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Levin
Clears His Files
I've
puzzled over it since last year's playoffs and I
still don't understand how superstar basketball
players can miss so many of their foul shots.
We're talking about guys able and positioned to
compile humongous career stats--twenty thousand
women, a hundred million dollars--those are Hall
of Fame numbers by any measure. So what's the
problem? Are they ashamed to be seen cashing in
their free throws? They can give them to me. I'm
seriously middle-aged, five-foot-seven, myopic,
arthritic and usually nauseous. Not every part
of my body is still getting a proper supply of
blood. The closest I've come to resembling an
athlete has been in the manner of my
deterioration; as with Mickey Mantle it was my
knees that went first. But shit. I made six of
ten just yesterday and it wasn't even my home
driveway!
***
Since my memory loss is strictly of the
short-term variety I have no problem remembering
the last time I got laid.
***
Can we cut the crap for just a minute? Managed
care isn't about reducing medical costs, it's
about making money for the people who run and
invest in HMOs.
***
Is it me or is it Congress? I mean, doesn't it
miss the point just a little to allow a
"successful" lawsuit against an HMO to
result in higher premiums for its members
instead of a devaluation of the HMOs stock and a
lower annual bonus for its CEO?
***
I've never been represented by anyone in the
House of Representatives.
***
The fitting response to "gatekeeping"
doctors who refuse to order certain procedures
or make specialist referrals because it means
losing a percentage of their HMO take is, of
course, to break their collarbones. But short of
that, I think physicians found capable of
compromising patient care for financial gain
should thereafter be addressed not as
"Doctor," but as "Mister,"
the appropriate title for the businessman
they've opted to be. It may not seem like much
in the way of vengeance, but I've noticed that
doctor's get unhinged in a major way when you
call them "Mister." (No, I'm not going
to bother reconstructing any sentences to
accommodate women doctors. Women are supposed to
be more compassionate than men. If they pull
that "I don't think the hole in your heart
is big enough yet to warrant a
cardiologist" shit, they don't rate even
GENDER recognition--call them
"Mister," too!
***
When you're put on hold in America you might
very well be subjected to a lackluster Naval
Academy Choir cover of "Bitch Better Have
My Money." But when I called a company in
Italy recently I got to hear the entire first
act of "La Boheme."
***
Mother Teresa’s death, coming literally in the
wake of Princess Diana’s, struck a friend of
mine as a mean-spirited attempt to diminish
Diana’s moment by obliging us to remember who
our real saint was. My own take was something
quite the opposite. A canonization ritual
elsewhere in progress, I thought she’d seized
an opportunity to complete her identity with an
exit that would go relatively unremarked. I
don't know what’s required to achieve
sainthood status, but it seemed to me that her
timing demonstrated how centered she had to have
been--how free of ambivalence she was about the
life that she led--and that it was testimony to
her attainment of, if nothing else, a state of
grace.
***
I've been pondering the "offers" to
insure my accounts against default that I
receive from credit card issuers. I agree that,
stifling any chance for me to save money by
charging interest
rates that would embarrass my local loan shark,
these companies have good reason to be concerned
about my ability to repay them should I lose my
job. But, you know, the peace of mind problem
here is all theirs. I myself miss no sleep over
the prospect that I may one day be forced to
stiff people for whom capitalism is too heady a
system--who get much too overheated and giddy
when they use it--and who should never have been
allowed to participate in a free-enterprise
economy. So I'm afraid that, in response, the
best I can do is tender a counteroffer. I'll
consent to the insurance if they pop for the
premiums.
***
When individuals or groups demand that I respect
them, they are evincing an uncertainty about
their respectability--and a need for my
reassurance--that only makes me contemptuous of
them.
***
How slovenly we've become in our pursuit of
money is no way better demonstrated than by the
loose subscription cards that cascade from our
magazines. I appreciate the fact that a lot of
magazines are in trouble and I know that good
subscription numbers sell advertising, but for
me these cards have resulted in only a
pronounced aversion to newsstands. And I can't
be alone. The choice of having a torso that's
permanently bent at an angle perpendicular to
your asshole, or leaving a trail of
"blow-ins" from your subway stop to
your apartment door--tipping off the entire
neighborhood that you've squirreled a copy of
"Miraculous Mammaries" inside the
annual face towel issue of "Macrame
Times"--has to be hurting magazine sales at
least as much as the dwindling literacy rate.
(It should go without saying that those were
arbitrary titles that happened to come to mind.)
***
Re: The final installment of Ken Burns's
"Jazz." Isn't Branford Marsalis the
entertainer who used to lead "The Tonight
Show" band? What exactly qualified this man
to pass judgment on the work of an authentic
artist like Cecil Taylor?
***
In most of our stores these days, trying to
negotiate a simple purchase with personnel who,
by all appearances, were clients of the City
University of New York placement service, is to
subject yourself to a degree of stress the
proverbial Turkish prison warden would be loathe
to inflict. But it's stores where the
salespeople are trained to pounce and hover, and
where the security guards greet you at the door
like they haven't seen you since you did hard
time together, that irritate me the most.
Betraying both desperation and a guiltiness
about something, they automatically lose any
prospect of getting my business.
***
The real mission of proselytizing religious
groups isn't to share a revelation, it's to
validate beliefs they're not sure of by securing
the agreement of others.
***
Since I think that, for the most part, the
people in charge of educating New York City's
children would be more suitably employed as
highway dividers, I certainly don't want to
appear to be coming to their defense. But it
should be pointed out that in its front page
story about that faculty-written junior high
school graduation program with all the spelling
errors, the "Daily News" incorrectly
identified "programme" as a
misspelling of "program." In fact,
"programme" is a legitimate, if
chiefly British, variant. Apparently the folks
who wrote and edited the "News" piece
are themselves products of New York's school
system.
***
Where can you relax or drop your guard these
days? I'm thinking of how stressful and
enervating the dumbing down thing has made all
but the most basic of verbal exchanges; of the
automatic defensive posture rampant greed forces
you to take when you enter into the most
elementary of financial transactions, and of the
increasing incidence of random violence. And I
haven't begun to talk about what you have to
deal with after you've left your family in the
morning.
***
Since I get all of the violence and profanity I
need at home I only go to the movies for sex.
***
People tend to be confused about this. I'm not
pro-choice, I'm pro-ABORTION. Okay? There are
currently six-billion humans on this planet,
most of whom are stupid and unattractive and all
of whom show up at precisely the moment I'm in a
supermarket aisle and reaching for something on
a lower shelf. |
