BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

In a little over a month, I will be 50.

Yay. Half century. Big 5-0. Surfboards, waves, syncopated Polynesian Hippie Music. Book ’em, Dano…

Actually, I’m sort of excited about it. After all, 50 is technically the new 30. Life should be just really starting to get interesting for me. Not that The Redhead hasn’t made it plenty interesting all along…

At any rate, one of the reasons 50 is the new 30 is advances in medical science, up to and including early detection of disease so that it can be treated before it REALLY gets to be a problem. Therefore, when you hit 50 the first thing the doctor tells you after pulling his hand out of your a$$ – prostate exam, folks… prostate exam… – is that you need something ELSE jammed into your bung hole, that being a 3d Imax Camera.

Okay, so maybe not a 3d Imax Camera. More like a  camera on a rope…

And so, you make your appointment to have a colonoscopy. This is important shit right here, no pun intended. Colon cancer isn’t pretty, and this is the sort of thing that can save your life. However, Dave Barry beat me to the punch on the whole Intestine Spelunking Blog… And Harry Smith had his done live on national TV. I offered to live stream mine on Facebook, but my fans said no. They are more than happy to read one of my books about a serial killer doing truly horrible things to a victim or two, but when it comes to poop they get a little squeamish. Go figure…

But anyway… Or should that be Butt Anyway? No matter, the real deal is that it’s been done. The benefits of having a colonoscopy have been espoused by much bigger names than me, so I’m not about to be a copycat.

I am, however, about to throw down a major bitch about this whole thing… You see, in order to properly film the poop canal it must first be free of poop. Makes a certain sort of sense. I mean, that way the Doctor doesn’t have to keep telling Mister Hanky to move out of the way so he can see, right? And so, in order to do this they write you a prescription for Colon Blow… Okay, so that’s just what I call it. In point of fact it is “Suprep: Bowel Prep Kit.”

Cool, eh? I mean just look at it. A box of awesome. Make you clean as a whistle, it will. But wait… There’s more…

Here’s the bill.

Yes… You read it correctly. $71.43… AFTER the insurance kicked in a twenty. Without insurance it would have been $93.09…

Yeah… For some stuff to make me shit my brains out and feel completely miserable for about 18 hours. Okay… it’s medical progress. It’s the sort of thing that can save my life. Of course, I won’t have any money to live on, so I might as well be dead, but hey, what the hell.

Here’s the rub… For less than 20 bucks I could pick up a box of Dulcolax and two bottles of Citrate of Magnesium, and it would do EXACTLY the same thing. I know this because I’ve been down this road before, plus I verified it with my buddy Dr. Gina, who is, in point of fact, a real doctor, not just one on TV.

So here’s my thing… To celebrate my 50K Exhaust System Check I am pretty much flushing about 75 bucks down the toilet.

But what the hell… You only turn 50 once… Since my ass is getting raped, I guess my wallet should, too…

More to come…

Murv

It’s still painful to talk about. I know it has been a whole week now, but it seems like it was only yesterday. The horror of it all is still fresh in my mind, and I find myself waking up in a cold sweat as the nightmares plague my slumber. I guess that’s what I get for surviving…

It was cold. Especially for Florida. Of course, it was also early November and George Bush had stopped denying global climate change, so those were just the dice Momma au Naturale dealt us. The Sunshine State caught in the grip of a cold snap of epic proportions. Unbelievable as it may seem, when the sun dipped below the horizon the mercury would plummet into the danger zone. Yes… the 50’s. I actually had to wear my hoodie.

EK, John, and Murv - Prior to the ill-fated Trick or Drunking Expedition

Earlier in the day, provisions had been running low. That’s how it is with Corona and lime when you are at a festival in Florida. One minute there’s enough, the next, not so much. We scraped together a twenty from my wallet and handed it off to the provisions maven. We never saw her again. Who knew a Jackson could take you that far…

Well… Not far enough, because that’s about the time the trolley broke down. Any seasoned Festival-goer knows that when the Trolley breaks down you’re as good as dead – but we weren’t ready to give up. Steeling our resolve, we grabbed our plastic cups and set out down the pass to go “Trick or Drunking.” We’d heard a rumor that Pirates had set up camp below, and if we could make it there, perhaps they would share their rum with us. Or not. One never knows about Pirates, but we had to try.

The trip was arduous. We lost three on the way, not sure if they succumbed to the cold, were eaten by the rogue bear, or simply turned back. Eventually, however, we made it to our destination. After much parlay, the assignation of Piratey names, and selling off E K to the “Feral Cathouse” run by the Buccaneers, we were accepted into the fold and beaten severely about the head and shoulders – and livers – with rum that had been shown a picture of fruit punch. But it wasn’t allowed to look for very long, as it was only supposed to pick up a hint of the fruity punchiness…

Sometime during the darkness, a roving band of strange women, each dressed in black and adorned with bright red lipstick, descended upon the Pirate camp. Even the Pirates cowered, powerless against their overwhelming osculation. And yes, they scurried about like little pixies, kissing all of the male types and leaving gihugic Angelina Jolie lip prints on our faces.

We were sore afraid, and a bit titillated as well, but that’s a different story.

Eventually, seeing as we had brought the strange women upon them, the Pirates made us walk the plank. Being on land already it wasn’t much of a plank, however, there was the mountain, for we eventually had to return to our base camp at the summit.

John – as in John Gramling… Yes. THE John Gramling – downed what was left of his punch drunk rum and pointed at the distant lights in the sky. He burped, hiccuped, and then said, “I ain’t climbin’ that mountain.”

E K, who had been kicked out of the “Feral Cathouse” for torturing the clientele looked ahead and replied, “Psshaw! It’s just a gentle incline.”

“It’s a damn mountain,” John repeated.

And so we braved the cold, the wind, and the bear, stalking off into the early morning darkness (it was after midnight) and climbed the Altoona Mountains there in Florida. Just her worship THE E K, and me…

We never saw John again. Rumor has it RD ate him when the Pirates finally ran out of rum, but then, RD is like that. (You’d understand if you’d ever met RD…)

And there you have the true story of The Gramling Party. I’m sure that mountainside is haunted now… By John and a case of Corona. Maybe I’ll go back and look for him some day. I’m pretty sure he forgot to take the lime with him…

More to come…

Murv