It's often said that famous deaths come in threes. Those deaths are usually disparate; an actor here, or an octogenarian politician there. There's usually very little in common between any of them, much less among all three.
This week, Heavy D, Andy Rooney and Bil Keane (creator of The Family Circus) all died. Professionally, a 44-year-old rapper, a 92-year-old curmudgeon and an 89-year-old cartoonist have nothing to do with each other.
But in the early 90s, they were my Sundays.
Waking up on Sundays was my favorite thing in the world when I was eight, because they were days unlike any other. They lacked the hectic to-do and heavy decisionmaking of watching Saturday morning cartoons, the fun-but-still-obligatory activities of Saturday afternoon, even the aimless chaos of Saturday nights spent playing or reading or visiting a friend or begging mom to finally let you order pizza because it's been soooooooooooo long since you got to order it and all the kids at school eat pizza like every night.
Sundays, you see, had structure.
I loved to draw when I was kid (and still do, despite professional life getting in the way). Sunday mornings were beautiful because the comics were in color, and huge. This was before they were half-full of ads and shrunk to two pages, too. Six pages of full-color comics, with some strips you never even saw on weekdays. At that age, my favorites were Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, because they hinted at the melancholy and frustration of being small in a grownup's world. Family Circus was a saccharine glop of sitcom-style punchlines, but there was something about the intricate detail of a dotted-line strip that put everything else to shame. You may have a T-Rex in space, Calvin, but this, this was something special.
After comics, my mother and grandmother would often pack up for the grocery store, and I would head out with them. When you're a kid going along for that ride, the purpose and function of the grocery store turns on its head. The most interesting parts for me were, in order:
1) The magazine/comic rack.
2) The checkout lane.
3) The cereal aisle.
4) The cookie aisle.
5) Whatever else was in the store.
After that sojourn, we headed back home. Not particularly caring about sports, Sunday afternoons became homework time. After that, some reading, maybe some playing, but it was all a countdown (for me, at least) to 60 Minutes. I remember liking the show because, unlike other news shows, it featured a big ticking stopwatch. It also had people with radio voices, and oftentimes covered things I was interested in, like Michael Jackson or Nintendo. And I remember the frazzled slouch of a man at the end of each episode who would often leave me with more questions than the rest of the show combined. I didn't even know enough about what he was complaining about to feign comprehension of his weariness. I did, however, understand the playful nature of his complaints, and that he wasn't really mad about whatever he was complaining about. It was a nice bookend to an hour of world troubles, and a way to recontextualize the adult worries and horrors I'd just seen.
Then, 8 PM hit. More importantly, the opening theme to In Living Color hit.
In retrospect, a lot about the show was problematic: its approach to women and its approach to homosexuality, to name two things. But for a young black kid who spent most of his television time watching white people clown around with other white people, who thought the best sitcom on TV was Roc and who refused to watch the last episode of The Cosby Show because I didn't want to admit it was over, In Living Color was subversive and wild and amazing, the place where my Sunday dotted line was going to end up.
That theme song was the first "adult" song I memorized. It was the song that kids at school used to determine who watched good TV and who didn't, who was down and who wasn't. It was also the end of my Sundays.
For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
My lovely wife Kate and I decided, instead of eating babies and participating in an orgy, to spend Friday night cleaning out the pantry and fridge of outdated and spoiled food.
It was a revelation of sorts, with various “science projects” in the fridge, and long-outdated canned goods in the pantry. And some of the dates were frightening.
Some of the fun discoveries in the fridge:
Moldy green Sargento swiss cheese
Ziploc bag containing two boxes of leftover Chinese food, one had leaked through and discolored the box
Rubbermaid plastic container with what looked like was a half of an onion at some point.
Jar way in the back with one dill pickle floating in its water
Deli drawer with various opened packages of deli meats at least a month old.
Apples that have been in there at least 2 months at least and do not look spoiled (that seems unnatural, no?)
Applesauce that was ancient and still didn’t look spoiled (scary)
Various discolored, freezer-burned meats that we didn’t Foodsaver
Some treasures in the pantry:
Three cans of Healthy Choice soups with expiration dates of 9/2009 and 7/2008(!).
Can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (that one I’m blaming on Kate), date: 7/2006(!)
Cans of corn dated 8/2009
Open boxes of pasta and rice, who knows how old.
Open box of Lorna Doones
Open bag of Original Goldfish crackers from June
And that was our deviant Friday night of marital bliss, Maggie, Brian, and the rest of you homo-haters out there.
Feel free to share your pantry and fridge purge nightmares in the comments, or tell us about your progressive Friday perversions that should scare the fundies.
I’m launching this feature on my pad, not here (unless folks are interested), but I wanted to post some of the recent garbage I’ve come across related to breed-specific legislation that I wanted to share…
Because Kate and I are dog lovers and know how hard the economy has hit local shelters (many people abandon or surrender their dogs for financial reasons) we made several deliveries of toys, towels and food to the Animal Protection Society of Durham last year but last fall we also decided to sponsor a dog cage. This will cover the costs to house a “guest” canines during the year in terms of food and necessities.
The APS handles the intake and adoption of animals for the city/county, with the city’s Animal Control handling animal pickup and enforcement of local ordinances. This differs from, say other county shelters handle both, and having visited some, the animals spend their limited time there before euthanasia in pitiful, horrible circumstances.
The dogs at the APS are in clean cinderblock suites, kept up by the many volunteers who walk and give the dogs human affection and attention to make them adoption-worthy candidates, and that includes the often forgotten and misperceived pit bulls, which are often pit mixes. No pittie is put up for adoption without temperament testing, so it’s a matter of educating folks that pits are great family dogs, love children—but they are not first-time adopter dogs, like many breeds that prospective owners should research rather than impulse adopt.
So I’m starting a weekly blog entry (no prompting from the APS, though they’ll probably gain more traffic, lol), where I feature some cute pit bulls that deserve a chance for a forever home with the right person or family who’s willing to put in the time, training and love to meet their needs, because the love they will receive from this very people-focused breed pays off in big dividends. My first two…
Too many dogs end up back in shelters, particularly after the holidays, because of the lack of understanding of the dog breed’s working, herding, burrowing, lure-chasing or guarding instincts (see Jack Russell Terriers, Border Collies, Weimeraners, German Shepherds, Rotties, Dobermans—and pits). If you can’t put in the time to give a positive outlet for them, you’ll have your furniture destroyed, or an anti-social, snipping, lunging, out-of-control dog—it’s not their fault, it’s you the owner—and knowing what you’re in for.
More below the fold that is something you should see, particularly those who believe in breed-specific bans. I was shocked at the number of breeds besides the “pit bull” (which has a preposterously broad definition) that you might not think some states and municipalities ban. Your breed may be next.
This idea was generated after I posted in my Twitter update “Why do piles of laundry appear to clone themselves?”
What’s your least favorite household chore, and if you have a spouse/roommate/partner, how do you divide the chores?
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Actually, laundry isn’t my least favorite chore. We live in a one-story house, so it’s only a matter of crossing our living room over to the washer and dryer located in the hall. This is a godsend, given my fibromyalgia.
We have one of those rolling carts with the canvas bags attached that has three sections. We use divide it up as lights/darks/delicates. We also have plastic laundry baskets to carry when I’m feeling ok. So overall, laundry can be done while we’re doing other things. FOLDING LAUNDRY and putting it away sux if you have a mountain to do.
I guess my least favorite chore is DUSTING. Dammit, why does it seem like after you dust it’s only a couple of days later it’s piling up again!? It’s not like we don’t change our filters enough.
Tools of the trade for me are a Swiffer duster (to get first pass of dust), then the Pledge and cloth come out. Taking stuff off, dusting them and then doing the surfaces has to be the most tedious BS imaginable.
Next least favorite is VACUUMING, and I leave that one (and garbage/recycling detail) to Kate. When we had our late great Lab mix Bailey, we had to do this every other day with the nuclear Dyson or there would be tumbleweeds everywhere. She shed like mad. When Bailey passed on, we had only Chloe the Bichon (doesn’t shed), and then adopted Casey the pit bull. Casey’s hair is as short as the Ridgebacks I’ve owned, but she doesn’t seem to shed much, and barely has any hair on her belly. That means Kate now gets a break. We can go a week or more without vacuuming, and even then, no tumbleweeds and it can be done with a Swiffer Vac.
After that, the other chores go fall lower on the list.
* Mopping: Argh; maybe I spoke too soon. This bites; we switch out on this one.
* Doing bills isn’t an issue because most are on auto-draft or I do through bank bill pay.
* Dishwasher detail: don’t mind this since I’m thankful to have one. I lived in places for almost my entire existence without one.
* Cleaning the bathroom: Kate does it.
* Grocery shopping: not really a bother; we have a Kroger less than 2 miles from the house and a Super Target’s about 4 miles away. We usually shop together.
* Ironing: we never bother with it.
* Dog walking: Either both of us do it or I do it; both are easy enough for one person to walk. We also have a small fenced backyard.
* Feeding the dogs/day camp: I usually do the morning shift, feeding and taking them to The Pet Resort at the Triangle since Kate is a zombie in the AM; she picks them up takes them home and feeds them dinner. They don’t go every day (it’s pricey, but Casey and Chloe need the exercise and socialization), but we do the AM/PM feeding split regardless.
It suffices to say that between exams and various personal issues, I’ve been virtually absent lately. After next Monday, that should change. For those of you who are cursing this news, I look forward to antagonizing you in comments repeatedly.
Anyway, the long-awaited redesign should come at the beginning of the year. And to that effect, our new header/logo is after the jump. For the first time in Pandagon’s long, panda-themed history, we’re going to have a black and white design…which is kind of remarkable, when you think about it.
Kate and I spent most of yesterday and a good portion of today going through all of the junk mail, catalogs and magazines that have piled up in the last several weeks. Since we pay all of our bills online, the only things we receive to pluck out the armful of mail that arrives each day, are either statements for those bills (some give you an opt-out for e-only, others still send a statement even if you pay online), or odd one-off fees like pet taxes, registration, etc.
Well I figured we’d be able to sit down in front of the TV and get through the sorting so we could strip off the labels and identifiable info to shred, then recycle the rest. Thankfully, our recycling program doesn’t make you sort out the types of paper.
But dammit, it took two afternoons to go through all of it! The worst are :
* the items from telephone, cable and satellite companies asking you to switch to one service or another;
* catalogs you’ve never ordered from but ended up on their mailing list sold by some company you did business with;
* solicitations for donations from charitable organizations you’ve never donated to - one was for some religious organization that sent me a cheap crucifix asking to save something or another.
Why, oh why do these things keep coming even after you’ve asked them to stop? Kate called one place and had to listen to drivel about why it would be bad to cancel service X. She said “please just cancel these mailings and while you’re at it, put me on your do not call list.” The customer service rep then said it would take up to six weeks to process your request.
Now I know these customer dbs are huge and a few pieces may mail until the cancellation takes effect, but I’m sorry, don’t tell me it will take six weeks to find a record and delete it. That’s BS. If it takes six weeks, then clearly the opportunity for the request to be “lost” increases exponentially.
NOTE FROM PAM: As I deal with the sh*tty, debilitating health issues that have affected me profoundly over the last six months, it was a blessing to come across activist and former Clinton aide David Mixner’s blog entry today. He spent some time in the hospital not long ago, with a grave (still unidentified) illness that had him bedridden for a time, as well as wheelchair-bound for a period.
I contacted David and received permission to repost this piece, because it’s a good reminder that it’s often difficult to understand living with physical disabilities until you find yourself in that situation, even if only temporarily. If you’ve ever seen “Murderball,” you know that being in a wheelchair is not an impediment to living a full and active life, so that’s not really the discussion point; what David’s post deals with is the general lack of forethought in actually adhering to the Americans With Disabilities Act access compliance, and the still-ingrained attitudes by much of the public that “you’re in the way,” you are “slowing them down,” or even worse, they avoid you as if you were in the throes of full-blown H1N1. It’s good food for thought.
Hell’s Kitchen Journal: My View From A Wheelchair
by David Mixner
As many of you know, I was in intensive care for a week in August and have been making a slow but full recovery. My energy level is still very low and it is difficult to be mobile at times. As Tennyson says in “Ulysses”, “I am not that force which in old days moved heaven and earth.” Nevertheless, I am strong in spirit, my mind is sharp, my wit is wicked, my sexuality is naughty and I am back to help make the world a more gentle place with my friends.
One of the by-products of my low energy level has been that a few times I have required the use of a wheel chair in order to carry out certain tasks. Now that has not been all bad, since I have some very hot muscle friends push me around. Many said they have waited for years to be able to ‘push me around.’ Gently I reminded them not to get carried away.
Making_it_happen At the National Equality March, given the extremely long days and many events, I had to participate almost full time in a wheel chair. Being pushed up Pennsylvania Ave by a dear friends was a first for me but realized that perhaps it wasn’t so bad since my feet were not blistered at the end. When I went to the White House for the signing of the Hate Crimes Bill, I underestimated the amount of walking to the East Room and once I arrived my strength had totally left me. Thus one more wheel chair came out for this guest. Since the signing was a ‘standing event’ with the President, being seated was not easy.
What I have gained through this experience is a new appreciation of the lives of those who are confined full time to a wheel chair. My perspective has been sharpened and my resolve strengthened to fight for disabled rights. Now at the March, the young were amazing to me. Helpful in pushing, solicitous of my needs, making sure I had a good site for viewing and showing great understanding. The experience at the White House was somewhat different and opened my eyes to some of the challenges facing people in a wheel chair.
Knowing I might have a problem, I emailed ahead to see if a chair would be available in the East Room. The response was that this was a ‘standing event.’ Say what? Knowing how swamped they must be in preparations for such a historical moment, I knew the White House had chairs and wasn’t too worried. In the foyer for the reception, I quickly found one and rested from the long walk. Part of the problem with my illness (they have no idea what it is still!) is that I get very weak at times. As the doors opened to the East Room there was not a chair in sight. Forget my problems, what about older people who might need to sit through a long process?
So, the thing that’s taken up a significant amount of my time recently is the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion’s Mock Trial, putting the FHA on the stand for racial discrimination in Detroit. And now that today’s the day, I’ll be liveblogging it below the fold, and you can watch/chat along here, as well.
Okay, so a big part of the reason I don’t blog as much these days isn’t because I’m too busy. It’s because my computer (an aluminum MacBook) freezes in the middle of everything I’m writing, gives me the rainbow wheel, and forces me to reset it. When it restarts, Firefox brings up tabs from three days to a week ago rather than what I had open. Does anyone have experience with this?
Just another one of those oddball weekend posts; I’ll date myself—again. Whether you loved or hated high school, you’ll probably identify with some of it. I happened to enjoy my nerdy years at Stuyvesant High School in NYC (class of ‘81). The Beastie Boys gave a nod to Stuy in the 1986 video “Fight for Your Right (to Party).” BTW, the group has pretty much disowned the song.
Ironically, the song was intended as a parody of party and attitude songs, such as “Smokin’ In the Boys Room” and “I Wanna Rock.” However, the irony was lost on most listeners. Mike D commented that, “The only thing that upsets me is that we might have reinforced certain values of some people in our audience when our own values were actually totally different. There were tons of guys singing along to ‘Fight for Your Right’ who were oblivious to the fact it was a total goof on them.”...
Despite probably being the group’s most famous song, the Beastie Boys have expressed distaste for it. In The Sounds of Science liner notes, MCA jokingly says the song “sucks,” though they did not feel the album would be complete without it. The group has not performed the song live since 1987
My fellow Stuyvesant High School alums have been forever traumatized by gym class; each squad leader had to wear this infamous red Stuy T-shirt, so to see the shirt turn up in a video was pretty amusing.
That song isn’t in my collection, but these two are…
Intergalactic: this video is so out there. Definitely captured the Godzilla insanity vibe. My brother and I used to watch those awful dubbed flicks every Saturday.
Sabotage: this song has had a resurgence because of its use in the latest Star Trek film where kiddo Kirk steals his stepdad’s classic car for a joyride in the desert. The Spike Jonze video is another tasty gem for those of us who grew up on those ridiculous cop shows of the 70s.
***
To complete this weekend nostalgia trip, seasoned with a little personal humiliation, here are some photos from my days at Stuyvesant High School (at its old location at 15th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan).
Left: A serious OMG Big Hair day, taken at graduation outside of Carnegie Hall. This is what my hair looked like when it was processed to within an inch of its life, and humidity still got the best of it. Right: The infamous gym class. I never got to be a squad leader—they got the red leader shirts as I mentioned above. Anyway, NO ONE liked gym. For my classmates out there—remember the gymnastics rotation? I nearly killed myself on the uneven parallel bars. One semester, I convinced one of the teachers to let me bring in a jump rope so that I could teach folks double dutch.
I just got my first tattoo. Pictures will be forthcoming. (And sorry for the absentee act over the past couple of days - first semester is technically over, I just have journal competition and a final paper to go…)
So, in the latest update in my appendectomy idiocy: I’m in collections for $16,040.
Every time I call my insurance company, they tell me they’ve contacted the hospital “for information”. Every time I contact the hospital, they say they’re “waiting for information” from the insurance company. When I ask for supervisors, they tell me they can’t do anything until they “get information”.
I thought we were in the Information Age.
So now, I’m disputing the charge with the collection agency and starting a whole new round of nobody helping me tomorrow. I’m really glad I didn’t have to wait that extra half hour when I had the flu last month, though. That fixes everything.
Many of you may have noticed our move to comment registration a few months back; some of you might have thought this was an effort to keep people accountable, to hold down the number of useless trolls on the site, to form a closer-knit community. Well, I have an announcement to make.
I am now engaged to jtsfds262, whose comments can be found in this post (also as jtsfds188, jtsfds27, jtsfds70 and others).
If you’re a close reader, you may have noticed the oblique references to our burgeoning relationship in comments. All those offers of prescription drugs for cheap? A loving realization of my status as a law student and love of a cheap high. The repeated, insistent destruction of every comment thread on this site? All an effort to gain my attention.
Registration was put in place so that I could gain jtsfds’ contact information, at which point I e-mailed her to let her know that she could e-mail me to let me know what she thought of me. To tell you a bit more about my new lady love, she reads Pandagon faithfully. She has commented on my posts literally dozens of times. We met for the first time this past weekend, where she showed me a book a printed out posts that I’d written, with her favorite parts highlighted.
This is love. Be happy for me. I will find a video I made of myself talking about my views on monogamy soon enough. For now, just congratulate me.
So, today, I get a bill for the appendectomy I had this summer from the hospital - a little over $16,000. If it’s not paid in fourteen days, it’ll go to collections. (Keep in mind that my yearly budget, courtesy of the law school, is a little over $15,000.)
I call the hospital, and am told that the claim was submitted to my old insurance company and denied because I was not covered on the date of service. I cannot do any sort of low-income write-off plan unless I cancel my health insurance and am denied from both Medicare and Medicaid. Even then, it’s conditional.
I call the insurance company and was told that I was not only covered on the date of service, but am still covered by the insurance, despite canceling it in August of 2008. I try to confirm that it’s canceled, and am told that I have to submit a request through a separate service by mail. They ask me to have the hospital resubmit the claim by fax.
I call the hospital back and tell them this, and they tell me that they won’t resubmit the claim, as resubmitted claims are almost always denied. They ask me to call the insurance company and request a re-bill of the claim of the hospital.
I call the insurance company back, tell them this, and they tell me they can’t request a re-bill, because they don’t do that. Ever. They will, however call the hospital tomorrow and request the resubmission of the claim…I hope.
I’m so glad that the American healthcare system isn’t run by faceless bureaucrats anonymously deciding what is and isn’t covered.
This week is my “spring” break from law school, where I was totally going to blog up a storm and relax and get back into my normal, non-law groove, even if just for a week.
Then I started coughing at the end of last week. And shivering. And getting terrible headaches. As it turns out, I had the flu. Emphasis on had, because I now have pneumonia. I understand what I did wrong, law school. Now, back to Contracts reading, before you smite me further.
For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
This idea was generated after I posted in my Twitter update “Why do piles of laundry appear to clone themselves?”
Hell’s Kitchen Journal: My View From A Wheelchair
Just another one of those oddball weekend posts; I’ll date myself—again. Whether you loved or hated high school, you’ll probably identify with some of it. I happened to enjoy my nerdy years at Stuyvesant High School in NYC (class of ‘81). The 
To complete this weekend nostalgia trip, seasoned with a little personal humiliation, here are some photos from my days at Stuyvesant High School (at its old location at 15th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan).
