Big Mike: Rachael Ray, What Am I To Do?

Sometimes I forget how tight a cocoon I've woven for myself. I like to think of myself as being much smarter than the average bear. Toward that end, I've sworn off broadcast TV, commercial radio and other artifacts of the illiterati such as USAToday.

Oh, I'm as smart as an extraterrestrial visiting Earth. With rare exceptions, I don't even argue with people about politics or social issues, preferring instead to roll my eyes and bury myself in my New York Times when guys insist on buffeting me with their uninformed opinions. Yeah, I'm smart.

I play chess rather than poker (although I shouldn't be too hard on that game - a university professor I know paid for his doctorate studies as a professional poker player.) I don't just root for the Cubs; hell, I pore over the most minute baseball statistics and analyze trends with all the zeal of an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health.

For laughs, I read P.G. Wodehouse rather than watch Jimmy Fallon. My car is a Prius. I cook with olive oil rather than butter. I do the laundry in cold water to conserve energy. I'm typing this on a MacBook, not - puh-lease! - a PC. I even wear horn-rimmed glasses.

I'm so smart smoke ought to be pouring out of my ears.

My constant efforts to cultivate this streak of elitism in me - and let's be frank, that's really all it is - have cut me off from, well, American life.

A great way to submerge one's brilliant self in the normal world is to stay at a Holiday Inn. The Loved One and I are spending a week in Bloomington, Indiana so we can look at homes. In our cramped room, the TV dominates. Even the lobby, with its plush leather sofas and cushiony armchairs, is dominated  by an enormous flat screen tuned to whatever peppy talk show is on at the moment.

And since The Loved One forgot to bring her alarm clock, she's had to use the radio alarm that comes with the room and seems permanently tuned to the local oldies station.

Here's what I've gleaned thus far in my descent into reality. The radio, first. I was in that delicious few minutes of half-sleep this morning when suddenly the radio alarm began to blare the Beatles' "Back In The USSR." Only it sounded as though the Fab Four had swallowed a jugful of amphetamines before they recorded it. I realized that a lot of commercial radio stations still use that speed-up technique to quicken the pace of records so they can sound more "energetic" than the competition. I was transformed from sleepily serene to jaw-clenchingly tense before Paul McCartney could sing "Man, I had a dreadful flight."

Unfortunately for me, The Loved One had gotten up before the alarm and was already in the shower. I would have had to roll all the way over to the other side of the bed and stretch out to hit the snooze button. Horrors! So the speeded-up blaring continued.

Next up, the news. I guessed, correctly, that the lead story - the only story - would be the impending termination of the human race by swine flu. It was the kicker at the end of the newscast that informed me radio news readers still employ that stale old format of ending on a wry (read: stupid, dull, and guaranteed to make the brain dead titter) story. This one was about a Chicago guy who wants to open up a hot dog stand called Felony Franks. He wants to staff the joint with ex-cons. Now, that might be a sort-of interesting tidbit but the news reader found the names of the entrees to be the meat of the story. "He wants to serve Pardon Burgers and Misdemeanor Weiners," came the voice over the radio, "this is ABC News."

I suppose the news reader intended me to respond he-he or ho-ho. Instead, I moaned "Shut the fuck up!" which elicited the query from the shower, "What's wrong?"

I decide to go down in the lobby for a cup of coffee and write this post. I'm immediately overwhelemed by The Early Show on CBS. Well, whaddya know - the big story is the coming collapse of civilization due to swine flu. A jittery couple at home wearing surgical masks answer the host's questions. Their teenaged son has developed flu-like symptoms and was tested yesterday for the virus. While awaiting the results, they're doing what comes naturally to Americans - panicking. The kid is off-screen somewhere, coughing occasionally, as if on cue. The host asks them, "Is this the worst day of your life?"

Man, this human-race terminating, civilization-collapsing swine flu couldn't have come a moment too soon, for my money.

After a commercial for a lawyer ("If someone you love has died after using a pain patch containing fentanyl, call...,) The Rachael Ray Show comes on. The maniacally grinning face of Rachael Ray has infested more grocery store aisles than all the ants and mice that have ever lived. Now, apparently, she's a life coach, too. Today's show features a segment on The Recession (that will, of course, collapse civilization.) A woman calls in to say she'd recently lost her job and asks what she should do next.

Again, she called Rachael Ray for this vital advice!

I can't take it anymore. I dash over to Barnes & Noble to buy Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica." I have to hurry up and read it before civilization collapses.

Big Mike: America's Holy Orgy

Okay, I'm gonna burn in hell. I'm ready to take my punishment like the soft, liberal, wussy, non-man I am.

I detest the Super Bowl.

Much of this hatred originates from my overall loathing of the game of football. And yes, I'll admit it, we liberals are haters; you're right, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and whatever other clever primates the GOP cares to unleash. So, really, what I'm admitting here is that I hate America.

I spent Sunday evening at - where else? - Dick's Pizza, finishing up the New York Times as a multitude gathered to watch the mega-materialistic, hyper-jingoist media suckfest and orgy of money, violence, machismo, and tits that is the Super Bowl. Icepick Ray tapped me on the shoulder and proffered a plate of appetizers. "It's barbecued goose wrapped in bacon," he announced, already slurring his words. I stabbed one with a toothpick knowing full well that the morsel would send my bad cholesterol skyrocketing.

"You only live once," I said. "What the hell, it is the annual game of the century."

"You're damned right," Icepick Mark said, nodding. "And these were homemade by Major Bob. He shot the goose and cured the bacon." Well, there's something. I sank my teeth into the hors d'oeuvre and unleashed a taste torrent of wild game, salt, pork, honey, tomato, and vinegar. The mouthful will shave a good year and a half off my life but so what? It tasted better than a thousand carrot or celery sticks.

Major Bob, a silver-haired bear of a man, is the new resident Republican ideologue of Dick's He has replaced Sellersburg Randy, who held the title up until the fall. Randy'd backed, in order, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and, grudgingly, John McCain, switching allegiances as each candidate dropped out of the primary race. In September, with McCain beginning his inexorable slide in the polls, I chanced to ask Randy who he thought might win the election. The contest still could have gone either way at the time.

"Oh, it's in the bag," Randy replied, dismissively waving his hand. "He can't lose. The only thing that'll beat him is if he gets caught with a 13-year-old in a motel room."

"You're that certain?" I asked.

"Oh yeah. Look at the polls. Look what's happening," Randy said.

I was amazed he'd sound so sanguine considering the impending paddling of his beloved party.

"So doesn't it depress you that Obama's gonna win?"

Randy nearly dropped his pint of beer. "Obama?" he shouted. "McCain's gonna win!"

With nearly two months to go before the election, I found it odd that anyone on either side could predict victory so assuredly. "You're sure?" I pressed.

"Absolutely sure," Randy said.

I had to figure out a way to capitalize on this kind of hubris. "Tell you what," I offered. "I'll bet you a drink."

"You are on," Randy replied as we shook on it.

The election, of course, fell on a Tuesday - Trivia night. Randy to that point had been one of the core members of Team Gorlock with Skip the Trombonist and me. When CNN announced that Obama had gone over the top in electoral votes, Skip cheered, Major Bob shook his head and cursed, and I sat silently, drinking in the history of it all.

I paid for my own drinks that night because Randy never showed up. Skip and I were puzzled because he was as much a fixture at Dick's as a barstool. We haven't seen him since. Either Sellersburg Randy's depressed that the country has elected a mole from Osama bin Laden's army of spies or he's too cheap to buy me a drink.

Back to Sunday night. A parade, fireworks, and an interview with the new president preceded the game, the crew of the airplane that landed in the Hudson River was trotted out, soldiers in dress habit carried flags and presented arms, confetti flew, cameras flashed, Faith Hill sang some paean to America, Jennifer Hudson warbled the national anthem, and then the military capo of the Iraq adventure, Gen. David Petraeus, came out to oversee that ritual so vital to our national security, the coin toss.

As the camera zoomed in on Petraeus's facial pores, Major Bob leaped to his feet. He began to applaud, banging his big paws together so loudly I feared the HDTV screens might fall off the wall. "Yes," he shouted, almost as a challenge. "Yes! Yes!"

And then the Steelers and the Cardinals actually played football. No lie. Buried somewhere beneath the bullshit was a game. I left the place after halftime. Bruce Springsteen, the icon of the blue-collar worker who just last week had announced that he'd made an innocent mistake in signing that big exclusive deal with the anti-union tyrants at Wal-Mart, sang "Born In The USA." You know, the song that jingoists for the last quarter century have adopted as their own despite The Boss's repeated innocent assertions that it's really a protest song. Honest.

EDIT: Benny Jay tells me The Boss sang "Born To Run" not "Born in the USA." The point still holds.

I'd had enough bullshit for one day - for another year, for that matter. If the Super Bowl is America, then consider me anti-American.

Big Mike: Icy Streets And A Cold, Dead Hand

Having already crowed about how surprisingly cosmopolitan and sophisticated Louisville is (well, cosmopolitan-ish and sophisticated-ish,) I have to reel myself in because I've been reminded again how much this neck of the woods loves its shootin' irons.

I was sitting in Dick's Pizza the other night, nursing a glass of Harp while the metropolitan area was being blanketed by ice. I know, I know, drinking and driving on ice-sheeted roads - I may as well have had unprotected sex with a brace of hotel call-girls. Gimme credit, though, because I considered that option but nixed it in favor of The Loved One's delicate sensibilities and the fact that the roads were too slick to drive to a hotel.

Anyway, sitting next to me were two lovely gentlemen expounding loudly about how Barack Obama not only profited politically from the current financial Armageddon but that he more than likely caused it. I should add that I was leafing through the New York Times at the time.

Naturally, this inspired the two men to express themselves in full voice about the state of the news media.

The fellow nearer me - let's call him Voltaire - harrumphed and launched into his thesis. "How 'bout this Gether or Guyther guy? I don't know what his fuckin' name is," he asked his compadre. "Fuckin' guy's gonna be in charge of the IRS and he doesn't even pay any taxes."

The compadre - we'll call him Thomas Paine - shook his head and snorted. "It's a god damned shame," he said. "A dirty god damned shame. It figures, don't it? That's change, huh?"

The reference to Obama's campaign buzzword aroused Voltaire even more than he already was, which was a great lot. "That's all the fuckin' media talks about. Change," Voltaire tsk-ed. "Why don't they talk about how Obama's settin' up all his rich friends?"

I resisted the urge to remind him that the correct anencephalic complaint about the new president is that he's a socialist. I bit my lip and turned the page loudly.

Paine was just getting started. "And the media doesn't say a thing about this Gether or Guyther or whatever. Not a thing! You can bet that if he was a Republican, they'd be all over it. It woulda been on every front page in the country."

Suddenly, I felt both pairs of eyes on me and my newspaper, whose front page, by the way, carried yet another in a series of daily stories about Timothy Geithner's tax troubles.

"These are bad times we're comin' to," Paine said, dolefully. "Bad times. They're takin' over, slow but sure." Here, I was moved to ask who was taking over - millionaires? Socialists? Tall, skinny men? Chicagoans? Again, I resisted.

"They sure as hell are," Voltaire agreed, leaving me feeling inadequate for not grasping things as readily as he.

"Well, fuck them," Paine announced. "They ain't takin' me over."

"Nope," Voltaire concurred.

"Y'know what they're gonna do?" Paine asked.

"What?"

"They're comin' for the guns next."

"Oh, yeah."

"That's right," Paine said. The men finished paying their tabs and dropped a few coins apiece on the bar.

Voltaire stood up and put his jacket on, bumping me in the process without apology. He remained close to me, too close for my comfort. I shrunk in the opposite direction, turning my pages as if I were sitting on a crowded el train.

Paine provided the coda for the proceedings: "Well, you know what they say...."

"Oh, yeah."

"... they're gonna have to pull my gun outta my cold, dead hand."

"That's right."

With that - and an extra hip check courtesy of Voltaire - the two men strutted out of the place.

I watched them as they said their goodbyes outside the front door. They laughed and shook their heads. Who knows what amused them? Had Voltaire said, Hah, how about that pussy, reading the New York Times? We showed him! Or had Thomas Paine said, I think he bought it. Man, we were good!

If I hadn't invented the latter option I'd have fallen into a funk on an icy cold night.

Big Mike: Snap Out Of It!

The Louisville area got four or five inches of snow last night, the equivalent of 25 inches in Chicago. Schools and businesses were closed today, most streets were treacherous, and hardly anyone was on the road.

I got up at the crack of dawn to shovel the driveway. It's about fifty yards from the garage to the street so it took me a good two hours. It was only after I'd finished and was peeling off my sweaty layers that I thought, Hey, I've got freakin' congestive heart failure!

As usual, I overdid it. I drove over to Barnes & Noble for morning coffee and the New York Times but the place was closed. Most of the shops in The Summit - one of only three malls in this city - were closed. Jeez! The Starbucks was open - phew! - so I sat down and began to read. Then it hit me. A wave of exhaustion. I could hardly concentrate. My legs and arms felt like lead. I thought I might pass out.

That's what happens when a CHF sufferer goes overboard, as I did. It didn't alarm me; I knew it would pass after a few hours. I sat back and breathed deeply. Then, suddenly, I started thinking about the last year and a half.

I've gotta confess - I went through yet another of my patented, fall-off-the-face-of-the-Earth depressions last year. The realization that I'd experienced another lost six months was as jarring as if I'd recalled that I'd lost a loved one.

This kind of thing has happened to me before. Somehow, whenever I've found myself extraordinarily worn out by physical exertion, the sun,or some emotional strain, the reality of my depression floods into my consciousness. The first time it happened was way back in the fall of 1979. My little nephew Doug, 11 at the time, wanted to go downtown to see the Pope at the Petrillo Bandshell. I considered counseling him to shun the gaudily-attired leader of the world's most pompous mythology but then decided, hell, it'll be an event and I can disillusion the kid another day. So we went.

The day was unseasonably warm. Doug and I stood out in the sun for eight hours. When we got back home, we collapsed on my mother's sofa, spent and dehydrated. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by the memories of my first real cyclical depressive episode, one that I'd just been emerging from. I'd been feeling fairly decent the last few weeks but sprawled on that sofa, the feelings of alienation, loneliness, dread, uselessness, and all the other classic symptoms washed over me. I began to sob uncontrollably. I told my mother that day that I wanted to kill myself, the first time I'd ever revealed the secret I'd been holding in throughout the just-passed episode.

I got over it, of course, only to go through the same process all over again more times than I care to recount here.

Today's realization was an epiphany. Here's what I learned: the amount of energy I expend fighting depression, running from it, arguing with it, pretending it isn't there, trying to fix it - all the strategies I employ against it - is enormous. Sure, I see shrinks, I take anti-depressants, I repeat affirmations, I seek joys and answers - I do, in short , what every depressive does to survive. But the most important thing I do each day, every day - every minute - is pretend it isn't there.

Were I to remain in constant cognizance that I carry this gray-matter burden, this six-ton anchor on my heart, this emotional Rubik's Cube, I'd never have a moment to wash my face, write a story, or, well, shovel the snow. It takes gigawatts of energy to shove the melancholia into an unused corner of my brain so I may pursue everyday life. Then, when I'm exhausted, when my energy reserves are depleted, that melancholia breaks out of its closet.

I'll be participating in a gallery show at the Lakeside Legacy Arts Park in Crystal Lake, Illinois in May. The opening reception will be on the first. The show is entitled "Snap Out Of It!" and will feature highly personal works about the artists' battle with depression. I'm doing a video piece. Keep an eye on these precincts for more info.