Ba Ba Loo . . .

Portions of these little exercises have been lifted from a work I add to every once in a while instead of paying a psychiatrist a couple hundred dollars for a fifty minute hour. Much cheaper and just as effective. Whenever the universe becomes a little too absurd for me to deal with I put my frustrations into a few paragraphs, and usually things come back into some kind of perspective. Or at least I've vented enough to appear reasonably sane again. The title of the book was Adventures in TDM, but since TDM are the initials of the main character it seemed a bit pornographic, or at least scatological, and I changed it. Now I call it The Man Who Hated Chocolate Chip Cookies which, while being perhaps a bit too autobiographical and having nothing to do with the story line, is the perfect title in my opinion.

Actually, I have no idea if Thomas (the character's full name is Thomas D Milton III) likes or dislikes chocolate chip cookies because it hasn't come up yet in the story, and probably never will, but I don't like them and that's enough for me. Now, hating chocolate chip cookies is not something you admit to to most people. (That's why I'm confessing it here where it will only be seen by four or five friends or relatives—if that many.) It is tantamount to blurting out you wear slippers made of kitten fur. People just can't conceive of such abnormal, probably blasphemous, behavior, and usually begin edging quietly toward the door.

The fact is I am one of those people that chocolate just doesn't excite. It's pleasant enough, and in small amounts can be enjoyable, but you will never hear me say, in that obnoxiously rapturous voice, "I'm a chocoholic," and the cookies quite frankly bore me spitless. The chips are cloyingly sweet, and the cookie part is next to tasteless. To me it's like eating little chocolate bombs in a bit of stale bread except without the flavor.

As is so often the case, my mother made a variation of the cookie which I quite liked. It was a banana chocolate chip cookie that was quite nice when it was fresh and you could pick the ones with just two or three chips. The cookie part was close to banana nut bread in texture and flavor, but without the nuts. Day old were best because then the chips had solidified making them easier to eat around, but the cookie was still soft.

Anyway, to me chocolate chip cookies are the Lucille Ball of food. Everyone loves both the cookie and Lucy, and I can't stand either one of them. When I was in grade school and had to stay home from school because of a hemorrhage I would have to watch the TV shows my mother watched. Jack Lelane was okay and there was always the chance the dogs would turn on him, and Liberace was weirdly fascinating like a car wreck. The soap operas were mostly only fifteen minutes long and had the virtue of being over quickly. But "Queen for a Day" and "I love Lucy" were more painful than the hemorrhage.

"Queen for a Day" had three women telling just how awful their life was, and the one with the most tragic story won something like a new washer. As if that would suddenly make up for her husband getting run over by a runaway rickshaw on the same day their fourteenth child was born and the oldest was diagnosed as chronically slovenly and marginally intelligent. I never could figure out why anyone watched it. It was, however, better than "I Love Lucy." Not by much, but at least it didn't make me want to gnaw my own arm off so I would be distracted.

Even as a seven year old I found the plots insultingly stupid: Ricky has a new show (when did he not have a new show—didn't any of them last?); Lucy (surprise, surprise) wants to be in it, and enlists Fred and Ethel to help her trick Ricky into putting her in it; hilarious antics ensue. Or not. Usually, if memory serves, it would involve Lucy pretending to be someone else, and the highlight of the show would be her dressing up as a Gypsy or something and grinning into the camera like she had just pee'd her pants.

Ricky was the only regular on the show that had any hope of functioning in the world without supervision, but you still have to wonder how intelligent he really was. After all, he married Lucy. As for Lucy, the best that can be said is that she should have been wearing a helmet and had a team of care givers supervising her twenty-four hours a day. Fred and Ethel? I'm surprised they could dress themselves.

The show was not only painful, it was embarrassing. It's idea of comedy was to have people doing things that were so outrageously stupid you would look away and pray to God the poor person was under professional care if it happened in real life. How could anyone find it funny? I will never know. I only know that when yet another survey proclaims "I Love Lucy" America's best loved show of all time; they did not ask me.

I think the reason Lucy has attained such a strong position in the American psyche is because she had no real competition. "Mr Peepers", "My Little Margie" and the other shows of the time were quieter, gentler, albeit wittier works (and Gale Storm was hot) that entertained you for thirty minutes and then politely excused themselves. They were the kind of guests that your mother hoped you would be when you went to someone's house.

Lucy, on the other hand, was The Three Stooges in drag and a red wig. She was loud (her voice alone could fuse a spine), obnoxious and stupid. Milton Berle was her male counterpart, but he did a variety show not a sit-com. For some reason America loves loud, obnoxious and stupid. It's as much a part of our national character as smoking is for the French. How else can you explain the current fascination with Paris Hilton?

薮陰やたった一人の田植え唄
In the shadow of the copse A solitary woman Singing the rice-planting song.