Today I endured out-patient surgery at a Los Gatos hospital - a
podiatrist (who shares a lot of attributes
<1> with my last boss
Back East) removed two warts from the bottom of each of my
feet with a carbon dioxide laser. These "plantar" warts have
been growing and multiplying for over two years now; the
ineffectuality of various treatments has led up to this minor operation.
After an expensive cab ride (where we discussed Kurt Vonnegut and his
Church of God the Indifferent, as well as local "meet markets" and
brothels) I arrived & checked in for the usual patient routines:
some rendering of bodily fluids, changing into the hospital gown, getting
wheeled about on a gurney, and being connected up to devices with
wires and hoses. The only painful part was the injections of local anesthetics;
most of my time in the OR was spent in animated chatter with an older nurse
after the discovery that we both came from neighboring towns in the same Maryland
county. Afterwards T drove me home; prior to the dropping off I took him
into work for a general tour and visit to the interior of Moffett
Field's Hanger
One. Now, for several days my feet are bound up in bloody rags; I feel
they make me resemble a wartime refugee; an impression enhanced by the
limping caused by both these goofy velcro-closure post-op shoes I must
wear, and the operation itself.
Lying there on my back, strapped down to a table with a powerful laser up
there almost between my legs, I advised the various medical personnel present of
my discomfort with this scene's similarity to the one in "Goldfinger" and
NONE OF THEM KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT! I detailed how it was a circular
saw in the book <2>; and
the movie's hardware was a lot neater-looking than their own. To hear G's
favorite bit of dialogue from that very sequence in the film,
this page
has sound files in both .wav and .avi format.
Reading DFW's 1996 essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head"
convinces me that I have to see all that director's stuff - must
definitely watch the recent "Lost Highway", and re-screen "Blue
Velvet" (plus I should really catch up on "Twin Peaks" - I only saw
the first 1.5 episodes). Also must see the 1959 film "The Fugitive
Kind" (with Marlon Brando) which he alleges "Wild At Heart" is a
remake of. This means acquiring either a color monitor (I do
have a working green monochrome) or better yet an inexpensive combined
TV-VCR (since my VCR no longer rewinds). This purchase might conflict
with my active hostility to television, reinforced by today's arrival
of the anti-tube 'zine' "The White Dot". Good extract from a letter therein:
I am particularly turned off by TV news. Instead of
real news, what is offered is an "entertainment of terrible happenings"
carefully edited to maximize entertainment value and carefully omitting
any background to provide understanding of why these things are
happening. The content is cleverly manipulated to serve the interests
of the "powers that be". - R. T. Gabbert, Chicago
Query: DFW uses italics for movie
titles - should I, too? Now I reserve that font-switch
just for book titles and emphasis.