The Show Must Go On

Baby, although I chose this lonely life
It seems it's strangling me now
All the wild men, big cigars, gigantic cars
They're all laughing at me now

When I was a teenager I saw this boy from England who dressed like a circus clown, he was a space age Pagliacci and his voice cracked when he sang about the circus. It was something you remembered for a long time.

New Years Eve 2025. All my favorite DJ's on Twitch wished everyone a Happy New Year, getting into the festive spirit which unfortunately escaped me. Donald Trump cheated his way to victory the month before, and any feelings of hope for a brilliant future were dead. The country was going to return to a malaise of hatred, idiocy and xenophobia. I lived in a country that always insisted on doing the wrong thing. The year to come held no promises, ominous threats but no promises.

New Years Day 2025. I celebrated the coming of the new year with a drive down Pacific Coast Highway. Driving by the scenic ocean side was deliciously breathtaking, sun kissing the blue sky and beaming, gleaming against the waves of the sea as I drove down the road. It looked heavenly.

Speeding past the movie star restaurants, post-war motels haunted by John Garfield's ghost, seafood shacks ("All the shrimp you can eat-Best clam chowder in town"), Pepperdine College, The Getty Villa (where I once worked), surf shops, and beautiful gated estates that ran for acres.

Then there were all the beaches of Malibu, Will Rogers State, Dan Blocker Memorial, Topanga Beach, dumpy Malibu Lagoon State Beach and Malibu Bluffs Park with its skateboard ramps and snakes slithering all around the trails. And leave the gophers alone. A little further down there was endless Zuma Beach, followed by rustic Lechuza Beach. As soon as I reached Sea Level Drive I'd turn around and head back to the big city.

Oh, I've been used, ooh-hoo
I've been taken for a fool, oh, what a fool
I broke all the rules, ooh, yeah
But I won't let the show go on

Monday, January 6th. My primary sent me to Cedars-Sinai Hematology-Oncology Center in Beverly Hills. He identified an alarming surplus of white blood cells in my system and set an appointment for me to go in for further testing.

Tuesday, January 7th. Los Angeles was stricken by Santa Ana winds blowing at 100 miles an hour. Whenever we get them brush fires are always inevitable. Winds were blowing at such a powerful speed you could feel the propulsion of the wind nearly blowing you down. When the Santa Anas blow this hard power cables collapse from their towers and ignite dry brush. It happens.

During my lunch break at the medical center where I worked I looked out the window to see big black plumes of smoke billowing out from the hills a few miles away. It looked perilously close, but we stayed inside. I went home and watched the destruction on television. Everything that I had just seen a few days ago, my private paradise, had been destroyed.

Baby, there's an enormous crowd of people
And they're all after my blood
I wish maybe they'd tear down the walls of this theater
And let me out, let me out

Wednesday, January 8th. The medical center I work at is in Brentwood, a few miles away from Pacific Palisades, so we've been advised to stay home that day. Staying home wasn't much safer, though, because parts of the Hollywood Hills were also on fire. Smoke from that fire wafted into my apartment, and I woke up coughing up tons of phlegm for an hour. I also had non-stop dysentery that lasted for 24 hours. Ashes fell all over my car like toxic snowflakes.

The phone rang and it was my doctor from Cedars-Sinai Hematology. My blood test results came back and they tested positive for CLL, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

The news of having leukemia came as a surprise to me because I've only felt a few benign symptoms, just fatigue and shortness of breath. I didn't have any large lymph nodes on my body and my spleen wasn't swollen, which are the more serious symptoms. My doctor told me that CLL is a very slow-moving cancer, meaning that serious symptoms may take years to take effect, so at the present time treatment wasn't necessary.

"In fact, based on your previous blood tests you've had it for years but nobody tested you for it until now", he said.

American Cancer Society: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) can rarely be cured. Still, most people live with the disease for many years. Some people with CLL can live for years without treatment, but over time, most will need to be treated.

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) develops from a type of white blood cell called B cells. It progresses slowly, usually affecting older adults.

CLL may not cause any symptoms for years. When symptoms do occur, they may include swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, and easy bruising.

Well...what can a poor boy do? My Altadena and Malibu friends have lost their homes in the fire, so I'll kick down some funds via GoFundMe, LA Regional Food Bank and other charities that'll help them. It'll be a good distraction from the fire inside me.

Oh, I've been so blind, yeah
I've wasted time, wasted, wasted oh, so much time
Walking on the wire, high wire, yeah
But I won't let the show go on

The Show Must Go On, written by Leo Sayer & David Courtney, copyright 1973 Silverbird Songs Ltd/Queen Music Ltd.

Smokin' Like A Villain

I’m not going to justify my enjoyment of smoking and drinking because it will inevitably result in a debate with some blue nose, usually female, who takes great pride in leading a supposedly sanitized lifestyle. The argument usually culminates on how the sanitized female will live forever, which of course raises my favorite question: Who the fuck wants to live forever? What are you looking forward to? Economic recovery? World peace? Another awful contest show on television?

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I want to talk about smoking. I first started smoking when I worked as a clerk in bustling downtown Los Angeles in the 1970’s. Girls in skimpy outfits stood on street corners around 5 o’clock handing out free packs of Winston cigarettes, and they just wanted to get rid of them sitting on those trays hanging around their necks. I liked Winston a lot, and soon tried out different brands to taste the difference in the tobacco.

I tried Kool menthols which made my sinuses freak out worse than pot, I tried lights which felt like smoking toilet paper, and I even tried old school unfiltered brands like Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, and Chesterfields, which Captain Beefheart once said should come with your own iron lung. I stayed with Winstons.

Owning cigarettes was only part of the ritual: Zippo lighters were the next step. I got a great one with an image by Robt Williams that Amphetamine Reptile used to sell back in the day. They sold lighters with images by Pizz, Dennis Worden, Gary Panter and Kaz, to name a few. Then you had to have a rockin’ cigarette case because those crush-proof boxes were garbage. I got a nice metal one with a Chinese dragon on it to match my Chinese dragon bracelet. A vice is incomplete until one acquires the proper paraphernalia for it.

One of my favorite stops in Palm Springs used to be The Tinder Box which had at least three cigar stores on every block. There’s a good one in West Hollywood, too, and I always like checking out all the smoking paraphernalia, like smoking stands for your sofa for that old lounge vibe. Cigarette holders are pretty weird, too, the longer the better. Some of the best smoking paraphernalia can be found at truck stops, so on that next trip to Vegas keep your eyes peeled for that Winchester rifle lighter.

I do confess to calling a moratorium on smoking several years ago when I started chain-smoking and having choking fits, which I no longer do and no longer have. When I did chain smoke, I didn't do it as weirdly as I've seen some people do it, which is lighting the next cigarette with the butt of the previous one that's burning out. Even as a smoker I found that practice creepy, quite frankly. These days things are different. I have one coffin nail a day and even skip a few days here and there. It’s not that terribly important like it was 20 years ago, so when I skip a few days I don’t start nervously twitching or overeating.

But if there's anything weirder than chain smokers it's the actual haters themselves. While some people object to cigarette smoke in patios they think nothing of toting their dogs. If there's an odor more offensive than Marlboro Lights it's the smell of a wet dog when I eat. Then there are those hipster parents that shoot daggers at me when I light up in front of their children like I'm the devil. These are the same clowns that think nothing of dragging their kids to the supermarket at 10 pm. Perhaps these Orwellian moms and dads are bugged because the kids look a little excited to see my cigarette case, lighter, and other tobacco toys in action. Roll over, Joe Camel!

The most extreme case of smoking hatred might be the time someone posted a movie review on the Independent Movie Data Base (iMDB.com) ripping into an old Cary Grant movie because he counted people lighting up 35 times in the film. His review didn't critique the nice set design, cool Edith Head wardrobe or dazzling performance by Cary Grant, no - cigarettes were lit up and smoked 35 times in this movie, so he hated it. What a freak!

Why do people smoke anyway? Why do people consider this recreation relaxing? I’ve always felt that smoking is the only time one can breathe deeply in a social situation and not look like a total freak. The calm inhaling of tobacco makes the body relax and stimulate the mind. So the next time you see me and my friends standing twenty feet in front of a building out on the sidewalk puffing away it’s because we’re chillin’ while the healthy blue noses are insanely screaming at each other driving on the road.