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"Love is an attachment to another self. Humor is a form of self-detachment a way of looking at one's existence, one's misfortune, or one's discomfort. If you really love, if you really know how to laugh, the result is the same: you forget yourself."
- Claude Roy
Nuff said.
As anyone will tell you, including myself and perhaps especially my kid sister, the world isn’t all about me. And that’s a good thing: otherwise the world would die of boredom instead of laughter.
I guess you could say a little bit of laughter departed this world last night but don’t worry; he’ll be right back…in my memories as well as yours.
And since I'm technically "unemployed" and have had all day to cruise the web looking for Johnny between naps let me give you the quickie tour.
Earthquake mode happens every morning on my computer when the venerable grey lady of journalism hits my email with a thud. Make that what sometimes seems to be the weight of the world. This morning was no different.
So let’s start there. The New York Times obituary on Johnny Carson is the usual graceful mix of fact and commentary, as well as a wonderful collection of audio and video clips, and still photos.
Read their obit and you will know what I'm saying when I note I was also close to flooding as I read about the second to the last 1992 episode where Johnny and the audience were in tears by the time Bette Midler finished singing "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)." Sniff, sniff. Now how does that tune go again?
If all this leaves you with a sudden yen for those late night memories you can rent them but you best be right quick if you want to see them this year. And since being distracted is definitely what I do best, the Divine Miss M always reminds me of my favorite of all her movies, The Rose (1979).
Anyway, like many others have declared before me, I have a soft spot for kids and animals and some of my most vivid "kid" memories of the Johnny Carson show involve Joan Embry and the animals from the San Diego Zoo .
So first I'm bawling and then my bladder also loosens (darn Midorine)just reading this 2001 quote from a tribute to Johnny.
Monkey Goes Potty on Johnny Carson's Head - Do You Remember?
"Going back to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for a moment, one of the funniest things I ever saw ANYWHERE was when Joan Embry from the San Diego zoo was visiting and brought a marmoset to the show. The tiny monkey climbed on top of Carson's head and relieved himself! You could actually see it dripping down Johnny's forehead! I laughed so hard, I almost had the same problem as the poor marmoset!" –twittylady.
Ever the debonair host, Johnny apparently told Joan, "I'm glad you didn't bring a baby elephant."
Regular readers know that most of my own monolouges often include my version of six degrees of … . The first two names that come to mind in connection with Mr. Carson are Jack Paar and David Letterman. In fact this inquiring mind wants to know if a new joke writer made the Letterman top ten.
Jay Leno also comes to mind, but I’m sorry, but whenever someone says, Jay Leno, I never think Johnny, I always think coolest art collection in a garage. Speaking of cars and art, forget the code, did you know Da Vinci invented a car?
Another sensible person who knows the world isn't all about him, Forbes quotes Mr. Leno as saying, "Having these cars is great fun," Leno says. "And there's a sense of history to all this stuff. We don't really own these cars, we just keep them for the next owners."
As the proud owner of a Caribbean blue hoppity named Abigail, I can relate to that minus the bling ($$$$$$$$$$$$).
For both those of you unfamiliar with my car -- and all the guys who are inevitably clustered around the open engine compartment - hint it's actually in the back – every time I come back out to her after paying for my gas -- "Abby" is a 1974 Volkswagen beetle originally purchased for one of my kids.
Exasperated Shop Owner: “Ms. Duprey, you need to get a real car”
Me: ever the smartass and four out of five staff members agree: “You’re just jealous because everyone honks and
smiles when I drive past” - sounding like my mom’s vintage sewing
machine on steroids I might add.
Sorry, I searched, but Amazon doesn’t have a sound clip for sewing machines on steroids.
And while I’m tipping my sun visor and paying tribute to important people, let’s not forget Williams Auto and Radiator Repair where the owner and staff – Marvin, Henry, Mr. P, Rooster, Derek, Horace, Joe, Nakia, and especially Gary, have done more CPR on my baby than a crash dummy and have generally kept her in one piece for years. Did I mention Henry finally painted the oil putter in part red and the little stick thing red also because I can never remember how that works. He's my hero.
And while I'm at it, hats off to Williams office manager and all-around babysitter, Phyllis who keeps all of the guys organized and in one piece! My bling (<$) has been paying their salaries for years. Not really, but you already knew that.
Oh okay guys, quick take a bow and exit stage left, because Doc Severinsen's got the band going again.
Leno, Parr, and Letterman aren’t the only comedians in town when it comes to Johnny.“How Johnny influenced my life,” by comedian…
Hey, hey! Who says I can only have so many hotlinks in a post, you are seriously messing with mah rhythum here! Oh okay,I guess it is your server.
Well anyway if you are willing to do the cut and paste thing, some comedian commentary can can be found at the following links.
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=64919&format= http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.html?id=d363b443-488b-4f88-812a-fe844de99b39
Oh, oh, look out, grab a carrot! Incoming ping-pong balls! Oooppps. Distracted again - Dunn, dunn dun dunnn...THE TRUE STORY OF MY LIFE ON ENCEPHALOPATHY coming to a blog near you. But, seriously folks if you like comedy in general, tributes to Johnny and Jack Parr on this site are included along with the Kaptain, who in my humble estimation, is also one of the greats. Maybe because he was before my bedtime.
<>
Like all my links, the site where I found all of the above is truly phat. Just surf on over to:
http://www.jerrypippin.com/Memories_On_Demand.htm
<>
On a little more formal note, Mr. Carson's biography can be found here: Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Johnny Carson
http://www.medaloffreedom.com/JohnnyCarson.htm
Okay, I get it, the cut and paste thing is getting a little stale. It's cool. I can be down with that.
And as Johnny would say, "I'll be right back..." with another post.
po·go stick n
a strong metal pole with a spring at the bottom
and two footrests to stand on, used to jump up
and down or hop along on for play or exercise
• Elevation potential of over five feet--dramatically greater than any pogo on the market
We all know,are or have met people who preface every conversation regardless of subject matter with the same phrase over and over.
Whether it is grandma’s tendency to start every conversation with “In my day…” or in the words of a musically inclined sex nerd whose every utterance included the phrase, “Onnncccce, at band camp…,” it’s there.
At my house over the past four years everything begins with, “Once I receive my SSDI …”. Please do not mistake this phrase for a never-ending pity party: At its most elemental, reality is simply reality: facts unchanged even by healthy, and I would argue, essential “attitude adjustment.” My bottom line: Life goes as life goes and nobody asked you.
“Once I receive my SSDI …” is usually attached to survival issues: minutiae like homelessness; rebuilding a credit rating totaled by overwhelming medical bills and forced, but utterly unwelcome unemployment; the amount of “discretionary” income for such trivialities as rent and food, available after paying for prescription drugs from Canada. (I'm every bit as patriotic as the President, but unrelenting reality remains this: we don't have the same level of personal funds in our individual checking accounts. Which I have a sneaking suspicion might be why we don't always agree on policy issues.) You get the picture.
But recently, dailycandy.com whispered in my ear about the Flybar Model 1200, a fly pogo stick for the kid in all of us. When I saw it a huge grin surfaced. I was so all about this.
I may be 90-years-old when I win my SSDI case and finally receive spendable bling, but I'm patient, I can wait tap, tap, tap.
You see, encased in this silvery frame is the joy of my childhood, memories of the cleansing pleasure of hours upon hours of skiing, including spectacular "burn-and-crash" aerial acrobatics natch in my teens and twenties. And though my body may be a tad physically impacted by chronic, and quite organic CFS/ME and Fibromyalgia - not neurasthenia imported from the 80s, make that the 1880s - my spirit “lives strong.”
Related live strong reading: The Wrist band gap.
I may have to be swaddled in protective football gear, bubble wrap and duct tape from head to toe and place two sturdy spotters on either side of me, confining me to a pillows piled to a depth of six-feet high, but I am going to bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce! Okay, excuse me, I am exhausted just thinking about it, but the grin lingers on and on.
Fine print: And I double, no triple, no quadruple guarantee you that my soul will soar with joy, far exceeding the gravitational limitations of the physical bounce.
Folks I’m not done living - heart, soul, passion and mind - not by a long shot. So once it gets here, don't be a stranger: Come on by!
More fine print read very quickly: BYOI (bring your own insurance), BYOB (bring your own bubble wrap) required for admittance. As well as, I refuse to define myself by the limiting, dry, scientific minutia of physical disease and you shouldn’t either etcetera and so forth. And never forget that if the toy is “mine” I can have as many turns as I wanna. :D
Did I mention the tree house?
Boy this is a lot of fine print: “…Treehouses lift the spirits. They inspire dreams. They represent freedom: from adults or adulthood, from duties and responsibilities, from an earthbound perspective. If we can't fly with the birds, at least we can nest with them…”
liv·ing adj
1. alive, not dead
2. realistic or true to life
3. interesting in a way that is relevant and useful
4. designed for living in, especially for social and
recreational activities
5. still used or in existence
n.
2. a means of sustaining or maintaining a way of life
3. quality of life or the way in which it is lived
npl
people who are alive (takes a plural verb)
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Paul Tash/Columnist: Poynter Online sezs:
Bob Haiman, president emeritus of The Poynter Institute, once posted a memo — more like a manifesto — of in the newsroom. I still keep a copy in my desk drawer. It says, in part:
An editor has a right to expect a number of things from a professional reporter. No one of them is more important than the right to expect that the reporter's copy will be absolutely, unquestionably, unexceptionally accurate.”
Accuracy is accuracy is accuracy whether you are a scientist, a physician, or a professional journalist and as Mr. Haiman said, there is no room for compromise.
I'm from the fourth estate and as a professional journalist, not to mention a thinking human being, nothing drives me crazier than people who tart up words that are at best nodding acquaintances and present them as joined at the hip.
I personally don’t care how many young men on the Montel Williams Show say it; “ho” is not interchangeable with “woman.” Nor is chronic fatigue slang for the distinct organic, neurological disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME).
In both cases, they are not synonymous. Never have been, never will be.
Remember when your second-grade teacher explained that even though the words “see” and “sea” sound the same, they are not the same thing at all. Fess up; the concept was refreshingly hilarious at the ripe old age of seven. But, I’m not laughing now, are you?
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, no matter how ridiculous and sophomoric the name sounds, is the biological medical term du jour for a devastating, chronic neurological disorder that has a well-vetted, distinctive clinical pattern of a number of biological signs and symptoms. Period.
The field of psychology is has a place in this disorder, as it does in other neurological disorders such as MS, however, there nothing causative about it.
Whether the “reality" of the disease can be “objectively” proven based on current medical knowledge is in one sense utterly irrelevant. After all, just because people in the Middle Ages thought disease was caused by “bad air” doesn’t suspend or negate the underlying principles of germs and pathogens just because they weren't part of the medical parlance of the day.
One of my favorite Biblical passages begins with the words, “We know in part…”
Taken separately, some of the biological symptoms can be made to sound almost benign, but this is one of those cases where the magnitude of the whole far exceeds the individual components.
I believe Laura Hillenbrand, PWC and author of “Seabiscuit,” phrased it very well.
"This illness is to fatigue what a nuclear bomb is to a match - it's an absurd mischaracterization,"
Well, that certainly puts it in perspective doesn’t it? The loosely defined phrase “chronic fatigue” sounds positively dusty and frivolous in contrast to the distinct organic, neurological disorder Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME), not to mention just a tad inappropriate to say the least since psychiatrists use the phrase chronic fatigue interchangeably with neurasthenia.
When it comes to illness, all illnesses big or small, dire or minor; chronic fatigue is a lone symptom meaning six months or more (that’s the technical definition of the “chronic” part) of the inexact, non-medical term fatigue. Solitary symptoms are rarely diagnostic of complex disorders and this is no exception.
I guess I have a tendency to see the societal, all consuming passion for nicknames and abbreviations to be a quirky American obsession, but I suspect it is true of all cultures.
And “short for” is a powerful tool for conveying love or affection, not to mention the exclusivity of the “in” crowd, no matter what language you speak.
My sixth grader is less than tolerant when her mother and aunt slip up, publicly calling her “pumpkin pie” and “pickle freak,” nicknames whose origins are rooted in her food preferences, not the sum of her proudly owned individual “uniqueness.”
And she has a valid point. Sometimes parts is just parts rather irrelevant to the big picture.
So…get a clue doctors, researchers, journalists and everybody else in the world: no matter how often it is tossed around, no matter how many UK psychiatrists use the term "chronic fatigue" as synonymous with the archaic notion of 1880s neurasthenia, chronic fatigue and undifferentiated psychiatric cfs are not the same thing as the organic neurological disorder of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. (CFS/ME).
Never have been, never will be.
vet
1. vt to subject somebody or something to a careful examination or scrutiny, especially when this involves determining suitability for something
ar·cha·ic adj
1. belonging or relating to a much earlier period
2. used to describe a word or phrase that is no longer in general use but is still encountered in older literature and still sometimes used for special effect
3. no longer useful or efficient
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
I first heard about this book through the grapevine in 2003 and now that it is more widely available, I am absolutely gleeful.
John Sayer, a fellow traveler from the other side of the pond, has graciously given his permission for me to post his take on "Skewed - Psychiatric hegemony and the manufacture of mental illness in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Gulf War Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (Slingshot Publications, London, ISBN 0-9519646-4-X)
John sezs: "If you've ever wondered why M.E. (known as CFS on the U.S. side of the pond) is incessantly touted by certain parties as a "mood disorder," the explanation is contained within this thoroughly researched and documented book by Martin J Walker.
The tangled web of big business and those who perpetuate the 'psychological' myth is well and truly exposed. You will be shocked, but probably not the least bit surprised.
Essential reading for sufferers, carers, advocates and the medical profession alike."
Me again: For those of you tired of the psychiatric debate and wondering how what happens in the rest of the world, including the UK insistence that neurological CFS is nothing more than "mass hysteria," impacts us here in the good ol' U S of A, this well-documented book is a good place to start.
Martin's book is more than the documentation of a specific neurological disorder, ME, subsumed by psychiatrists into a larger, undifferentiated psychiatric mass including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, as well as Gulf War Syndrome where the environmental toxin connection is pretty well documented. It is a history of how a group of psychiatrists have created a cabal with insurance and industry to create the myth that illness, some of which may have environmental triggers, is shrugged off as psychiatric illness by deliberately using the stigma of psychiatric illness and the imaginary to quell the patient voice. As Walker notes, this theory is used to dismiss anybody who has an illness which isn’t easily identifiable, doesn’t have a characteristic symptomatology and doesn’t have any clear treatment.
I'm not big on conspiracy theories but I'm too old and skeptical not to recognize the well-documented connection between big money and unethical action.
Still not sure it applies to you? The following groups are deeply impacted:
Anyone who has received a medical diagnosis based on the research criteria from the 1994 Fukada study done throught the auspices of the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) is impacted.
<>Anyone who has ever had a medical doctor tell them that this neurological disorder is "all in their head," which it is DUH, but that's not what the doctor meant, has been impacted.
Anyone who has the additional heartbreak of having a child with CFS and been told that either their child is just "lazy" or "school phobia," or that the parent themselves are trying to make the child believe that she, and sometimes he, is actually physically sick: for their own personal gratification is impacted.
In an interview with Louise Mclean, Walker states: "There are examples ...in another of my books, Skewed, regarding ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome... in which... Cases are described where psychiatrists put children with ME in closed mental hospital facilities. In some cases the parents are arrested and in one case imprisoned because they were said to be inflicting false illness beliefs on their children. Some of the mothers were accused of having Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.It appears that we are entering an area where abuse becomes defined by doctors, not simply in criminal terms or in terms of violence or even mental cruelty but on the grounds that the parent disagrees with orthodox medicine...
...A moratorium has been called on diagnostic testing so that there is going to be no further research, in Britain anyway, into what actually caused ME or what ME is ...
...SKEWED deals with ME, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and Gulf War Syndrome. It uses them all as examples of how the psychiatric argument is used to cloak any research into organic aetiology."
LOL; as some vaguely remember adult used to tell me when I was a kid, "Shut your mouth sunshine, you're letting all the flies in."
<>According to John, "Skewed" is available from Cygnus Books UK. (Tel. 0845-456-1577). Skewed may also be purchased from the following address:
Slingshot Publications B.M. Box 8314
London, WCIN 3XX England
12.0 Pounds U.K.
20.0 Dollars U.S.
18.0 Pounds Australian
+ shipping and handling…
A few other reviews of note:
Review of Skewed including insightful foreward by Per Dalen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Gothenburg, Sweden;
Book review: 'Skewed' By Martin Walker: "Retrospect has a way of making past blunders look foolish..."
ca·bal n
1. a group of conspirators or plotters, particularly one formed for political purposes
2. a secret plot or conspiracy, especially a political one
vi
to form a group and plot together against somebody or something
Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Just a quick note. Anyone who is new to this blog may well wonder what kind of nut I am. The only answer I have is this. I was raised by 60s democrats who were who they were. My father is a retired minister and my mother a psychotherapist who worked among the less privileged in our society for many years. Somewhere in my development I grasped the concept of walking the talk. My parents did it and I do my best.
I have spiritual and political views much like everyone else on the planet, but I try not to bring hit people over the head with them unless commenting on the political environment and how it affects people with chronic illness and then sometimes what some people call "politics," is my reality. So sue me. LOL
But, I must admit my spiritual views are reflected in my political views and sometimes I won't be able to separate them. Please keep in mind that this is part me and who I am. We are all unique beings worthy of respect. There is no ranking here. I don't care about red or blue other than to say I prefer the unity of red, white and blue.
From time to time I will provide links to a place that may not reflect your own viewpoint, possibly not even my own. This is not a personal insult, simply information. I believe that contributions of value come from many sources, not just one. Only you can separate the wheat from the chaff for yourself.
As a friend of mine, photojournalist Mike Fagans, always signs his letters, "Be well."
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