“CONGRATULATIONS ON A JOB…DONE.”
I would like to start off by saying that I do NOT hate the Beta Report podcast. I really and truly don’t. No matter what you may have heard on this week’s podcast or on CNN. If you heard that anywhere, you’re being bamboozled! Hate is such a strong word to use for the way I feel towards these brave souls. I actually listened to this week’s episode, episode 28 to be exact (thanks for the weekly reminder) and I have to say that the podcast was human. No? Too much? Too vague perhaps? OK OK…how about, the podcast was alright. I mean, it wasn’t bad. Like J. Peterman told Elaine when he came back from Burma, “Congratulations on a job…done.”
I wanted to put that out there since I heard a few jabs at F.R.M on this episode and I really just wanted to clear the air. Maybe I’ll be invited to be on the show one day and share my thoughts. We will see. But seriously guys, I hope we’re like cool like you know dawg like dope cool like, you know foo right? Boom. Beef squashed.
With that out of the way, I wanted to talk about superheroes and comics and what not.
THE DREAM OF A SPIDEY FAN
Now a lot of you may have seen the second trailer for the third installment of Captain America, Captain America – Civil War that was released a few days ago. If you haven’t, you should. SPOILER ALERT - I watched it on Sunday and was happily surprised when I saw Spiderman come out at the end. I wasn’t geeking out fanboy style or anything. Well maybe a little, but still. Not to the extreme though. I mean, I am in my mid-30s, married, with a 3 year old son, so I don’t geek out over comic books or superheroes. Those days have come and gone for me. But it was cool to see that he will be part of this movie. I didn’t really like the first Captain America but the second one was pretty cool and this third one looks like it is going to be pretty cool as well. By the way, my favorite captain of all time is Capt’n Crunch. That guy rules! Now, am I going to stand in line to watch Captain America – Civil War? Nope. I’ll probably be hung over from all my Cinco de Mayo partying! Actually, I don’t get hung over but you catch my drift. Again, I am in my mid-30s. The only thing I stand in line for these days is to pay for my groceries or to take a piss at a ball game. If I was a pre-pubescent teen, maybe then I would get wild style. You see back when my voice was changing keys mid-sentence, I was really in to Spidey. So in to Spiderman that I was at my local comic book store (do those still exist?) picking up the latest issue the day it came out. My favorite Spiderman artist/writer was Todd McFarlane. That’s how into Spidey I was, that I remember Todd Mac. So you can see that Spiderman was and still is my favorite superhero. Now, that doesn’t mean I rock a Spiderman shrine in my home. With 18 inch tall toys or Spiderman pjs or coffee mugs. Nor would I want anyone to ever get me a Spiderman gift for my birthday or Christmas. Those days, like I said before, are long gone. But I think I related to Peter Parker because he was just a teenage kid who gets superpowers. And he ended up with Mary Jane who in the comics is a model! And I like that she called him “tiger”. I’m going to try and see if my wife will start calling me “tiger” now that I think about it. Spidey and MJ style. MJ being Mary Jane not Michael Jackson. That MJ is a whole different comic character…but I digress. Growing up, the dream of this Spidey fan was to somehow accidentally or coincidentally get superpowers.
Let me tell you all how I almost became the male Jean Gray…
A HERO IS BORN
My parents are the best parents ever. When I say ever I mean it. Yeah my dad throws killer parties and boasts about the outcomes a week after funerals, but still, my parents are too legit to quit. My dad and mom illegally immigrated to Canada in the 70s. They then legally immigrated to the United States a few years later. So they can’t get deported by Mr. Trump. Although I am sure my dad wouldn’t mind getting a free ticket back to the motherland. He loves that place for some reason.
When we were younger and living in South Gate, many years before the Jesus Party, we used to go to this clinic owned by a Dr. Zacky. It was called La Clinica del Dr. Zacky. It’s comical whether you say it in Spanish or English. The name alone should have been a red light for my parents. I guess it was the fact that we weren't the richest family on the block that my mom took us to this clinic with the same name as the chicken manufacturer. It also didn’t help that this clinic was one of the shadiest ghettoest clinics in the area. It was literally in a commercial part of town and for some reason, always packed with people.
Only 4 visits stick out in my head about Dr. Zacky's.
One was the Snickers incident. When I put $0.50 in the vending machine, hit B3, and watched as all the Snickers in that row, fell one by one to the bottom of the vending machine. I felt like a king!
The other visit that comes to mind wasn’t as glamourous. During this visit, I remember the “nurse” asking me to drop my pants in front of my sister and mom so they could do that coughing thing where they cup your testicles. That was weird. I mean, why not ask my mom and sister to leave the room?? This place I tell ya, was one lab coat away from being a three-ring-clown-circus.
The third visit that I can remember was the time they diagnosed me with what I am now going to call “Milk-the-insurance-itis” . This is where a shady clinic runs random unnecessary tests to milk your insurance premium. Case in point, they strapped me to some gyroscope thing and spun me around like a human coin flip.
That however, was not the worst of my visits to the Zacky Farm. The last visit is the wildest, most unbelievable visit in medical history.
I am not even sure why I went to the doctor that day. All I remember is that for some reason I needed to get a weekly shot for God knows what. What’s mind boggling is that my mom never asked why I was getting a weekly shot. It just happened.
I remember it being super busy at the clinic that night. This place was filled with probably the same third world brethren who attended my dad’s future Jesus party. It was like that scene in Titanic where they show people boarding the great ship. We were the lower class folk. Not the upper class swanky peeps. They were at Kaiser.
I remember I was wearing my newly purchased-from-Mervyn’s gray jeans that night. I wanted to look fresh in case any first world girls where there. There were none. So a nurse took my brother Jazz and I to a different room for our weekly shots that again I am assuming, were simply placebos. Probably just shots of IV or water. I don’t know. I was young and naïve but I want to say that this room had other patients in as well. Like I said, it was SUPER busy that day.
As we were standing there wondering who in that room was a nurse and who was just a Salvi in their newly purchased Goodwill scrubs, our actual nurse figured that right then and there, would be where she’d administer our weekly shots. Apparently she liked working in front of a live audience.
Now the next part of the story, I swear, really happened. And I confirmed it with my brother and my sister.
The nurse took out the syringe, filled it with whatever it was they were giving us, and shoved that need straight…THROUGH…OUR…JEANS!
Then she sent us on our way. Just like that! No one around seemed to be bothered by what they had just seen either. And who was I to say that this was not a normal medical practice.
Needless to say, that clinic was later on closed down by the state of California's Medical Board. I vaguely remember hearing about it on Primer Impacto.
After that day however, I started feeling different. I started feeling a little rougher. A little more comfortable in my own skin. I became a huge fan of jean jackets. I looked for Levi’s everywhere I went. I felt a connection to denim like never before. Could it be that somehow, that sketchy nurse’s heinous act allowed for my genes to have jeans in them?!? Gray jeans if you will?!? Did I become the real, male, Jean Gray? Probably not. But that crap has me thinking I should go to the doctor to make sure I’m OK.
In the style of Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”, I was literally….
Shot through the jeans
And Zacky's to blame
You give medicine a bad name
The End.
F.R.M.