Charles Grodin just died, which makes me incredibly sad. I thought about writing a eulogy, but then I remembered that I wrote about him years ago, on a now-defunct movie site. Luckily, I had it backed up in my files:

Charles Grodin is a comedy god.

Either you’re now wondering who he is, finding his name vaguely familiar, or recognizing him and disagreeing with my assessment. OR, you know comedy and you know what I’m talking about.

Grodin (born Charles Grodinsky) had a few moments of outrageous comedy in his career, but what defines him is the mastery of playing the straight man. It’s harder than many think, especially when the other characters sometimes get more attention.

It might be easier to talk about straight man/not straight man using Eric Idle’s terms (1):

“There are two types of comedian . . . both deriving from the circus, which I shall call the White Face and the Red Nose. Almost all comedians fall into one or the other of these two simple archetypes. In the circus, the White Face is the controlling clown with the deathly pale masklike face who never takes a pie; the Red Nose is the subversive clown with the yellow and red makeup who takes all the pies and the pratfalls and the buckets of water and the banana skins. . . . the White Face is the controlling neurotic and the Red Nose is the rude, rough Pan. The White Face compels your respect; the Red Nose begs for it. The Red Nose smiles and winks, and wants your love; the White Face rejects it. He never smiles; he is always deadly serious.  Never more so than when doing comedy.”

If you’ve ever seen a movie with Charles Grodin, you can picture his white face, pinched perfectly as he delivers lines with perfect dry wit.

How dry was his wit? Well, the one time he hosted SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, they “themed” the show (something that happens on MUPPET SHOWS more than SNL). The “theme” was that Grodin would play himself, as an actor who hadn’t prepared and kept messing up his lines. How did this experiment in postmodern SNL go? Grodin was so convincing that the audience didn’t like him (why hadn’t he prepared? they asked themselves) and he never hosted again.

You can still see Grodin working today, but I want to explore what I consider his best period: the early 1980s.

SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES (1980). This is one of my favorite comedies of all time. Grodin plays Ira Parks, a lawyer attempting to turn politician.  He’s married to another lawyer played by Goldie Hawn. And their life is fine until her ex-husband (Chevy Chase) shows up, running from the law. It’s a pitch-perfect film, written by comedy master Neil Simon. Poor Ira has to fight for his job, his wife, and his sanity. I’d probably pick Chase’s character over Ira, but that’s because I make romantic mistakes. The only disappointing thing about this movie? You never get the recipe for Chicken Pepperoni.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN (1981). Grodin is Vance Kramer, married to a character played by Lily Tomlin. This movie was ahead of its time with its concern about the chemicals leaching into our bodies everyday (what makes the wife shrink) and animal testing. Tomlin is our fabulous red nose to her supportive white face husband. (They thought about doing this movie in 3D; I’m glad they didn’t).

THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER (1981). Faithful readers will know that I love anything Muppet, so how could I go wrong with Grodin playing Nicky Holliday? His red nose partner here is Frank Oz (as Miss Piggy) and a whole host of muppets. Holliday falls immediately in love with Miss Piggy, but we know her heart is always reserved for Kermit. Sad when the white white can’t even get the pig:

THE LONELY GUY (1984). Many argue that this is Grodin’s finest film and he is wonderful opposite Steve Martin. The screenplay is by Neil Simon. Martin plays a guy who learns how to be lonely (single) from Warren (Grodin) when he’s dumped. Martin is able to parlay his knowledge into a successful book and eventually romance, though his teacher is not so lucky. This movie shows Grodin hosting a party with celebrities—well, with life-sized cut outs of celebrities. Never has so much energy gone into loneliness. His life is summed up here: “I remember after I saw ROCKY, I ran out in the park jogging, shadow boxing. Some guy came up to me and punched me right in the face.”

THE WOMAN IN RED (1984). This film was directed by Gene Wilder, who was also the star. It’s basically a treatise on the inevitable attraction you will feel to other people, even after you’ve promised your fidelity to another for life. It’s fun to watch Wilder chase Kelly Le Brock, though you’re never quite sure why she lets him. Grodin is the buddy (aptly named Buddy) and is hilarious.

Playing the white face to Chase, Hawn, Muppets, Martin, and Wilder’s red noses is something to admire. I also have a soft spot for Grodin in HEART AND SOULS (1993), where he plays a ghost with unfinished business that only Robert Downey Jr.’s character can fix. 

Next time you’re watching comedy, appreciate the white faces. And go watch some Grodin. He deserves it.

(1) This definition comes from Eric Idle’s sci-fi comic piece, THE ROAD TO MARS: A POST-MODEM NOVEL. One of the characters, a robot named Carlton, who happens to be a “Bowie” model, writes his dissertation on 20^th Century comedy. If you like Idle, sci fi, and comedy, check out the novel.

I’m still not feeling safe enough to go to a museum, which is awful, because I love them. Even the bad ones. (Sometimes especially the bad ones.)

And it’s International Museums Day!

To celebrate, I’m going to Springfield, USA, which features over 20 museums, including the Civil War Prison and Museum of Sideburns, Fort Sensible, and the Museum of Generational Wealth.

Yesterday was “May the Fourth Be With You Day,” which meant I had to choose which of my five Star Wars shirts to wear. We watched the new Simpsons/Star Wars short, and I ended my day with a Star Wars-themed stand-up show on RushTix, hosted by Brian Posehn.

He was talking about his toys, which made me think about all the ones I had as a kid, which made me remember a time when I bought my son a few.

Christmas was coming, and I found myself in the bargain bin at Toys R Us, in an attempt to provide a good holiday on a single-mom budget. The year before, Star Wars toys had been big, which meant they were relegated to the bin this year. I bought several ships for us to put together.

Christmas was spent with my extended family.

On Christmas night, my son and I were on the floor next to my grandfather’s chair, attaching wings, figuring out which stickers went where.

My grandfather said, “You’re being a good mom.”

I was surprised for a few reasons. First, my grandfather was a man of few words; praise was rare.

Second, putting toys together didn’t seem like anything special to me. It wasn’t staying up with him all night when he got sick, making his favorite dinner even though I would have to stay up even later to finish my paper, not murdering him when he wouldn’t let me even go to the bathroom by myself, no matter how much I begged . . .

Still, I treasure this rare moment of acknowledgment. I hope it gave my grandfather some pleasure to watch the little girl he raised play with his great-grandson.

I didn’t write a wrap up last week, because I was down. I’m not great this week, but I’m not actively depressed anymore. It actually took me a while to realize I that I was–why do I keep staring off into space? Why does my face and body crumple the second I end a zoom call with a student? Why do I just want to sleep?

Luckily, my depression didn’t lie to me–it didn’t tell me that I didn’t deserve to be happy or that no one cared about me or that I would feel depressed forever.

Instead, it told me that my pain was going to keep getting worse.

And that’s probably true.

We’re dealing with a lot at my house. Anubis keeps getting blocked, even though we’re holding him down and cleaning his urethra, which is every bit as awful as it sounds. He’s been to the vet every week for the past month; Dante is literally there with him now as I type this.

Dante’s also had two flat tires in the past three weeks and will have oral surgery next week. And it’s heavy exam time for his Masters program.

I’m dealing with a couple of really difficult students, and that takes up more mental space than it should. My massage therapist is encouraging me to do a meditation throughout the day to clear the pressure of making all students happy all the time.

But what’s really causing problems right now is my physical health.

My TMJ dentist made me a night guard a couple of months ago. I had told him that I stopped wearing the one I got almost twenty years ago, because it made me grind more, and thus caused more pain. I told him my TMJ physical therapist a lower one would work better for me.

He told me he knew best and made a top one.

And I grind more.

And I wake up in pain more.

I met with him a couple of weeks ago, and we didn’t really talk about the guard because we had to go over the most intensive scans I’ve ever seen–down to the blood vessels. Apparently, not only do I have TMJ problems and arthritis and neck problems, which I knew already, but my airflow is constricted and my mouth didn’t form properly when I was a child and my tongue is in the wrong place. And apparently my tongue being in the wrong place maybe means I can’t breathe at night, and that would explain why I’m overweight and hypertensive (I would love to blame it completely on my tongue, and not on my stupid back making it hard to walk and my job being so sedentary and the food I cook being so good). And surely I’ve noticed these deformities, like how my upper lip is too thin, right?

I had not noticed that.

So he wants to cut my frenum and the tissue that connects my upper lip to my gums and put braces on me.

And I worked very hard not to cry, because having braces when I was a kid is when my daily headaches started, and moving my bones and teeth will hurt, and I have fibromyalgia, which means I will feel that hurt more than normal people, because my body is oversensitive and whiny.

And I think he said something about the braces closing the gap between my front teeth, but I don’t actually want that, because I’ve got this whole multiple-husbands, lusty wife of Bath thing going on.

And then, as I was working through this information and the depression that came with it, I started to bleed again, heavily.

Regular readers will remember that for several months last year, I had unexplained, constant heavy menstrual bleeding, which resulted in agonizing tests like a uterine scraping. We ended up fighting this by adding a second form of birth control–so now I’m on two different kinds, both of which are supposed to keep me from having periods all together.

It’s day 14 of this particular period, and it’s awful. I have some blood tests to do Wednesday.

I’ve been talking to some of my team members about what the TMJ doc wants to do, and their reaction reassures me that I’m not insane. They were all trained that lower night guards were best, and they have reservations about moving things in my skull around. My chiropractor stressed that this was a lot to add to all of the other body problems I’m working with right now and how if these procedures didn’t work–or made things worse–there would be no way to undo them.

I emailed the TMJ doc’s medical assistant a week ago with questions. If my tongue is in the wrong place, where is it supposed to be? Do I need a frenum cut to get it there? Can we try a lower guard? etc.

She hasn’t written back.

Today I head into Sacramento, to UCD’s genetics people, for a physical exam, to see if Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is likely.

I’m all cramped up because I walked for thirty whole minutes outside.

It’s just a lot.

And it’s been a lot for a long time, and usually I can handle that. And I don’t have unrealistic expectations. I’m a chronic pain patient. My goal is to manage, to keep going, not to erase what is unerasable.

But the dentist just threw me for a loop. I thought I knew what was wrong, and I did.

I just wasn’t prepared to learn my whole upper body was completely wrong and that it has been since the beginning of me.

And now I can’t stop thinking about my tongue.

I was so wrapped up in the rest of last week’s wrap up that I forgot to mention one of the most exciting things. I dreamed about Dan Savage, of the Savage Love Podcast. I tweeted about it, and he mentioned read and responded to my tweet on the show!

This last week, I was busy with UCD starting up; I welcomed classes 301, 302, and 303!

Two bummers this week: I was searching for my documents on the internet (something I do every once in a while to protect my intellectual property). I discovered one of my students last quarter stole 11 documents and put them up on Course Hero.

Think “stole” is too harsh a word? Students uploading to Course Hero have to say THEY are the copyright holder of the work.

So yeah. Stole.

Their code of conduct explicitly forbids sharing our materials, and I make a huge deal about this in class, since I had a student put a draft I shared with them online, which later led to me being accused of plagiarizing my own work when I tried to submit my piece to a journal.

As I was searching, I got sucked into the black hole that is Rate My Professor, which I know I should never read. I’m going to blame my mild OCD on obsessing over this. All I’ve been able to do the past couple of days is to argue with the naysayers in my head (“WTF? All the other students said this course was organized gorgeously! I got unprompted compliments! And if you were having trouble, why didn’t you tell me so we could fix the problem instead of yelling to the universe that I need to be fired?!?”)

Are there good reviews too?

Yes.

Do I know more students like me than hate me?

Yes.

Objectively.

Do I try to fight the negative voices by remembering I won the teaching award?

I do.

Does it help when I’m trying to sleep?

It does not.

In other news, I have indefinitely postponed the back surgery I was going to do this week. I have had many procedures similar to this one, and I’ve never gotten a bad feeling, but intuition says no to this one.

I think it’s because I know they will use this procedure to try to talk me into a nerve burn, which I don’t want.

Thus, intuition is like, “hey, let’s NOT go the medical center for another “this will only rarely paralyze people” thing when it’s just going to lead to an argument you don’t want to have.”

My treadmill came last night. Predictably, the not-quite-English instructions may have had us oil the belt incorrectly. The instructions also don’t include anything about changing the incline or the height of the handlebars, so I’ll have to do some tinkering, but my thighs already hurt from overdoing it.

Or doing it wrong. Not sure.

This week, I also bought the new album by my new favorite band, Tele Novella, I got my oil changed, we survived a flat-tire-on-the-boy’s-car wrench in one of the days, I made my first lohikeitto (Finnish Salmon Soup) of the season, and I tried two new recipes: lemongrass chicken (in the air fryer) and spicy cajun shrimp.

I got my post-Easter ham this morning, which I start playing with tomorrow.

“What wonders the compost bin is revealing, and who put in that avocado pit?”

That sounds like something I would do
I flash back to our full paper bag
That ends up behind our apartment complex
(And then? Who knows.)

Atwood has been gardening again
Planting and pruning
Knowing the helpful from the hurtful
Creating a balance I don’t understand

The generations before me,
Three of which I lived with,
Had farms
Or at least gardens

But they let me read
And kept me out of the chicken coop
My brain grew well red
My thumb grew black

My foremothers didn’t read dystopias
And my grandmother “retired” when her husband did
So I can cook, but not can
Sew, but not quilt

I’m not prepared for the zombies

Or even, as Atwood tweet-warns,
For the solar flare
Or an EMP attack

In my fantasy,
I find Atwood,
Who is prepared

In her books,
I’ve learned about replenishing ararats
And purslane
And what to do when it happens

I won’t be much help to her,
In terms of knowledge,
But I like to believe
That I would follow her directions

(Fantasy me is less bossy)
Not wasting her time
(Except in those moments
When she wanted me to)

I imagine us safe
-Ish
An evening lit by candles we made
After a cobbler that didn’t disappoint her

I would have had trouble
With the wood fire stove
But I’ve always known how to milk goats
And any fool can pick blueberries
(I even know to wear gloves
And watch for snakes.)

I manage to say something
She thinks is smart
And she laughs
And tells me to call her Peggy

And we no longer have leftovers
So I don’t have to worry
About the compost rules

I got my second vaccine! I could tell it was going to fuck me up, because I got numb in my arm, neck, and face right after the injection. Luckily, I had planned taking the next day off, which ended up being my only day off in Spring Break.

It was perfect for bingeing The Bureau, my new addiction.

My son and I have also decided to rewatch this little show called The Simpsons. Since we only get through a few a week, it will take a few years.

I saw two stand-up comedy shows and caught this month’s Sacramento French Film Festival offering, The Fantastic Journey of Margot and Marguerite, which was, as hyped, fantastic.

I did my taxes, got everything ready for UCD classes to start tomorrow, pulled my hair out over two problematic students at SCC, and attended a webinar on equitable grading.

I tried two new recipes:

Tumeric Black Pepper Chicken with Asparagus

Pork Chops in a Lemon Caper Sauce

And I got another air fryer.

Yup. Another air fryer.

I got a small one to experiment with a few months ago, and I fell in love with it. Lately, I’ve been disappointed that when I want to cook meat, potatoes, and a veg, I have to choose just one for the air fryer. I’m also thinking ahead to summer, when I will want to cook without heating up the kitchen. The air fryers don’t add much heat to the kitchen, and food cooks really fast in them.

My first night with two air fryers, I put a layer of green beans down in the big one, topped with a grill layer of chicken breasts.

The smaller air fryer got the potatoes. In 20 minutes, I had this:

I also discovered that I don’t have to do a boil and slow roast of pork ribs for them to be tender. They take 20 minutes in the air fryer.

Finally, Graymalkin got a new box. He’s a very happy boy.

Every time I hear the Republicans report what a Democrat said, I freak out a little bit.

Remember when Obama said he was moved by Treyvon Martin’s death because if he had a son, he would look like Treyvon?

And remember how Republican pundits said that what he said was “I only care if black children die. Kill whitey!”?

Recently Joe Biden said we could maybe safely have 4th of July BBQs.

Republican pundits lost their shit, claiming Biden was saying people aren’t allowed to have a BBQ without his express permission.

I freak out when I hear stuff like that because I’ve been gaslit like that my whole life, by a couple of family members with undiagnosed and untreated Borderline Personality Disorder.

Let’s review the symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic:

• An intense fear of abandonment, even going to extreme measures to avoid real or imagined separation or rejection [let’s overthrow the government so King Trump won’t leave us!]
• A pattern of unstable intense relationships, such as idealizing someone one moment and then suddenly believing the person doesn’t care enough or is cruel [John McCain is a hero! Wait, nevermind, he’s a coward. Let’s insult his family!]
• Rapid changes in self-identity and self-image that include shifting goals and values, and seeing yourself as bad or as if you don’t exist at all [2020: We don’t even have a platform anymore!]
• Periods of stress-related paranoia and loss of contact with reality, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours [Fake news! Qanon! Democrats are massive idiots who somehow stole an election!]
• Impulsive and risky behavior, such as gambling, reckless driving, unsafe sex, spending sprees, binge eating or drug abuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship [Nothing could possibly go wrong with aligning with white supremacists!]
• Suicidal threats or behavior or self-injury, often in response to fear of separation or rejection [If you end the filibuster, this will be a scorched-Earth Congress!]
• Wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days, which can include intense happiness, irritability, shame or anxiety [We’re #1. No, wait, we’re a terrible country full of pedophiles and traitors! No, wait, we need to do everything to resist any change, cause we’re #1!]
• Ongoing feelings of emptiness [Life isn’t even worth living if I can’t show my dick to women at work and read a couple of Dr. Seuss books I’d never heard of before I learned they’re racist.]
• Inappropriate, intense anger, such as frequently losing your temper, being sarcastic or bitter, or having physical fights [Let’s dox all the cucks and have a civil war!]

Last week definitely had more ups than downs. This week, not so much.

The bad:

Both the boy and I had to deal with medical b.s. Mine included driving all the way to Sacramento with a migraine, to see my TMJ specialist, only to be told that my appointment had completely disappeared from their system.

I’m also prepping for some facet injections in my back. The pain clinic and I are sort of at a stand-still. I don’t respond well enough to the treatments we’re trying, and they’re also a little dangerous (since I’m so young, I shouldn’t have frequent disc injections). They want to burn the nerves in my lumbar spine, but I’m unconvinced, both because nerve pain isn’t the only thing going on and because I’ve had a nerve burn done in my neck, and it backfired. Instead of my brain saying, “we’re not getting pain signals from her neck anymore, so let’s not make her feel pain,” my brain said, “holy fucking shit! They BURNED HER NERVES! Let’s send the regular pain signals and the pain one should feel after being burned!”

The facet injections are a compromise, basically. They’re hoping to show me, through it, that a nerve burn would work there.

Anubis decided that two family members having health problems wasn’t enough, so his urethra got blocked. Now we’re monitoring his pee, and Dante has to help him keep is clean (Anubis’s surgery to widen his urethra has helped, but not quite enough.)

We didn’t get to really celebrate St. Urho’s Day, due to the chaos.

In other news, I took a break from celebrating getting out of medical and consumer debt to check on how those student loans were coming.

Borrowed: 133,733

Paid back so far: 88,744

With interest, what I owed Tuesday: $154,213

My laptop’s keyboard is starting to have sticky keys. Apparently, it’s a known issue, and they should fix it for free, but the fixers say I have to be prepared to be without it for a couple of weeks. My desktop can’t yet do Zoom, so I’ve had to order a web cam with mic before I can get the laptop into the shop.

The meh:

My 300th college course began this week! It’s an intro to lit class at SCC; unfortunately, it’s an 8 week class. And while I got rid of a few units (postmodernism, the Southern Gothic, and fairy tales), it’s still a challenge to do a semester course in half a semester.

5 of the 26 enrolled students didn’t respond to emails or log on to Canvas the first week. Half of the rest are already failing because they haven’t turned in the homework. I’ve reached out to everyone, and most are telling me they just didn’t think the course would be time consuming. When I explain that they would have physically been in a room with me for 6 hours and 40 minutes each week if we were in person, and that they should therefore be prepared to do at least that much (which is much less than the Carnegie expectation of 20 hours/week for this class), they are shocked.

I’m not shocked that they’re shocked, but I’m disheartened.

Many of my students are working full time and also taking a full load of courses, which an 8-week course isn’t compatible with.

Half of the students hated “Hills Like White Elephants,” and I had fun reading their interpretations of what the “operation” was. The most creative was that the American wanted Jig to join a prostitution ring. I also included “Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown in this first week, to show them that poetry isn’t just dead white guys writing about daffodils. Most of the students loved it; the one who wants to be a cop found it offensive.

Next week, we do plays: Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune and Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play. It’s my first time teaching the latter; I’m cautiously optimistic. Am I having them watch the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons first? Of course!

I finished my four Winter courses, and I got the syllabi and Canvas pages up for my three Davis Spring courses, which was quite a feat. There were a couple of days, including yesterday, when my brain broke.

The good:

I got to see the Sklar Brothers and Grep Proops perform virtual shows.

Spring came.

I took The New Yorker‘s recommendation to watch The Bureau, which is excellent.

I had many students thank me for my work last quarter. A few of them realizing how much time I spend writing to them and talking to them is the only thing that makes it worth it. One student wrote this:

“I have never had another teacher like you before. You terrified me for all of the right reasons. I kept feeling called out in the beginning. I used to write papers for the grader instead of the purpose because of their biased writing styles. In fact, I used to do everything to please other people because I thought that is how life works. I know now how incorrect that way of living is. Maybe this wasn’t your intention, but I understand how I want to live my life from now on. You taught the class with humor, honesty, and empathy: three characteristics I strive to perfect one day. There was never any bullshit, and for that, I am so thankful. You taught the class not only how to become better writers, but also how to be better people.”

I’m pretty sure “[terrifying] for all of the right reasons” should be on my tombstone.