A Moment by the Water-Cooler

I watched American Idol last night. Now, like many of the 70 million or so other Americans who watched it (I just made that figure up), I can’t seem to get the experience out of my mind. I have never been a fan of the show, but on Wednesday nights there very little on, and this is the only night I get to indulge in shlock TV and ice cream. I thought that the early rounds of auditions for this show would be interesting, but I only could take about an hour and fifteen minutes of the two hour cattle-call, or rather, in some cases, hog-calling-contest.

Now, meanness has always bothered me. It would be hypocritical to say that I am not guilty of it from time to time, but I hope that it is usually justified, say, when I’m speaking of the Republican Party or something (I believe you need to fight fire with fire). I experienced conflicting emotions, however, when I witnessed the three impeccably preened judges enduring a parade of Seattleites, with a wide range of talent, try for their shot at stardom. I wanted to hate the judges, especially the villainous (and, by now, richer than God) Simon, who veered between patronizing, mocking and cruel. But, on the other hand, I was amazed at how disillusioned some of the contestants were. Part of me (I think we’re seeing a wishy-washy theme here) wanted to route for Simon—or at least not hate him so much—when one contestant, whose opinion of herself far surpassed her ability (something that is so common in the everyday workplace), went on a tirade against the smug Brit. It was like watching two trains carrying e-coli crash head-on.

But there were no-talent contestants who were, even in the face of heartless criticism, gracious and humble. This is something that, to me, shows far more character and worth than the ability to jam thirty notes into one measure of music. My problem isn’t really with the judge’s reactions and comments; it is with the producer’s choice to hold the most talentless contestants up to nation-wide ridicule. If the show wanted to showcase a contestant who took a break from working the street corner to show her “wha-eva, I do wa I want,” attitude on national TV that’s one thing (a la Jerry Springer), but everyday Americans who have been baited by the pseudo-glam of the Fox network being mocked for not being “pretty” enough, or talented enough bothers me. One young man, who appeared to have been put up to it by his co-workers (like that smug prick Jim from The Office), embarrassed himself so vehemently that his shame seemed to radiate from the television set. The whole thing smacks of frat-boys getting the geek to down a bottle of vodka so they can get him to sleep with a goat or something.

But here’s the rub. This next segment is going to cause me to get “this man is a total hypocrite” tattooed onto my forehead. There was a brother and sister team whose father is a classical Indian musician. Both were extraordinarily good. Instead of choosing nauseating ballads by Journey, or tone-twisting neo-soul by Christine Aguilera, the young woman chose Summertime and the young man chose a song by Stevie Wonder. Simon blandly dismissed the sister for not having anything new in her voice, although I thought her version was awesome, but the brother was the only contestant whom Simon liked (during the time I was watching). Both “kids”, the sister is nineteen and the brother is seventeen, radiated genuine enthusiasm and spirit, and it was very difficult not to be totally charmed. So difficult, I’m afraid, that I believe that I am hooked for the season, provided that Wednesday is the primary night for the show.

Here is another admission. During the commercial break, while I was getting my second Polar Bar, I began to sing “Willin” by Little Feat. I tried to imagine the looks on the faces of the judges as I created a tone that was like a bleating sheep with acid-indigestion. I imagined Simon pausing with his pained expression fully intact, and finally giving me, what has now become his catchphrase, “What the bloody hell was that?” I realized, if the auditions come my way, I should be out of the country at the time.

As stated, I could only take a little more than half of the two-hour show. By nine-thirty I was dozing in front of Mythbusters with Jamie and Adam trying to send a wood-splinter through a latex model of someone’s head. Now there is a show that I would love to pass an audition for.

On Whining

So I've read two pieces in the past twenty-four hours where the author complains about whining in other people's work. One was a superior toned memoir piece in the college's literary magazine whose author claimed that David Sedaris' writing was whiny. I like Sedaris, and someone close to me claimed that my writing reminded her of his. I would rather be compaired to Tobius Wolff, wishful thinking I know. Another person wrote about how she is making an effort not to whine about trivial things while so many people in the world have much more important things to complain about. This led me to ask myself if I whine in my work. I think I do, actually.

I think the main thing I am trying to do is force humor out of certain uncomfortable, awkward or painful moments. I believe there is a propensity for people to look for fault in anything that is foriegn to them. Say if I complain about being cold on the top of a hill. It is very easy to look at that statement and think, "well how many people ever get to be on a hill?" "How many people ever get the chance to climb a hill?" "How many people ever get the chance to even be cold?" So if I say I was cold on the top of a hill, and then I slid down on my butt, bumped my head on a root, while my little brother laughed at me," am I still whining? The point is not that I feel sorry for myself, but that I can look back now and find it funny, and hope, if there are people who still have a sense of humor out there, that others find it funny too.

My family sits around a lot and tells funny stories about what happened to them. At the time of the actual event we may have wanted to cry, scream, or punch something (hopefully not each other) but by the time the memory makes it to the dining room table at Thanksgiving the story has taken on a hilarious nature. "We'll laugh about this later." is the term that sums this phenomenon up. So, really, it is not the fact that tribulations are a learning experience so much, they are just a way to dominate the conversation for an hour or two during the holidays.

The things we really want to whine about, bad relationships, failed career choices, bad relationships--oh yea, I said that allready--stay in the background.I save my real whining for the lucky people who are closest to me. Believe me, my significant other can attest to this, I whine verbally all the time. Sometimes my whole day is dominated by "Why can'ts?" and "How comes."

I think where I'm going with this is maybe it isn't the fact that someone is complaining that is the issue. Maybe the complaint is about community. Comedians use "don't you hate it when..." in their acts all the time. I don't think, as an audience, we are supposed to recognise this as a whine, although it is. I think the point is to remind us that we are not alone in our irritability, vunerability, and pain. Getting us to laugh about it together is a good way of sharing the communal experience.

So, if someone complains about traffic or tax forms, I'm going to give them a break. These things drive me crazy too. And it would be hypocritical to state otherwise. I will complain (Hell, I might even write a three page blog post),about these things. At the same time, I will never forget how fortunate I am to be able to fill out tax forms, sit in traffic, and tell funny stories with my family.

P.S. I have to ask also, aren't the people who are writing about people who whine just whining about whiny people?

Roommates

You know, I’m probably not the easiest person to live with. That’s not hard to admit sitting here in the chilly environs of my office, where denial is just a river in Egypt, and public pride is of no use. I’ve more often than not had trouble with roommates since I was first assigned one at the annoying boarding school I attended. Part of that trouble, I have to admit, is my fault. I’m a snob at times, who becomes unforgiving of quirks and tics after only a few hours, although I am loath to recognize my own (I used to snort). Someone chewing and slurping a bowl of cereal can tap into my basest instincts. If, God forbid, I am ever under torture, (not so hard to imagine with the current administration) all the interrogator would have to do is ask me questions with frosted flakes churning in his jaws and milk dribbling down his chin. I’d cave in an instant.

Its things like these that create unfair resentment toward innocent co-habitués. But, that being said, I’ve had some real duds when it comes to roommates. My first real roommate was at the above mentioned boarding school. He was from Chattanooga, and he had the couth of a drunk flamingo. At times we got along, although we loathed each other at first. His real sin, the one that had me hold a grudge against him through the entire year, was eating all the food in my first care-package from home. This was a deplorable slight, and I’ve still never forgiven him. Maybe a couple of rounds of therapy would help me here.

My senior year I had two roommates, and there was tension there too. One roommate settled things for me early on when he slammed me up against a wall and threatened me with a broom because I wasn’t keeping my side of the room clean. I ended up becoming friends with him, but kept away whenever he was on a cleaning binge. The other roommate wrote poetry, had a steady girlfriend, won literary prizes, and received high honors every semester. I hated him, of course.

We survive that year together and looking back I realize that they were good roommates. I cringe to think what they would remember about me. I sometimes meet people who knew me long ago and they’ll say things like, “remember that time that you ripped off the head of a frog down by the creek.” Now, I know, that I’ve never harmed a frog that wasn’t already dead, and that was in biology class, but the statement leaves just the slightest doubt as to what I remember and what I don’t. Note to FBI profilers: That last example is purely hypothetical.

When I was in Africa, someone had the foresight to give me my own living space. I really like this arrangement best, present situation excluded (note the disclaimer). But my incompatibility showed itself in other ways. On a long trip to Zimbabwe, I found myself very agitated by one of our traveling companions, an English public-schooler who made Gore Vidal look unsmug and humble. His refusal to get into the spirit of things—which in my mind meant getting tipsy on cheap beer every night—really got me down. We ended up parting ways, he and his girlfriend opting to hitchhike thousands of miles rather than endure my funk. There was a kind of equality in our spoiledness which made us somewhat more alike than I ever like to admit.
When the South African government turned down my second application for a study visa (this was during Apartheid and no American undergrads were being granted visas, although I had already been accepted to Rhodes University) I went into a small tailspin and ended up in Greensboro. This was not the best place to land after spending a year watching history take place in Africa. I rented an apartment that was way above my means, and soon was forced to find a roommate. I ended up with a guy who was the boyfriend of a girl I knew in high school. He would come home drunk and throw furniture at the wall. Once, when I was away, he had a party, and when I returned my room had been rearranged by one of his friends who reportedly had had sex all night in my bed with allegedly the ugliest woman anyone had ever seen. There was body hair all over.

So, the point here might be that its not just me, but sometimes it is a little bit me.

The last person on the list of roommates is a guy I roomed with when I was at culinary school in Portland, Oregon. He was from Atlanta and was somewhere around six-seven or six-eight. Really, the guy was gigantic. We got along very well the first couple of months. We shared an apartment in the oddly named suburb of Beaverton. We located a decent watering-hole and attended classes together, and we played one-on-one basketball where I would get soundly trounced but was able to improve my hook-shot, which was the only thing you could do against the guy. We were both in different stages of long-distance relationships, he was trying to remain separated from his wife, and I had just begun a relationship with Margaret. The telephone became a life-line.

The trouble started when he informed me that his wife was moving in with us. I maintained a “wait and see” attitude, but I was a little wary. She arrived not long after and, again, it seemed that it would be no problem. She was a little eccentric—she would sit on the couch all day and read piles of library books, however, she was afraid to drive a car—but she was friendly enough, ‘til she got to drinkin’. She was the first redneck genius I had ever met. It was a very strange combination, to hear someone talk about how “twawd the end of his laff, Twalstoy, only ceered abawt freein’ the serfs. Hun, go dwn ta store an git me a pack of Misty Ultra-Light 100s.”

About a month later, after hearing about her nine-year-old son day in and day out, I was informed that he was coming out to live with us as well. The kid had the brain power of his mother, and the eccentricities and insecurities to go with it. Plus he was a nine-year old kid with the squirms and a habit of asking just the wrong questions. But, I have to say, I made an effort to be friendly, and I was told that the kid liked me well enough. Never-the-less, the apartment was getting crowded.

I came home from work one day, and was watching TV, when I started noticing a squawking. I asked what in the world it was and was told that it was a parakeet that they had just purchased. As they told me this, a little fluorescent green bird hopped into the room, jumped on the couch, and preceded to peck me on the head. All of my roommates began to laugh. “I think he laaks yoo,” One of them said.

At four in the morning, the bird would start squawking. He would keep this up most of the morning, with his owners snoring obliviously in the next room. I awoke to this racket every morning, and it was getting to me in the worst way.

One morning, while I rushing around, late for work, I began to tie my shoe and the lace broke. The bird had chewed through it. I rigged some sort of lace and cursed a little as I headed off to work. By the third week of living with the bird, the couch that I used in the living room had been covered with little white parakeet droppings. The camels back was beginning to crack.

The showdown came over the phone bill. The bills were high, due to the length of time that we spent making long distance calls, but I let them handle the actual payment. I would give them the money for my share. They had been late a couple of times but it ended up getting paid eventually, and there wasn’t much more time left on the lease so I was okay with the arrangement. But this time, the bill never got paid. I had given them a large chunk of the payment, and a week later the phone was disconnected. I asked them what was going on and only got a passive-aggressive response. After a day or two I began to get highly agitated. They kept telling me that they would take care of it, but wouldn’t tell me why they couldn’t pay it and get us reconnected. Soon the situation deteriorated into silent stonewalling.

I realized that the man had a drug problem and I was becoming certain that this was where the money had gone. I ended up confronting him, not an easy thing to do with someone who is several inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than you. His response was to say “bite me” and leave the apartment. His wife, left to fend for herself, locked herself and her son in their room, and I was left with no choice but to go to class with nothing resolved. Apparently they decided to resolve it themselves. When I got home from class, they, and all their stuff, including the bird, were gone.

I threw myself on the mercy of the apartment complex, and was granted a month to find a new place to live. I didn’t have the means to keep the apartment on my own. Eventually, I found a place right across the street from Nike village that was a better apartment, and fifty dollars cheaper a month. My roommates were normal guys, with very little hang-ups, and I got along quite well with them. I occupied a loft overlooking the living room, and I could study during the day while they were at work (I was attending night classes at this time). I left Portland with the bad roommate experience behind me.

Those were the last real roommates I ever had. Now I have a housemate, but a girlfriend is a different category, there are bonds there that go deeper than sharing the rent together. We annoy each other sure, but it may be possible that all of the ups and downs I’ve had with roommates in the past were meant to prepare me for this one. I’ve lightened up a little, I like to think anyway, but I still may need help in the category of loud cereal chewing. That one, unfortunately, may never go away.

2006, Year in Review

I really don’t have a topic to for this blog entry but I guess I’ll just go free form and see what happens. I haven’t written anything about it being a new year yet so maybe I’ll write about that. I want to write about last year, however, because except for a few scares and bumps, the main scare being my father’s health, it was an exceptionally good year. Yes, 2006 was one of the best, and I believe I was due for one. So already, in a few short sentences, I have formulated a topic: 2006, the year in review.

So I will try not to make this like one of the form Christmas card family updates that people send you which I’ll only read the first sentence of each paragraph to see if Mary got her PHD or Ed’s out of jail yet. I just want to list some of the things that I am proud of.

I started out the year with a long overdue trip to see my sister Emily and her husband Bob in New York. This was his last year at Union Seminary, and I wanted to take advantage of the fact that they had an apartment in the city before they had to give it up and return permanently to their house in Connecticut. We spent the week rushing from the Museum of Natural History to the New York Public Library, to various cathedrals and even made it out to Connecticut to watch the BCS championship. Bob is a very enthusiastic tour guide, and by the time I got home I was very fired up to start the semester and really make the year count. It was an excellent way to begin the New Year, and I kept up the momentum for a couple of weeks.

The spring semester had me taking four classes and working full time. This was a very hectic schedule. One of my classes was meant to take care of the dreaded science requirement for my degree. I chose Botany. Bad choice. I told my classmates that I was a history major just looking to fulfill a requirement, and one of them turned to me and said “and you chose Dr. Keegan’s class?!” I took this as a bad sign. This was by far the hardest class I’ve had, and it is a 100 level class! I just can’t imagine what his molecular chemistry class is like. Is there such a subject as molecular chemistry? That’s how scientifically illiterate I am. I soldiered through it and ended up with a respectable grade, but I will never look at a tree or a blade of grass with same appreciation that I used to. Trees provoke just the slightest degree of resentment in me now.

The other classes I took went very well though. I took my history seminar class and wrote about the Colonization of Liberia during the 19th century, a much more manageable subject than xylem and phloem. I got an A, and my advisor suggested that I become a teacher’s aid for this semester’s seminar. I’m looking forward to watching, and helping, the class survive the experience. I also managed to get an A- in class with a notoriously tough but brilliant professor, and this gave me a little consolation for the Botany nightmare.

Before the Christmas of 2005, my father decreed that no one was to give him a Christmas present that year. Instead we were to send contributions to our friend’s medical mission in South Africa. Prompted by this suggestion, we began brainstorming for ways to raise money, and I suggested that we hold a dinner. I had raised money this way before to fund a trip that I took to Costa Rica in 1991, and had been amazed at how much money I had been able to raise with just a couple of chicken pies and some desserts. We chose my parent’s church as the “volunteer” venue for the event, and decided to hold the fund raiser during fall break. So, on a break from cell walls and John Dryden, Margaret and I drove to Charlottesville with chaffing dishes stuffed into the back of her Subaru. We let my Mom put us through the paces as we pulled off a dinner that managed to raise almost $7,000. Our goal had been $5,000. My sister Lindsay, an artist, donated a painting for the silent auction which helped to push us over the top.

At the end of the semester, I was honored with an award and a small scholarship from the history department. I was also selected to join Phi Alpha Theta, an honor society for historians. I remember feeling very overwhelmed at times during the semester, but now it seems like it was pretty exciting.

I also had the opportunity to see my niece, Mary Katherine, graduate from high school. She started as a freshman at UNCG in the fall. Amazing, I used to baby-sit her just yesterday.

As the spring semester ended, I prepared for summer school. During the summer I was able to take care of my language requirement and fulfill more credits toward my English degree (I’m a double major, History/English) with a great class called Cult Films. Also during this time, the folk/blues/whatever-kind-of-music-we-want-to-play trio I’m in played a number of times at a bistro downtown. Those were some good times with close friends.

The fall semester had me taking only three classes, but one of them was English 400 with the notorious but fair professor from last semester. This was an extremely difficult and rewarding experience, filled with scholarly articles written by men and women who write in a language forsaken by mortal men. Very Challenging! Two history classes rounded out the semester and got me closer to my history degree.

We also held another fund raising dinner for our friends in Africa. This time it was in Winston-Salem, and we raised yet another $7,000. Yes. I have to say, this is the proudest I’ve been of something lately.

I also met a couple of people around campus who play bluegrass, and we held impromptu jam sessions a number of times. This was a great diversion on days I had buried myself with history and English.

I turned forty, so it wasn’t all good, but I’m getting used to it. I can actually form the words in my mouth now, and sometimes I can even articulate them. It’s not so bad being middle-aged, mainly because I definitely don’t feel middle-aged. What a terrible expression—middle-aged. I prefer fully-matured.That doesn't sound quite right either. How about ten-year-old trapped in a forty-year-old's body?

My father got sick and we were scared for a while there. He is much better now and much of the worry is gone, so that turned out for the better as well.

And as 2006 turned into 2007, I acquired a notebook and a wireless router so I can read and write blogs anywhere in the house. It was a good way to kick off the New Year, and hopefully it will be one of a series of things to be grateful about. Seems like 2006 was filled with such things.

Chicken Pox

I want to write a post about having the chicken pox. I’m supposed to be going buy a new dryer today because our old one lurches and screeches the clothes dry, and recently lost the ability to heat up. I don’t like doing this kind of thing, but the clothes are piling up upstairs and I’m down to my purple, “only wear in an emergency,” shirt. Amazing, who would have thought that one day I would be using writing as a form of procrastination.

So if the theme of this post is the chicken pox, then it must be one of those childhood memory pieces, right? Wrong. I had the chicken pox at the tender age of thirty-five. I’ve always been a johnny-come-lately when it comes to music, politics, sports and infectious diseases. So I waited thirty years to get this one out of my system—I should have gotten it over with when I was six.

We think that the cause came from sleeping in a bed that my father had slept in while he was suffering from some weird condition known as the shingles. This is not to be confused with another skin infliction of equal severity known as the floor tiles. Daddy took his condition in stride, making up a little rhyme to help him in his discomfort, something like: “jingle jingle, I’ve got the shingles.” I thought it was clever, and I wasn’t worried about catching shingles or any other sickness on that particular trip up to see them.

This was in winter, when the sun never quite reaches an apex in the sky and sunny days mean constantly squinting through an afternoon, due to perma-glare. It is a terrible time to be sick, although when is a good time? “I caught diphtheria in early June, it was simply lovely, had the entire clinic to myself.” But winter, with its leafless trees and icy drafts, makes sickness pretty hopeless. So when I woke up at home feeling like my blood had been replaced by sludgy crude oil, and saw the blemishes covering my entire body (itchy blemishes at that), I felt winter was somehow in on the conspiracy.

When I was nineteen, I got the opportunity to work in a hospital in South Africa. One of the things I did early on was take photographs of people suffering from leprosy for a clinical study. The patients were in varying stages of the disease, and as I looked at my face in the mirror I identified, for the first time, with those South Africans. Yea, I know, Chicken Pox is definitely not as severe as leprosy, but it was hard for me to understand that at the time. Main point here is, I felt like hell.

But I had to be sure it was chicken pox. I called my mom to see if she had any record of me having chicken pox as a kid. Unbelievably, she was able to quickly produce records of our childhood illnesses and vaccinations. She relayed them over the phone, and it appeared that I had never had the illness, although my sisters had. A trip to the skin center at the hospital confirmed that if I didn’t have chicken pox, whatever I had was damn close to chicken pox. How’s that for a pinpoint diagnosis? So I “kinda had” chicken pox.

The doctor told me that whatever it was, it was highly contagious and that I would have to remain at home for at least two weeks. I pretended that this news disappointed me. “Aw, shucks, what am I going to do for two weeks?” I called work and broke the news to them, and listened as my former boss tried to find angles to have me work from home (impossible in the food service field) and prevent me from cashing in PTO time. He was unsuccessful at both, and all he could do was wait for the doctor to okay my return to work.

For the first two or three days I could do nothing but feel like a pile of rash-infected refuse. I seem to remember a debilitating headache which intensified with every inch I tried to lift my head off the pillow. The doctor had told me to take benadril, and Margaret bought me a topical cream for my rashes. The cream, however, did not react well with my face. In fact, it had the opposite effect of healing, and created an excruciating burning which lasted for an entire night. I spent the sleepless night with a wet towel over my face to comfort the searing skin. One of the worst nights of my life.

Back to South Africa. This interlude is not for the squeamish. The night of the evil face cream reminds me of another terrible night I had in the first week that I arrived in South Africa. I had just come from Scotland in January, and now that I was in the Southern Hemisphere, I noticed that my ghostly pale complexion contrasted sharply with the Tropicana tans of the “white” South African kids enjoying mid-summer. I had to act quickly. So the second day after my arrival I sat out in the sun for a good five or six hours. This, obviously, resulted in the worst sunburn of my life.

The family I was staying with had employed me (at their peril—a work ethic was still a long way off for me at this time) to paint the little round guest hut behind their house. A few days after my “tanning session,” I was in the hut working with paint and paint thinner. As I mixed the paint and cleaned the brushes I noticed that my skin was peeling at a rapid rate. I figured that the paint thinner was accelerating the peeling skin of my bad sunburn. It was pretty horrific, but somehow fascinating at the same time. I literally peeled a piece of dead skin off of my front torso the size of a small throw rug.

The discomfort came that night. The exposed new skin was so sensitive that it created the most agonizing itching imaginable. I was unable to stop scratching the entire night, and I was on the verge of waking the family up and asking for help, but I figured at the age of nineteen I was too old for late night pleas for sympathy. I suffered through that night and a couple more, and eventually, grew into my new skin and resumed normal, slacker activity. I developed a healthy respect for the African sun, however.

Back in the third circle of chicken pox hell, I slowly began to feel better. The exhaustion and headaches went away after a few days, and I was left only with the skin rashes which still had me looking like an extra in the leper colony scene of Papillion. My face was patches of white, pink, rouge and crimson—it looked kind of like the paint swatch section of a home improvement store. It didn’t really itch like I thought chicken pox was supposed to, it just looked slightly scary.

During those long two weeks—the freedom from work gave way to boredom around day five—I watched a lot of television. Ironically, the program that sticks out in my mind from that time was a showing of The Elephant Man. I’ve never seen this film on television as much as the time when I had chicken pox. I watched it, and when John Hurt yelled “I am not an animal!” I identified with him greatly. When Margaret would come home from work and comment on how my rashes looked pretty bad, I would shout “I am not an animal!” She failed to find this funny.

The first time I went out after catching the chicken pox, I was returning from the store and was pulled by a policeman. I can’t remember what pretext he pulled me for, maybe failing to use my turn signal, but as he checked my license and glanced at my face, he did a kind of double take and backed up slightly. I expected him to go “whoa… what the hell happened to you?” He quickly told me to be more careful, and let me go.

My return to work was met with equally silent astonishment. The contagious part of the trauma was over, but the blemishes hung around for another few weeks. It was maneuvered (because of the way I looked, I believe) that I would not have to deal with the members of the stuffy little country club I worked for. As usual, everyone betrayed their opinions through body language and facial expressions. Life went on though; eventually the blemishes faded, and the ordeal left only an opportunity for a story.

When I think back on it though, I am again reminded of an incident in South Africa. At the hospital, I followed one of the surgeons on their rounds. We came upon a woman whose angry and drunk husband had pushed her into a bonfire. Her entire back was covered in third degree burns. There is no way I can compare my slight discomfort from chicken pox to the agony this woman was experiencing. The degree of her trauma is sobering when I start to imagine that chicken pox should be a subject of pity. The woman will have to live with her injury for the rest of her life. I, on the other hand, only have to be reminded of my illness when, every so often, TCL shows The Elephant Man.