"Use All The Crayons!" updates
• Check out my first appearance on the DVE Morning Show in 24 years. Twenty-Four years!
I’ve determined after much deliberation that Parkinson’s is the perfect disorder for me. See, I’m a guy no one has ever been able to tell what to do. Now, even I can’t tell my body what to do.
It starts with the legs.
Allow me to correct that. It starts with the legs when they don’t start at all.
It’s most embarrassing when I’m in a crowded bar or restaurant, exiting the car and my legs just freeze. I’m looking at the leg and I’m thinking …
“Okay, left leg. You’re on. I want you to elevate 3 inches. Just 3 damn inches. Remember when you used to lift those legs waist high chugging around the net back at the Lebo rink. You were team captain! Well, part of you was.”
I look at the lazy bastard and it pretends like he can’t even hear me.
The nerve.
It won’t budge.
I feel like I’m entering a new phase of my Parkinson’s. Coincidentally, this reduced mobility is happening as I prepare to turn in my finished manuscript for “The Art of Living Suddenly: How to Deal with a Parkinson’s Diagnosis (and other things that suck).”
I missed the deadline by a whole year!
I hope nobody at the publisher was ordered to remain awake until Rodell turns his shit in.
It took a long time because I was trying to share a very personal story and still have it be fun. I believe I succeeded.
I arbitrarily ended it before these new symptoms began cropping up.
Just like I’m arbitrarily ending this update!
I don’t mean to alarm anyone. I’m still “high functioning” and most of my trouble is unrelated to Parkinson’s. The trouble is the hips. And that trouble, I think, stems from my botched toe operation, which stems from …
It reminds me of a scene from one of the “Airplane!” sequels. The scene stars a flamboyant actor whom I suppose we’re to assume is homosexual. He prances and flits around. It was all very funny to a kid in the 1980s.
I remember it was a courtroom scene, but I might be wrong. One of the officials asked “Johnnie” to “start from the beginning.”
“Well, first the earth cooled, then the dinosaurs came, but they got too fat, so then …”
That’s how I feel when someone asks how I’m doing.
Now …
Onward!
Today’s theme: Recent gems
• It is said the genius Leonardo da Vinci was so ambidextrous that when he painted, say, a horse he’d use his right hand to begin painting the tail while his left dealt with the nose, progressing until the hands simultaneously finished in the middle. Others have wondered if the gift allowed him to cut time spent on rudimentary tasks in half. Me, I wonder about different stuff. Like what kind of anatomical calculations went through the genius’s mind when he was bored and felt like jerking off?
• Summer vacation, Day 1: I handed a spray bottle to a younger man and advised he apply before going out in the elements. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I know all about sun screen.”
I told him to check the label. It was shark repellent. I told him I’ve been applying two blasts to my testicles 7 days a week and my balls remain intact. He busted out laughing. I asked if he was mocking my common sense precautions.
“No, sir,” he said. “But we’re in Tennessee.”
And one day Tennessee is going to thank me!
• The Lazarus story makes no mention of it, but Lazarus became very unpopular. Because he eventually died. Again. A typical complaint: “Didn’t we already go to his funeral? I’m not missing another Steeler game to bury that jack ass. I can’t pretend I liked him all over again. I swear, if that guy dies one more time I’m gonna have to kill him.”
• The Lazarus story makes no mention of it, but Lazarus became very unpopular. Because he eventually died. Again. A typical complaint: “Didn’t we already go to his funeral? I’m not missing another Steeler game to bury that jack ass. I can’t pretend I liked him all over again. I swear, if that guy dies one more time I’m gonna have to kill him.”
• You can give me a fish and I’ll eat for a day, or you could teach me how to fish and I’ll eat for the of my life. But no matter how much you give me, I’m coming back every six months to complain I can’t get by without a bigger boat
• If a Siamese Twin gets into a mental state often described as “beside himself,” how exactly would that look?
• Anthropologists say there have been 117 billion humans on earth since creation. What's the one thing --the only thing -- we all have in common? Sooner or later, for better or worse, one-by-one, every single one of us has died. I try and remind myself of this when things do not go my way. It's nothing personal
• It pisses me off whenever I hear anyone use “fish” to describe tuna. Everyone already knows it’s a dang fish. We don’t say salmon fish, trout fish or flounder fish. But you hear tuna fish all the time. Jelly fish and catfish get passes for sound reasons, but you’ll never be in a restatant and hear …
CUSTOMER: “I ordered tuna!”
WAITRESS: “Was it the tuna fish or the tuna bird?”
• The typical Swiss Army Knife was invented on this day in 1897 and has 32 functions. It comes in handy anytime a besieged soldier needs to trim a mustache, pop a cork, or trim an unruly pinkie toe. In its entire history there are no recorded incidents of it being used to slay or subdue an enemy and you can’t help but wonder how different European history would be had someone first invented the Swiss Army Bazooka.
• What exactly happens at a masseuse convention when they allot free time on the agenda for attendees to “rub elbows.”
Still haven’t checked out my “Use All The Crayons!” podcast? Why not start at the beginning? Here’s episode No. 1. The show is getting great reaction and we’re putting together season two set to debut in mid-September.
Thanks to those of you who recently showed your support by sending cash or the equivalent to me at PayPal, Venmo, 874 Solomon Temple Rd., Latrobe, Pa, 15650).
All Chris’s books can be purchased through www.ChrisRodell.com