Trifecta

 Sweet. Recovering from my third major surgery in five years.

Next time I fly, I will set off the machines at Security and then some. The luggage area will sound like your nightmare neighbors' teenage kid's cacophonous garage band.

Assorted thoughts.

• After my dad's knee surgery went bad, he spent a miserable six weeks or so in rehab. He pulled through. Years later, his other knee became worthless and he was in agony. I asked him when he would have that one done. He said, never. That the memories of the first one were so overwhelming that he'd rather be in pain for the duration than to have another operation. That is pretty much the way I am feeling this week. Of course, the first week out is the worst, but I sure do feel lousy. Here I am typing at 230 in the morning. Felt good around 5 pm, almost normal in fact. But lemme tell you these hours of the night are from hunger.
• I will never, I guarantee it, take Oxicodone again. They say get ahead of the pain. And the first few tabs you take, do take the pain away and you feel like it is the 60s. But after a day or two you feel awful.
• The good news is that you have an appreciation for good health and the days that silly things bugged you seem to be absurd wastes of time now.
• I am ensconced on the second floor of the house.  I was not "cleared" to go down the stairs. NOt much fun this.  Room service, given the other constraints, is not what it is made up to be. Tomorrow I see both Occupational and Physical therapists. I will do the hora with my crutches when I get out on the deck after I am so cleared.  Donna could be entertaining sailors on the first floor, for all I know.
• The one thing they keep telling you is not to fall. "Falling is not an option." Was how the visiting nurse put it when she came out here on Saturday.  For those not initiated, going up the stairs is easy, going down the stairs not so much. On Friday I got up the stairs in no time. When I tried to show the physical therapist on Sunday I could go down, she looked genuinely nervous as she looked up at me when I descended one foot at a time.
• I've gotten calls and notes from many.  I'm surprised at how comforting these have been.
• I get, and have always gotten when sick, night sweats.  I go through three or four shirts a night. I awaken drenched and sometimes require assistance to remove garb. I prepared a stack of dry shirts so that I can change uniforms.
• Tomorrow I learn how to get into the bathtub. Today I am ripe, despite sponge baths.
• Good news is that my appetite has not abated.  A friend of Donna's made a blueberry pie and brought it over.  Very good thing I cannot access the kitchen because otherwise I would have snorted the whole thing after I had taken one slice.
• haven't been able to knock one back since the 10th. Thought I would miss it more than I have.  Still, looking forward to cracking a cold one, when the word is go.
• Pandora's Phil Ochs station, is a good companion.
• I am a big reader, but cannot focus on reading. Maybe tomorrow. Could barely get through the Sunday papers a couple of days back.
• The discharge papers suggest sexual relations can be resumed when the patient returns home. I want to meet the horny bastard who thinks about getting laid for five seconds during the first week post major surgery.
• The discharge papers also include information about the various drugs one is supposed to take. Fuck big Pharma. Yes, I know drugs have allowed us to make us feel better and last twenty years longer than our parents. But flawless panaceas they are not. And the notion that drug companies are altruistic ethical companies interested in the public good, more than they are interested in making profits is comical.
• It seems to me that doctors have gotten into more and more niche categories. "I only do surgery" "I only do rounds after surgery" "I only do anesthesia",  "I only speak omnisciently on Wednesday's, If you need someone to speak omnisciently to you on Tuesday, call Charlie."
• Horror movies in the middle of the night are not the way to go.
• The tendency for serials to go immediately into the next episode, is a problem for someone who dozes off during episdode two, and wakes up in episode 6, not sure when in 2 the sick sandman hit.
• If Covid can still be transferred, I am giving it a whack having been handled in a hospital by, literally, dozens.  Then there is the visiting nurse, occupational therapist, and physical therapist at home--not always the same person.
• Writing this has been therapeutic.
• Full recovery is 3-6 months. Great. Looking forward to that. Of course, by then something else in me will have fallen apart.
• I was a long distance runner. Played tournament tennis. Never smoked. Didn't eat great, but did not snort ribs three times a week. Like my beer, but compared to some college cronies, belong to the WCTU.  Maybe I should have smoked a carton of Luckies, snorted smack,  eaten cheesecake, and sucked down s quart of Ripple each day.

Deconstructing Funny

 I was switching channels tonight and thought I'd watch some news. So, I clicked on CNN. It wasn't news; it was something I had heard about, a documentary called The History of the Sit Com. 

To be clear, I did not watch the entire episode. Actually, I saw pieces of two episodes. For those unfamiliar with the format, the show identifies programs, shows short clips, and then an actor--sometimes an actor from the series itself, sometimes a tv expert, explains the significance of the program and what it depicts.

I am a very big Honeymooners follower. I went to the first Honeymooners convention held at CWPost in 1984.  The auditorium was jammed with people dressed as Norton or Kramden or some minor character. Everyone there, like me, knew every line from every show. When a character from an episode who appeared for less than five minutes in that episode, came to the stage at the convention, the thousands of attendees gave the guy a standing ovation.  His response, "You people are insane."  The crowd responded with cheers.

I'm not a follower of many other shows.  I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm and enjoyed that. In the seventies I did plan my Saturday nights around All in the Family. Watched a good deal of the Mary Tyler Moore show which, as I recall it, followed All in the Family on Saturday night.

The thing is I found the comments on the documentary, particularly from the pundits-as opposed to the former actors--off the money.  There were some claims that a show reflected societal values--which is not particularly profound. But the ones which I thought were off-putting were those that attempted to deconstruct the sitcoms as if the writers and producers of these programs were attempting to make social commentary with their story-lines. As if the Honeymooners was trying to make a comment about society in the 50s as opposed to reflecting a tiny piece of society in the 50s.  The Jeffersons and Alice were not intended to make social commentary as much as they reflected the times and, more significantly, were developed to get laughs.

The Andy Griffith show did not want to comment on the virtue of small towns. The writers thought that the vehicle would get laughs and win audiences, particularly with a character like Barney Fife--and to a lesser extent Gomer and Goober. I never thought the Beverly Hillbillies was all that funny, but that was the writers' goal

The segments I saw may not have been representative, but I thought that many of the comments about the meaning of particular sitcoms were meaningless deconstructions.