Well Done

“I don’t like steak!”

Hang on a second.  That came out a little abrupt and apparently needs context.

I was a junior in high school and my girlfriend asked me over for dinner.  I inquired about the fare and she replied that her dad was grilling steak.

"I don’t like steak.”

My comment was followed by the retort, “Well, you’ve never had my dad’s steak.”

She was right, of course.  I knew her mother worked at the Jewel meat counter, but this was probably the first time I’d been invited over for dinner.

A couple of hours later, I was sitting at the table when her dad placed an inch and a half thick slab of meat in front of me.  I looked at my girlfriend and asked, “What’s this?”

“That’s steak!” she answered. 

Apparently, my context needs context.

My mom made steak rather regularly, but it didn’t look like this.  You see, our steak came on a shrink-wrapped Styrofoam tray.  It was about a half an inch thick and probably didn’t reshape the plastic that was stretched taut across the shallow plate.  Mom would transfer it from the packaging onto a pan, then it went straight into the broiler.  I’m not even sure if she stopped to season it.

Some 20 to 30 minutes later, the steak would be done it was time to eat.  Eating my mother’s leather required a sharp knife, A-1 sauce, and lots of chewing!

That high school family dinner-date opened my eyes to a whole new world.  There was this thing called steak that was easy to chew and rather delicious!

The best steak I’ve had since then was on another date, this time with my wife.  We were in New York for a couple days and I decided to call around to find a nice dinner reservation.  I obviously started at the top of the “Best restaurants in New York” list.  The #1 restaurant told me their next available reservation was in three months.  But it only took 2 or 3 more calls before I found a 9:30 PM on a Thursday reservation for two.  After promising them $450.00, I took the reservation.

The meal was spectacular and I may blog about that another time.  But right now, only steak matters.  It was Kobe steak, or some other trademarked slab of beef.  Shaped like a 2 1/2" circle and standing 2” high, it was unlike anything I had ever seen.  From the top, the outer edge was dark gray, while the rest was a warm pink.  It was like they had rolled it once across a 500° grill, then dropped it on a plate.

I cut into it, first tasting the outer edge.  It was exactly like my mother’s steak!  But beyond that outer edge, was a soft, delicious meat that absolutely melted in your mouth.  Even thinking about A1 sauce while eating it would have brought the chef and his largest knife out of the kitchen in a fit of rage.  No such thought crossed my mind.

I’ve come a long way, as far as steak is concerned.  Every time I order or grill, I find slightly less done is always better.  From the extremely well done my mother made, to the medium well I ordered through my twenties, I now prefer a thick cut grilled to medium.  Recently, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying medium rare.

But even with all that experience behind me, I still don’t like steak.

I love steak!

Comedy is (Not) for the BIrds

There are certain opportunities that only come along once in a lifetime.  Sometimes you can see them coming, jump on, and ride.  But other times, only hindsight is cruel enough to point out the opportunity missed.

Now one could easily cite missed stock buys or other life changing decisions that have passed most of us by.  But I’m talking today about one of those potentially life-altering events above and beyond just striking it rich.  I’m talking about… the first Angry Birds movie.

The movie was fine and, on a whole, lived up to my rather low expectations.  But its creators missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be immortalized for their comedic genius.

It was somewhere near the middle-end of the movie when the birds somehow decided it was reasonable (I’m sure they didn’t do it just to be true to the game) to launch themselves out of a giant slingshot.  Their target was piggy castle.

First, they launched a little orange bird who came up significantly short before exploding in an orange powdery puff.  The pink girl-bird was next, but she also came up short.  Other birds were launched, mostly forgettable, especially if you didn’t play the game.  At some point they decided to launch the mime-bird.

Now let’s stop right there for a minute.  There have been some outstanding mimes throughout history: Charlie Chaplain, Marcel Marceau, and dare I say it, Tape Face.  Tape Face’s ‘Lady in Red’ bit is absolutely hilarious and Marcel Marceau’s ‘Walking Against the Wind’ bit from Mel Brook’s Silent Movie is spectacular.  I have no idea how he manages to move backwards while leaning forward with the appearance of walking forward.  It puts the Moonwalk to shame.  Both clips are worth a quick Google! (Hey, where are you going?  After you finish reading my blog.)

Mel Brooks was able to catch one of those opportunities I spoke of earlier in that very same movie, a movie titled Silent Movie, when he gave the only spoken line to the mime.  Pure. Comedic. Genius.

Which brings me back to the birds.  They loaded the mime into the slingshot and sent it flying.  The movie then cuts to the Piggy King walking confidently in front of a large, glass window.  Do you hear opportunity knocking?  A mime?  A window?  I sat in the theater with anticipation growing.  I just knew the mime was going to smack into the window, then do the ‘Stuck in an invisible box’ bit before gravity finally smeared him off the glass.

Alas, history is cruel and I was left disappointed as the bird instead bounced about amidst a tumble of falling buildings far from the castle.  The writers, producers, directors, voice actors, gaffers, and even the best boys for the movie failed to see the historic moment staring them in the face.  It could have been great.  It could have been epic.  They could have written their names proudly alongside the likes of Robin Williams, George Carlin, and Tina Fey.  But they didn’t.  And the world is a more dreary place for their failure.

Pure. Opportunity. Lost.

And Then I Got Covid and Almost Died...

 You may not realize it from reading my blog, but I’m actually a rather funny person.  Just ask anyone.  My daughter will proudly proclaim me as funny and The Boy will describe me as humorous.  Even my wife will occasionally admit I have a mildly amusing sense of humor.  (Please don’t ask anyone else, as their opinions do not count.)  I’m the guy who giggles like a school girl when someone uses consecutive “dos” in a sentence.  It is my firm standing opinion that everything is funny if you look at it the right or wrong way.

As an example of my clever wit, we were walking into church a week after there had been a small fire in the attic and the water sprinklers had flooded portions of the building.  (See, funny already!)  The pastor was standing in the atrium, greeting us late-comers.  Above him, the drop ceiling was missing various tiles, obviously those that had been damaged in the flood.  My mind raced for the right thing to say.  My first thought, something about water, was a fail, but two or three trains later I had it.

“What happened?  Were you guys playing Mario?” I asked, jumping and swinging alternating fists into the air while doing my best impersonation of the “you got a coin ding” from Super Mario Brothers.  They laughed, The Boy laughed, and we proceeded into church.

On that rather short walk, Andrew, still laughing a little, asked, “How do you come up with that stuff so fast?”

I don’t really know.  The quick-twitch function of my funny machine parses situations rather quickly.  It can amend or rewrite thoughts about a situation at blazing speeds, finding just the right words to express the humor in most any situation.

Not having a filter assures that those thoughts are always shared with the world, for better or worse.

As it turns out, humor is my security blanket.  It is what I turn to when I am stressed, worried, or something is going horribly wrong.  As doctor visits of this aging male have gotten more and more interesting, I remember one time declaring to my primary doctor before an “exam, “Remember when we used to be friends?”  A similarly themed ER visit found me in prime form entertaining the doctors and nurses with every inappropriate ass joke I could muster.

And then I got Covid and almost died.  Technically the Covid was a few months before the Mario jumping incident.  But trust me, it ties in reasonably well.

My wife got Covid from a patient at work and was kind enough to share it with the rest of us.  She got a little sick, the kids took it better than Mom, and Grandma weathered the Covid onslaught better than all of us.  Then there was me.

I started out feeling sick.  My lungs began to struggle.  I tried doing breathing exercises to keep them open, but the illness progressed.  Exertion of any sort, especially walking up the stairs, would send my Oxygen levels in a downward spiral.  It took two trips to the respiratory clinic and a second visit to the Emergency room before I was finally admitted.  By then, I felt like the breathing capacity of my lungs had been reduced to the size of a walnut.  All humor had left me.

I was locked in an isolation chamber (i.e. specially adapted hospital room) and was occasionally visited by the extras from the ET escapes scene.  For four days, I lay in bed, tethered to various machines.  I had an IV in my arm, pressure collars on my legs, a glowing OSAT monitor taped to my finger (I could make another ET reference here), and that oxygen hose thing (Google tells me it is called a nasal cannula, or NC) wrapped around my head.

Sometimes I had enough energy to sit the bed up and watch TV, but most of the time I just lay there like Mojo the Helper Monkey, struggling to breathe.  One time I tried to roll over and lay on my stomach, per Mollie and the doctor’s advice.  After 30 minutes of trying to figure out the logistics regarding my multiple leashes and lack of energy, I found myself face down and more uncomfortable than I have ever been in my entire life.  It only took a minute to roll back over, followed by 15 minutes to recover.

Going to bathroom was the worst.  I had to sit up, disconnect my tethered legs, take off my Oxygen, unplug the OSAT monitor, and drag my IV poll around behind me.  By the time I made it to the bathroom, worked my magic, and lumbered back to bed, I was so extremely short of breath, it sometimes took 20-30 minutes to recover enough to reconnect anything beside the Oxygen.

One time, I sat on the toilet after a really bad coughing fit with my hand on the red emergency cord, ready to pull it.  I held it for about a few minutes before stubborn pride got the best of me and I managed to stumble back to bed. 

After about three days, a nurse pointed out that my Oxygen cord was too short and suggested she get me a longer one.  I regaled her with the struggle I faced just getting myself to the small water closet less than 10 feet from my bed.  How did she describe it?  Oh yeah, they had “…set me up to fail.”

The longer cord meant one less thing to detach from myself when getting up.  It helped a little, making the experience only absolutely miserable instead of completely defeating.

I occasionally had enough energy to reach my phone when someone called.  From those calls I garnered that Mollie was extremely worried about me.  My parents were worried.  My siblings were worried.  The dog was worried.  The doctors were worried.  The threat of being moved to the Intensive Care Unit, intubated, and put on a ventilator started to come up.

I remember my father calling me and encouraging me, in earnest, to do everything I could to get better; a difficult task when it is already all you can do just to breathe.  He asked me if I was scared.  Thinking about it, I wasn’t scared throughout the entire episode.  I was sick, but just waiting to get better.  It didn’t really cross my mind to be scared.  “Maybe you should be,” he advised.

Somewhere about day four, I was told I would be receiving convalescent plasma.  They hooked a new bag of liquid up to me and I fell asleep.  Some five hours later, I woke up feeling better than I had in days.  Instead of breathing through a walnut, my lung capacity had expanded to the size of a softball.  While still terrible, I can assure you even a little increase in the ability to breathe is an extreme comfort.

It took a few days to be discharged and two months to feel somewhat okay.  After leaving the hospital, I was talking to Mollie about her ongoing concerns during my internment.  She showed me a text conversation she had had with our pastor.  He had asked what he could pray for.  “That Mike would get his funny back,” she replied.  Obviously hesitant at such a dangerous request, he only offered to pray for “my funny to get an upgrade.”

Now five months post-Covid, Mollie has learned my humor is a necessary tool.  She can often be heard declaring, “If Mike loses his funny again, I’m taking him straight to the hospital.  If they ask what’s wrong with him, I’m telling them he lost his funny.  He must really sick!”

I’m not sure how funny my Mario impression really was, nor whether the pastor considered it an upgrade, but I have learned that even a bad sense of humor is better than Covid.