Worse than a root canal...

I held off on this post, because I didn’t want to distract from the previous one about immigration. I was going to say a few words about French fries redux, but why bother? In America, political negotiations are conducted via character assassination and yelling at each other. In Iraq, blowing things and people up is a form of negotiation. In France, it’s rioting in the streets. I guess they enjoyed the Muslim riots so much, the generic French young people decided to throw their own weenie roast.

Ah, but I digress, right off the bat. Who cares about the French? People who eat snails and frogs ain’t right. ‘Nuff said.

I had my first root canal the other day. This is a procedure that apparently involves sticking white-hot needles into the sockets of the eyeballs, while simultaneously running high-amperage 440 volt electricity through the jaws. And those sensations occurred before the anesthetic wore off. I have been seriously injured in my life, and they say the body has no memory of pain, but I am hard pressed to think of anything that ever caused such acute, sheer agony. The broken tooth that led to the root canal was relatively painless in comparison. And to think, I volunteered for this exercise in masochism, and even paid for it…

This was on a Thursday. I spent Friday in bed, eating soft toast so I could take aspirin without destroying my stomach. By Saturday, I was semi-ambulatory. I indulged my mania for cooking, which is always therapeutic. I experimented with variations on mush, so I could take in some nourishment without screaming and alarming the neighbors at the foot of Scorpion Hill.

Some hours after sunset that evening, I finally stopped whimpering and transitioned from my wheelchair into my easy chair. Click the TV remote, and we have: Henry Rollins and Larry the Cable Guy, back to back. Okay, comedy specials. I need comedy…I need a chuckle to make me forget that upholstery nail the dentist has driven into my upper mandible.

I have no idea who Henry Rollins is, or what he’s ever done. The name sounded vaguely familiar, like he might have played in a rock & roll band in the ‘60s, or something. Maybe he was the bass player for Canned Heat, or Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Nope. He’s too young for that. I guess I’m culturally deprived. This guy does a stand-up routine. I hesitate to call it comedy, although some folks in his live audience were laughing. What I saw was 90 minutes of an assault on conservative values, with a few mildly amusing anecdotes thrown in for leavening. At one point, I tuned away, when Mr. Rollins’s remarks about Laura Bush crossed the line.

“That smile…she’s done a half bottle of Stoli and two Prozacs…by eleven in the morning…the Prozac is to keep her ‘even’, and the Stoli is…[reference to oral sex that won’t see print here]…”

Okay, the Libertarian exercises his prerogative, and changes channels. My blood pressure was running high enough to make the belabored tooth start throbbing again. I watched a few minutes of Clint Eastwood as “Joe Kidd’, then had a passing thought: if I can sit through a root canal without screaming and assaulting the dentist, I can see what else this Rollins mook has to say. I hit the recall button, and braced myself.

Henry Rollins is the darling of the Independent Film Channel [IFC]. If you have cable, or a satellite dish, you probably know these folks. They think Michael Moore is God, and Quentin Tarantino is the Holy Ghost. Today, 1 April 2006, is an appropriate day to remark on Mr. Rollins. He has been given his own television show on IFC. It starts tonight.

I sat through an hour and a half of this guy’s rubbish, because I was stunned with the post-trauma of some intense oral surgery. The people in his live audience laughed and applauded, most loudly when he made some remark about FOX News or President Bush. Dogs lap up their vomit, and some people seem to love Henry Rollins. In the spirit of transcendence, I suppose we can write this off to diversity of opinion. He called the president a corrupt liar, and demanded documentation for anything Mr. Bush has ever said. At the same time, he offered absolutely no references of his own. It was The World According to Henry.

We are all egocentric. To deny one’s sense of self, and declare “I’m a selfless person who cares only for others” is to invite disillusionment and disaster. Okay, so we have the world according to Henry, and we have the world according to Possum. History will judge whose glasses were cleaner.

I suffered through boring, sleep-inducing classes in high school and college. I have suffered through massive, sudden traumas that would likely have killed other people. I have missed many other Very Bad Things by a thin, fine hair. Sitting through 90 minutes of some comedic darling of Those People should be an exercise in boredom, right?

It was worse than a root canal.

If you want to attack the president, have at it. The last time I checked, the First Lady doesn’t make policy, although the She-devil of The Usual Suspects tried awfully hard. And…if you’re going to call someone a corrupt liar, it’s best to have a documented comeback just in case they call you on it.

Just at the time Henry Rollins is wrapping his [taped] live performance, Larry the Cable Guy is showing up on the Comedy Channel. He was also in front of a live audience, and the Comedy Channel does bleep some of the saltier words, as opposed to IFC’s policy of “uncut…uncensored.” Fine by me; there are no children remaining in the Possum Den, and every decent American has that remote box on the TV tray, so they can exercise their First Amendment franchise.

Larry is—allegedly—a hog farmer from somewhere in the heartland of America. I’m thinking Missouri; he was on FOX, and gave his real name and everything, but I don’t take notes on the particulars. He was promoting something; a book, a tour, an album…I forget. He kept it clean for FOX; his onstage persona was definitely saltier. Can you say “bull…” without adding the second stand-alone word?

Larry used his terms sparingly, and got great response when he did call a spade a spade. He riffed about nude beaches, genital shaving, and trying on thongs at Victoria’s Secret, but he did it in a way that flew, most of the time. He got laughs from his audience—including me—without having to resort to personal attacks. His routine was just the antidote I needed for Henry Rollins.

I am not the first person to declare that Those People have no sense of humor. Nor will I be the last. They sit there and scowl, even when they’re doing what I’d kill to do: appearing on radio and TV. Everything is so damn serious to them. They don’t just sulk because they have lost power, and have no credibility with what’s left of mainstream America; they whimper because they see the whole world going to hell in a handbasket, and they’re disappointed that no one acknowledges that they alone have the only solution. They can’t tell a joke; they need one explained to them. They regard ironic, self-deprecating humor as a confession of sorts, while declaring themselves to be the Masters of Irony.

I thank God every day for my little bit of life in the post-Post-Modern world.

Maybe it’s a symptom of the dreaded mid-life crisis, but I have come to realize that the world has been going to hell since I was born in the 1950s, and it will still be devolving when I draw my last breath. No one can save the world; just when you think you’ve got ‘er done, to paraphrase Larry, the sun will flame out in about 23,000,000,000 years, and burn our progeny to cinders.

Larry the Cable Guy likes to say “Get ‘er done!” a lot in his live act. He also calls bovine fertilizer what it is, in no uncertain terms. He gets bleeped.

Henry Rollins is a scumbag. Scum grows on ponds, as algae, and bags are receptacles for various items. So, that ain’t cussin’, exactly. Larry TCG is funny, because he addresses human issues that really concern us, like shaving your girlfriend’s back. I don’t need some know-nothing to tell me what’s wrong with Iraq, gay marriage, FOX News, or the immigration amnesty. Like Al Franken laundering campaign money through Air America and the largesse of George Soros, Rollins is given a forum without definition or documentation. If it sounds funny, say it. Someone will laugh.

I’d rather have another root canal than listen to another Henry Rollins monologue.

Playing to the lowest common denominator is the surest way to get stuck on stupid, as the new cliché goes.

I held this little review back, so visitors could read the last post without distraction. I’m not through with this immigration nonsense. Every time I hear “guest workers” cross someone’s lips, I cringe. I heard some spinster mouthing the other day that it will take school buses lined up, bumper-to-bumper, from here to the moon to deport 11,000,000 illegal aliens.

Hey! Do it by increments! Those protests, where the army of the reconquista is waving those flags from a sovereign, foreign country, is a good place to start.