Bear joyride.

Once in a while there is some news that actually makes me smile, even if I know it means someone suffered some fear, distress, or discomfort. Hell, Fear, Distress, and Discomfort could have been the name of the long-running America's Funniest Home Videos, of which I remain a fan.

The story in question this week is this one:

A (human) family’s vacation took a bizarre turn when they found out that a family of bears had infiltrated their car.
     It’s a story that sounds made up, and we have to admit we were skeptical ourselves, but there’s some pretty solid proof: photos were taken of the bears during their attempted theft.
     They’re definitely in a car, and definitely causing some mischief.

Yep.

Eventually the three bear cubs got out of the car, went to another car, and rejoined their mother nearby. So no one was harmed, and the car only suffered a small amount of ursine damage.

Naturally I imagined that the entire scenario would have gone very differently if A) the keys were in the ignition and B) they could have talked Mom into joining them.

🐻🐻🐻🐻

BEARS ON A TEAR

Carl Cub: Come on, Mom! Let's go! Look! [jingles keys]

Cal Cub: Yeah, Mom! Don't be a stick in the mud!

Carly Cub: Shotgun!

Mom: Well... all right. Just this once.

[car backs out, hits seven other cars, takes to the road]

Carly: Gangway, world! Bears comin' through!

Cal: Hey, move over to your side!

Carl: I just want to see the truck driver! Did you catch his face?

Mom: Boys, no shoving or I'll turn this car right around.

Carly: Uh-oh!

[lights flashing behind car]

Officer: Ma'am, you were a little wild back there.

Mom: Sorry.

Officer: Have you been drinking?

Mom: No, officer. Although I am a mother of three, I am only eight years old.

Officer: Very well. You drive safely and have a nice day.

Mom: Thank you.

Cal: Wow, that was a close one!

Mom: Everyone be quiet until the nice man leaves the area.

Carly: Hey, look! There's an old-fashioned map in the glove compartment!

Mom: Huh. When I was a little cub, raiding cars, I used to see them, but that was seven years ago.

Carly: Look at this! Next exit up the road -- Hunny Ⓡ Us!

Carl: Can we go, Mom? Can we huh huh huh huh huh?

Mom: Well, why not? It's such a nice day. But you have to behave. No raiding the dumpster unless I say it's all right.

Cubs: YAY!

🍯🍯🍯🍯

That's gonna leave a mark.

Every once in a while my wife gets hooked on a show that sucks me in as well. Last fall it was Mysteries at the Museum. More recently it is Untold Stories of the ER.

This show's been running a long time -- it debuted on TLC in 2004 -- and reruns have been on a couple of nights a week on Discovery Life. Untold Stories features reenactments of bizarre cases or situations in emergency medicine, with comments by the actual doctors, nurses, and often patients and others involved in the story. Sometimes the real people play themselves in the reenactments. So, the acting is not always top-notch. But the stories are always compelling. Often astounding.

For example, in just a few weeks of watching I've seen people with heads and necks impaled by giant metal hooks, fence posts, and poles, and one poor guy who fell off his roof and was impaled groin-first on a shovel. There was a fellow with a stiletto heel jammed in his chest. Someone with no fellow feeling might find these things hilarious, like Hell's own America's Funniest Home Videos, but I'm too busy squirming in my chair. The money saved on professional actors and complicated sets is used for realistic bloody reenactments. (The word "dramatization" is often posted on the screen so you know it's fake gore, but it looks real enough to me.)

There's usually a mystery element to the show, like "What's making this dude so sick?" or "Where can we find enough rattlesnake antivenin?" or "How are we gonna get this fence post out of this guy?" And I don't believe I've seen a complete fail yet, where the patient died, although they often don't come through unscathed. It's an impressive element to the show that they often get the real patients, sometimes with limbs or senses lost, come on to tell a bit from their end. The medical professionals relating their stories sometimes paint themselves the noble heroes, the lone voice of reason, but not often. You learn a good deal about what goes on from the other side of the curtain in the emergency room.

Maybe it's of extra interest to me since I had to spend time in the ER last February. Although the show demonstrates how emergencies can pile up and cause longer distress for patients who aren't in immediate danger, it doesn't really tell me why I had to wait so long for pain meds that my wife was about to try to score some heroin for me. However, I am a little more sensitive to the situation of healthcare providers in ERs (or EDs -- emergency departments, as they are more typically known). There's a fine line between crisis and chaos.

I certainly think all medical interns and students who haven't seen this show should check it out. It's a good example of how life is always trying to throw curve balls and change-ups at you, no matter how well prepared you think you are from school.

Hairum-scarum.

It was with some trepidation and yet enthusiasm that I approached the task of doing what acclaimed fictional moron Forrest Gump once warned everyone against: "Do not try to cut your own hair."

Armed with my wife's hand mirror, my electric razor, and my new Chinese-made "professional" hair clipper (that's what the box says), I faced the bathroom and steeled myself for the task of cutting off my quarantine-distress tresses.

The easiest way to do it would be to get scared and trim my upstanding hair, but I am not a cartoon character.

Being a man, I had to wait until I was alone the house. Why? Because when a man wants to do something that has the possibility of being a complete disaster, he has to wait until he is assured of being alone. Meaning, no wife present. Because if she knew I was planning to do this, she would have started to make rational arguments, like:

1) The barber will be open in a few weeks, and I know it will be a mob scene for a while, but so what?

2) Who cares if your hair is a mess? You work from home and we're not allowed to go to church. Everywhere else you can wear a cap.

3) If you must do this, let me cut your hair, maybe outside where it won't make a mess and all the neighbors can see. It'll only take an hour or so.

4) Haven't you watched enough episodes of AFV where children get hold of Daddy's clippers and take big chunks out of their hair? You want to look like that?

There's no point in trying to reason with a man determined to try something stupid. She ought to know this by now. She grew up with a dad and brothers, and she and I have been together a long time. Why does she have to be so reasonable?

So I set to the task. I put a trash bag in the bathtub floor to protect the drain, since I didn't want hair flying hither and thither (especially thither). It was go time.

It seemed easy enough on the YouTube video I watched, but that guy wasn't trying to turn a faux hippie balding mess into a crew cut. At first it seemed good. The hair at the base of my neck was coming up easily, but I was pushing the hair above it out, and when I checked my progress it looked like I was wearing a hair hat. I realized that short strokes were the way to go with this clipper, and kept at it, being careful not to drive it into the scalp and create more bald patches than nature had already provided. I trimmed the back of my neck and cut down the sideburns too, and used the scissors provided with the clipper to get the loose bits.

Overall I was satisfied. Shorter than I expected, but it felt like freedom. It took about twenty minutes, but I did end up with a uniform cut, at least as far as I could tell with the mirrors. The hair went in the garbage can; I took a shower to get rid of any little hairs, and then waited for my wife's return and the accompanying shriek.

On the whole, she took it well.

Dramatization

You guys know that horrified look. "You quit your job?" "You bought a dog?" "You bought a motorcycle?" "You sold the house?" "You quit your job and sold the house to buy a dog and a motorcycle?" "You cut your own hair?" That look.

Once the shock wore off, she admitted I did a not terrible job, although she doesn't like it that short because she thinks I look like a During Treatment patient in an ad for Memorial Sloan Kettering. also, I gouged a little too deep going sideways on one side, but I barely could tell. Of course she asked why I didn't let her do it. I explained that a man sometimes has to do something dumb and don't cotton to no womenfolk telling him otherwise. That also did not go unchallenged.

Anyway. the damage is done, and I think it's okay. If it grows in funny I still have the clippers. And a number of baseball caps. So all is well.

Hospital TV.

During my medical sojourn last week, I found that you can learn things from the TV the hospital provides to help pass the time. Mainly, you can learn that daytime TV is an irritating way to pass the time. Still, I had nothing to read and no juice on the cell phone until my wife brought me books and a charger, so it was more engaging than looking out the window.

I can't say I wasn't warned. A friend of mine was undergoing cancer treatments last year, and while he was able to stay at home through most of it, he was unable to do anything beyond watch the tube. I believe he said he had memorized episodes of Bonanza and The Twilight Zone and that Wilma Flintstone was starting to look good to him.

Thankfully, I only had a couple of days to deal with it, from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday evening. I can see how it would make you crazy. Even the all-news channels, or maybe especially those; the constant chewing of the same Bone Du Jour is insane. Apparently there was nothing much in the world of note last Monday except for the Roger Stone sentencing, because all the news channels were on it constantly.

Ah, but the cable TV provided by the hospital had soothing channels, with calming music and video clips from nature. Well, the most educational thing about that was that I couldn't stick with them very long. You'd think a guy in pain, who'd just been through a major pain crisis, would want nothing else on but that channel and the back of his eyelids, but no. No wonder I suck at meditation.

So what did I like?

Well, as I alluded to yesterday, I watched America's Funniest Home Videos on Sunday night. What made that educational was how my attitudes had changed toward people falling during the previous 24 hours. You just fell down the stairs! Go get an X-ray! You have no idea how this can come back to haunt you, you fool! My previous reaction to people falling on AFV was the more lizard-brained Ha ha him fall funny.

On Monday there was a Catholic priest in the little chapel downstairs, and I was able to watch Mass on CCTV. I liked that, although the sound quality was pretty bad.

I picked up a tidbit on the History channel, one that had nothing to do with Ancient Aliens. It was a neat little documentary on Air Force One that the channel ran on Presidents Day. I knew some of the history of the planes assigned that name, but amid the data was this: the name of the country painted on the plane's exterior is meant to simulate the typeface used for the name of the country as it was seen -- for the first time -- on the Declaration of Independence.

Cool.

Other things I leaned came from watching most of Return of the Jedi, which I have not seen in a very long time. And those things were numerous. They include:

1. The movie begins with the worst rescue plan I have ever seen in the movies. I can't even tell what they were trying to accomplish, sending people into Hutt's Hut in dribs. To infiltrate and then take over at a signal? Obviously not, since everything went to hell immediately. It made no sense at all. If R2 didn't have enough space to hide a lightsaber in his chassis, the galaxy would have been screwed. Even then a lot of dumb luck was required. Almost any other plan would have been better. 
2. Mark Hamill was a pretty bad actor. I don't know if he got any better. I haven't the new trilogy and I don't care. But Harrison Ford was pretty bad, too. He looks stoned through the scene where we learn the plan to attack the new Death Star and he is revealed to now be General Solo. If 1970s Steve Martin had been cast as Comic Relief Solo, and played the part the exact same way, people would have thought it was a hilarious spoof. 
3. Retroactively speaking, I hear that Leia was supposed to do all kinds of Force stuff late in the third trilogy. This makes perfect sense, as she's revealed to be a Skywalker. And yet, although Darth and Luke can sense each other's Forceishness in real time across space, neither of them had any idea that the Force would be strong with that princess, too. Was this addressed?

Anyway, by the time we got to the Ewoks, I was about to be whisked out of the room for injections. Some people loathe the little Space Teddy Bears, but at least for those pre-CGI days, they were pretty convincing.

I also saw enough (ten minutes) of Matt Damon's The Great Wall to realize that, whatever faults the Star Wars series might have, if you put them all together in a bag they might still weigh less than the faults in The Great Wall. What a waste of Willem DaFoe.

All of this hard-won knowledge would have been avoided if i'd had more than an 8% charge on my phone.

Maybe I should have spent more time staring out the window. Sure, it's a modern, dull building, and it looks drab and tired although it opened in 2011, and February is not much to look at -- but at least the skies were blue.

Question: Did someone determine that tan and brown are great healing colors? Because that's the sum of the whole color palette in this place. Does it help keep people relaxed and compliant?

The rest of the hospital story.

If you'd told me on Sunday morning, when I was in crushing pain in the ER, that I'd be relaxing in a private room watching America's finest network program on Sunday night, I might have thought that it was some weird, unattainable dream. But indeed that was the case.

The hideous pain I'd suffered didn't return, but I was terrified that it would. However, I slept and napped pretty well, for a guy who was getting an IV bag (they feared bone infection initially) and vitals checked every few hours. Ultimately on Monday they chose a course of action, and that was the epidural steroid shots commonly used in my situation. They had had to hold off until they decided bone infection was not likely, because steroids' immunosuppressant characteristics would make an infection worse. Monday afternoon I was whisked away for the job, and that was awfully painful, because I had to lay on my stomach. This stretched out the nerves, and the doctor doing the procedure said in cases like mine it could bring that pain right back. But there was no choice. However, the nurse was able to slip some fentanyl in my IV plug, which made me dizzy but eased the agony.

And that was the last painkiller I got. I had to stay over another night for observation, and then all day Tuesday while endless paperwork was processed, but I haven't had so much as an aspirin since. I don’t want to mask a return of crisis signals.

I'm grateful to the hospital for getting me some treatment. Complain as I have over the last couple of blog entries, I can't imagine what people did with these kind of issues in the past. Whiskey, I guess. What else did they have?

And every person on staff was shockingly nice. The grumpy nurse, the overworked resident, the empty-headed intern, not one of these caricatures appeared in my reckoning. They were all great.

Yes, the food was exceptionally bland, but it was prompt and generous. I thought the bed was comfy enough, considering that I had to sleep on my back for the duration. One nurse sympathized, having heard complaints from patients about the beds; another said she'd been a patient and had hated the bed. But I thought it was fine.

Seems like a comfy spot to me

And when the time came to leave, the duty nurse was organized and efficient. I was offered a wheelchair but refused. I was going to have to start walking on my own again anyway.

Now what? Well, I was told to see four different doctors, including my own GP, who is finally returning to action after being missing for months. (I suspect he was on a three-hour tour near Hawaii when the weather started getting rough.) I can't walk very far without the leg hurting, so my wife still has to tend to the dogs all by herself. 😞 And I can't lift anything heavy. There's also some question in the discharge papers as to whether I should be allowed to drive. So clearly there's a path before me to traverse back to health.

But I'll say this: On Tuesday night, when I went to bed, I was bone-terrified I would wake up again as I did on Sunday morning, in all that awful pain. Fortunately I was exhausted, because I fell asleep. In the morning I didn't feel any better -- but I didn't feel any worse. And that was all I really wanted at that moment. For a long time on Sunday, being without pain was all I thought I could ever want again in this world.

It was cold, I tell ya!

Give the weatherman his due -- they said it would be cold on Monday, and it was frigid. I'm glad at least the mail carriers and schools were closed for the holiday. Pretty sure I heard the kids saying "Free at last! Free at last!"

It all started Saturday night with freezing rain and light snow, and eventually it was like Mr. Freeze had attacked the town and was holding us hostage. (I prefer to imagine the urbane and tragic George Sanders version, but choose your favorite.)

The temperature never got out of the single digits from Sunday night through now (Tuesday morning), and all day Monday we had windchill as low as -21. The snow that had fallen was not deep, but froze over into a candy shell of treachery. I'd crouch from the blasts of wind before they could send me sliding down the hill, AFV style. My four-legged friends -- the only reason I even went outdoors on Monday -- didn't fare much better. Legs all over the place, paws unable to gain purchase. And these are suburban dogs, not used to peeing on solid surfaces; the little guy, Nipper, was baffled. He had a terrible time figuring out where to go. 

I never fell, and we never lost power, thank heaven. I've mentioned before that our furnace can't run without electricity, and winters where random tree limbs took us off the grid would get cold fast.

How cold was it? <carson> It was SO cold, that Gladys Knight froze her Pips. </carson>

Below is a bad picture of ice on the window. Or more specifically, on the window crank mechanism on the inside of the house, above the kitchen sink.

Today it's supposed to go to 26, which will feel like a day at the beach by comparison, and it's said to be a rainy 50 on Wednesday. I think I can live with that.

(Note that all temperatures used in this blog are in that human scale of Fahrenheit, not those other anti-human scales people outside Murca like to use. Just FYI.)

PSA from the dog #7.

Hello, friends. It is I once again. The dog. As in the past, I ask for just a moment of your time, your consideration, and maybe cheese.

As we know, today is July the Fourth, easily remembered because it is one day after July the Third. It is also an important American holiday, even to those of us in the Canine-American community. We enjoy the jolly get-togethers, the barbecues and picnics with dropped food, the many games that dogs can join in on, like that one where people stand around in a diamond and go crazy when a doggie playfully steals the little white ball. So much fun!

But there is one thing about this holiday that we dogs do not like, and that is your insistence on blowing things up. That is bad! Why would you do something that is bad? Don't you know that the exploding things frighten dogs? It's true!

When the things are blowing up you look kind of scared too, you know, like you don't want to be hit with them. I'll bet that would hurt! Maybe you should stop with that stuff!

Remember, the pain you save may be your own. Look at this famous clip. The poor doggie is not trying to hurt anyone; he just wanted to play with the stick. But then all the people run around like chickens as it fires at their feet. Not so fun when the shoot is on the other foot!

Even when you are blowing things up way in the sky, where it is not quite as dangerous, we doggies cannot understand the appeal. So there's a bunch of gray lights. Big deal. It's not like the stuff smells good. And the sound is awful! I cannot tell you just how loud that noise is to our sensitive ears. It is terrifying! It is like thunder times ten! That sensitive hearing that helps us find Timmy in the well or hear Sweet Polly Purebred call for help is the same sensitive hearing that gets us all scared and upset. Can't you find another way to celebrate this big holiday? Something less explosive? Maybe something more cheese-oriented? I hear you have a lot of cheese just lying around.

To sum up, we dogs ask is that you bear in mind this simple thought:

Before you start to blow things up
Remember that it makes your pup
Scared. 

This has been a public service announcement from the dog.

Best dog toy!

I'm never going without one of these in the backyard again.

It's one of those bubble wands you see at the supermarket for a buck. In the morning I take the little guy outside for a run, help him get some exercise and fresh air so he'll be happy and healthy and let Papa get some work done. We toss the ol' squeaky balls around, but some days that's not enough to excite him. And his favorite thing is to skin tennis balls, but fresh tennis balls aren't always readily available. But he always enjoys chasing bubbles.

The wand is cool because it blows a stream of bubbles, and he wants to break them all. He'll leap and jump and run and basically act like a crazy person. He'll nab them in the air. He'll find them on the ground.

Lie low... he won't see us...

He'll find them trying to go over the wall!

I think you're stuck, there, dude.

It's awesome. I also like that I don't have to go around picking up toys later.

Plus, bubbles are just fun. Who doesn't like to blow bubbles? Jerks, that's who. So put us down in the Pro-Bubble column. They're certainly cheaper than tennis balls.

I've even tried the Incredibubbles -- these are peanut butter flavored bubbles (really!) by Pet Qwerks, safe for pets and children. Mrs. K bought them. (As you can see, they also make catnip and peach flavored bubbles.)

Bubbles: the great equalizer between pets and children.

Pet Qwerks says you can stack and otherwise play around with the bubbles, and that's great, but Nipper generally prefers to nail 'em in the air. Also, the Incredibubbles are very small, and he likes big bubbles. And he cannot lie.

Some dogs would prefer a more bite-size bubble, though, like Snoopy:

If I can get Nipper to do this, you'll see us on AFV.

AFV host quest!

I love watching America's Funniest Home Videos, or AFV to us "insiders" (although it should be AFHV, or AF(H)V, but we overlook quibbles for the sake of love). Every Sunday night I look forward to people getting whacked in the crotch, slipping and falling, getting spat on by animals, tripping in bridal gowns, crashing through trampolines, getting tripped by dogs, getting tripped by dogs in bridal gowns on trampolines... I once tried to talk Mrs. Key into wearing her wedding gown and jumping on a trampoline while swinging at a pinata and then hitting me in the crotch with a dog nearby. That had to be worth the $10,000 prize.

Sadly, she would not go for it.

I enjoy watching people do stupid things on Sunday nights, as I've mentioned before; it helps me feel smarter when I start my week.

Sadly, all us fans of the show know that the new season that starts October 5 will be the last for host Tom Bergeron, who is retiring from AFV after 15 years. We'll be sorry to see Tom go. But who will replace him?

My vote: a man who can deliver terrible jokes with a wink or a fake duh look or whatever it takes to sell the gag, the former host of Talk Soup and current host of Wipeout, Skunk Boy himself: John Henson.

He's just the kind of professional knucklehead who cold make a brilliant career out of this long-running goof-a-rama. He's been an actor for a long time, so he's certain to have experience working with live audiences. And he's been hosting Wipeout for years, so AFV would be running your local chapter of Mensa by comparison.

Other possible hosts:

Ryan Reynolds: Not sure he's going to be allowed to make any movies for a while, so he may be available.

Michael Bloomberg: He already thinks we're all morons.

Bill Clinton: He'll do anything for a buck.

Michael Strahan: Football, Subway ads, dealing with Kelly Ripa... Apparently he can do anything for a buck.

Larry the Cable Guy: If he could take the pay cut, he'd be dynamite -- hell, the show is a real-life version of the material he's been doing for decades.

One of the Kennedys: The ones who are still in public office are pretty useless, and we've seen pretty crappy behavior from the others, but folks still seem to like them. Maybe one of them can do something that requires talent.

John Elliott: Local New York weatherman but former newsman Elliott is one of the more refreshing personalities on TV today, and a great student of TV hosts like Carson.

Craig Ferguson: I wouldn't let any old foreigner host an American show about Americans doing dumb things in dumb ways, but this guy is dumb enough for us!

Tory, Kari, and Grant: They need the work.

Daisy Fuentes: What the hell, give her another shot.