes after an ER visit, or hospital stay, I'm able to write a good poem or story about it, but there are a lot of very strange things I've seen in ER's that I have never committed to paper because I'm too lazy to try to get all the absurd details just right.

The last two times I went to the ER (a few months ago and last night) I didn't even to try to collect details to use later.  I just closed my eyes and imagined myself flying, instead of sitting there in the waiting room in pain but assuming I'm unlikely to die with so many people around me.  That time, the waiting room was mostly full of rich-looking people all playing on their phones.  No exaggeration -- every adult in there was on their cell phone even when they were sitting right next to the people they came with.  I keep trying not to judge people but that night, i wanted to punch every last idiot in their stupid faces. 

Last night my main ER waiting room experience concerns a 22 year old boy who was sound asleep in his seat.  he looked rather beautiful, skeletal and gay and vulnerable, especially asleep the way he was, so I sat next to him and read his name on his wristband, so I could wake him up when the nurse called his name for intake.  i don't mean for this to sound like a selfless deed -- I just enjoy doing things that normal people are afraid of, and there were normal-looking people sitting close to him, exchanging mocking looks about him.  I also saw on his wristband that he was born in 1993, and it always amazes me that any young adult can be so young, like how Nirvana is considered Classic Rock now and the music they used to play on the oldies stations when I was a kid, like "Big Girls Don't Cry" and The Supremes songs, are so old now they seem to have disappeared.  He did sleep through the nurse calling his name, like I thought he might, so I tried to wake him up, politely at first, but then I got frustrated with him and I was shaking him and telling him "Hey, wake up, get up, you're going to miss your turn.  Get it together."  it was so uncharacteristic of me to be shaking some sense into someone like that, because I'm usually the one who needs to have the senses shaken into me.  Later on, though, when he was back in the waiting room and I was still there, and I was still compelled to watch over him as he fell back into his deep sleep, I had to remind myself that I was there to watch over myself, to find out why I had a bunch of spontaneous bruises developing  all over my arms and legs.  That kid was just a stranger, and while lots of good people think that it's good to help strangers, I've been experimenting with the concept that maybe it's not.  Or in any event, I've narrowed down the groups of strangers that I want to help; it's pretty much that classic disaster maxim, women and children first.  When a nurse called his name again, this time because a bed was ready for him, I wasn't sitting next to him anymore but I went to him and shook him roughly awake like last time, telling him "Get up!  What if they skip you?  Just get up and go over there."  He tried to wake up and was pleading with me, "Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'll get up, I'll do it."  Then he started to half-cry and said "This is too much for me.  I can't do it."  I felt so intent on shaking some sense into him, I wanted to know what was wrong with him so I could reason him out of it, so I asked him if he was on drugs, because that seemed to be his problem, and I knew I could reason him out of a drug panic.  He suddenly seemed very alert as he yelled in my face, "I'm not on drugs."  I realized then that whatever his problem, and how ever much I outweighed him, he was to some degree a potential threat to me.  I hoped the night wasn't as bad as it felt and that maybe there was someone there watching me, ready to shake me back to life if needed.

Film Reviews and More Galore

I’m taking a break from pissing in the wind posting my novella Yesteryou (an adventure and a love story) to piss in the wind giving my opinions on movies and songs I’ve recently consumed.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love to watch movies and read books all day every day; I guess it’s my version of having a short attention span, though I consider it a tiny bit better than other people’s short attention spans (who doesn’t find their own habits a bit superior?) because at least I’m not screwing around on a smartphone all day like the rest of the world (old lady rant).  After I read something or see something, though, I always wish I could talk about it with someone, so here are some unsystematically recorded thoughts.

Hip-Hop

The last 5 years or so, I think I listen to Hip-Hop more than any other type of music, which I constantly amaze myself over, because it is definitely not in keeping with my sense of aesthetics.  I like things to be tender and in favor of the underdog (and my “real” favorite music is punk like Bikini Kill, rock like Bruce Springsteen, avante garde like Velvet Underground, and folk like Marianne Faithful) while most of the hiphop I end up listening to is this beyond-disturbing Darwinian bullshit about seriously hurting anyone weaker than oneself.  I know there is a sociological reason for this cruelty, and that it’s not intended for me as its audience, but that’s a lot to get into, as far as white guilt vs. my anger as a feminist over how horrible the black woman character is treated in the narrative of most of the hiphop I listen to (I know there is politically correct/ smart hiphop, but I don’t like how it sounds!), and I won’t digress into all that, since that wasn’t the main thing I was thinking about this morning as I thought about how weird it was that I listen to so much hiphop this morning as I drove into work.  I was listening to this Wu Tang song as I pulled in to my office building, and I turned it up really loud as I was driving into the parking lot.  Here is a sample of the lyrics (I'm using the verses with the least n-words in them):   

 "Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber"

[Verse One: Raekwon the Chef]

Champion gear that I rock, you get your boots knocked
Then attack you like a pit that lock shit DOWN
As I come and freaks the sound, hardcore
but giving you more and more, like ding!
Nah shorty, get you open like six packs
Killer Bees attack, flippin what, murder one, phat tracks
A'ight? I kick it like a Night Flite!
Word life, I get that ass while I'm fulla spite!
Check the method from Bedrock, cause I rock ya head to bed
Just like rockin what? Twin glocks!
Shake the ground while my beats just break you down
Raw sound, we going to war right now

So, yo, bombin
We Usually Take All Niggaz Garments
Save ya breath before I bomb it

[Verse Two: Method Man]

I be that insane nigga from the psycho ward
I'm on the trigger, plus I got the Wu-Tang sword
So how you figure that you can even fuck with mine?
Hey, yo, RZA! Hit me with that shit one time!
And pull a foul, niggaz save the beef on the cow
I'm milkin this ho, this is MY show, tical
The FUCK you wanna do? More than Spike Lee's Do
I'm like a sniper, hyper off the ginseng root
PLO style, buddha monks with the owls
So who's the fucking man? Meth-Tical
On the chessbox


[Verse Six: Ol Dirty Bastard]

Are you, uh, ah, uh
Are you a warrior? Killer? Slicin shit like a samurah
The Ol' Dirty Bastard VUNDABAH
Ol' Dirty clan of terrorists
Comin atcha ass like a sorceress, shootin' that PISS!
Niggaz be gettin on my fuckin nerves
Rhymes they be kickin make me wanna kick they fuckin ass to the curb
I got funky fresh, like the old specialist
A carrier, messenger, bury ya
This experience is for the whole experience
Let it be applied, and THEN DROP THAT SCIENCE

Obviously, this wasn’t written to appeal to me or even to have anything to do with me, and objectively, I know it is ridiculous that I listen to this song, and I even feel a little ashamed, both for being a part of the exploitation of black culture as well as for liking something so violent and ugly, but it made me feel better about the upcoming day, and it’s because I feel sad at work, and the anger in this song and many of my other favorite hiphop songs really speaks to me.  I know I could be listening to some punk song about hating work or being angry at this Christian, capitalist, sexist, classist, bullshit society of ours, but nope, for whatever reason (the purity of the anger?) Wu Tang really says it all for me some mornings.   Besides externalizing my anger, hiphop hits other emotional chords of mine at times, like these few Tupac songs that make me cry sometimes because they make me miss a Tupac-idolizing high school friend that died, but this is equally ridiculous ... just imagine me with my whiteness and my buck teeth and scrappy Corolla with my cute baby in the back seat and the window rolled down bumping Tupac's Life Goes On and weeping.  

ANYWAY, on to some passing thoughts on the dvd’s I’ve viewed in the past few days:

Adventures of Baron Munchausen

This used to be one of my favorite movies, and I still remember going to see it at the Rialto in South Pasadena like it was yesterday.  My sister-in-law gave it to my husband for Xmas and when we were watching it the other night I was telling my husband about how much I used to love the little girl who plays Sally Salt, who also played Ramona Quimby in the series Ramona on PBS, and guess what? – I realized that little girl was Sarah Polley.  I can’t believe I never knew that before.  Sarah Polley is so great as a young woman in Dawn of the Dead, The Sweet Hereafter and Go, and I never even realized that she had a career when she was so young and that she was the little girl that little girl me related to so much. 

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World:  

  

This film wasn’t very popular and I can see why:  it’s too sad to be even a Black Comedy and too glib to be a drama.  It’s actually pretty good as a Romance though, and as a Romance I was really touched by it.  The whole time I was watching it though I kept wondering if it was an intentional homage to the 1988 film Miracle Mile or if it was an accidental rip-off of it.  Miracle Mile is also a romance that takes place around the end of the world, and has the added bonus (to me) of being an amazing Los Angeles movie.  I’d highly recommend Miracle Mile, which is surreal and painful, and is partially shot inside of Johnie’s, one of my personal favorite L.A. landmarks (and I have a hunch it’s a favorite of many Angelenos).

I am running out of steam now that my coffee is wearing off so about the two other films I saw over the weekend I”ll just say:

Broadway Danny Rose

A sweet and underappreciated Woody Allen movie!  Woody Allen and Mia Farrow are so fantastic together in this film that it’s hard to believe how bad things turned.  Woody Allen you genius asshole.

Hanna Takes the Stairs

A perfect movie for anyone with a crush on Greta Gerwig.   I suppose it’s pretty good even if you don’t have one, but I get irritated by the generalized ennui-caused laziness of the characters in Mumblecore films, so if not for how good Gerwig was in this movie, I probably wouldn’t have liked it too much.