MRI Machine Music

For most of my life, MRIs were just for catastrophic sports injuries. But it was Magnetic Resonance Imaging that first indicated my MS, and now it’s part of my biannual regimen. It could be worse.

Basically, I lay on a platform and slide into a big tube, and I always prefer getting to stick me into something rather than something sticking into me. Although there is an IV in my arm so they can add contrast dye to make the pictures trippier or something. They paparazzi my brain and cervical spine, and in so doing there’s series of car alarm-esque bleeps and bloops, more rhythmic than Lou Reed’s infamous Metal Machine Music. Oh, and my head is strapped into a cage that immobilizes my neck. I can’t come within two of touching my nose, so itches must be accepted.

They said it would take 80m, but it was under an hour and it felt long but not that long. Except for one persistent itch, it was pretty de rigeur. I’ve described my infusion as not unlike a cross-country flight. This is a quickie to DC, except you’re motionless while someone’s steals Blade Runner’s car. Loud. The tech said new mothers love all the time to themselves. Some even fall asleep. I wondered if they were deaf. But like so much of my MS, it’s unpleasant and inconvenient but not painful.

Looked at the online results and no change in lesions, and that’s what we’re going for. Seems getting back on the Ocrevus was a good thing. The march continues.

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I collaborated with the brilliant Vee to make a webcomic (2009-11) that failed to become syndicated across the globe. I’m still super proud of it, I still think it needs to be seen, and I am pro-recycling.

Niece #3 dropped a your face jibe in a text recently, and I sent her this comic. It’s an actual funny thing you’ve done! No respect at all, I tell you. If I was writing this today, the first panel would be the lines reversed since I got this bit from the Awesome Wife. We’ve refined it together, but it’s at least as much hers as mine. Maybe she could put it in her long-threatened response comic, The Urbane Blah. And she can actually draw, no outsourcing to Canada for her!

One benefit of this noise of the MRI is you pick music to play in the chunky headphones that they admit helps immobilize your head. My first time panic-chose Classic Rock and endured an hour of Springsteen and Journey. Choosing Beastie Boys only reminded me that it I’m rarely as excited about an artist’s Biggest Hits, too much “Intergalactic,” not enough “What Goes Around” (we met in the middle on “Sabotage”).

Wu Tang was fine because I like their popular stuff, but whatever program they used included artists like Cypress Hill (great!) and Dr. Dre (less great!). I need artists where I celebrate their entire catalog. Heaters was solid, but it took a bunch of tries to find the right band. Junior Kimbrough worked, especially after I determined that time they were using Pandora. This last time I chose Colour Haze. Couldn’t even specifically remember what they sounded like, just that I knew it was all equally good. I could also have said Winona Riders, but I didn’t want to apologize for their stupid band name. Six months to find the next soundtrack.

I decided I wanted to be a writer in 8th grade and have fiendishly held onto lots of my work. I have fun highlighting old writing and making fun of my former self.

When my sitcom career came to what I determined was an abrupt halt, I was encouraged to write a sketch package. I doiubt this is what they wanted, but it made me giggle. Intended for more mature audience, so this a heavily edited (redacted?) selection from “Open Sesame,” fall 2004:

JIM: All right, let's get started. We table the first script in a couple of weeks, what’s everyone got?

Much profanity to establish it’s a typical writers room: crass, combative, and very funny (or at least attempted).

JIM: All right, great stuff, all very useful. Anybody write anything we could actually use?

FRANK: I've got something. It’s a Grover.

JIM: I love your Grovers.

FRANK: Rough outline — Grover teaching the difference between near and far, keeps running back and forth, gets more and more out of breath, collapses. The end.

Reveal: it’s the Sesame Street writers room! But they’re just as crass as the sitcom writers rooms I’d worked in for years.

JIM: That's great. One character, basic script, teaches and is funny, we can shoot it in an hour — totally in the show.

FRANK: I’ve got another one where Cookie Monster's doing lines of coke, finally explains why he’s so crazy.

LARRY: I always saw Cookie as more of a freebase guy.

JIM: That or speed.

FRANK: We do Snufalupagus on speed -- it evens him out and he’s almost normal.

JIM: All very wonderful and productive ideas. Anything remotely usable?

What would be like if Sesame Street, a truly funny show, had a writers room like the ones I’d worked in? My friend who wrote on Full House said that room was exactly as explicit and mean as every other writers room in LA. The writers will say, You have to go to dark places to get to the great. The shows I worked on, they went to dark places get to bad television, with “the creative process” as an excuse for bad behvaior. Whatever gets that studio audience laughing!

I also left my original spelling of Snuffy, but the internet says it’s spelled “Snuffleupagus.” Better.

ELVIRA: I had this really awful Grover I was going to try to avoid pitching.

LARRY: Grover goes to the gynecologist.

ELVIRA: Exactly, Grover’s pap smear.

Writers room pitches often went like this, a chorus of aggressive joking while the writer struggled to actually get through it. Coincidence that Frank got through his Grover pitch unscathed while the female writer takes fire? Mm? She eventually pitches “It’s Not Easy Being Blue.”

LARRY: There’s so much estrogen in that pitch, I think the gyno one would actually be more manly.

ELVIRA: I told you it sucked.

JIM: No, no, I like it. But what if you do it as a Kermit?

FRANK: Interesting.

JIM: (AS KERMIT) : “It’s not easy being green.”

ELVIRA: Yeah, Kermit is sort of the moral center of the show.

Moral center of the show, that’s some prime warmed over execu-speak. What’s his drive?

Dusty ENTERS. he’s disheveled with long hair and looks like he probably smells and is on drugs.

JIM (CONT’D): Dusty, glad you could join us.

DUSTY: Dudes.

Loosely based on an actual writer I knew who was hilarious and aggressive and once threw a water bottle at my head and later won an Emmy for writing. “Loosely” because his hair was short.

JIM: What brilliance have you brought in for us half an hour late?

DUSTY: A positive attitude, clearly. Man, you guys are goddam strychnine.

FRANK: Ladies and gentleman, Sesame Street’s greatest living writer.

DUSTY: I’ve got a Bert and Ernie.

JIM: We’ve already got a lot of Bert and Ernie this week.

DUSTY: So use it another week, I don’t care. It’s something you haven't seen before, that's for damn sure.

NOTE: So many f-bombs removed, Dusty was colorful! From here, the room guesses what the unexpected Bert & Ernie might be. Use your imagination.

DUSTY: Should I pitch this or go get some coffee?

JIM: Come on, let’s hear it.

FRANK: We’ll be good.

DUSTY: Okay, now stay with me. Bert and Ernie going to sleep.

LARRY: Together.

DUSTY: You work for a children's show.

That person who just can’t let the joke go, even after you get mad and make it clear it’s time to stop — half of every writers room.

JIM: Go ahead.

DUSTY: They’re going to sleep, Ernie tells Bert he's scared because he had a dream the night before where aliens invaded.

ELVIRA: Anal probe?

FRANK: I think that’s what us puppeteers are.

DUSTY: Bert doesn’t believe him. Ernie’s talking about the aliens. They’ve got huge...

Pick your own answer, as the writers did.

DUSTY: Mouths. Huge mouths and antennas, and they’re all sparkly with googly eyes.

ELVIRA: He’s finally lost it.

LARRY: I love Dusty.

DUSTY: And they go, “Yup yup yup yup yup uh-huh, uh-huh.”

You know who I’m talking about, right?

I mangled the setup because this was before you could proof things easily on Youtube… I think? The key to Ernie is saying Bert a lot. You see what I mean, Bert? The key is to say it a lot, Bert. You hear me, Bert? Bert? Anyway, Bert, Lovisa loved these guys.

DUSTY: So Bert doesn’t believe him, tells Ernie to just get some sleep. Bert goes to sleep. Then the aliens come.

FRANK: We’re so getting canceled.

ELVIRA: It’s worth it.

DUSTY: The aliens come in the room and go, “Yup yup yup yup yup uh-huh, uh-huh.” Ernie tries to wake Bert, but he’s out cold.

In order for this to have been made, someone had this idea and had to communicate it to others.Maybe it wasn’t in a traditional writers room setup — that’s the whole premise! — but some version of this conversation must have happened.

JIM: How’s it end?

DUSTY: I don't know. Just with the aliens and Ernie.

LARRY: Teaching anything?

DUSTY: Did you learn anything from it? What’d you learn from the bit where Bert sneezes and his nose comes off in the tissue? It’s a joke one. Use it or don’t, get bent.

DUSTY EXITS.

That Bert nose bit is also a classic. Many F-bombs removed from Dusty’s significantly saltier language.

LARRY: What do you guys think?

JIM: I vote “Yup yup yup yup yup uh-huh, uh-huh.”

Great choice!