Adventures In Doctoring

Love arriving at the hospital an hour and a half before my regular scheduled appointment to get a chest x-ray only to find that the intern has filled the form out incorrectly, which means I’ve got to go bother poor Rose, the secretary, and get her to fix it, only to arrive back and discover that it’ll be at least another hour before it’s my turn, and then discover I’ve been semi-usurped by a seriously old woman with a lovely male nurse who are still in the change room when I poke my head in and say, “I’ve got an appointment at three,” which means they whiz me through because the x-ray itself takes approximately 17 seconds, and by the time I finished, she hadn’t even made it to the room, slooooowwww.

And I wasn’t even late for the Super Fancy Disease Doctor.

Where I discover that my tests are excellent (yay! double yay!) even if my blood pressure’s a bit high but that he’s still got no idea why I’m so bloody tired I can barely make it up a flight of subway steps, is it the disease is it not the disease, maybe I’m eating all wrong or maybe it’s just the weather pulling me down, down, down with every original flake that falls from the sky, and when they have no answers it just means you have to see them more often, so I’m back in a month for more bloodwork, more tests and a whole bunch of other non-fun health-related things.

I did manage to get home a little early and took a nice long walk to the streetcar stop.

But I’m so tired that I’m finding it absolutely impossible to even get one sentence down, completely unlike how I was on Sunday where I managed over 5,000 words (in a row!) before collapsing in front of the TV with a delicious vegetarian burrito and the teacher’s words are still echoing in my mind, “it’s those of you who work regularly that’ll survive,” the rest are just “tourists,” and the last thing I want to be today is a tourist in my own writing life, no my own life.

And isn’t American Idol on?

A Conversation With My Father

Or, An Exercise In Writing Dialogue

My dad was going to come down and have lunch with me tomorrow, but as the weather’s supposed to take a turn for the worse, we’ve postponed until next week. He did, however, have this to say, “Did you see that article in the Toronto Star about people like you? Do you read that paper at all?”

“Not usually. Like me how?”

[I am thinking: writers, readers, RRHB-lovers, bloggers, workers, women, any myriad of words that could be used to describe my interests]

“You know, left-handed.”

[Ohhhhh] “What did it say?”

“That you’re all pretty intelligent. And there’s not very many of you.”

“My smarts have never been in question Daddy, just what I do with them.”

Chuckle. More conversation about when he will come down for lunch. Sounds of him eating dinner. Me teasing him about being an old man eating at old man times. Hanging up.

Lorrie Moore: Where Have You Been All My Life?

I’ve been reading, sllloooowwwly, the stories in Eugenides’s collection: My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead. Some I’m familiar with (Joyce’s “The Dead”; Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”; Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”), but some have been complete surprises. Denis Johnson’s “Dirty Wedding” knocked me out as cold as a February wind; so much so that I went out and bought his latest book, Tree of Smoke, before realizing it too is a whopper, clocking in at 613 pages.

But Lorrie Moore’s “How to be an Other Woman” might just be my favourite so far. It’s a little gem of a story with such fresh prose that I kept laughing out loud last night in bed and reading parts to my half-asleep RRHB. But my favourite lines might have to be these:

“After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half musuems, you sleep with him. On the stereo you play your favourite harp and oboe music. He tells you his wife’s name. It is Patricia. She is an intellectual property lawyer. He tells you he likes you a lot. You lie on your stomach, naked and still too warm.”

Now that’s how to use the second person and not make me want to punch the story in the nose (tm Munro).

What’s Wrong With Writing Fiction?

The most beleaguered category in literature these days, the poor traditional memoir, takes another beating this week with the news that Riverhead’s hotly reviewed Love and Consequences is fiction from start to finish. I get a little peeved when every bit of book media references James Frey in situations like this, if only because I still believe that there are parts of A Million Little Pieces that are true and the book in general is true to the form; but whatever, he lied, we all know that, maybe it’s time to move on and let the guy continue with his career.

But I do think that it’s quite different from writing an entire FICTIONAL book as this crazy woman has done and then passing it off as a memoir with the vain hope of ‘speaking for people who can’t speak themselves.’ Seriously? That’s the reason why? It had nothing to do with you sensationalizing other people’s misery and flaunting it all out so you could make a million or two from your book? (Perhaps not now that all the books have been recalled. Ouch. And poor trees. I hope the pulping machines can recover).

I’m kind of flabbergasted that Seltzer actually thought she could get away with it. That the little truth-meter in her mind wasn’t blaring when the media started calling and the NY Times raved about her book? And how mad must the sister be for to become the whistle blower? In this day and age, with fingers that fly and author pictures that appear on the web, did she think no one would recognize her? And when she started “speaking” for a neighbourhood, did she not think anyone would come forward and call her out?

It’s not so much the surprise that fake memoirs keep finding their way onto the shelves that surprises me, it’s more the fact that these writers are making it so much harder for the rest of the genre. Margaret Seltzer might just be an idiot (what would have been wrong with writing fiction?) who made a bad decision, but the more fake memoirs that come out and then are ripped to shreds by the Gawkers of the world, the harder it’ll be for people who honestly do have a story to tell and to sell to get published. It’s as if the memoir in its truly glorious, Joan Didion loving format, is dying a slow death.

And “homies”? Seriously?

The Beautiful End

I’m glad I’m not the only one upset about the final episode of the final season of The Wire. The episode we watched this week almost cracked my heart in two by the end, and I have no understanding about how they’re going to sew it all up with only one show remaining. I was talking to a friend via email last week, and he said something about television rotting your brain. It’s not a new argument. It’s one my mother employed a great deal growing up (we were allowed one hour of television a day, either before dinner or after dinner) and we never watched TV at the cottage. That’s entire summers spent without any kind of artificial stimulus.

But I’d argue that shows like The Wire are art, not television. The difference between a truly great movie that changes the way we see the world and one that’s there just to pass the time. The Godfather vs. Fool’s Gold. The Wire has maintained a level of excellence and utter bravery from the moment it hit HBO. Never the ratings juggernaut like The Sopranos, I’d argue that it’s been far more consistent in terms of quality than that other HBO tentpole; and it has another ace in its hand, something else that’s rare in TV production — that’s the fact that it gets BETTER as the show goes on. How many 5-year-old shows do you know that are actually getting better with each season and/or episode that airs? Exactly.

And as with all great art, perhaps it gets misunderstood in its own time, arrives perhaps before the audience is truly ready for it, but at least HBO had the decency to run with it for 5 truly excellent seasons. My life has been enriched by the storytelling, made me understand the world in a different way, and ripped my heart out of my chest on more than one occasion. All things the usual brain-rot (American Idol anyone) is missing hovering out there on the waves. I will mourn the loss of the corners, say goodbye to the po-po, root for Jimmy, hiss at Marlo, and frankly, will never look at television in the same way again. Especially now that in addition to the end of The Wire, the networks now might take Riggins away too.

In that case, maybe said friend was right and I need to read more books.

Evil Dead The Musical

Splatter zone indeed. Famous last words before Act II: “There’s not enough blood.”

The weather tried very hard to act as a deterrent. We waited for a half hour for a streetcar until we gave up and finally hailed a cab to cart our soggy butts to the Diesel playhouse. Shared a pint. Found our seats that were eerily reminiscent of the show in Havana where you sit at communal tables. That’s where the similarities ended.

Lights down, the show began, great performances, hilarious moments, fantastic sets. The RRHB got splattered as he wished. And even though I’ve never seen a single Evil Dead movie, I enjoyed the camp, and the audience were so into the whole show as they shouted out the more famous lines and thoroughly enjoyed getting buckets of blood dumped upon them.