Albuterol For The Soul – LittleCubeNews.com

My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. It’s that time of year again, Halloween, and it’s time to decide what type of monkey I’m going to be. As much as I love to be subtle monkeys, I don’t get a very enthusiastic response when people ask me what I am and I tell them “I’m a Hamadryas monkey, but you may know me better as a baboon” or “I’m a Patas monkey, and you probably didn’t realize I do not display the obvious dominance hierarchy seen in many other primate species.”I’d have to say most people thought my coolest costume was when I wore a gladiator outfit over a gorilla suit and swung a light saber around in the air screaming, “Who dares challenge the Ape King of Damascus, Lord Henderson?!” Everyone really liked it even though I doubt anyone knew Lord Henderson is the primary character in a “What if….?” novel I am writing and hope to publish on the web. What if… apes rose to power during the Macedonian Era using light sabers somehow? My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. And Star Wars.

For years, I had resisted going on any sort of anti-depressant. When Prozac first came out it developed a sort of chic reputation, followed by a time when it was very unfashionable, then becoming vogue again. At least, I think that was the case. I really only had a vague notion of it’s dithering public perception, but that was enough to turn me off, as I try to avoid doing anything that seems extremely, moderately, or not at all trendy.

The other reason I didn’t try it is because I already take enough pills a day. The pharmaceutical companies already have an extreme financial interest in the majority of my body. But my brains… them’s mine. It always seemed to me as if these mood enhancement drugs change who you are. They rose questions of identity and the light philosophical definition of self. I figured I would rather be miserable than alter my personality. But then I figured a few months ago, you only live once, so you might as well be doped up.

I came to this conclusion from after a few occurrences. A movie I recommended to a friend as a “great comedy” made her cry (Todd Solondz’s Happiness). I became despondent for a week after benching the wrong players in a fantasy football league. And I began to spend a lot of my afternoons listening to Icelandic trance while watching Family Feud on mute. In my opinion, the latter is actually quite fun as it allows you to guess the original survey question according to the answers that pop up on the board. Still, my doctor thought this was a perfectly good reason to put me on Prozac.

In fact, after asking me if I wanted to talk to a psychologist before trying medication and I told him I didn’t want to talk to anyone, he hastily wrote a prescription. One thing he warned me about were the sexual side effects that made achieving orgasm a prolonged process, although that was “rarely a problem for young guys like me”. The inference was that he had confidence my new stamina would make me a certified fuck machine. Deep down, though, I knew I would soon be lying in bed having just disappointed my girlfriend (again) and my doctor.

After our appointment he dropped me off at the nurses desk and headed back down the hall when he turned around and said, “The Prozac usually takes two weeks to see results.” Only he put his hands around his mouth like he was making a bird call and whispered when he said “Prozac”. I realized there might be a social stigma attached to the drug and he was trying to save me the embarrassment. I wasn’t embarrassed in the least, but I felt compelled to tell the nurse “I’ve got a rash…” before handing her my co-pay and leaving.

After two weeks of nothing, I coincidentally had an appointment with another doctor who, after learning I was on the antidepressant, asked me if “I believed in it”. This immediately signified to me that Prozac is really nothing but a placebo that only works if the patient “believes” it will. Needless to say, even if it isn’t, there was no way it was going to help now that I thought I knew what I had no way of knowing. The only effects I noticed after two months were the sexual ones my physician had mentioned, but at all the wrong times. My “special alone time” is too much work, now, which makes me even more depressed.

I switched over to Paxil yesterday. As far antidepressants that start with “P” and contain a weird letter in the middle, it is definitely one of them.  I will write all about it later.

This was written a couple of years ago after a trip to the city of Las Vegas. I’m posting it now with hopes that this site will be the first to pop up if anyone does a Google search for “Aladdin’s Casino” and “vomit”.

It used to be that you couldn’t take a step down the Las Vegas strip without stepping on a scattered pile of prostitution flyers. Now, they are politely handed to you on street corners. What’s more, if you accept it, it will likely be slapped out of your hand by your traveling companion as if it were a snake. Things have changed. What used to be the Disneyworld for adults is now just Disneyworld, complete with a lame roller coaster.

I flew in recently with a friend, we’ll just call her Beth (the one who apparently frowns upon hooking). It was a short vacation, which I think, proved not quite short enough. The immediate impression one gets is of a disaster area where something just exploded, something full of neon and Asians. The lights and people blurred into one muddy streak as we were being shuttled from the airport to our hotel. If I have learned anything from television, and I believe I have, New York cab drivers are a crazy bunch. Ours was clearly trained by one of them. His thoughts may as well have floated in a bubble above his head, “If I come to a screeching halt here, I can cut across this lane into the median, now I can pull into this lane of oncoming traffic and start cursing wildly…”

I expected to go to Vegas and three days later, return with enough stories of sin and dissolution to write a short novel. Instead, I only have a story about the complete lack of stories. Maybe it was our shortage of mescaline and high-powered blotter acid, but there were no soaring Nevada highs. I was only a witness to things like a man lying on a casino floor bleeding from his ears, a woman running nude down the hotel hallway, and a waitress throwing a plate at an ungracious customer. I’m sure all of these events, in and of themselves, made for fascinating stories, but seeing only a small portion of each, I was left to wonder what the entirety them would reveal. Who was that man? What had happened his ears? Could I do anything to personally involve myself in his tragedy and make my trip more interesting?

Those were some of the few things I was grateful to have seen. There were things, two in particular, I was not. There are a million advertisements in that town for an equal number of magic shows or musical cabarets happening daily, or in many cases, twice daily. Someone named Danny Ganns was being highly publicized when I was there. Danny had a nice smile and, in many pictures, a pastel blue jump suit, but no matter how many posters or magazine insets I could find, the only clue to his talent was one of an “entertainer”. It was a mystery that I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to solve. It never occurred to me that people actually went to any of these.

Still, I convinced Beth to go to something called Bottom’s Up, the “only afternoon topless revue on the strip”. It was a sad attempt on my part to recapture the town’s seedy lure that we had yet to come across on our trip. The place was full of people, most of them it seemed, in all seriousness. Ten minutes into the performance, she whispered that she had to go to the bathroom and would meet me after the show by the nickel slots. I said I would see her there in five minutes. I had never known the appeal of a woman’s bare chest could be so nullified by bad puns and a midget in a cowboy costume.

Lesson unlearned, we decided to go see a troupe of impersonators that evening. As a prelude to this decision, Beth announced she had a splitting headache and needed some medication if she were to open her eyes in this town again. I gave her some of my prescription pain-killers, assuming it was common knowledge that the pills should be taken with food, and also, not with alcohol. Ten minutes into Elvis Presley, she threw up. I thanked her and walked her out of the auditorium. She’d had the forethought to bring an Aladdin’s Casino coin bucket in, and on our way out she expressed her amazement over how she’d topped off the entire thing. “This must be thirty-two ounces!” she said. More familiar with throwing up into toilets, she had apparently never considered the raw metric volume one person could fill with vomit.

After a quick recovery, we settled on eating. There are many restaurants in Las Vegas that advertise ostensibly absurd specials- steak and eggs for $4.99. Jelly and toast in the same restaurant, however, costs ten dollars. The buffet, then, is the safest bet, at least economically.

The one we were at offered a selection of food from across the globe. It seemed exciting to unite them on one plate. I put some Kung Pao chicken on one half, a burrito on the other, and unified them with their common bond of rice in the middle. But the dish, and the four thereafter, quickly made me sick. My stomach was angry. It had expected to trip to Vegas, but it was now traveling to China, Mexico, Italy, and France, all in one night.

We shared a cab ride back to our hotel that night with a couple from Texas. Each of us reflecting upon our own nausea, we were silent for most of the ride. When it was time to pay, the man told me to put my five dollars away. He told me to “put it on black, partner, because they won’t let me put in on black…” It sounded like he was about to spin off into a tangent about how he was wronged by a casino pit boss, so I readied a smile and prepared to nod awkwardly. Then Beth, from the front seat, began to make nervous small talk about the weather and hotel amenities. Later, I found out she was under the impression our guests had not only paid for our ride, but had given me an extra twenty dollars to gamble with and consequently she reckoned, we would all be having sex in their suite shortly, probably with our boots on, Texan style. If only…

The last morning there, I was drying off from a shower when I noticed two large red stains on my towel. In vacations past, still hazy and confused from the night before, I imagined myself prodding my body with urgency, searching for open wounds. This time, I only shrugged. Las Vegas, especially the housekeeping, just isn’t what it used to be.

Because of my last eulogy, I received a lot of heat from readers, including one John Ritter fan with the phrase “princeofdarkness69” in his e-mail address who made the claim that this site “sux” and “wouldn’t know funny if it bit [us] on the ass”. I’ve learned my lesson and won’t use this opportunity to discuss how any of Jonathan’s work could be improved the way I did with Ritter’s TV show 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter (allusions to incest). I will say that if I had written for seaQuest DSV, I would have included a lot more sexual innuendo between Roy Schieder and the psychic dolphin. And I’ll leave it at that.

I am most familiar with Brandis because of his work in Ladybugs, a Rodney Dangerfield vehicle that allowed Jonathan to dress up as a teenage girl and dominate between the lines on a female soccer team. Outside the lines, of course, he falls in love with one of his teammates and helps Dangerfield learn the true value of higher education by forcing him to go back to school and get his degree. Even though one internet reviewer “did not care for [Dangerfield’s] patented line about ‘finally getting respect’ being mixed in with the techno song during the end credits” that was my favorite part. That was a really good song.

What I remember most about this movie are the circumstance under which I saw it. It was the only time anyone has turned around and yelled at me to “Shut up!!!” in a theatre. This includes the time I screamed “This is the worst fucking movie I’ve ever seen!” during Tomb Raider, once five minutes into it and a second time nearer to the end. This also includes my irrepressible yelping during The Texas Chainsaw Massacre… remake. Ostensibly, the reason I was reproached at Ladybugs was because I was laughing too loudly. Laughing too loudly at Ladybugs?! To be fair, it was during the supposedly serious, high drama of the movie’s climax when the winning soccer kicker was floating in slow motion towards the goal. You know the one. I just thought the use of ball-related slow-mo was even more hilarious than the shot used for Peter Horton’s wicked dig and C. Thomas Howell’s subsequent spike during the finale of the classic beach volleyball flick, Side Out. You know the one.

From Side Out to Sidekicks. Later, Brandis starred as a poor man’s Ralph Machio who overcomes his asthma with homo-erotic daydreams about him and Chuck Norris saving Modesto, California from ninjas. I suspect this was the beginning of the end of his film career, and ultimately, his life.

Some things will always be cool- Audrey Hepburn, Appetite for Destruction, and cigarettes, for instance. They are immune to the usual instability of coolness thoroughly detailed by the “What’s Hot, What’s Not” list in People magazine. Kill Bill knows what’s always cool – namely, Asian cinema – the wuxia kung fu, the heroic bloodshed, the chop socky slice ‘n’ dice ‘em show downs, and the babes ‘n’ bullets who are in the middle of it all. Quentin Tarantino may never live up to Roger Ebert’s post-Pulp Fiction prediction of becoming “a bold new voice in American filmmaking bound to make a movie that cures a serious illness,” but he is certainly passionate. Bill comes across as the ultimate love letter-cum-homage to the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films that were first to teach us even a stubbed toe could result in somebody spitting up a quart of blood in slow motion.

In some ways, Kill Bill resembles another recent movie, Once Upon Time in Mexico. They both have subtext about the new American imperialism, but neither was likely meant as such. I’m guessing both were simply intended as high-flying comic books constructed by a couple of video geek, do-it-yourselfers who were making movies for nobody but themselves. Even Johnny Depp, however, could not rescue the narrative chaos that drowned Mexico. Kill Bill, conversely, has an undemanding and predictable story, if it can even be called a story. A one-trick revenge fantasy may be more appropriate. But the chic ballet of violence that Tarantino achieves is a beautiful thing.

I don’t know how this movie will be received by an audience who have been targeted their entire lives by the cynical prostitutes who release Charlie’s Angels and Bad Boys movies. They may not be impressed by the lack of any new-fangled, FX stunts. Or they may be disappointed that the soundtrack by the RZA does not sound more like the Wu Tang Clan. It is my hope, though, that they will be enticed by the operatic orgy of lost limbs and martial arts in the same way a baby is instinctively drawn to its mother’s milk.

Kill Bill is not perfect. It lacks the consistent snap in its dialogue that made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction so compelling. I also think masking the real identity of the main character in favor of a smooth alias, “The Bride,” may just be a way to inspire the creation of fan-based web sites entirely devoted to discovering her true name (I’ve found two so far, and started one of my own- www.whoisthebride.com ).

For some reason, the movie has been split into two volumes. Unless, as my friend pointed out, volume two is four hours long, it’s probably just a way to make more money. That’s money that I will be more than happy to spend unless I can figure a way to sneak in. On a scale of famous body parts in cinema, where Bunny Lebowski’s toe is a 1, and the human torso/guitar in From Dusk Till Dawn is a 10, Kill Bill rates Braveheart’s head, the numerical equivalent of an 8.2.

You are really an ass. I guess the freedom of speach is working or ou wouldnt be. I know you have the right to say whatever you like but it seems to me that if you don’t know what or who, you are talking about you shouldn’t say anything.

I am talking about what you wrote about John Ritter. My Dad always told me that if you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t say anything. Enough Said!

Anonymous

Ed. Reply: Thank you for contacting LittleCubeNews. I appreciate the fact you don’t think I’d be “working” without freedom of speech. That seems to imply I’m getting paid for this. It’s really quite flattering. Unfortunately, thousands of readers a month and the occasional e-mail like yours is the only reward for my “work”.

I’m sorry you’re upset I didn’t mention “Problem Child” or the informational video “The Joys of Natural Birth” in my John Ritter eulogy. It was an oversight. I hope you can forgive the omission and visit LittleCubeNews in the future.

Sincerely,
The Editor

_____________________________________________

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, I have found that your site does not meet our guidelines. The results are outlined in the report below.

At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of “Hate” websites that contain “language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization (McDonald’s)”. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

Ed. Reply: Thank you for policing the content of my website. After review, it seems that I may have, indeed, accidentally expressed an opinion. And it may have even been critical towards McDonalds. God forbid. Combine those dangerous opinions with a few inflammatory facts (taken from one of those notoriously unreliable NY Times bestsellers no less, Fast Food Nation) and I can see why my ad should have been “suspended”. If just one of the ten people who read my site decided not to buy a McGriddle sandwich, then that is economic injury to an American business I am responsible for! I hope one of the minimum wage workers they shuffle in for 10 hours a week does not get fired because McD’s can’t afford to pay him. Then again, it is likely that worker would have been shot in a robbery. Maybe I saved a life! Oh, who am I kidding- probably not.

Even if McDonald’s is indirectly responsible, oh hell, let’s just say directly responsible for the death, pain, suffering, undermining, and crippling of people, animals, and free-market economies, that is no reason for me to go off on the McGriddle! I have never even had one. I am only reticent to go in and buy one because gallons of blood on the floor make me squeamish, even the metaphorical kind.

I guess Thomas Friedman, who is usually right about nothing, was dead-on when he asked if Google was God in a recent op/ed. I apologize to you and the trouble I have caused for the people who review ad content. But since a person who reviews the ad content for appropriateness actually took the trouble to click through it and read the site, my total number of readers is now 11. Thanks.

While I work on changing the content of my site, I temporarily changed the ad to read “We love the McGriddle. Read why while you still can.” The only problem I have is that my regretful piece about the McGriddle was part of a column urging people to “resist things”. So what do I put there, now? In light of this recent experience, I am thinking about going after Amnesty International. I assume there would be no problem with that? Until then, I will continue to look to Google ads for principled advertisers, especially when searching for “ass fisting” and “used condoms”, which brings up 17 paid advertisers alone.

My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys. The spotlight monkeys this week are the 28 Days Later apes. I have a friend who loves zombie movies, and he tells me that those films have always been a reflection of society’s contemporary worries, from the death of the nuclear family in the 50’s to the rise of consumer culture in the 70’s. In 28 Days Later a group of eco-terrorists free some chimps from a laboratory, and as a result of this act of terrorism, the zombie germ the chimps are carrying infect all of England. Watching these terrorists and their terrorism makes me think that today’s society largely fears one thing: monkeys.

As you can imagine, this upsets me very much. Whether this worldly anxiety comes from a fear that all primates are disease-born or simply that they are so out of control they must be kept in cages, neither could be farther from the truth. Minus the 1920’s case where monkey cholera wiped out the entire animal population of all traveling carnivals on the eastern seaboard, most of the infirmities that monkeys suffer from (excluding AIDS) are limited to the species and would effect humans no more severely than the common cold.

Secondly, it is obvious to me that monkeys are not so “beastly” that they cannot be released from captivity. For instance, the Japanese Macaque is a race of monkey so genial that star Cameron Diaz owns one. She met hers, named Hiriko, on the set of My Best Friend’s Wedding (the DVD contains the alternate ending of Diaz relating her character’s misfortunes to the monkey at a Los Angeles bar). Hiriko is certainly not kept behind bars. In fact, during press for Gangs of New York, Diaz mentioned that Hiriko serves her tea every morning. My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys.