The Gospel According to Prisco

Ain’t this been a month?  I’ve actually watched, and listened to, and read my way through a ton of shit.  I just haven’t taken the time to write in my usual taut and concise manners.  Mostly, because of other writing obligations.  I love to write.  And now I’m neckdeep in the motherfucker.  But it means I’m so busy writing, I can’t find time to write.  Riddle that, batdick.

It’s not a complaint, it’s an apology.  And if anything, it’s sort of like boot camp.  It’s forcing me to write every day, or at least sketch up outlines and whatnot.  I’m doing a Pajiba article a week, and I just joined a really nifty group of Pajibbidactyls at Blog Me A Tale.  Each month, there’s a new topic, and we’re to write a blog entry concerning whatever is there.  The first month was Open Mic, where we could write about anything.  I wrote about my first open mic experience in college.  It’s called Ode to My Penis.  Because someone’s got to class up the joint over there.  Don’t just read mine though, check out everyone else’s.  It’s a really awesome conglomerate of writerly folk.  I’m looking forward to my monthly contributions.

Also, in case you wonder why my interwebular presence is going to be lacksadaisical in the next month, it’s because I’ve signed on to do Script Frenzy!  Similar to my blast through 50,000 words on NaNoWriMo (half the novel I intend to complete this next go around) in one month, the idea is to write a 100-page screenplay in 30 days.  But since I’m a psychotic self-abusive asscock who can’t do anything the easy way, I’ve decided that I’m going to try to write 4 screenplays in a month.  One a week.  All horror films. 

If I get four plot outlines and character layouts worked up for these things, I’ll consider it a victory.  If I finish one, the website considers it a victory.  If I finish two, I’ll shit.  But goddammit, I’m going for four.  Higginbottom may or may not also be attempting it. 

If you are part of Script Frenzy, and want to join in, sign up at the site, then befriend me.  My username is CharlesDickensCider.  Because I am mature and witty.   I’m going to probably be on AIM for most of this, with the screenname Hooray4Pancakes.  So if you feel like shouting out to me, please do.  I may get distracted and cranky when it starts coming down to crunch time.  But hey, when am I not bitchy? 

I’ve honestly got about 15 reviews to post, that I’ve got listed at the top of this page, and I’m cranking through some other stuff that’ll go up for April.  Lawdy, lawdy, I’m already fucking exhausted and I haven’t even gotten into the grind of things yet.  Son of a bitch.

Whereever We Go We Bring Monkey With Us

My latest review for Hangover Theatre! I think it’s going to be a Thursday/Friday regular gig. Fhweeee!

On other news, I apologize for not writing more as of late. It’s taken all my efforts just to concentrate on not veering into other cars on the 101. Not out of any sort of suicidal impulse (for once!) but just from sheer exhaustion. I have about ninetyteen friggin’ reviews waiting in the queue. It’ll happen, peeps. I promise.

My second review is up on Pajiba! for your delights.  It’s titled “Slap That Baby, Make Him Free”, and it’s a review of the Underappreciated Gems variety on Time Bandits.  I titled it in honor of Maureen, and her insistance that the line from the movie was “Slap that baby, make him pee”.  Which in all fairness, it totally should have been.  But she was so delightfully demanding.  And that made me laugh. 

Soon, I will be an official staff member!  Which probably involves some sort of combination of movie watchin’ and a-paddlin’. 

It’s that time of year, the time of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament of Champions, or as many people know it, Oh Shit That Basketball Thingy.  The time of year when fathers and sons bond for exactly thirty minutes, when the last two minutes really do count, when mystery illnesses empty cubicles and fill bars in the middle of the afternoon, when other wise law abiding citizens become dime store bookies, collecting three dollars in the name of donut stores everywhere, and when lazy students can raise their grade point average with “brackets”.   What a glorious time of the year.

I love to gamble.  I put as much feverish delight in collecting Oscar pools as I do NCAA Brackets.  There are no teams to root foor, there are no wild bets to make.  It’s win or go home.  And as much feverish erasing as you can do, as much plotting and judging and consulting of chicken bones, any team can beat any other team at any given time.  Provided they aren’t a 16 seed.   Once a year, 64 teams start out, culled from a process that has about as much logic as the presidential primary.  Some earn their spots through combat, fighting their way through a seperate tournament altogether to earn a noble 12 seed.  Others, like legacy, get their simply by virtue of the dogs with which they hunt.  Schools we’ve never heard of do battle against legendary warriors for a mere few minutes.   People sit, raptly clutching their photocopied newspaper brackets, cheering desperately for five boys from a place seemingly as fictional as Trafalmador or Narnia.  That’s motherfucking America.  Winning money off the sweat of young boys.  Sinner.

I am hardly a sports fanatic, and in some circles I would be deemed a poseur.  I can root for just about any sport with equal aplomb.  I will shout profanity at the Dallas Cowboys as they engage in bloody conquest with my beloved Philadelphia Eagles.  I will leap up in the air as Tiger Woods sinks an unbelievable 30 foot putt to go into sudden death after four grueling days of golf.  I will type up a term paper or movie review as idly watch the Red Sox play an exhibition game against the Phillies, happy because I have a cold beer and both my teams are playing.  My first date with my beloved Higginbottom was an Anaheim Ducks/Pittsburgh Penguins game, because we both love hockey.  But by love, I mean, we like to watch it live.  Hell, I’ve even watched NASCAR. 

But I can’t quote stats.  I can’t tell you who’s got the highest ERA percentage.  I can’t tell you who’s top of the standings.  Shit, sometimes I can’t even remember players names.  I am a fan in the moment.  I follow teams out of loyalty to the cities I come from, or the cities I’ve lived in.  I became a Red Sox fan the year before they won the World Series, because that was the first year I lived in Boston, and in Boston, baseball is a motherfucking religion.  And I drank deep from the cup of victory when they won.  I was dancing on the stoop outside my apartment, high-fiving cops on horseback and hugging complete strangers because one team scored more points than the other.  But I’m not obsessive.  I love going to games, I understand most of the rules, and I know some of the players.  It’s not like with movies.  I can name directors, writers, actors, cinematographers even.  I can quote movies verbatim.  I’m a motherfucker to play Six Degress of Kevin Bacon with.  

So I find myself at odds this time of year.  I’m too noob to be a sports nut, sitting around talking on barstools with old hats who’ve been following the Phillies since they were the fucking Athletics.  I watch sports to drink watered down beer and eat over priced hotdogs.  I watch sports because it brings everybody together.  But I’m too sporty to deal with all the geekery backlash.  The people who shun sports because they just don’t like it.  As if the two cannot mix.  I can appreciate it, the whole seemingly neanderthal “Me Like Sport” grunt-and-scratch machismo.  That somehow you are less of a man if you don’t watch a sport, so you’ll show them. 

But I say to you this, nerdlingers!  The En-SEE-Dubble-Ay!  It isn’t about sports!  It’s about victory!  You can know all the statistics you want, you could have followed teams to the bitter bone, but none of that matters.  It’s the Any Given Sunday Rule.  Or Any Given Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the first couple weeks.  It’s the Highlander of fucking sporting competitions.  Forget the Superbowl or the World Series.  This is it!  This is the great equalizer.    Ten men enter, five men leave.  And it’s quick and dirty and feverish.  It comes down to the last seconds, where teams have won by tossing that rock into the hoop.  I don’t understand the logistics of basketball.  It’s my least favorite sport to watch of ALL sports.   And that includes NASCAR.

But for this small set of weeks, for this brief period of time, all bets are off.  And all bets are ON!   Grab a bracket, ask someone how to fill it out, deal with their condescending snicker, and then laugh heartily as your random ass picks beat them.  Why?  Because that’s how it works.  One year, a friend of mine picked his entire bracket by flipping a coin.  He had Old Dominion going to the finals for the victory.  And we all laughed at him.  And that motherfucker won third place in the tournament and $37 dollars.  Who’s laughing now, baby?

So I say this unto you!  Cast off your shackles!  Set free your judgmentalism!  Do not fear the big orange ball, chilluns!  Get together with that meathead from the office, grab your pencils, bracket it up, fill a pitcher and watch as hearts are broken and three dollars becomes your ticket to victory! 

Viva LOS NCAA!  HALLEJULAH!  HOLY SHIT!  Where’s the fucking Tylenol?

Yay!  I have achieved internet stardom.  My very first post ever at Pajiba! is up for your viewing pleasure/displeasure.  I justified Joe Dirt as proper hangover viewing.  I’m happy so far in the the comments tend to be towards the “great job, awesome show!” variety, and even the negative ones are merely towards Senor Dirte and not my savaging of the English language. 

And this is bolstering my traffic which is always a good thing.  There are many Pajibians who’s webpages I take joy in, and I have yet to add them to the list of folk, merely because I don’t like to just add people without their permission first.  So if you want to be among the legions of followers, please, shoot me an email at priscogospel@hotmail.com. 

Also, if you have any suggestions, selections, intoxications, libations or procreations, please drop me a holler.  I might actually become a semi-regular contributor if I don’t run out of Pimpjuice.  Or suffer an aneurysm ala scientific self-body experimentation (Manny) or television indignation (TK) or even election withdrawal (Beckylooooooooooooo).

Wheeee!  Now I’ve got even more excuses to get drunk!

I spent this weekend coping with dystopia.  My current bathroom literature is 2012: The Return of Quetzlcoatl, which is a little hippie/hipster smart for my tastes.  It oozes self-righteous smarm while peddling new age enlightenment.  Essentially, the according to the Mayan calendar, the world as we know it, is supposed to end in December of 2012. Not necessarily, kaboom sayonara, but just that our collective unconscious may suddenly experience a paradigm shift.  We all decided to submit to the corporate borg of Apple computers, or whatever.  It’s an interesting concept, but a monotonously mountainous read.  But finish it, I shall nonetheless.  Through no purposeful forethought of my own, I managed to also start reading both A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.  And I queued up the next two available films on my Watch Instantly queue for Netflix.  Which were Logan’s Run and Soylent Green.

I am fascinated by the end of the world.  Usually, it comes at the hands of some sort of worldwide disaster, either Mother Nature claiming her revenge as in the uberstorm of The Day After Tomorrow, or the greenhouse effect withering crops in Soylent Green.  Technology makes for an interesting garnish when seasoning the future.  Consider the cell phone.  Ten years ago, I didn’t own a cell phone.  I didn’t need one, I couldn’t imagine why I would ever.  Then, because of an emergency car failure, I found myself bounding back and forth from where my car had broken down in a parking space that I shouldn’t have been parked in to the pay phone to find out when the tow truck was coming.  The second I was picked up from the garage where they repaired my car, I told my parents to take me to the Verizon store, because I was getting a goddamn cell phone that day.  Now, I can’t imagine my life without one.  I use it to keep in contact with my brother or my girlfriend.  I don’t imagine the future ending up like the Jetsons anytime soon, but there could potentially be colonization on other planets, video phones being common, all our entertainment being piped wirelessly to our computers and cable boxes.  I imagine it being very much like it is right now, only with shinier toys. 

But not in the futures set forth by the entertainment world. Society always breaks down under the rule of some sort of totalitarian regime or corporate overlord.  Don’t forget, most of this stuff was imagined over 30 years ago, so I can’t fathom how people won’t see this coming.  But then again, motherfuckers still vote Republican, so what can you do?  It’s always run by some sort of crazy megalomaniacal overlord, or else a cadre of old white men.  They revel in capturing people and subjecting them to inquistion like tortures.  You know, latching their eyes open and forcing them to be desensitized by graphic images, or throwing them in cold stone prison cells, or waterboarding them or….oh.  Wait. 

Inevitably, society is turned into some sort of desolate wasteland strife with mongrel hordes.  Either radiation-sick or chemically-poisoned zombies, or weird ass tribal clans.  These pseudo-gangs always have tattered rags for clothing, carry bizarre antique weapons crafted with hammers and soldering irons out of crap in the dumpster behind Lowe’s, and inevitably are just filthy, filthy monsters.  Usually, they are lead by someone with a beard or eye patch.  And no matter why there’s one woman in the gang, as if following the Smurfette rule will lead to better killing, she’s either a mannish brute or a skimpy whore.  Ladies can do killings too, you know.

Mostly though, the ladies are being saved for the rent-a-whore service that’s offered in the future.  I guess you can grow up to be anything, as long as anything means prostitute or wife.  Apparently, someone has to get the dick in dictatorship crammed in them repeatedly.  Usually by someone who resembles or actually is that fat guy from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.   It’s just really funny to me in a totalitarian society, concubinism is encouraged.  Drugs, too.  So apparently, the Republicans and Democrats can agree on something, provided that society resemble a mob-ruled Las Vegas.   But Ridley Scott knows that you can’t keep a good Rutger Hauer down.

Even if there are starships or futuristic weapons, they tend to be used to keep everyone in check, protect against an alien menace, or to defend against the warring tribes.  As is wisely communicated in A Canticle for Liebowitz, sure a nuclear bomb wiped out society the first time. But what are the chances of it happening again?  Now that we’ve got an even bigger bomb? 

The concept of 2012 is not that we will inevitably succumb to the mass zombie onslaught that we so richly deserve, but that society will eventually wake up.  It will change forever, hopefully for the better.  I suspect this will result in either some sort of ubertechnology, or some sort of universal Luddite movement, where everyone shuns the computers and starts farming for themselves.  If I told you that you can become smarter through meditation, you can live longer with minimal exercise, and you can be healthy without medication, you’d be on board.  But if I told you that to do that, you’d have to worship a science-fiction book and work on your imaginary internal ions, you’d look at me like an asshole.  However, if I told you that those imaginary internal ions were called medicholorians, and that you could train to be a Jedi knight, you’d line up like a motherfucker trying to buy the last Wii.  But if I told you that the secret to all my knowledge came from aliens, unless that alien was Yoda, you’d be all up in my craw again. 

I just don’t think society wants to accept slow change.  Change will have to come swiftly and electronically.  It’s going to involve technology, and it’s going to involve some sort of corporate overlord.   Society is run by five basic companies.  My wish is that if they were to pull the plug on our dependence on easy living and hurl a sledgehammer into the television blaring constant amusement, we’d start up theatre troupes and tell stories around campfires we read from honest to god books, and we’d learn to cook again, we’d start talking as people.  But in reality, we’d shriek and moan, and sit and wait for the power to come back on.  We’d start going insane.  We’d be uncomfortable.  In making a list of necessities for myself, I realized I had to include internet access and cell phones.  Two things I didn’t have ten years ago, but living this far from my family, I can’t live without. 

My wish for the future would be enlightenment and an artistic renaissance, but in reality, I see the world ending up like The Running Man.  Tell me you don’t honestly believe that we are but five or six years away from sponsoring criminal executions via a high-tech, corporate sponsored gameshow.   Where people can bet foodstamps on the end result.

But what the fuck do I know.  Arnold’s my fucking governator.

Well, the saga continues.  I spoke to my doctor the other day, and it appears that everything is good.  My blood pressure is coming down, though it’s not quite where we want it to be.  I’m saving the health care stuff for the other blog, but suffice it to say, all is decent if not well. 

Friday rolled around, and I went in to have my showdown with my boss.  I told him that I needed health care, that that was no longer an option but a priority.  I told him that I would like him to raise my salary so that I could pay for the healthcare myself, but I wanted to make sure I got the best plan possible.  I told him that I needed vacation days and sick/personal days.  I told him that I would like to be made salaried, and that, if he wasn’t willing to pay for my full increase, I would like a pay bump that would put me up a whopping $2500 extra a year.  I told him that I needed this money to actually PAY for the medical care that I required.  That the extra $175 that I would earn (after Uncle Sam drinks my milkshake) would go towards doctor’s/dentist’s visits (because my wisdom teeth are making my mouth look like Sloth), complete lab work, and essential care in case there was an emergency and I had to be hospitalized. 

Now, let me divulge a few details.  My job does not exist in the real world.  I applied at a temp agency for data entry/clerical work when I moved to California.   I ended up doing the invoicing for a company that cleans grocery carts and repairs shopping equipment.   For the past year and a half, I’ve essentially watched this company fall apart under the complete douchebaggery of my boss.  My position is executive administrative assistant/internal quality control facilitator.  What does that mean?  I’ve got no fucking idea.  I made it all up.  That’s how we roll.  Basically, I’m responsible for typing up the invoices from the cart services, answering phones, acting as my boss’s personal assistant (complete with booking flights and rental cars), filing, etc.  Oh, I’m also the shipping manager for his latest magnetic shopping cart ponzi scheme.  So like I said, my job doesn’t exist.  Now, every time he increased my responsibilities, I went to him for a raise.  He didn’t like that, called me unprofessional.  I told him, in a normal company, I’m doing the job of two people, so I want the pay of both of them.  He said, that’s not how it works.  I said, no, it doesn’t.  It’s called a promotion, look it up.  I don’t suffer fools, and because of that, he had a begrudging respect for me.  Or so I thought.

We get the big teamwork speech Thursday, about how this is a family, and we all need to feel like part of it, and we need to watch the company grow, and we need to help that, and puppydogs and rainbows and sunshine and all that farty fart fart.  So I’m feeling good about my prospects.  So I go into his office, and I lay it out.  I need an answer on this today.  Mostly because he would hem and haw over it for two months before making any changes.  I told him, I need to know if I would be a part of this team on Monday.  Because if not, I need to go find other work. 

Well.  First, he berates me for sandbagging him like this.  He doesn’t like this insistence or pressure.  He doesn’t appreciate me making ultimatums.  He calls me out for being unprofessional.  This, from the motherfucker who fired one of my co-workers on a Friday afternoon after I left for the day.  Not only did he fire him, but he had secretly been training his replacement for a month.  The dude had been with the company for 8 months, and boss man just ditches him.  Tells me, Mike took it like a man. 

Then, he proceeds to insult and belittle me.  Telling me my job is easily replaceable.  Telling me that this company isn’t as profitable as I think it is.  Telling me that my demands are ridiculous, the amounts that I’m quoting him.  Motherfucker, I DO THE FUCKING BILLING.  I process the fucking checks.  I KNOW WHAT WE MAKE.  You know how much we charge to do a full service at a store?  Anywhere between $1500 and $2000 a service.  Now, we’ve got six warehouses, and almost 15 crews.  Who are doing services Monday through Friday, and occasionally Saturday.  So that’s about $25000.  A DAY.  Even being less than generous, we pull in $100,000 a week.  Sure, he has to pay payroll and office expenses and yadda yadda.  But that doesn’t count all the other services we do that are pretty much pure profit.  We fucking make over $10 million dollars a year.  And the cost to run the company is about $4 million.  That’s $6 million.  And this cunt can’t fork over an extra $7500.  Just typing this pisses me off. 

Then he condescends to me.  He gives me this line about how I need to consider my professionalism.  And then he gives me some “mentoring” advice.  The day I take advice on how to conduct my life according to his personal philosophy is the day I finally stretched my big toe long enough to swallow the barrel of a shotgun.  Mostly to cure myself of the flying monkeys bursting from my asshole. 

After all this, he tells me that he will get me the medical insurance, but he wants to pay for it, because he knows that “some people” would quote a number and then buy lesser medical insurance and pocket the rest of the money.  You know, liars.  Like me.  It was the second time he questioned my integrity in less than a week.   He tells me that he will give me a week of vacation and two personal/sick days.  He then tells me that he will consider whether or not to raise my salary, and he’ll give me a decision but not until next week, and even then there’s no guarantee that there will be a discussion, but that he will consider it. 

I basically tell him that I would like him to instantly give me the pay raise, and then consider bumping it up to a proper salary in two or three months after I’ve proven to him that I can take on the extra responsibilities.  What extra responsibilities?  The ones he’s already going to put on me.  He’s going to increase my workload by 40%.  And he doesn’t want to pay me extra for it.   He just wants me to do it, and then maybe he will increase my pay rate.  Maybe.

I finally found my pride.  There it was, at the bottom of the fucking barrel.  I don’t want to find another job.  As shitty as my job is, it’s not hard, I’ve gotten my niche with my other co-workers, and I was learning to leave it at the door as I went on to get my really real career as an actor/writer/burdenonsociety.  I don’t want to have to break myself in at a new job, and maybe hate it, and leave to find more work.  Interviewing is demeaning, and since I have degrees in English/Theatre as well as an MFA in Screenwriting, I always have to defend myself that I’m not going to up and quit.  I usually tell them the truth, that it’s a fickle business and it’s hard to get a foot in the door, and that opportunity might not come until years down the road.  And in the meantime, I’ll work as hard as I can for your company.  Which is pretty much true. 

But no amount of money can keep me at this piss poor excuse for a company, with my Napoleon Bonerheart boss.  Seriously, the motherfucker looks like Joe Piscopo, complete with collar opened to the third button shirts and a jewfro mullet.  You better fucking believe there’s a screenplay coming out of this.  Office Space indeed.  So I’m looking for new work.  I haven’t put in two weeks notice, and I don’t believe I will be.  I know he’ll take it like a man. 

$4 is all it takes to save my life.  Four fucking dollars, twice the bounty on John Cusack’s life, to keep me alive.  And a piece of paper.  But, oh, it was that elusive piece of paper that was the motherfucker to obtain.

I always loved the phrase “The Cost of Living”.  I was planning on naming my first collection of short stories that.  (And I still am, so back off, you fucking jackals.)  But never has it meant more to me than after today, and the events of this weekend.

Saturday found us going to the Glendale Health Clinic at 7:30 AM.  I moved a potentially valuable audition to make sure I could fit both in the same day.  Higginbottom does our clerical research, and after making a surreptitious at-work phone call was informed that walk-in appointments were available at 7:30 AM on Saturday.  So when we drove the 15 or so minutes to Glendale to discover the joint closed, we were perplexed.  Apparently, by 7:30 AM on a Saturday, they meant, 7:30 AM Monday through Friday, fuck you fatty and your sleep.  So we drove home.

I began calling free clinics on the Los Angeles County Public Health Website.  There was a clinic open on Saturday, and so I called them first, because there were down towards East LA.  Everything you heard about Compton and East LA are true.  Going there is like those kids playing capture the flag who would play run across the line and back to taunt the other kids.  Except here, getting tagged means two to the back of the dome, spray painted, and left for dead up in a vacant by Chris and Snoop.  I respectfully keep my lily whole wheat ass out of the ghetto.  But enough of my suburbanly racist rhetoric.  I am informed in broken english that they are not taking new patients, and to call back in two or three MONTHS.  Thank you, American Health Care system!

So I decide to call Glendale Health Center on Monday to set up an appointment during the week.  Which I will have to make up on my own time so that I can get paid for it.  Glendale informs me that, yes, I can just walk-in, it will only cost $50.  Because even though every fucking cent I make goes to paying bills, I make too much income to qualify for low income medical care.  I thank her, and inform my asshole boss via email (because he flew up to San Jose to pimp our business) that I will not be in Tuesday morning, and potentially the rest of the day.  He agrees, but tells me to document my hours, because otherwise “how will he know?”  He just called me a liar.  I want to make him a living pinata.

So here we are on Tuesday.  After obtaining transportation to and fro work for Higginbottom (oh, did I forget to mention we share a car? In LA?), I drive to the clinic in Glendale.  Already, a line is forming.  I ask to make sure I’m in the right place.  I tell the woman that I need a general check-up.  She tells me that they no longer do general check-ups.  But if I have an issue, I can be examined.  So I say, yeah, I’m having chest pains because I think I have gallstones, but I need a check-up to make sure.  She cocks an eyebrow and says, we don’t do checkups.  I say, “I have chest pain”.  She nods, says, “Good boy.” and gives me the forms to fill out.  I wait as the queue starts to fill.  The woman calls number 9.  I’m number 19.  But then, I figure that numma nine means 19.  Because she can’t read 19.  Awesome.  The nurse asks me a few questions, and then says, “Well, for the gallstones, we might be able to see you, but because you have chest pain, you have to go to the hospital.  Immediately.”  I say, I can’t afford the hospital.  She says, “No, they’ll give you the low income deal we do.”  I smile, and tell her how much I make.  She gets sad.  Oh, yeah.  No, they won’t take you then.  You won’t qualify.  But they can put you on the installment plan.”  But she can and won’t do anything for me.  I thank her quietly and leave.

Because of the cost of healthcare, a hospital visit, with the necessary EKG, lab work, and various folks poking and prodding me, will cost between $1500 (i wish) and $4000 (they wish).  I can’t afford to pay $100 a month for several years to have them shrug and tell me they aren’t sure.

I call Higginbottom.  I tell her, I’m going to start contacting health insurance agents.  She tells me that she’ll look into her DGA program, but even if I get on her plan, it probably won’t go into effect until the first of the first month beyond a full month after it goes into effect.  Which means, if it happened today, it wouldn’t work until May 1st.  I think.

I call an agent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.  I had been checking out their Tonik plan, which is designed for twentysomethings to get cheapo coverage.  It’s $109 a month with a $1500 deductible.  So sure, I can go to the doctor, but if I need lab work, I pay full price.  Again, can’t pay.  Also, this is for a 20-29 year old.  I am just 4 months shy of 30.  So it goes up.  I call the agent.  She gives me the skinny.  It would cost $144 a month.  For a $35 co-pay, and 60/40 split on lab work and a $750 deductible on brand name prescriptions.  I don’t need brand names, so it goes down to $132.  So I pay $132 a month, plus the $35 for the doc visit, and then 40% of whatever the lab work is going to be, which will be inevitably expensive.  So that pushes it to over $200.  Not working.

Higginbottom calls me.  If we get married, I go on her plan instanteously.  That means, if we hop in a car to Vegas, get a quicky marriage (which is the best way to make a lifelong sacred commitment, and absolutely romantic, since her engagement/wedding ring will undoubtedly be an onion ring, cause that’s what I can afford), and drive back with the wedding certificate, I go on the DGA plan.  Which would cost us an extra $50 a month.  And we’d share the deductible she already used up with her surgery.  Which has $0 co-pay, and 90% of labs covered, if not all of them, if they’re done in network.

Let us recap.  Right now, my most viable healthcare option involves a Vegas marriage. Now you fucking tell me Michael Moore didn’t deserve to win an Oscar for Sicko. 

While searching for a powder blue tux in tubby little bastard sizes, I happen upon the phrase “urgent care clinic”.  Let me explain the concept of an urgent care clinic.  It is similar to ordering at Outback Steakhouse.  You pay a flat fee for the initial exam.  Then you pay for any extra labwork and testing off a menu.  No, I’m fucking serious.  A menu.  EKG work?  $60.  Blood tests?  $75.  Loaded baked potato?  $4.85.   Then you pay the full cost at the end.  I start pricing urgent care clinics.  I call one in Sherman Oaks.  Sherman Oaks is where Britney Spears buys her Starbucks.  The initial fee is $120.  Lab work included, but the EKG and seasoned french fries combo package will run me to the super-sized cost of $200.  Thanks, but I’m looking for a Chili’s or Applebee’s, not Cheesecake Factory.  

I then see a webpage that I swore was for Nursing Assistants Gone WILD!  It advertised $20 walk-in.  The page looked like someone did it up on an old geocities site.  I was looking for the little Joe Francis logo.  The doctor was pictures amidst all his beautiful nurses.  Like a slut buffet.  And this was also below the 10 freeway, so I figured I would be found in a bathtub full of icecubes sans a liver and with a new thirteen tattoo.  Plus, you don’t really want a bargain basement doctor plan with someone who smacks of Dr. Nick.  Someone has to graduate last in the class at medical school.  They’re called malpractice lawyers.  Or Mexican gender altering surgeons.  

Finally, I saw a doctor advertised in Canoga Park, which was out near where I worked.  It seemed to look professional.  It was a $40 initial fee.  It came with a free 7 day followup, and choice of soup or salad.  Tuesdays they have Snickers pie.  Sold!

I drove out to the Urgent Care Clinic, and immediately filled out the paperwork.  It went super fast, no waiting.  The doctor took my blood pressure, which was through the roof.  We talked about my diet, about foods I should eat (which I’m eating), taking baby aspirin (which I do already), and the medicine I need to take.  He would fill the prescription in office.  I asked what that cost.  It was $15.  I asked if I could just get a prescription, because I could find it cheaper.  He said, not a problem.  He told me he wanted to do a blood work test to check my cholesterol, and then an EKG to see if there was any damage.  $10 for the EKG, $45 for the lab work.  SOLD!

His nurse, who I was afraid was a teen Nurse Ratched, turned out to be incredibly sweet, and got me sensored up (apologizing for the chest hair I was about to lose in the name of health science) and drew blood.  I was afraid she would be less than skilled, because she was in a cheap office.  She was brilliant!  Turns out I didn’t have a heart attack, but I need to be on blood pressure medication.  He’s going to call me later in the week to review the lab work to see if I need to go on cholesterol medication.  He was totally familiar with South Beach, so he figures if it isn’t too bad, he we’ll be able to diet it to normal.  Oh, and that’s going to cost me NOTHING.  Even if I have to run back for the prescription.  I told him, it’s only going to be $40, I don’t have insurance.  He says, “I’m the doctor for people without insurance.  That’s why I’m here.”  I almost hugged him.

So $95 later, I had my prescription.  Which he made out for enough pills for two months, plus another refill for two months.  So I wouldn’t have to go see him for another four months if I wanted.  I drove to Wal-Mart, where despite them being evil and corporate, they also sell generic prescriptions for $4 for 30 pills.  So I got my slip of magic paper, and now $4 later, I have the medication which will cure all of my ails.  

So the cost for me to live:  $4. 

The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub

Eh.  Once again, Peter Straub, you’ve let me down.  I’ve noticed that with Straub, he tends to adapt to the style he’s obsessing about in his writings.  Almost always, his stories are about novels, or novelists, or playwrights, or people who are ravenous fans of an author.  In Mr. X, it was Lovecraft.  Here, the story revolves around a publishing magnate, and his one great success, a novel that quickly became a trilogy, but the first novel is called Night Journey, and it’s a kind of The Hobbit meets Lewis Carroll.  Anyway, the publishing magnate had a son, or maybe he adopted him, or maybe not.  And this son is a milquetoast who married a mildly psychotic former nurse.  And they live in New England, under the thumb of daddy and the maddening upper class.  The story itself quickly draws upon the gothic, as a serial killer is savaging the single older women of the town, and when the killer is caught, he kidnaps the wife of the publishing magnate’s son.  And then chaos and literary hijinks ensue.

If you’re having problems following what I’m talking about, it’s because I have problems explaining what the novel was about.  It’s this meandering lumbering oliphant, that crashes along this path that seems so forced.  As the serial killer and Nora, the least enjoyable heroine I’ve ever encountered (and that includes Jane Eyre), pursue this quest to determine the truth behind the mystery within a mystery in the true authorship of Night Journey, Straub seems to believe he’s taking you on a meta-journey.  But the problem is, he’s interwoven so many plots and story threads, that instead of coming up with a rich tapestry, he’s got a ball of yarn savaged by kittens.  And the characters are so stock and stuffy and unlovable, that you really don’t want to bother with it. 

I’ve been told that these were bad novels by a Straub fan, and that I should take up Ghost Story.  So that’ll go on my list, but it’s going way, way down.  This is the same guy who told me he didn’t like Heart-Shaped Box.