For Frying Out Loud (6 page)

August 2007

I SHOULD LIVE SO LONG…

So, how do
you
feel today? I felt pretty good until I got my hands on some advice to extend my life.

Let me put forth a disclaimer here: I believe in traditional Western medicine, but I am also open to, although I haven't experienced much of, what folks call alternative therapies. From trigger point massage to acupuncture, natural remedies to yoga, I believe there are some great ideas and great practitioners around. And I mean absolutely no offense with the following…but…

Auuughhhhh!!!!!! I have just had the living poop scared out of me by a magazine purported to represent life extending alternative medicine therapies, regimens, drugs, machines and pills the size of bagels.

I sat down to warn you about this stuff just after I tried to swallow something that promised to extend my life. By the time I got finished choking the thing down, chasing it with water, then tomato juice, then a slice of cheesecake (it was the only edible in the fridge at the time), I'd used up twenty minutes of my life and clotted my arteries sufficiently to take two months off my existence at the other end.

Between the taste of the pill and the feeling that there's still a major league baseball stuck in my throat my life extension adventure is off to a rocky start.

It all started when my spouse went to have a treatment by our local Myofascial Trigger Point Therapist. Contrary to how it sounds, Myofascial does not mean a massage for your face. It's a discipline to treat muscle pain by finding the trigger points where the pain originates. Frankly, that means that the therapist sticks her elbow in the small of your back, trying to shove it through to your belly button so your rib cage will stop hurting. Honest. I've had treatment myself, for (I love saying this) a sports injury (stop laughing). It works and works well.

So my mate was behind closed doors having her triggers popped and I picked up a magazine we shall call Live Longer Than Most People. That's not the name, but I don't want litigation. I took the magazine home with me. Purportedly, this magazine features alternative meds and natural remedies to fix everything you can possibly die from, now or in the future.

In ten minutes I learned that I have to improve the endothelial function in my arteries, better absorb Bio CoQ10 for anti-aging, take Mitochondrial Energy Optimizer, eat pomegranate supplements, use Theanine to calm my nerves, avoid benzodiazepines (eek, don't step on the benzodiazepines), avoid the wrong form of Vitamin E (of course, that's what I take), swallow more butter extract, and keep from microwaving myself with my TV or cell phone. And I was just on page 32 of 94, not including the Buyers Club pages in the back.

The thing is, each article makes sure you know exactly which unhealthy pharmaceutical company drug is bad for you and tells you exactly which of their natural house brands MUST take its place or you are toast. The hell with Valium, Lipitor or soap and water. You have to use Reversatrol, Sesame Lignans and Olive Fruit Extract. Frankly, I get plenty of olive fruit extract from martinis.

From what I can glean from the articles and ads, if you take one pill from the greedy pharmaceutical companies, you have to replace it with four pills from the greedy Live Longer Than Most People people.

If you take even a small portion of their advice, you'd be in the bathroom every morning swallowing pills until lunchtime. If I do live twice as long but spend months at a time gulping handfuls of anti-mutagenic pills, is this a good trade-off? If I have to live like this I want my life to be shorter than most people.

Then there was the cautionary article “Single Fast Food Meal Increases Blood Pressure.” I'm sure that's true. It should have been followed by “Single reading of this magazine monumentally increases blood pressure.”

I turn the page. Look out for free radical reactions! I'm having a pretty radical reaction to this whole thing. Know what an adaptogen is? It's an agent that strengthens the body's response to stress. I think a stopreadingogen can do the same thing.

Then come the machines. Blood testers, capsule filler machines, Dr. Fung's Tongue cleaners (ick), pill grinders, and a Gauss Meter to detect radiation from my phone, photocopier and (omigod) my computer. Hell, I should be dead by now. Did you know that premature labor is associated with gum disease? While I don't have to worry about that, or the boswellia plant providing optimum prostate health, I can avoid some ugly maladies by using Live Longer Than Most People Toothpaste.

The magazine also recommends diets, all of them based on starving yourself to death. The Ultra Low Calorie Diet is, essentially, not eating. My idea of ultra low calorie is pizza minus the pepperoni.

The UltraSimple Diet advocates getting rid of extra body fluid. I do that already, after several Yuengling Lagers.

In the back of the magazine readers are invited on a special Live Longer Than Most People Cruise. You travel to the tropics while enjoying anti-aging lectures, Live Longer Than Most People gift baskets, and “insider secrets to significantly extend your life span.” Wow, does the midnight buffet include all-you-can-swallow capsules, pills and Pomegranate Oils? Nightly in the lounge, Miracle Cures trivia? Excursions to Island health food stores?

There's even a Live Longer Than Most People Credit Card, with Merchandise Rewards. Don't ask. But you don't get Longer Than Most People to pay.

And on just about every page in this magazine there's a question.

LLTMP Magazine: Are you overdosing on Lipitor?

FJ: In their view, yes.

LLTMP: Can you manage stress without drugs?

FJ: Probably not.

LLTMP: Are you swimming in radiation emissions?

FJ: Absolutely.

I can't decide if I should go to the emergency room or suck down olive fruit extract at Happy Hour. I'm heading to the kitchen to finish the rest of the cheesecake so I can get my butter extract. Ahhhhh….

August 2007

THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON, PART TWO…

You may have read my previous rant about a cross-country flight that set a new low in comfort and customer service. While I didn't think it possible, that terrible record has been bested. Seattle to Philly had nothing on Philly to New York.

My step-mom Joan visited Rehoboth from New York last weekend. Since we didn't want Joan driving the distance alone, we suggested a short flight from White Plains, NY to Philadelphia, where we would pick her up. I'd taken that very same round trip in reverse last June and apparently there was a glitch in the system because both flights were on time and without incident.

Here, the similarity ends. When leaving N.Y., Joan's one-hour flight was more than three hours late. Apparently, somewhere in the continental United States, there had been weather.

On the following Monday, after a wonderful weekend, Joan and I headed back to Philadelphia for the departure leg of the journey. Leaving the car in Short Term Parking, we foolishly figured it might cost me “first half hour $4” but I'd certainly be back before it doubled, right? Yeah, you know.

We crossed from the parking lot to the departure area and discovered we were at U.S. Air Terminal B and not U.S. Air Express, Terminal F. However, a woman behind the ticket counter, said, “You can take a bus to your terminal, but we'll check your suitcase here.” For a minute I considered sending Joan on the baggage belt with her suitcase.

I was heaving the bag onto the scale when another, quite frantic employee rushed at us whispering, “NO! Don't do it! We're having baggage issues!” Wow I'm glad I didn't plunk my family member down on that conveyor belt.

We snatched the bag from the jaws of defeat and schlepped it with us toward the shuttle bus to Terminal F.

The ride was so long I thought we'd accidentally gotten
onto the bus to Manhattan. But it finally delivered us to the very last door in the entire six-terminal airport, a good 5K from Short Term Parking. A few more yards and we'd have been in center city Philly with the Liberty Bell.

In the right place at the right time at last, we stared at the Departure screen, found the flight number and saw the throbbing words CANCELLED. CANCELLED. It sounded so, well, final. Joan and I exchanged helpless glances and headed for the ticket counter.

“Our flight's been cancelled, what now?” I asked.

“You wait,” the agent said, dismissively.

“How long?” I questioned.

“Until we can get you on another flight. Looks like 4:30,” he responded, head down, willing us to vaporize.

“Will I be able to get a refund if I drive to Amtrak at Wilmington instead?” I asked.

“Nope,” said the dope, “our obligation is just to get you on the next available flight. And that's 4:30. But you can check your bag now.”

I looked around to see if another employee was going to freak out and throw herself in front of the scale to stop me from checking the bag. No crisis worker intervened, so we watched the suitcase go bye-bye.

“Can I ask why the flight was cancelled?” I inquired.

“Operational Decision.”

Really? They decided not to operate? Who's decision was this? Granted, there can't be throngs of people anxious to suffer modern day air travel for a measly one hour pain ride, so the flight must have been cancelled due to a masochist shortage.

I sighed and prepared to move on. But Joan, having stood demurely and quietly this whole time, addressed the agent.

“Aren't you even sorry?”

Way to go, Joan. The pompous, patronizing ticketing agent in this, the City of Brotherly Love, stammered some kind of answer as we turned and left. On our exit we spied a bank of “Courtesy Phones.” I bet not.

That the next flight was just under five hours away was awful enough, but thanks to any number of terrorist threats, our airports are now hermetically sealed. No one without a boarding pass can enter any part of the airport where they dispense books, souvenirs, food or, as was becoming increasingly attractive, something to drink.

“Let's take that shuttle back to the Marriott at Terminal A,” I suggested. We stood at the curb, waving, and a bus flew past without stopping. We flagged another and it too, whooshed by as if we were lepers. Turns out the shuttle only goes one way. Getting back from F to A is not their problem.

So we hiked the U.S. Air Express 5K, in the ninety degree weather. As it happens, every terminal from F to A had a wall-mounted Automatic External Defibrillator, just in case. Airport humor?

We crossed the Marriott finish line, with both of us schvitzing, panting and in serious need of adult beverages. Luckily, the restaurant was cool while we tried to get calm and collected. Spending a few extra hours together was a lovely gift, but it galled us to realize we'd be approaching New York's skyline by now if we'd just kept driving.

After a deliberately leisurely lunch, we boarded the shuttle yet again and headed for effing Terminal F. Although it was only 2:30 p.m., Joan opted to go through security to the gate so she could finish a book and I could get home. Naturally, some of her reading time was chewed up creeping in line for the X-ray machines, going barefoot, getting searched and generally being treated like a woman with explosives in her brassiere.

Concurrently, I dragged myself, amid further rising temperatures, back to the parking lot. En route I spied an air-conditioned van with the words Homeland Security Working Dogs on it. I longed to crawl in among the pack for a cool nap. With airport security at Code Orange I'd be quite willing to help sniff luggage. Finally back at short-term parking, where I had been for so long that my short term memory
failed and it took me twenty minutes to locate my car, I had to pay an astronomical ransom for my vehicle.

With rush hour approaching, traffic crawled, my patience ebbed and I was still outside Smyrna, DE at dinner time. Hell, I could have been to New York, had a knish, and been back again by this time.

As it turned out, Joan's plane didn't leave Philly until after 5 o'clock, making this a record seven hour wait for a one hour ride. And, she arrived in New York to discover that – ta da! – her luggage didn't. I wish I'd had money on that. It was Tuesday before her bag finished its vacation.

So this is air travel 2007, brought to you by a merger of Corporate America and Jihad terrorists: F.U. Airlines Inc. Together they've replaced Fly the Friendly Skies with Apocalypse Now. Fasten your seatbelts. We're in for a bumpy time.