The Hawaiians arrived in their pickup trucks with their “pig dogs” in the back. The pig dogs have the hugest heads of any dog on earth, their tongues flapping around in their huge jaws like those giant flags at car dealerships. I went into the house because they scared me, while Johnny went outside with the men. The pig dogs were sent out on recon and soon were barking up a storm. Johnny yelled for me to come out and see what was going on. You have not lived inside of nature properly until you have seen snarling pig dogs corner a huge, terrified mother pig the size of a small Volkswagen.
The Hawaiian men must step up to the pig and stab her through the heart with a great big spear to end her life with one thrust or they are thought to be less manly than the ideal. (After all, the Hawaiian warriors were the fiercest of all the warrior nations that American interests decimated and usurped so that they could build KFC franchises outside the American mainland.) The dogs are given a taste of the pig’s blood and they go wild from it, running and howling. I felt like I was going to vomit, pee, shit, go blind, and faint; I wanted to run around barking at things myself when I saw the dogs’ bloodlust, and the eye of the dead pig, not raisinlike at all, but deep and large, staring into eternity. It looked like the eye over the pyramid on the dollar bill, kind of a symbol of infinite consciousness, or some other symbol of symbolism.
Then the hunters all stood around the carcass and quietly began to talk about nature and cycles, and the end of life, as they waited for the dogs to calm down again. I was thrilled that all of this led to a discussion about the Goddess Pele. They are the only men with whom I have ever had the pleasure of discussing Pele and nature, and it was deeply mystical, I thought. Every life that ends takes something with it and leaves something behind, it seems. Moving out of physical existence into memory takes no time at all. I saw two little pigs peeking out from behind the tall grass, and the men said those were her babies. “Why,” I asked them, “if nature is so intelligent and so perfect in design, as all the religious nuts claim God made it, why can’t a pig sense when it’s unwanted and why does it go to the most dangerous place it can go, after being repeatedly run off?”
They aptly answered, “So they can be caught and eaten. We will bring you some of the sausage we make.”
“Uh, no, I am a vegetarian,” I lied, and then almost immediately became one.
Then they packed the dogs and hauled the pig carcass off to their homes to be made into sausages. “Gotta serve somebody,” as Dylan says.
Johnny said, “Let’s take a meat break for a while. Ingesting all of that cruelty is kind of gross.” We have not eaten meat since then, now about one year later. The mother pig’s orphans, after a brief and suitable period of pigly mourning, began rooting and digging in my yard again, ignoring the other forty-seven acres where there are even more nuts, taller grass, and no humans.
I have a new concept for dealing with this generation of interlopers. I read a study in the New York Times that described pigs as highly intelligent as well as vain. The study said that pigs enjoy looking at themselves in mirrors. I decided to install big round mirrors at a low level around the fence, so that when the pigs approached they would be too caught up in checking themselves out to dig under the fence. I will let you know how that turns out. I will not accept that I have been outsmarted or outdone by any pig, ever! You would think that if we can send a man to the moon, and destroy an entire city’s humanity with one of our bombs, leaving only buildings standing (for new KFC franchises?), we could invent birth control pellets for pigs!
These Repiglicans should start evolving a new system of behavior that leaves a smaller carbon imprint if they are to survive Granny’s new world order!
Chapter 18
The D-word and All That
Let’s face it: Some days we don’t need to be reminded of our mortality because it’s damn near impossible to forget. At times like that, it’s not the elephant in the room; it’s more like the room in the elephant. I have the worst fears about how I am going to die. I would never want to be discovered naked, even while alive, but especially after I am no longer.
Don’t think I’m being morbid and please don’t tune me out. But if there’s one thing that lots of Baby Boomers don’t like, it’s the idea that we’re getting closer to the end of the line with each tick of the clock. I’m determined, though, to have fun with that. Honest! Well, if not fun, exactly, something like a good- natured response to the thought of kicking the breathing habit one day. When people say that life is too short, I say it’s not that life’s too short; it’s that we’re dead for so long! If that doesn’t get them to at least consider the potential absurdity of it all, I try something else. Like: Maybe we should shed that Baby Boomer handle and start calling ourselves something that still has a youngish feel but doesn’t kid itself, like, for example, Casket Patch Kids.
“Fifty-seven isn’t old, Roseanne. It’s just middle-aged!” No it isn’t. Nobody lives to be a hundred and fourteen. And if you do, your payoff is sitting in your wheelchair faintly hearing Willard Scott (in that charming, shall we say, drunken way of his) wishing you a happy birthday from the TV room at the nursing home. As I like to say, “Thank God for Depends!” And yes, I do want some free Depends, thank you very much! You have to laugh to keep from crying, they tell me, and that’s partly why I’m a comic. Well, that and the free Depends.
I just found out that one of the warning signs of a fatal heart attack is . . . NOTHING! You heard me. Great, so now feeling perfectly fine is a damn red flag. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Even if you try to be careful and play by the rules, you can still fall prey to any number of things that can take you down. But there’s no sense in whining about it. God knows I tried that for years and found out the hard way that it doesn’t help and nobody wants to hear it. I like what old Hugh Hefner said about it when they asked him how he felt about aging: “Getting old? It’s way better than not getting old!” (By the way, no matter what it says on his birth certificate, isn’t it weird to say “old Hugh Hefner?”)
I have a line that I think says a lot—it’s a play on another old one and it’s not as dark as it sounds at first: “Remember, today is the first day of what’s left of your life.” It’s not really negative. It makes me remember that the less you have of something, the more it’s worth. I want to use my time here for good things and live to the fullest. But I’m not the type who says you have to rush out of bed and go bungee jumping on your way to tango lessons after you climb Pike’s Peak with your hypercaffeinated lifestyle coach. Do what you like as much as circumstances permit. I, for example, am partial to engaging in eating cheese, drinking wine, getting lots of bed rest, reading tabloids, and hanging out with my grandkids (for brief, controlled periods).
My health is pretty good. If it ever gets terrible, I guess I’ll have to deal with it. Worst case scenario: I heard that Dr. Kevorkian is out of prison and running for Congress, as if a man that age can be said to be running for anything. Wait a minute, what am I thinking? Does the name John McCain ring a bell—or is that my tinnitus?
Jeez, Kevorkian, Dr. Death! I can hear you guys now: “You’re not going to start up about suicide or euthanasia or completely cutting out carbs, are you, Roseanne?” No, I was just thinking, I don’t know what party Dr. K is representing, but I bet he’s not the life of it.
Speaking of getting old, a lot is written about . . . okay, let’s get it over with: sex and companionship and love and junk among old people. I know, it’s part of life and all, but let’s not talk about it too much, okay? I just know that lots of older women outlive their husbands, and finding new guys can be rough. I’m always amazed at how many guys in their twilight years are looking for chicks half their age. I guess a few older women are turning the tables there, but most of them just happen to be, coincidentally, rich. Go figure. The ones who aren’t rich often say that they don’t want to hook up with a guy their age or older because such guys usually need a nurse more than a “girlfriend.” Lots of older women just d
on’t want to take care of an old guy. They probably still have to do that with one or more of their “adult” children, or as I call them, teenagers in their thirties. Some of these really old guys’ idea of fun is sitting up in their oxygen tent and pushing the nurse button all by themselves.
I laughed when I heard that they give out free Viagra to senior citizens in Mexico. That is certainly a creative way to thin the herd. At some point, someone has to bring up the fact that if Baby Boomers would just die and get it over with, instead of getting plastic hearts and such, and going to heroic measures to stay alive, we might be able to leave our kids some of the limited resources that still exist. I say, as soon as you hit sixty-two and get sick, you should just take the Paula Abdul morphine patch and say nighty-night.
Anyway, to wrap things up: What can we do about getting really old (if we’re lucky) except take reasonably good care of ourselves, enjoy life as best we can, make plans for dealing with our bodies when that number I mentioned is “up,” and then forget about it. Try to be good to yourself and everybody else and keep on rolling! It ain’t over till the fat lady sings, and I promised I wouldn’t. The way I look at it is that when my death comes, I won’t be there anyway, so why waste one more second thinking about it? There’s an old song that was popular when my parents were young: “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think).” Well, I say, “Express yourself—it’s later than you think.”
Chapter 19
Celebrities Dropping Like Flies—What I’ve Learned
As I get a little nearer to the end of my book, there’s been an incredible wave of deaths among the famous. Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Bea Arthur, Walter Cronkite, Heath Ledger, Dom DeLuise, Karl Malden, and, of course, the big shocker, Michael Jackson—it’s been positively eerie. Forget about that crazy “Rule of Three” that gets tossed around, the one that says the famous tend to go out in some kind of celebrity death triangle. There hasn’t been enough of a break in this grim procession to bear that old superstition out—2009 and 2010 were busy years for the Grim Reaper, and 2011 is shaping up to be the same, as the roll call continues.
Before I go any further, I have to say that I hate all those bullshit euphemisms for dying. (I don’t know why I even brought up the Grim Reaper.) I mean, when I hear that so-and-so passed? I want to say, “Did they croak, for chrissakes, or get their driver’s license?” We DIE, people. Get used to the word. There may or may not be an afterlife or whatever, but from this side of the net—we just plain DIE.
Here’s what I’ve learned from the way we seem to react, or at least the way the media reacts, to death and how I think we should change things: We should pay more tribute to people before they die, while they’re around to hear it. You know how people like to say, at funerals and such, that the “dearly departed” is looking down on us? I don’t know if they’re looking down on us or not, but I know they’d damn sure have appreciated knowing how highly we thought of them while they were still here to be appreciated. I think that’s true for everybody, not just the famous among us.
Sure, people have said this before, but do we take their advice? Why do you have to die before anybody really pours out their heart and talks about all the good things you’ve done and how much you’ve meant to them? Does anybody get the kind of tribute in life that we seem so ready to pour out when they’re gone? We should lay it on each other, good and thick, while we’re still around to say it and hear it. I’m not just talking about celebrities; I’m not even talking about family, per se. We should tell anybody who tries to do the right thing, everybody who touches us in some way or another, that we notice them and appreciate what they do and who they are every day.
The world is getting tougher and more impersonal in so many ways. Sure, we can Facebook or Twitter, and talk about our hundreds of “friends” or whatever else we do on the Internet to feel like we’re reaching out to one another, but a lot of that is shallow crap. I think it’s important to look somebody in the eye and tell them that you’ve noticed the kindness they’ve shown you, or the steadfast loyalty they’ve exhibited in always being there for you, doing what’s expected of them and then some, being one of the people in your life who you know you could call on in times of crisis. All of that needs to be said and needs to be heard.
I don’t care if it sounds a little sappy. I wanted to say this because, as I’ve watched the people I mentioned at the beginning of this little reflection come to the end of their lives, I couldn’t help but wonder if they heard, loud and clear, anything like the out-pouring of appreciation and recognition and affection that was there after they died. The truth is, though, as celebrities, the odds are probably better that they did hear and see the love and respect people had for them, more so than many of the other good people who aren’t well-known but who deserve to know that they’re appreciated for just being decent people—who played a meaningful role in the lives of the people around them.
Okay, it’s not the newest notion on earth, but it’s one of the messages that have been coming through loud and clear to me during this rash of celebrity deaths. Starting with your family, and then working your way out from there, tell people you appreciate them, their work, their kindnesses, or anything else for which they deserve some credit and recognition. It’s rougher out there than it’s been in a while. Let people know they’re noticed, respected, and recognized now—while they can hear it and you can express it.
Sometimes I think we do the opposite—while people are alive, we heap shit of all kinds on them with both hands, and then just to indulge our guilt after they die, we praise them and never “speak ill of them” out of “respect” for the fact that they were once living, back when we happily slung shit all over them. That’s why reading obituaries is such a guilty pleasure—if that’s what you call something that’s not really that pleasurable. (Come on—don’t pretend that you never read them.) There’s always some ninety-three-year-old whose “cab came” while they were surrounded by friends and family after a long and satisfying run, mostly in the sunshine. I start to feel good when I see those high numbers because I’m only fifty-eight and don’t feel a day over seventy. But then, there has to be one in every crowd: the fifty-eight year-old who brings us all down with his rebellious gesture of dying while being no older than I am and having an obituary full of those disturbing terms like “taken too soon,” and “suddenly,” and so forth.
I know my number’s coming up at some point, with the added insult of not knowing my damn number. But, hey, I don’t need to read about it before I’ve had my coffee in the morning. Sometimes, when I’m really in touch with my inner child, I realize that I’m barely over the whole Santa Claus being an anti-Semite thing my dad used to tell me! I hate obituaries more and more the older I get, and I hated them when I was young. I was angry when I heard my grandfather Ben’s obituary read to me at age three. It was full of lies and omissions. The guy promised me that he would always be with me, and that was never mentioned in anything anyone ever said about him, yet to me it was the most important thing of all!
Therefore, it has always been one of my fondest wishes to write my own obituary, and I began that undertaking in the first grade. I have updated it along the way, and I want it read at my funeral, if I have one. I might not, as it would truly disgust me to look down from the wave particle I will be riding and see a bunch of people who treated me like crap, or who ignored me or owed me money, unburdening their guilt about me and singing my praises. They know who they are, and unless they contact me soon, apologize, and bring me cake, they can go fuck themselves and forget about me forever!
Chapter 20
Flattery Will Get You Everywhere
Writing my own obituary has made me reflect on the beginnings of my career in entertainment and the course my personal life has taken since that very first night on stage at the Comedy Shoppe in Denver. Once I made the transition from a thin cocktail waitress with a wicked sense of humor to a fat comic with comedy chops, I began to go out on the road and work
a few comedy clubs. I had been encouraged by the fact that audiences seemed to really like me, and so did other comics from Los Angeles, who told me to hone my hour and then come to L.A. to audition for Mitzi Shore at The Comedy Store, which was mecca for comics back then, before cable television.
At a club in Minnesota, I met Lizz Winstead, who later co-created The Daily Show. Lizz introduced me to another fat comic, named Tom Arnold. Tom and I were on the same bill that week as another really, really fat comic, Scott Hansen, who booked the club, and Louie Anderson, who was really fat, too. We all sat around and made fun of one another and told fat jokes, but Tom got the best of everybody with the best fat joke of all. He was introduced onto the stage by Scott, who weighed about six hundred and fifty pounds (give or take a hundred), and after thanking him, Tom said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Scott also works as a rodeo clown in his spare time. Now, a lot of guys will stay on the horse for ten or fifteen seconds, but Scott stays on until the vet comes.” Offstage we howled, and when Tom came off, I went on. He laughed really hard at my act, and hung around till it was over. He told me he thought I did great; in fact, he acted like he was in awe of me, and his compliments and flattery went on and on and on. I loved it, of course. I had never in my life had so much positive attention paid to me from a man.
We started talking and kept talking well into the next morning. We found each other funny, and we told fat joke after fat joke, and talked seriously about how much we hated being fat. Tom and I had some pretty intense eating issues, and matching character flaws, too. He also had quite the cocaine addiction, which I didn’t find out about till later.
Roseannearchy Page 19