Our Sweet Warrior Is Free

Scott passed this morning around 8:00, peacefully in his sleep, Lisa and a very caring Hospice nurse watching over him. If it seems fitting to each of you, please lift your voices in song today, in his memory. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Kathy

Scott would know just what to title this...

....but he is sleeping now, carefully and lovingly medicated by the experts at Hospice, and watched over by Lisa. He had a talk with his nurse and doctor this afternoon, and decided very clear-mindedly to stop fighting and rest. There will be no more antibiotics, forced fluids or nutrition. Only medications to ensure no pain and the easiest breathing possible, plus oxygen. Shortly after these changes were made, he fell asleep, and has been sleeping since. Before allowing these changes, he asked that there be no visitors at all. Once it is apparent that he will not be waking up again, he said it will be all right for Debra, Janice, Mary, Marie, and I to visit briefly, but that is all. I know how hard this will be for so many people who love him, but please know that this was his express wish....to be allowed to fall asleep with no disturbances. He knows how much you, we, all love him, and he's taking that with him as he rests. When there are any further changes, we will post them here right away. Until then, please continue to pray for his comfort and peace.

Kathy

Back to Hospice

Kathy here. Scott's visiting Hospice nurse felt strongly that he should be moved back to Hospice inpatient today for a number of reasons, all related to trying to get him stabilized again. They're planning to go back to an IV opiate (either Dilaudid or Morphine), work on the nausea and vomiting, and keep a close eye on the changes that are going on with his shoulder tumor area. There are other less pressing issues as well, but those are the main things. The ambulance came for him shortly before 4pm, and Lisa is on her way right behind him. We'll let everyone know more as we do. Please keep him in your prayers, and thank you for all the love and positive energy you keep sending his way.

ah hates to do it...but it has ta be done...

since the party, things haven't been pretty here. my right arm is feeling the burden of the impacting of the shoulder tumor, both in terms of playing guitar and in terms of, say, eating. my right arm's been pretty useless to me. and that has just felt like an annoyance to me , where once it would have felt like it was taking a tremendous cost from my former life. no more driving cars, gigging, playing guitar, no more days without arm pain, extra care in every activity to keep from accidents and spilling.

I owe over a hundred people deeply grateful, rhapsodic, touched and emotional emails in response to their most generous participation in the Celebration of Life! this body won't be writing those emails, and I will focus my responses to the participation of one and all in this site.

I'm Sorry.

for anyone who contributed here, or to "Scott's Account" more personally, and hoped that it might have some pull on me to do some work on their music...believe me, the spirit here is wiling but the flesh is deserting rank at a scary rate.

more important than anything in the arm arena is the whole breathing arena. I'm on high oxygen here...scary high...and still short of breath a lot here.

and none of that is as formidable as the pull I feel on my mind. it seems like breath strain relief and pain relief are both very related to morphine and dilaudid. I've been asking myself if I feel any blurring of memory or acuity, any loss of sharpness, right along.

the results are in. I don't think I can be in much more denial of it much longer. I feel like people feel when a dreamy, exotic, tempting aroma wafts over them from an open window, or sun on denim...the invitation to just go where it pulls you to go. I find myself talking to someone from a dream, who isn't really here anymore... and unable to hold onto some thoughts that I need to finish a train I need in the real world. how to set up the studio...the stereo...what components would mean less moving of cords around.

or maybe I should just nod off to sleep....

so I'm majoring in patient these days. and while I still can, writing a lucid (enough) email to friends, family, cohearts, saying....these are the days of miracle and wonder, and I know every one of you would rather have me share another one on the planet than to work on a part for a project for them that lessens the survival chances.

if someone needs a refund, I will totally understand...but right now, I'm backing way off on all visits or recording, investing these days and hours of feeling better into Patient Scott.

I'm Sorry.

love, Scott

26 guitar salute

attempt to put a picture of the 26 guitar salute from the party on this site...

I don't know where I might have gone last night to see some music...

it seemed like Denver must have been dark last night...with parts of Utah and New Hampshire close behind... while a beautiful sound and light seemed to be emanating from Cottonwood Circle in Golden.

go figure.

I don't know who the Oxford Hotel could have even scrounged up for an opening act for Paul Geremia or Batdorf and Rodney...it might have been hard to book a dance night with Colours...I'm telling you, the Little Bear had to do without The ReJuveniles, Paonia and the world without the Strolling Scones, the Pearl St. Pub without The Modniks, folk venues of all sizes had to do without Dakota Blonde...

I really never thought of it all that way before. it makes me feel downright selfish for putting a date to this party.

but perhaps my surviving long enough to love love love being there was the most selfish part of it all. I have a bit more use for these resources, in their present configuration, thank you very much; the Universe will have time enough later.

I'm not pretending the night was not a gift from the Universe's timing as well. since I'm not really getting away with anything in the broader world, it was the present of life that I and each other person be there to celebrate it!

I'm feeling a little hung over this morning and today. the party last night was an agreement I had with myself to take one day and burn its candle with a blowtorch. to ignore the shadows to come and take some pleasure in still being around after the time specified by the first studies I read about my cancer. today, I'm back to being Patient Man to some degree, to dealing with pills and aches and needs and troubles. getting some rest back.

last night, none of that. last night I spent some lovely hours in Real Scott land. that's a gift that all of you have been giving me throughout, and anyone will tell you what it means to a patient to just step aside from all the hard stuff for a beautiful vacation in territory that they walked once without a second thought.

anyone, and I, will tell you.

that was, for example, the very best Frank's barbecue I ever ate. I have pondered for years...why are they not more of a restaurant? open lunch only several days a week only...I know they make their good money catering functions and I've always wondered if the unfortunates like myself who wander in for dinner get some older, more dried out, salty version of the meal not exactly destined to bring them back for more dinners.

I'd hate to think that. but the Frank's I have been wanting to show everyone was definitely in the house last night! even at the end of the night, when I got to it, it was everything we don't usually eat barbecue about...salt, grease, fat, density...and everything I can't resist breaking down for about twice a year.

the pisser is breaking down and then not getting the indulgence you craved. which is what has happened when I've tried to show Frank's off to folks throughout the years. thanks be to Linda and Bill Patterson, I can now point and say...now THAT is what I've been talking about.

even though I can point to my body today and say, and that is why I don't do this very often. soup and salad for dinner tonight!!!

George Bailey, who in short time in It's a Wonderful Life is given to see not only a vision of the world poorer by exactly the amount taking his life away would mean to it, but then is given to see how much more he has been given in his life, how much more he has given to the people in it, than he could possibly have imagined...George, in the last scene in It's a Wonderful Life, goes through some version of what I have been through in these days.

but here's what is different:

George's gift to others, to Bedford Falls, takes place in the same family, in the same town, with largely the same cast of characters. I felt worlds colliding, intersecting, tumbling headlong over each other last night. families...isn't every band kind of a family? Rick Stockton, playing in the mid 70's with Bill Roser as PigeonToad...then in a duo with me for years around Larimer Square at Josephina's and the Prairie Schooner, also a semi house gig at Sweetwater (that duo was called Harmony Gritts). also in a big country band occasionally, the O.K. Chorale. Rick headed back to Texas about when I moved to California to play with Bill Roser in Boy Howdy!...the origin of many great pal in the trenches stories between Bill and I...when Bill moved to Seattle at the turn of the decade, I had a solo career thrust on me (me having a great PA and no car to move it, nor license to drive any such car. ("Bill, can I bum a ride for me and the PA to San Berdoo?")

on the way back to Colorado in 1981, having enjoyed California about as much as I could ever want to, I did a couple of months of gigs with Rick and (still Linda at this point) Helen.

yes, it was a long trip.

at that point they were Ritzy Keno. they tried to make it in Texas during the mid 80's, when I was trying to get audiences out here to have the kind of fun the solo led them to in California. but eventually Rick set up a powerful studio in Paonia, CO, and I started adding bands and recording projects to my continuing solo gigs. I reconnected with Rick over the last few years, doing work both on Andy Byron's CD and Bent Roses' CD (Bill Roser, his wife Susan and myself, the first full CD I mixed and mastered in soundHouse) and occasionally filling in with Rick's full on 60's band, the Strolling Scones, his and my 60's things fully influencing each other.

I'll blame being on drugs for any of that history I've misspoken...

the point is...this was one guy!

looking at that room of people from various strata of My backstory, as if someone had decided they needed to put a highway right through here, exposing layers music over time like the rock on either side of I-70, and that highway was darned well going to be me...I was blown away! it felt like the casinos I'd played at, where bells were going off constantly through out, but bells that someone had made sure would complement each other harmonically.

I didn't know if I would be able to sing or play a note. but a new frontier of insecurity also presented itself...with my having lived so much in Patient Scott world recently, and with so much material dating so far back...could I remember, would I be able to focus? were things I could no longer do going to be anything of a detriment?

I made a couple of unconscionable arrangement gaffes early...but the evening was so much about other things. it was about whether I could be there around the people I had played so much with, and bear not trying to play and sing something. the pull ended up being irresistible, and I felt like I had kind of a free pass to not be able to do as much and still be accepted.

it was part of the beautiful gift I was given last night.

so please accept, all who were there and all who were there in spirit, my deep gratitude for celebrating life with me that night, and here is what you all did so virtuosically...you gave me exactly the celebration I'd had in mind, exactly the night I'd dreamed of. you kept the accent on the living positive, and focussed on the smiles and the music and the light of this day reaching us all.

musicians, I find, are like anyone else in that they just want to tell their story. but they are different in that they really really REALLY want to tell their story. it is as much giving as taking, for them to tell it, but people like me who work to help artists tell it sometimes need some way, some place, to open up and tell their own, and be listened to by that room full of storytellers.

you gave that to me last night.

we've all been at parties where socializing was primary and jamming was secondary, and we've all just wanted to say, something special is happening at the jam now if everyone would pause for a few minutes and tune into it. and we've all been rebuffed by a group of persistent talkers...sometimes at a gig, even!

my voice isn't strong, oh Blog Followers, but it was strong that night. my decreased lung power was plenty enough to ask for and receive focus for the jam stage. very quiet things were heard amazingly well. it was Sherman's March to Heaven, a dream come true for me.

let the following days be what they will be.

comrades, this day was ours!

Stage announcer [archival audio clip]: This is one thing that I was going to wait awhile before we talked about, but maybe we’ll talk about it now

so you can think about it.

fans of Woodstock, or of Jim Ratts' wall to wall eighty minute Woodstock CD project will recognize the speech wherein the promoters communicated the changed financial nature of the disaster/ opportunity/ flashpoint that all were right at the epicenter of. it goes on:

Stage announcer [archival audio clip]: This is one thing that I was going to wait awhile before we talked about, but maybe we’ll talk about it now so you can think about it. It’s a free concert from now on. That doesn’t mean that anything goes. What that means is we’re going to put the music up here for free. What it means is that the people who are backing this thing, who have put up the money for it, are going to take a bit of a bath. A big bath.

I find myself now in exactly the opposite, and yet uncomfortably the same shoes.

I've been prideful and stubborn about the subject of needing money. from time to time, the idea of a benefit or a contribution has come up, and I've responded by saying:

* I have the world's greatest health insurance, for which I have paid the deductible for the year. if there were massive medical bills, I'd be shaking in my boots right now, and a lot more ready to talk about benefit help. but my understanding is that I am in the 100% paid for category now and really haven't a need to be bailed out at all.

*When the days come that I have and can have no income, I will let you know then...so far, I've been pretty much doing everything as it needs to be done, and bringing in enough to kind of get by. not earning a living, but living on my earnings.

*Boy, I've been seeing these Les Pauls (electric guitars I've always wanted) on ebay...really not bad!

it was my way of being sassy and optimistic about the future, not letting the cancer get to me. and, save a few people who have gone above and beyond to invest in my case in a little less dollar-spent-for-value-received way, trying not to let myself or others feel any sense I could be dependent moneywise.

I had quite the independent summer booked, where income was going to be well supplied. and we know that the last part of my participating in that summer had to be cancelled.

it's fall now. different days.

both my ability to sing and my ability to play have been decimated. I still try. push comes to shove, sometimes I can get a workable track.

but, mostly, I have no income these days, and no sense of what could change that.

and the thing that starts to compel me about that is my concern for the girls, at 708 Arapahoe and elsewhere. not one of them is flush...some are in some trouble getting by already. as prideful as I have been, they would be equally prideful about letting you know how scary money stuff is for them.

but, see, I can rat them out without my own pride being wounded. I want to feel I am doing something to help maintain life as they have come to know it...or, at least, not to have money be quite the worry it could be at a time of loss.

when I originally thought about it, I hoped that by flying under the radar, avoiding lawyers and funerals and services, that I could write an informal guide to how I wished my belongings dispersed and that I could die quietly outside of societal formality.

I can feel myself, the more imminent things are, kind of backing off from that idea. "hope I die before I get old!" spat out a teenage Townshend...he would have quite the conversation with the 60 plus man I saw front The Who a couple of years ago.

I took the informal document I wrote about my possessions to an actual lawyer. I liked her. she made some good points. at $250 an hour, she provided an hour's worth of information that would help me make the document stronger. she also said it would be $900 total for her to write up a will.

I caved. I told her to go ahead and do it.

when I saw the document she returned to me, it was obvious that it was a world of difference from my original, or anything I could write. that it showed that the participant was displaying his willingness to play the game. that this was a good decision.

$900.

so the point is twofold:

1. today, there was created a bank account called "Scott's account" it's kind of for the purpose of paying house bills, after death expenses, supporting myself as long as I need such support and supporting the girls' needs after that.

there's no crisis in that department right now. the girls tell me, we're going to make it. so I am holding back from...actually...asking...

but any checks or money anyone wishes to donate towards that goal can be given to any of the girls (or myself, I suppose) at any time. I just wanted to put the word out that the account exists, and what its intended use is.

2. it's the opposite of Woodstock.

this blog has always been free. it always will be free. I probably owe you by the time it's all said and done.

I'm going to put a Paypal button on the site. if you never have need of it, please ignore it's yellow presence every time your eyes stray across it. they tend to make me feel not only vaguely guilty but a bit compu-challenged... like I spent all of my cyber coupons just getting to and reading this site, and now you want me to interact with it? as if...

the promise of the Paypal button is that anyone who wants to support me, the girls, writing, or Illya Kuryakin and has a Paypal account can send their money straight to my existing bank account, which is different from "Scott's account". this gift can be given in any degree of smallness, with total anonymity, without me feeling any little bit less like George Bailey.

here's the thing about monetizing the blog versus "Scott's account", though:

my account...if I want a record or cd or something...that's where I'll take the money from. I mean, if that's the sort of thing you want to encourage...the Paypal button is for you. of course, bills and such can also be paid from here.

"Scott's account"...I actually can't sign money out of it. it's meant for house bills and expenses after my death, and any contributions to it will 100% go to that purpose. no AudioQuest, I promise.

filthy lucre. bit of a sticky wicket, this money stuff. I hope all y'all understand why I waited so long to set it up. I had kind of a naive hope of avoiding it.

but in a way, I hope it will be kind of a service to anyone who's spent time wondering..."I want to do something to help, but just don't know what I can do."

I am convinced that need is how we are brought into sharing with the world, and that the person who doesn't want to need anything is the person who is trying to avoid sharing their life with the world. I don't think that's a happymaking decision, and I don't want to be that person.

one of the smartest things I ever heard said...like so many others of them...came from the mouth of Dave Bell. he was talking about his college age daughter, and how her interactions with him were often wrapped up with her needing something, often money.

and he said, "she thinks she's taking...but she's actually giving."

I hope my CoHearts will not take it amiss that I let down some pride and some barriers, and allow some mutual sharing and giving through these ways. the button, Lord willing and the internet don't freeze, will come starting with the next entry.

continued trying of the Forgiving Reader's patience...

When We Last Left Our Story, I had just come home from a day I honestly had not expected to come home from.

Decadron was to remain, after Monday's boosts, at 2mg a day in the morning. some stimulant was prescribed and picked up to help on the awakening end...and I have a new theory now as to why drugs have two names. when Dr.Gore had originally brought up the stimulant in the morning and sleep aid at night idea, to help divide day from night, she used a long name for the stimulant that I had never heard. but the way she was talking about it made me vaguely suspicious I might know what it was.

later she slipped up. Ritalin.

am I destined to take each and every drug eventually that I have hated the military industrial pharma complex for overprescribing down our throats? sheesh, morphine and steroids and Prilosec, sleep aids and now Ritalin???

she said that it has the opposite effect on kids from on adults, stimulating adults and calming down kids. I said, Dr. Gore, do we really disagree that Ritalin is the very most over prescribed drug for kids on the planet?

ADD is bullshit intolerance. be proud of yours.

fortunately she said, yes, I will never prescribe Ritalin for a child, it's terrible. and she is a pediatrice, so we trust her about kids.

and I trusted her enough to get the pills. watch these pages, Faithful Reader, to see if I use them.

My feeling is, now that All My Children is gone, I may as well try to fill in some medical soap opera content for fans...

so we see that all of the news was amazingly good. tumor stunted, fluids not reaccumulating.

but it's back to the cancer bottle model as far as what is really going on with me. and as strange as it sounds I'm the most likely guy to make sense of it, more so than the doctors who know their fields, but can't have the time or information to process how I'm feeling or doing.

since Monday, I haven't felt like doing nothing but sleeping...a little more energy than that some days. nights have been a little less down the whole time, a little more towards wakefulness some times, but not to where I turn on the computer or go work. I am allowing a whole lot healthier respect for what those tiny blue Decadron pills can do...and, mind you, I'm still on the track of passing the adrenal making baton to my own glands. just more gradually.

the non rebreather mask, which I remember from my hospital stay, is a definite advantage for the health of my nose, and O2 levels in general. sitting at a tidy 96 right now, on 13 liters. I'm going to take it for awhile before trying other levels...

(Stewart Greisman enjoyed my description of Decadron as my "scapegoat drug". Scapegoating is such an important model that affects both relationships and the way we process the world that there may be a long piece here soon about it. Not Sayin'. Just Sayin'.)

as I've watched more carefully, I've noticed that my O2 levels fall more than I thought when I am moving around.

the last couple of showers, which I perform without any O2 supplement at all, have yielded scary readings. like, 59 or 60. and it takes a little while for the numbers to come up after reapplying the O2...maybe a minute and a half back to 91. I'm thinking it might have been the first time I saw those O2 levels from moving around that scared me on Saturday, but that they weren't indicative of any new situation...

so...the new days...aren't exactly like the Decadron munchy, up to write in the night, good spirits throughout days. for one thing, this is day 5 of my maintenance chemo. I'm glad we're not letting the palliative chemo part of the treatment picture slip away. but if I lose any spunk or energy, I have some reasons for it.

but they are neither the hospital days. breathing is good, being home is perfect, I finished the work on "Sweet Serene" for Lost Alamos, and I don't think my parts hold the song back that much. that feels like a promise made and kept.

it is too late to do other than plan that I will be at the Celebration of Life! party on October 7th. and hopefully with just a little spunk...theeese peoples don' know who zey are dealin' wiff, tellin' me I weel not make it to theees party!! (generic cheesy accent)

much more music ahead to do, and hopefully no pressure to do what I can't do, hopefully much more room in people's hearts and my own for me to rest. every time I don't feel like getting up to do something, I think of how the lattice of support drugs may need tweaking...until I remember having a feeling or two like that when I wasn't a patient, just old. I don't need to feel as good as the best day of my life...just ready for the day, whatever it brings.

sound good?

hang in there, medblog fans...more to come quickly!!!

the ship in the bottle

what a mysterious undertaking, I have always thought.

not only mysterious technically...since I have no privy to the secrets of the builder...is it that they labor under all of the handicaps of trying to build anything that small, or that they impose additional handicaps upon themselves with the form, things that cannot be as easily done because the end product will be displayed as in a bottle rather than just an insanely small model on a shelf?

one is tempted to marvel at the person willing to take on handicaps so large to produce a final piece so small, many of whose details will ever only be seen by the artist.

but one always marvels at what limitations another person will put up with in order to express themself, how hard something has to be before it "counts".

I mean, people live in New York City.

no further examples of extreme choicemaking need be presented.

but those bottle shipbuilders are themselves modeling a behavior we all do.

we live and observe our lives, seeing what works and what works even better, keeping track of what effect this has on us, what effect that has. sugar and salt and ska music and sun and Dad's company and this exercise, and that slightly different one.

we see it in the big world. but we interpret everything we see. inside ourselves, we create models. we try to predict what will be good for us by remembering how things affected us and basing our choices on the model we have of its behavior.

and, ultimately, basing our life choices on the ship in a bottle we create, in our minds, the tiny us in the tiny universe whose laws are what we have so far ascertained them to be.

it is a thought I think few people consciously have, that the truer this internal model is to the real world, the better we will prosper, the better predictions we will make, the better we will take care of ourselves, in every plane...physical, emotional...

and a step further out, that the better process we have for making and evaluating this model, the better our lives will run.

a lot of what changes when we reflect on and evaluate our past and upbringing, the times when these early modelmaking choices are made and set in place either realistically or traumatically,

is a result of clearly seeing for the first time the principles we embraced to describe ourselves, people, and our world...seeing which ones had only components of clear modelmaking, and which were emotionally forced into the structure and compulsively defended from being questioned and evaluated.

anecdotes abound.

in Back to the Future II and III, we see that Marty's life is again and again limited by his emotional response of compulsively taking any dare if he's accused of being...chicken. he can't play guitar, or fulfill his dreams of being a rock and roll star, after accepting a drag race that ends in an accident. he loses his job, after being "chickened in" to a shady business deal that his boss was monitoring.

long ago, his anger had taken away his usual choice and modelmaking criteria by making a hard fast and compulsive rule "nobody...calls...me...chicken", which translates to, "anyone who calls me chicken can get me to do anything they want me to, and I will be too angry and stuck in an old spell to evaluate the choice."

in III, he is about to have an old west duel with his generations old bully/ adversary, when he realizes something I wish more people would get - Marty says, "I don't have to fight him! he's an asshole!!!" just because he is issuing invitations to a crazy party doesn't mean you have to accept. the worse opinion we have of some enemy, the less we should want to do just they want us to do, not the more.

Marty reclaims the option of making choices, even when they counter his earlier traumatic conditioning. and he has a better model of how things really run because of it. if only we could see him live his life over with this new knowledge, and make better choices throughout. oh, wait...it's the movies...and we do get to see exactly that. it's pretty darn inspiring.

what is going on with my body???

what is happening??? what do I do about it???

which drug is having what effect? what Big New Problem are we missing? why have I felt myself dimming, not strengthening? why did I have energy on Wednesday, breath enough it seemed, to sing and play for a couple of hours, yet that seemed way too hard to even imagine doing Saturday?

what is the new shortness of breath, what is the new dimming?

I have been laboring hard, as has my whole extended prayeramedical team, to make a good model of the cancer, to know what it doesn't respond to and what it does, to know the effect of every drug and watch for side effects.

in these overtime Miracle days, I've had the construct that the amiodorone is affecting my heart, limiting its heart rate, maybe keeping it in sinus rhythm and away from defibrillation. the dilaudid/ morphine...I accidentally skipped one the other day, and didn't feel very good during those hours...

but decadron has been my personal model scapegoat drug.

munchy appetite? oh, doctors say,that's the decadron. swollen legs? definitely the decadron.

trouble sleeping? decadron for sure.

while Dr. Gore was in town, we had gradually lessened my doses of decadron, with increased sleep, decreased swelling, etc. while she was away, we didn't change anything...when we heard back from her last week, she prescribed some strong cuts. we had started at 8mg a day, 4 in the am 4 in the pm...we were down to 4mg in the morning, which she prescribed down to 2mg in the morning last Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday, going to 1mg Friday , advising us to go to 1mg every other day on Monday, and be done by the next week.

having not liked the idea of being on steroids long before decadron was used in my first chemo, I was only too willing to go with the plan. but Dr. Gore said something interesting, potentially model changing.

she said that the idea of decadron was to prepare the body for making its own adrenaline.

well...that's something I want. and I want my body to have the time it needs to do that.

when the shortness of breath hit and the unusually low numbers on the Pulse Ox Saturday, I had the model that this was a little like the last time I went into the hospital. even though that seemed more immediate and drastic...this time, for example, I felt I could get through the weekend before going in to the clinic (better than doing it through ER)...I think all concerned had the notion to look at some of the things we did...look for pleural effusion, in both lungs, the pleurocardial liquid in the sac around the heart, take the chest X rays and find out where we were at.

this is something I had wanted done for months. and, from Dr. Gore to the hospice nurse, been guided away from. if they now wanted to do it...I'm so totally there.

my model had been, well, if there is something they can do in the hospital that will relieve me, I want it...I felt like there was every chance that Saturday/ Sunday were the end of the Miracle Management days, and the beginning of fading out til the end days. I wanted to do nothing but sleep, everything was hard, woe is me.

at the clinic, Monday, that medical team hit the ground running for me. the physician's assistant, Anne Leyba, I had seen before...felt she kept driving for too long after she ran out of pavement, but she'd also said hi to us in passing when she wouldn't have had to...her heart must be in the right place...and Dr. Gore being at the other hospital today, Children's, Anne's number came up. she got us a 10:30am x-ray, an 11am appointment with her. she showed us the x-ray...it was agreed that it didn't seem to look very different from the last one. ............kind of amazing!............

but no real fluid to be drained. to be honest, I had kind of not suspected there would be, but I'm not the doc. I just have this ship I've built in the bottle of my mind, and the model of how it moves through the model of the world I've built in the bottle around it.

Anne explained carefully how, short of a C-T scan (which was not discussed) or possibly preferable to it, she would like to see a echo-cardiogram of my heart. that would show if fluid had built in the pleurocardial sac. it also tended to cost, she said, 20 or 30 thousand dollars, and unless it were specifically authorized by hospice, might fall through the cracks and not be paid through insurance, either. outpatient echo-cardiogram tests tend to have to be scheduled a week out, not ideal.

kind of a consideration, eh.

she found us a room with a bed and wall oxygen...a tank lasts like 45 minutes and is always this consideration...to wait in while she went to war.

we switched from a nasal cannula to a non-rebreather mask...harder to talk, or eat, as it has a bag like the ones on an airplane, and covers nose and mouth both. but more efficient, and helped with breathing and Pulse Ox numbers.

she came back she said with fabulous news. we had an appointment at 4 for an echo-cardiogram. and the doc would look at it today and report back.

and so it was that I had the test, and the doc said there didn't seem to be much growth of the tumor pressing on my heart, or more than 100cc's of fluid in the pericardium. and we were free to go home.

I did go home, on a day I wondered if I would be checked into the hospital and never come out, and a bottle full of squall rocking the models I had built of the cancer.

more later...to be, happily, continued

I always hate it when I have less than the best news to report here

no immediate Big New Problem...but a very badly timed change in energy.

I was made to play music. nothing seems clearer in my life. thousands of nights, thousands of days in gigs, in studio. the fact that I have gotten to do so is less due, I think, to an undeniable amount of talent - we all know very talented people who give music up for making art bowls or having families or becoming financial advisors - than to an undeniable passion for all of the challenges and rewards of playing music. it's always been the only game in town for me, a place where the right answer is not found in the back of a book somewhere but in your heart at the end of the day.

I believe in music, and through it, in life, that life has for us what each of us really most wants.

the quality of the product can be very very important to a musician, but somehow always still takes second priority to living out and transmitting that belief. If you had fun...you won.

The ReJuveniles for six years now has been a bully pulpit.

yes, it has looked like nothing but fun, getting up in a bar that will never really lose its decades of smoke infusion, wrestling with the sound, pouring out energy to an always hungrier group of thrill seekers, occasionally attempting to discipline them by letting out the Punishment Music...

Do Wah Diddy or Wooly Bully or "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Haaaaa!" by...wait for it...Napoleon the 14th!

ok, so it was actually nothing but fun. balancing our desires to do the music we never thought we'd get a chance to do with the demands of the Big Beat Sound live. being able to dive for a microphone that is set for a normal singing level, and just scream into it!! like a Beatles or a Who scream.

it's all been only what I could most want. I could not be more grateful. thank you.

I haven't spent a long time looking for a way not to get along with Jim and Vickie Jones. but neither in our years have I found one. there are not two more virtuoso people on the planet, and if Happy is the New Smart, I would nominate them long before any of the models the media confront us with as being the "it" crowd, "the people". two people who love music as I do that I get along with all the time...wouldn't have to have a whole lot of raw talent to immediately have me in their band.

we all know that there is no direct correlation between an artist's value of self and their actual ability level...geniuses are plagued by self doubt, while Pat Metheny has a cow that Kenny G would put out an album intermingling his tracks with those of Louis Armstrong. oh, yes, the G-monster had that much nerve...we're all supposed to smile and endure such things, but Richard Thompson also couldn't keep still about it and wrote a song "I agree with Pat Metheny/ Kenny's talent is too teeny..."

so, smile, and leave Jim Jones the room he needs to be self effacing about his contribution to The ReJuveniles. but know better. no one is more passionately involved, loves that music more, makes more sure he's on point for every performance, no one in that band fills their assignment more fully than Jim. and no one is more responsible for the vibe ReJuveniles project onstage, for giving everyone in the band and audience permission to be thrilled at what is happening, than Jim is. Jim has brought a special kind of courage to me in these days, but brought it in spades throughout the days before as well.

primary, for me, on the long list of talents Vickie Jones brings to that band is that of misdirection.

yes, you're going to get Grace Slick, yes you're going to get Merry Clayton on Gimme Shelter, against all odds you're going to get Graham Nash and Paul McCartney thrown into the bundle.

yes, we're talking someone whom you can set up with any sixties song, let her take the ball full court, and end up with a slam dunk at the far end, no one near her.

so how is it, Dear Hearts and Gentle People, that like Mary Huckins, she's the one who takes on the keyboards, the flute, all of the percussion, sometimes guitar, mandolin, accordion, always filling the sound out by filling in just what's needed. is it possible for someone with Vickie's great direct talent to still be a sleeper?

I say, yes.

this is someone whom, when I sing a unison Beatles part with, the two of us are being the record. when I hear that music, I have always wanted to be as happy as it sounded like they must have been when they made it. Vickie brings that to me, and to the band. watching her when she is in that place...playing sparse percussion throughout or determinedly singing a high part leaving the lead for someone else...is an irresistible pleasure for band and audience!

yes, a solo star can be a sleeper if she also turns out to be the quintessential team player...and all around musician...as well.

Jim and Vickie have been pulling on each other musically for decades now...I think one of the additions of my pull is the adrenalin making task of singing some song you have never thought of performing before, and finding the three part harmonies right off the bat. I think Jim is most improved in that skill, but we've all gotten kind of good at it.

of course, George gets the sleeper award for the whole band. again and again, after a good long time of getting to know him, you still go...I didn't know that he did that...he was there...that he has this degree, plays a sport to this level...has some great writing chops...to hear George tell it, probably common to many drummers' experiences, it's always the ego driven guitarist who makes the band not fun, who wrecks the party...now, here, I always though the rhythm section was the problem!

not here. George caught onto what we all wanted to do right away, and always came prepared not to let down the side. oh, he'll stay mellow and scratch his head, and you'll worry sometimes...but he always comes through.

and it matters to him, like it matters to each of us. a high entrance bar for anyone to clear to be in this band, too high for some pretty darned talented people to really be ok with. but he's the guy I'll turn to for the big rock and roll ending every time, and we 'bout hit it every time too.

yeah, bass players, now there's a place where we've tried out some different answers. it was a mystery for quite awhile. a traditionally dour seat to fill in a band, especially one looking for the bliss of sixties music. bass is a hard seat to fill if the player has to love the music, to be willing to do the research and learn the parts, to bring energy and order from a part that was undermixed in poor studio muck on the original recording.

there just are no other Sandy's. I've looked for them, believe me. to learn a part with religious zeal, and then be willing to modify it for some larger band idea...that takes a courage in itself, methinks. he prepares like no one else for a gig, brings a great stage presence to the show, isn't afraid to be silly or to bowl people over with bass when each are called for.

and this answer to a musician's prayer bounty isn't the full list of what the Rejuveniles just handed to me to step into years ago.

Jim and Vickie, George, Sandy have no fans to show for their years in the music business. but they have many many many good friends. people who have been filling the Little Bear when we play, and with the most flexible, supportive, Ed Sullivan Theatre audience anyone could ever want.

when I encouraged the band to do this last gig without me, I've been calling that audience "the fifth man". like a football audience is the twelfth man. I told them people would love them, and not let them down.

I have a lot of feelings for that audience, the times we've shared there, even when I've gotten to be the fifth man. without them, there would have been a lot less us, that's for sure.

I wanted to be there yesterday.

Wednesday's rehearsal was as encouraging as it could possibly have been. I had really been looking to see if my strengthening and Miracle Management was starting to level out, or only getting deeper.if the gig had been Friday...I might have given it a shot.

I got some low oxygen readings Saturday morning, though. unexpected, and didn't bounce back as I might have wanted. and I was just tired. the idea of that whole campaign was the second most important thing in my world.

but the most important reared its head at the exact wrong moment.

I wanted to say, never quit. I wanted to say, this was good, this is good, hang on all. I wanted to say, no matter what I can no longer do, I will do what I can. to add one more big yes, for me, for the band, for the audience who has given each of us a dream come true.

it wasn't the day, Kind Hearts and Gentle People. I made it an easy day. when Dr. Gore called back...ten minutes tops...she spoke of my coming into the hospital to get a chest x-ray and looking for some fluid to remove. I had long lobbied for some scans to find out just what was happening...but had it been yesterday or today, it would have been through the ER, and I'm not sure that shouldn't be avoided. it seems to me, and I'll change this plan if I must, that I can lay low today and be ok, then go in Monday to the clinic.

from there, I don't know. readjustment of drugs? look at the pericardium to see if fluid came back? more pleural effusion warfare? some BNP that might find a Big New Answer? check into the hospital?

history writes that I didn't make it to the Little Bear last night, not even to listen. not even to beg people to live, by example.

less than the best news.

and less, less, less than the worst. Oh, I was there. 1pm, when the table was to be saved, 3pm when the amp was going to be set up, 4pm when the band started, 6:15 or so when I was going to get there, 7:30 to 8pm when I was going to rock. I watched each come and go, and I was there. I heard the feeling and the band on janice's phone. as committed as I am to being careful, I really regretted not having more to give.

and now we're back to, we don't know.

The Rolling Stones' first attempt to break the US singles market was oddly resonant during each of their last tours...Time Is On My Side, yes it is...

The Rolling Stones' first self penned song to go into the top ten in the US singles market was oddly resonant during each of their last tours...Well, This Could Be The Last Time...

I don't know.

tired tired tired tired

and I think it's hopeful.

not sleeping through the night has been the most limiting part of my attempt to feel good and be stronger. waking up and needing breaks from trying to sleep before catching the next bus to the clouds.

I have come to accept...which is what people say when they face something they don't like or accept at all...that we're not going to be able to predict what effect medical strategies will have on us. how will this chemo affect me? what will the cancer do next? how much, how bad, how much did the radiation stun the tumors, what will I be doing next week?

yeah, my stand on predictions in these pages is famous.

I am now faced with the exact same inability to quantify and manage the effects of what I am doing presently, and an equal lack of ability to say what drug I have taken has had what effect on me.

here's what I am getting at:

now only can we not reliably pre--dict, for the future, but there is little certainty in "dicting"...seeing how what I am doing now is affecting what I am doing now...and, discouragingly enough, just the same problems "post--dicting", laying out what drug caused what effect, what strengthening moves make for strength and which just strain...

it can only mean one thing...that the Scott Bennett Center for Miracle Management Research will never close its doors.

I sent a detailed letter of questions last week to Dr. Gore...can we continue decreasing the Decadron (less steroids), is all the anti nausea stuff necessary when there hasn't been a trace of nausea? I quoted the old, old, old joke:

"What's that? " "A Polar Bear repellant" "But there aren't any Polar Bears within a thousand miles of here!" "Works good,, don't it?"

I have gone down on my air, from 13 liters to 10 liters...noticed working a little harder breathing, but oxygen levels basically still mid nineties, unaffected...pulse rate up into the mid nineties as well. wondered if these factors were counter-indicative, or if getting my body to do more of its own breathing was a good idea.

Monday, we got the hospice nurse to call Dr. Gore and ask about the Decadron and also an oral butt rash medication...all next week, on America's Most Humiliating Blogs...soon after, she sent a long and very reassuring email in answer to my old one.

we cut the Decadron down immediately, from 4mg once daily to 2mg once daily, and after we see her tomorrow, we're going to halve it again, to 1mg.

the distinction between day and night is starting to be redefined...especially the night part. I'm exhausted. I have put off the last step on this song I'm working on a couple of times in favor of what Elmer Fudd called "West and Wewaxation" I still think it's the best course for me. fewer emails, blog entries, less work done, more sleep. just kind of has to be that way for a bit.

but is the tiredness a response to lessening the Decadron? the sleepy eyes...is it the Dilaudid? even as things change, in ways that may or may not be better for me...can we dict? can we post dict? would it help us pre-dict?

or, as I suspected all along, am I just dict?

well, time flies like arrows, fruit flies like bananas, and trouser flies - like wow! the work continues, and I'll just make my bets and take my choices.

time flies when you're having fun, they say. I actually have timed flies...they're fast little buggers...but once I timed them, I immediately stopped having fun. so there's one adage I can't verify.

my father used to say, "a wet mule never flies at night". you had to hand it to him...when he was right, he was right. yes, your worst suspicions are confirmed, I do have a small collection of reimagined sayings.

"the early worm gets eaten."

"familiarity breeds."

"lips that touch liquor will never touch mine." "your lips?" "no, my liquor!"

(we're heading quickly into Soupy Sales territory..."show me a russian embassy on the 20th floor and I'll show you a stairway to the czars" "be true to your teeth and they will not be false to you" "if you answer the door before the knock, you beat the rap" )

yes, this is the wild untrammeled land of collections and connections, the country and the culture that makes up a person's unique mindspace, the very thing that is lost when he is no more. some of it, though, you can't help but ask yourself how big a loss it actually is...

lots more, Forbearing Reader, to talk with you about later.....

for anyone auditing the course, this would be a fine blog to skip

sometimes I need to do an entry for me, just to get my thoughts straight about what might be happening to me medically. there are a lot of components.

so...way too fine a detail...though I won't promise a complete absence of personality...just a level of navelgazing that will even bore me reading it later.

yesterday was all good from the outside, all learning which is invaluable, and all not so great from the inside. didn't feel particularly good for most of it, for reasons.

to start with, I didn't sleep. at all, or hardly. 5am I'm wondering what the fuck? because I need sleep worse than ever. what's the body doing now?

about the same time, it occurs to lisa...in a dead sleep, or a troubled one...that we had both spaced my taking my bedtime Dilaudid.

which means, I spaced it. she is on board to help. but it's all up to me, and I know it.

we divide up the pie chart of responses well in times of trouble, do lisa and I. I go right to adrenalin fueled calm problem solving...holding on tight...she goes omigodomigodomigod, then to some shameandblame, then to generating solutions which may or may not have perspective to them. but...if no one did that...it wouldn't be as easy for me to bypass that stage and stay clear. I have designated emotional drivers, who hurt and cry and get too involved and rejoice for me, so I can just keep going. and I need that kind of fanfare...this is no one's walk in the park.

they are also there for me at times I need reassurance and general mommying. oh, yes, and every other second of the day for everything I could need or want, from orange juice to Sky, to the untruth I realize needs to permeate the house, that I am attractive, and have always been.

the answer I came up with - to how not to skip that dose again...is to slightly shift when I've been taking the Dilaudid. it's been four times a day, about every 6 hours, at 8am, 2pm, 8pm, and at the last wink before bed, to make the distance between the night and morning dose as small as possible.

problem is...lisa goes to sleep...I come to bed...I space (once, all told)...and it's not good.

so I think if I do the Dilaudid more with the landmarks of the day...8am breakfast (oh, yeah, I get a hot breakfast every morning), 1pm lunch (which I'd been cheating the 2pm back to 1pm anyway so that the Decadron has less effect on my sleep), then 6pm dinner and 11pm solid night dose, that lisa and I will both still be up, and the time will be specific, etc.

this gives me 5 hour cycles, not so off from 6, and 11pm to 8am to wait at night...but the Dilaudid morphine stuff when I need it, starting to sleep. and mornings...the last part of my waiting for a sleep bus which sometimes gets me and sometimes does not...have been the best feeling part of the day.

so, we'll see. don't want to schedule anything at midnight or 7am...too late and early.

so...I slept some after 5am. but lisa and I both got up tired.

with a 9:15 appointment for Dr. Gore exciting both of us. I had nothing but good to report. the chemo had been well tolerated and was over...I was feeling good and strengthening. we looked forward to lessening the Decadron dose slowly, and other non curative helpful decisions.

from the beginning, as it so often does when something isn't good with sleep and rhythms, it felt like we were brushing the hair of the dog the wrong way.

hassles with the oxygen tanks. hassle getting a wheelchair at the hospital. hassle with the front desk not wanting to do labs before I saw Dr. Gore so she could see them. waiting, waiting. hassle with the oxygen tanks in the hospital. sleepy sleepy.

a great meeting with Dr. Gore, although at Warp Starbucks. tried my best to rev up and be clear and exhaustive. janice had wanted me to ask her...so...i know that there can be periods of increased energy before someone dies...but...have you ever seen anything like this before????

I did say that, but I said after...of course you have. you've seen a lot.

she said it is, however, unusual.

yeah, leave it to me to be unusual. me and cindy lauper.

we'll take it this time, though.

had the best labs experience of my life, which is to say the least. no pain at all from the stick. no problem at all drawing the blood. Theresa is a genius.

I felt a little pressure to take the pleur-x catheter out immediately, from both lisa and Dr. Gore. you remember the tube in my abdomen that was supposed to keep draining the fluid in my right sac around the lung, to give me more breath. it was still in there, but over the last three weeks, we had hardly gotten a drop the four or five times we tried to drain it.

without x ray or c t scan, I felt a strong recommendation from Dr. Gore that it come out, and come out yesterday.

of course, she and lisa are the ones who see it...I can't. and as long as it's in , the risk of infection is there.

I tend to move slowly, and sometimes especially when things could be in my favor. I hate being like Neo in the Matrix movies, where instead of going to a phone booth to travel between the inner and outer worlds, that I have two cell phones with me, the port and this catheter. the person who would most gain if it were gone would be.....me!!! me me me!!! I could shower with impunity, never having to have lisa change that dressing after.

it was like the fanny pack...I felt some pressure to do it before I might have done it, but once done, what a relief!

so I went with the pressure when Dr. Gore got a last minute appointment in IR to remove the catheter. 12:15pm. better than using a whole other day to do it.

between then and the actual procedure...the worst hospital employee encounter of my experience. beyond a little disappointing, beyond not just up to snuff, beyond not making the grade, all the way to territorial, belligerent, and totally wrongheaded in an injurial way.

we were at IR at 11:45am. the word was that insurance needed to ratify the procedure, and we were waiting back to hear from them. it was also lunch, probably for insurance as well as IR.

waiting isn't awful...we asked to be added at the last minute, we can be good about making our end work.

we watched as the oxygen tank ran out and became quiet.

now, I am on 13 liters at home. it's so not a big deal to some folks, so crazily spendthrift to others. me, I feel it gives me every o2 advantage. I have been thinking about going down a bit at home, once the chemo was over. I was at 10 for the trip today.

lisa was beside herself, talking to anyone who would listen about my need for air. we probably both had the visual of a fish out of water...I remembered when Aquaman and Aqualad had to be resourceful to get water after 24 hours out of the sea. but this was somewhere between oversight and emergency already.

the guy who eventually told me that I would not be allowed to sit here and use up "his" tanks like that. he literally turned the tank to 6, and then 4. and he was not to be moved. lisa "went all mama bear" on him....

I had a different approach. I said, you're really willing to contravene a doctor's orders to lower my oxygen?

he said, I'd like to see those orders.

lisa said, have you seen his charts ? do you know anything about his case?

no

I very quietly said, it's hard for me to believe that anyone can just come along and make decisions against a doctor's orders. would you like to talk with Dr. Gore about it?

yes, I'd like that very much.

now, he was the first person we've met in the hospital who not only didn't know Dr. Gore (referred to her as him), but didn't look fearful at the prospect of getting in her way. and my guess is he never ever thought she'd call back. it took about 8 minutes.

"turns out," he said, "you really do need the oxygen."

have a nice day.

yeah, it was every bit as ugly as it sounds. and immaterial to any telling of my story. but this blog's for me, and, ouch, dammit.

I have a strong programming that the more important something is, the more important it is I don't freak out about it, but work for what is best.

also, I am fond of saying...the dog with the smallest yard barks the loudest. now...whose tanks are they, really?

but watching him "man up" and watching lisa mama bear...I was aware that the question was whether I would be dealing with one out of control person, or two. making it two never, ever helps.

I never understood why, with the people I watched backstage at Telluride or at the folk festivals, why they were so over the top friendly. was Mick Jagger? Bob Dylan? it was a convention of the form.

now I know. those people needed you, whoever you are, on their side. they needed not only to leave a good impression, but to seem like someone you'd go the extra mile for.

I relentlessly good vibe my medical people. learn each name, ask about them. how you holding up? busy out there.

I mean, Christ, they're saving my life!

but also...I want to be someone someone would go the extra mile for. not just because I want to be a good guy either...I am going to need those miles, I think.

when I got into IR, and on wall oxygen at last, the nurse was from Louisiana and very pretty in a very French way. I said to her, well I had some trouble with oxygen out there. she said, I heard. I said, that guy is pretty much that guy all day every day, isn't he. she said he sure is. I said it can't be easy.

the nurse who did the procedure was not up to snuff on the new computer system...asked the intake questions, didn't save the answers. the nurse who prepped me asked again and did. it was a good team.

that kind of procedure involves a numbing shot or three... Snickers bars which make regular shots seem like Milk Duds chocolate...and some sensations like nothing you've ever had. not awful...not long... no sedation or anaesthesia necessary...just something you want eight secnds after to say, I didn't like that.

but it was done. in at 9, out at 3. and I'm more me than I was, for being more only me and not augmented.

took a killer nap when I got home. thought about working...had a visitor coming at 7...but Body Knows Best. took the second Dilaudid at 3pm after the procedure.

Dr. Gore had said that Dilaudid, orally, is considered for every 4 to 8 hours. if I ever wanted to, I could back down from four times a day to three. it wasn't really time crucial.

she also was the first person I've heard say that Dilaudid doesn't really do much for anti-inflammatory...that it's strictly a pain thing.

in the pattern of the day, she talked about what it would be like in future to come off of it.

point of this self indulgent writing is...by 9pm last night...I wasn't feeling great. it had been a day, I was still tired, and I had decided that taking the last Dilaudid, at 9pm six hours after the previous, would leave a long space before next morning's 8am; if I wanted to get on the new 11pm schedule, this would be the time to do it. so I waited. with the information that...I was not feeling the well being I was used to.

now...it could well be that a seven day chemo thing could still be felt several days later. need to stay open to that.

but at 10:30, when I broke down and went for the dose...I kind of immediately felt the world shift back toward its regular axis.

ok...even more TMI alert!!!

one of the battles team Bennett fights here at 708 is a fiendish and quite uncomfortable butt rash. man! so twice a day, lisa mans up and uses a three coat system on it...then I lay for half an hour with it exposed and drying. often I sleep. I did last night, rolled over at 11:30pm and went to bed. woke up at 4.

so...better.

took an internet break, lay back down...but drifted through strange troubling dreams and trying to get to sleep for a long time. long time. finally here now...but...feeling kind of the normal of the last weeks.

Scott, what causes the sleepy eyes during the day? what caused the not quite feeling right last night? is fewer drugs always going to be the answer, until I am free of drugs enough to try another study? should I really let myself focus away from the time that is being bought for me now, cherishing it but maintaining no denial that these days will end and I'll be right back where I was, ready to knock on the Big Door?

and...what about AudioQuest? how can I get what I need while I feel good and while the guy there is in such a generous place about it?

I'll keep an eye on the Dilaudid...mild mood enhancer? pain deterrent, but easier breathing drug as well? and for lingering chemo effects...the half life doesn't just drop precipitously, I'm thinking. the cycle is monthly, so there won't be any more for another two weeks plus. I asked about radiation again, and she's going to ask about that.

Dr. Gore, that is. I gave her Stewart's CD, which she had me sign, somewhat bashfully...and some homemade no sugar peach pie for her lunch dessert. lisa would never have done it...it was a fine vintage Monday, and a little broken up. me-- I say, gimme. I wished her well on her supercharged but at least a little more rested way, feeling blessed again to be under her care.

today, I hope, will be a more normal feeling, more normally scheduled day.

perhaps in it, I will consider how Rocky and Bulllwinkle caused the 60's.

not exactly shutout ball

but not so far from it.

final score in the P.C. bowl...palliative chemo...Scott 6 1/4, chemo 3/4.

a banner day for the Rockies, anytime.

in the four day infusions, day three and a couple of days after were the worst. in the five day cycle, it was day four or so and a day after dosing stopped.

this time I didn't notice much through day 4 at all. didn't feel that off. nausea, fatigue, hair loss was mentioned...

day 6 and 7 this time, and yesterday day-after-dosing-ends, I was being forced to let in some droopy eyed tiredness...though it seemed I could close my eyes entirely and still talk for half an hour. stayed pretty linear, too.

the thing about sick is, it's halfway between consciousness and unconsciousness. so, sleep is uncomfortable, but waking equally fidgety.

this was a problem until the late 1940's, and the invention of television.

post millennially, the "busy box" that fills the gap between sleep and being up is the computer. its interactivity is most often minimized in that role, however...

but even editing, I had to accede and put myself down for a nap when my eyes drooped...or let company know that it really isn't them, that they belong in a fully waking cycle but that I was having a dozy one, and needed to go lay down for a bit.

especially since sleep hasn't changed much at night...I just let myself do it. when hungry, eat; when tired sleep.

as with most real time fact finding missions, my study results are muddied. was the chemo

the sleepiness? was it the decadron hills and peaks, the steroid? how is the amiodorone affecting it all?

last night came an unintended experiment that may hold an answer or two.

Faithful Followers of the Blog...I can see in 15 years, "easy as following a blog" being a new permutation of an old simile...will predict what happens here next...yes, the dreaded Inset Topic.

I am fascinated with Regis.

not my medical pillbox, of which Brian got the joke immediately when I named it Regis. a little more fascination with that last night would have served me well.

but, actually, Regis Philbin.

and not from when he was on WOR TV when I was growing up in New York. he seemed the oiliest of media sycophants then, along with , say, Army Archerd and Joe Franklin.

to me, they were part of what gave social a bad name.

al of that changed when catherine, a true love of mine and quite a bit younger than me, got me into watching "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" while it was first airing, then later on with dinner. if a show is on every night at 6pm, I may well end up watching it a lot.

I've always had the love-hate relationship with social. I was undersocialized as a child, having no really attractive role models for it and also having headspace that usually interested me much more than grade school conversation. but there were profoundly upsetting times associated with my not knowing the rules of playground and prom etiquette...lot of loneliness, lot of picking on, lot of tears.

all of the 18 seconds I saw Regis with Kathie Lee, he was putting cucumbers on his eyes for beauty and oiling up the latest media darling. ptui.

but no such folks on "Millionaire". and Regis held all power from his seat. what kind of despot would he be?

surprisingly, to me, focused on his normal contestant in their 15 minutes of fame. on their side...but nobody's pushover. ready to get testy. ready to play his celebrity card.

last night he encouraged a person not to use a lifeline, but to go straight for the answer their gut told them.

it was a siiiiiiiiiiiimple question.

but the guy got it soooooooooo wrong.

Regis raised his voice just a little and said, I don't know why I get involved with these people!!

it rang true...in a cover your ass kind of way.

if the contestant has been dating the same girl five years, he'll ask her...so is he ever going to pop the question?

a little drop of brusque cuts through a lot of grease for me. but he does it...and no one holds it against him! can life really work like that? times when I swallowed stuff, would I have been better liked had I shown a flash of real?

he really wants each one to win. and he'll actually tiptoe over the line, to help them! if you understand Regisspeak, that is.

so I watch the show, mildly interested by the questions, the thought that goes into what makes a good question, sometimes wondering if i have the answer right. more interested in the emotions of the contestant. but fascinated with how Regis is doing, how to read him. whether there is any tape holding down a corner of social that I could pick at, and try to learn how to express myself more in a social context that would work for "them" and for me.

last night, that passion kind of clouded my linearity, and I took the wrong set of pills from Regis Pillbin. the evening set in the afternoon.

I have some twice a days, one (chemo) once at the beginning of the day, one (Dilaudid) every six hours or so. one with mealtimes. etc. etc. etc.

instead of heart medicine at 8am and 8pm, I got it at 8am and 2pm. none in the evening.

I did get the Dilaudid every six hours. I don't want to mess with that stuff.

but I was watching my pulse rate and oxygen saturation. 02 was still sky high...97/98...but pulse rate was like 88 to 92 through the night. and, I would wake up and have to wait before I could get back to sleep.

so...I guess I'm thinking, the Amiodorone is doing the job of keeping the heart in it's low seventies rate wise. and the drowsy seems to me chemo linked. that's my story, until other evidence surfaces.

it's hard being a one person scientific study, as there really isn't a CONTROL group!

oh, don't worry. irrelevancies are still part of the mission of this blog. Honey West...Anne Francis in that and Forbidden Planet. Forbidden Planet alone could be the study of an entire blog entry!

just not this one...

strengthening continues apace

yes, here in the Man from U.N.C.L.E blog, formerly Scott Bennett's Medical Mystery Tour, I'd like to go off topic for a second and write a health update.

did I say health? if I can't say curative, can I say health?

does it mean I am in denial about the incurability of my cancer, to think in such terms?

you can tell that the real issue for me is not the hospice vs hospital wars, curative vs palliative, or even Dr. Gore's admonishment that "we are not going to beat this one"

it's my being told what thoughts are ok to have, what thoughts are not.

and, Lord knows, no one said that to me. only that holding onto reality is going to necessitate acknowledging some hard hard facts, and all but eliminating what we wish could be possibilities.

no one wants me not to pray for, dream of, imagine a miracle cure. the woods are full of those stories, fuller perhaps than of people they are true of.

but what we are experiencing right now, my Team members, is Miracle Management.

everyone will sign up for managing the disease. curative, palliative...find the best way to Manage the disease.

well, the success has been nothing short of a Miracle.

Miracle Management. I'll take it.

a substantive indicator...I stopped turning to the fanny pack of Dilaudid around my waist for boluses, chosen boosts of injected drug, over a week ago. pain relief wasn't needed, breathing was pretty much short but comfortable, they weren't helping me sleep (not that I wouldn't turn to melatonin before morphine for that), it didn't elevate my mood...more like made me twtich...

I stopped.

inset topic: Diseases of the Very Smart.

oh, yes. they are at much higher risk than the general population for some debilitating troubles.

the worst needle/ IV/ port experiences I have had have been directly attributable to one of these diseases:

namely, the Inability of Genius to See its Limits.

I get the temptation. in group after group, you're not even in the same group. the first place you go in your mind with a problem no one else ever gets to. it becomes a mater of sheer time and practicality, getting people to follow you...we all get home for dinner in time that way.

the part where you question your judgement gets pushed further and further back, until it's like Jabba the Hutt's legs.

then, one day, you really need it.

Sally was the best nurse I had, through my stay, in terms of what she knew, her patient involvement, the level of her discourse...lisa and I agreed, pretty much a genius nurse.

in a field with, throughout, next to no clunkers.

I have a permananetly installed port on my starboard side. (I never know how much to assume today's blog reader has read of earlier posts; I do some summing repetition sometimes...)

in the hospital, it was felt like a second access might be needed in case of emergent care. this means one whole hand's strength and ability would be taken away by a needle in it all the time. I fought it valiantly, and in vain. Sally came to do the stick.

it was miserable. three times, in either hand, no success.

but each time, she could not give it up. each time she worked it, moving the needle inside me and sticking again and again.

I can do this. I can do this.

a different nurse, in the morning, set it up quickly and cleanly, and the IV was never used.

real genius is knowing when, indeed, duh, you are not going to get this thing done, you need to withdraw.

one of the most intelligent ideas I've ever seen illustrated in a film was in George Lucas's first movie, THX 1138. it concerned a dystopia where "the System" controlled every moment of a person's life, including giving control drugs from birth which made you feel ok about the life you did have.

it was profoundly smart to me (though the smartest thing mentioned is still to follow) when the hero told the system...I need something stronger.

he was still willing to toe the line...but it just wasn't working for him so far. he needed a drug to smooth his growing discontent away.

eventually, he sought answers more out of the box...in this case, out of the dome that surrounded the city, that none were allowed to leave.

so he fights off the giant pain stick police robots and heads for the edge of the dome. he narrowly escapes, in a way Lucas films would later take on as a feature, and he is on his way with the giants catching up with him slowly.

out of nowhere, in their police radio brains, the giants get a message : WARNING! THE PROJECT YOU ARE ON HAS GONE 6% OVER BUDGET! RETURN TO BASE IMMEDIATELY!!

they do. he reaches the Perimeter, and sees his first sunrise.

an autocratic, compulsive, robotic, rigid rule forcing any genius to acknowledge his limits. I doubled the percentage, and immediately adopted it as a genius-like guideline. in every field, I'll say, but music.

one of the hospice nurses, who check in on me now at home, is amazing. never lets a dang thing slip. you figure, a dozen medications, some of which are controlled substances you can only get a few days worth of at a time, how would anyone keep track? in her 16 track mixing board, she deals with all of it at the same time, and hits every mark.

I need her.

but it came time to change my port access, the needle the Dilaudid was going into. to take the old out, and stick a new one in.

you're not supposed to know how not to do something. believe me, I know the headspace.

but she didn't. and after three tries, never got anywhere.

it really bothered her - which also made me worry. to do something you don't know how to do is one thing...to keep doing it while beating yourself up and kind of freaking out...another thing we engineer types are not supposed to do.

Monday she calls all on fire with this great idea.

she'd brought it up to the docs at the round table meeting in which everyone talks about everyone, and all agreed that it would be just fine if I could take my Diluadid orally, since I was using such a small dose.

no sticks. no port access. and...no fanny pack!

see, beneficial change brings up the same wariness in me that problems do. how much do I really want to mess with what's working?

but how much have I been inexorably drawn to what's Even Better.

I asked if she would call the vacationing Dr. Gore about it. within an hour she had, and received Dr. Gore's ok.

so....drum roll please...I walk this house in a Long Green Tube, as Lefty Frizell might say, but ta da! no fanny pack with a basal rate of Dilaudid. pills suffice.

I stood at my closet yesterday for a minute, holding onto nothing, deciding leisurely what shirt to wear.

I've been peeing standing up.

I've been getting things my own damn self, cleaning up this or that mess, moving better, stronger. feeling literally better every day.

moving so slowly towards resuming playing, doing singing I need to do.

today is the last day of the etoposide chemo. still no real concrete "down" feelings from it...I'm starting to associate tired drooping eyes more with recent Dilaudid than a chemo pill in the last hour. now, the traditional down days came after the end of the chemo...but...we have seen so far, and we will see.

strengthening continues apace.

phew! glad that's over!!

Top Brass. ring any bells?

it was a 50's hair cream. like Wildroot creme oil, Charlie. Charlie was how the viewer was addressed. or Brylcreem, with alternate barbershop and all female chorus ads .

but Top Brass addressed its viewer/ buyer as "Tiger", from the lips of a Jackie Kennedy dressed and coiffed woman on a tiger skin rug. you couldn't make that commercial today, between NOW and PETA.

the point is...that woman was Barbara Feldon.

she of the "Never Never Affair" cited in the last blog. but of fame that would surpass either work easily in Mel Brooks' spy spoof tv show, Get Smart!

guys, get real for me here...Maxwell Smart...is there a more confident loser anywhere? the shows turned on his catchprases, the mystery gets solved at the end of the half hour...but if Max doesn't bungle, isn't obnoxious, doesn't make you cringe...there's no show, right?

and yet Barbara seems not to see a thing. she mothers him, lectures him, makes excuses the way any good dysfunctional family member would...Max's oblivion to her love for him, as well as any emotion not found in a second grader, just made us want her all the more.

we never needed to grow up, socialize, get competent, face adolescent rites of passage...she could purr them all away.

she was all the Yanks were to know of Emma Peel...the Mel Brooks version.

if there are Get Smart books which expand CONTROL ...the U.N.C.L.E- like organization Smart, Chief, and Agent 99 (Feldon) worked for along with Sigmund and Hymie the robot...into an acronym, I never read them. I have nothing on KAOS, either.

those aren't the reasons I am losing sleep at night.

My father thought that show was the funniest thing to hit the planet. so...we got to see it.

I remember him reciting the classic "Craw" bit to us over and over again. Get Smart! has a certain spyish rhythm, but its comic pacing was much more Grossinger's, much more the Borscht Belt, much more like my father's formative experiences watching vaudeville.

Smart meets the stereotype Asian villain in one episode. he is "The Claw", and we accept his Sidney Toler aphorisms and TV approximation of an Asian accent the way we accepted Jewish indians on F Troop.

Smart does not.

"permit me to introduce myself, Missa Smalllt. I am The Craw."

"you're The Craw???"

"no, no, not The Craw, The Craw!!!"

repeated to ever increasing frustration levels.

Dad thought that was one for the ages. I would estimate, 9 and up. I don't have the 138 episode collection on DVD, almost half a year of half hour dinner shows...though I still remember 10 of the 15 total jokes used in it. The Cone of Silence. ("what??") "would you believe...?", "sorry about that, Chief"

these phrases wove themselves deliably into our language.

last footnote...a lot of conspicuous casting came from this genre.

North By Northwest, Hitchcock's irresistible tale of an innocent (though sophisticated) man drawn into a dark world of cold war intrigue, featured not only Edward Platt as a lawyer, later to play "Chief" on Get Smart!, but Martin Landau as Van Damme's oddly menacing henchman, he later of Mission: Impossible. and of course, the head of the spy "alphabet soup" in the movie was Leo G. Carroll, who played Mr. Waverly on U.N.C.L.E.

but wait...there's more!

"The Project Strigas Affair" starred...wait for it, Adam Sandler...starred both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Inspired casting, Mr. Roddenberry. and also Otto Klemperer, not captain Kirk but Colonel Klink, in Hogan's Heroes.

yes, yes, this is what you get in these pages instead of the latest health news from Team Bennett. sigh. but to some degree I've really lived my life by these priorities.

and don't you hate it when someone immediately follows an intensifier with a qualifier? like above? I really kind of hate that.

The Technological Hierarchy

for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

David demanded to know. but even had he not, I heard from Paul, who said he still owned all twelve U.N.C.L.E. paperbacks and the only two Girl From U.N.C.L.E paperbacks printed. and Stewart, who also professed great love of the show.

I have not heard yet from anyone who, like myself, owns all 105 episodes on DVD. if anyone can take a guilty pleasure way, way too far, that be me. every night for over three (happy) months, 48 minutes of U.N.C.L.E with dinner.

but I think the real question is burning in the brains of the Readership, those of They who think this subject is worthy of any brains at all...

just how guilty is this pleasure?

I mean...was the series always shooting for camp? the writing...cold war spies out to save the world...had to be called serio-comic...by the time Batman came out, the series completely yielded to the not-to-be-taken-seriously side of the tube.

but...was it...bad? and if so, was it always bad? and if so...why do we remember it is being so..............good? could it be.....us?

I mean, not to unnecessarily deepen the trench - but one of my studies as I follow my media preference for intelligent dumb comedy is exactly this question -

is there not something in every show, however tongue in cheek, that is designed to have a direct impact, made to be taken seriously? if not, can the show really work at all?

if we don't care at all...and, let's face it, there is no real reason we should care...whether or not Dr. Evil succeeds in getting his "one millllion dollars", if we don't have a moment of empathy when Austin tries to play the "Mr. Tambourine Man" CD on a 45rpm record player...can we enjoy the bright colors and hijinks of the film?

some folks don't enjoy it anyway.

but the point is...a song, a TV show, a movie needs to find its level of cartoon. it needs to know what its world is, what can and can't happen in it. and then stay there. once you make a movie about The Green Lantern...my favorite DC superhero, and also the nickname for my new microphone...you can't resolve the plot by having King Brian, the leprechaun from Darby O'Gill and the Little People, trick Sinestro into making one too many wishes.

you can have a villain whose super power is that he was reliably lucky...that some impossible fortunate coincidence always enabled his plan to succeed. like, that Hal Jordan had parked his car on the street during the six hours a month it is designated for street sweeping, and got towed. it's vaguely within the level of cartoon you've established. similarly, you don't really want Robin to be embarrassed to go out and fight crime because of a bodacious zit at the end of his nose...in the movie, let's say...whereas in "Teen Titans", that is exactly what you'd expect to have happen to him.

no one...no one!!...would ever tell you that that we really ought to be taking the Spinal Tap movie more seriously. that it was meant as drama, and to be evaluated for its Shakesperean heft.

but when Nigel goes backstage to be a "messenger", at least over here in my world, you can hear a pin drop.

it fascinates me that the stupidest smart dumb comedy still needs the viewer, in some way, to take it seriously, and even more incredibly that we, as smart people suspending our disbelief in hopes of a worthy storytelling experience, can still be willing to do exactly that.

of course the hero wins!!! especially in this kind of joint!! you really, at 59, need to watch all the way through to make sure that happens?? the third time?? it's fiction! it's made to order! it's made to give us reliably what we can't rely on in our lives!

last night, on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the question was, what was true about the fictional character Harry Potter? that he a. lived in New York, b. wore glasses...

anyone but Immanuel Kant would choose b. and get the $500.

but what if we predicate something true about a fictional character? he wears glasses...but could he do that, if he did not exist? so if it is true that he wears glasses...Harry Potter, and all seven books, exist somehow, somewhere.

a laugh riot, eh? except for Anselm of Canterbury.

he proposed one of the middle period ontological proofs for the existence of God by saying...when we say, God is that which, greater can it cannot be conceived...we are speaking in an intelligible way, which can be understood. thus, what is referred to either exists only in thought, or in both thought and reality. but since in thought we can always conceive of something greater that what we just thought of (but wait! there's more! you get two Snuggies and a Pajama Jean for the same low price, plus separate shipping and handling)

then God must exist in reality.

to put too fine a point on it, Kant countered that existence is not a predicate. that you cannot say of a fire truck, that it is red and has a siren and also exists. things just don't work that way. once you go there, you can posit the existence of all sorts of ultimate things...greatest island, greatest pizza (reader's choice), greatest version ever of "Dark Star".

existence is not a predicate. just as you cannot bring up the subject of the King. because the King is not a subject. try parsing a sentence with those rules.

I will also put too fine a point on my answer to the question posed so so far above, Weary Reader.

be at peace. U.N.C.L.E could be quite good. even beyond Illya Kuryakin's allure to both chicks and unconventional role model seeking guys. beyond star charisma and cool gadgets.

I cite in my defense, "The Never Never Affair", starring Barbara Feldon and Cesar Romero.

it was an inclusion in every U.N.C.L.E episode, the outsider propelled into a world of espionage they had never dreamed of. in this case, the coup is that Barbara already works at U.N.C.L.E, in the Portuguese translation department. but she is bored to distraction, and looking for just a taste of the front lines.

that's all I'll tell. except to say, it's good...watchable today with nary a moment of guilt. you wouldn't say, theatrical, but you would say, involving. and it finds and keeps to its level of cartoon surefootedly.

we come to a storytelling ready to be manipulated, hoping that the teller can do it well. U.N.C.L.E. did sometimes do the job.

and, of course, if teller is sufficiently skillful, then we don't have to be caught wildly suspending our disbelief like children. a real embarrassment saved there.

me, I suspended my disbelief for Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich when they put out their Zorba the Greek sounding hit, "Bend It". I'm lost. those of you who can, save yourselves.

Dave, next visit, let's throw that episode in the DVD player.

p. s. wouldn't this reading have been more fun if you had not Googled the THRUSH answer?

tsk tsk.

p.p.s. I was too young to have caught Bond books, or the movies before Goldfinger. but the organization he battled in the early Ian Fleming books was SMERSH. actually (yes, I Googled this) Stalin made up the name...a Russian acronym, so no letter filling in for me...but the SMERSH in the books was a far broader outfit than Stalin's unit.

U.N.C.L.E., the only one with periods. hmm...

we'll leave CONTROL and KAOS to another time.

two topics, and two half topics:

1. napnea

2. da studio es da bomb!!

taking the second first...I guess the real point of the studio stuff is that I am feeling well enough and strong enough to set it up (sometimes with help), and able to work in it and run it.

weak. on oxygen. still no bargain.

but able to fill in some holes, get some folks what they want.

that is such a dream for me. another Walk in Heaven. yesterday with Don and Mary...until something turns out not to have worked...I was able to fix a couple of things up to give them some options, and put my tracks for them on a hard drive for Jim's studio.

not like climbing a fourteener, I daresay. but a dream for me.

the day before with Lost Alamos was pretty full on. I want to put at least guide vocals on their material, so that even if someone else records the parts for real later, they'll know how the parts were meant to work. plus, there's one song that is finished except for vocals...if we can get those done, my beautiful and expert friend James Tuttle has agreed to mix it, and it could be available for download on the Lost Alamos site...also available as some tangible return on the project I was hired to produce almost three years ago, which became the project of producing us, the band, instead.

I've been saying that what I trade, through these medical days, is one kind of I-don't-know for another. when I went into the hospital, I didn't know. I just didn't. now...I don't know. I just don't.

but I'll take this I-don't-know over that one, all day every day.

I haven't, the Reader may expect, been singing.

if I didn't sing for that many weeks when I was healthy...it took awhile to get my voice to do anything. anything.

putting down guide vocals...my voice started to smooth out a little. it may smooth out more as I reach, if I can continue to.

but the air stuff...I don't know. I just don't. take the oxygen out, do a couple of takes, put it back in. use the studio to the fullest to piece parts.

I joke that I have four O2 tanks in my living room to get more air into my recordings.

but...I sang on the new mic.

I say it's da bomb!

Mary Huckins, bless every cute and talented hair on her head, took pictures of it.

and when I was doing the guide vocals, I tried to get them so that if at some point it became more valuable to have actual Scott vocals on the project than actual good vocals, there would be no oxygen noise, etc. to keep that from happening.

we'll all find out together, shan't we, what is down that road, and how long it winds.

I've held a guitar.

times when I had not played for weeks, even before all of this, it was always a looooong way back.

but outside maybe of general strength issues, it's not like there's a direct major physical impediment stopping me from practicing guitar, maybe kind of getting it back a little.

I'm not promising anyone that I will never play again.

I promise that I'll find the good three notes, and play them first, if I do start to play again.

I realize that, maybe especially for the now ironically named Unassisted Living (Ken Morris, Peggy Dennis, me), that my vocal parts are even more necessary to having a band presentation than any and all instrumental tracks I might have done.

guys, I don't know.

but I'll find out on a great mic.

***********************insert tertiary topic here...the BNB

yes. I have had over a week, maybe two without a Big New Problem. (for a bit, they seemed to be coming two a day)

but today is a day of a BNB

Big New Blessing.

non-medical variety.

and I'm always non-specific about unfathomably wonderful gifts...how big, who gave them...it tends to be embarrassing to folks.

but the efforts in concert of a number of angel people have enabled me to end up with a cable for my studio (and every other music I ever play) that mere mortals could never ever aspire to having. I'm telling you. no one alive would not experience sticker shock at it, and no one alive would believe how generous people , including one I haven't even met, were to make it happen.

Dear Supportive, Enabling Reader, I feel I should tell you those things as well, so as to make the things that inspire me and make me smile do the same for you.

better sound.

may my days here allow for time time time to enjoy it. every pull to not only life but what I make of my life counts towards inspiration and wellness. towards healing and being careful, but not playing small; looking to the future seems like the genius response to what I am going through.

this will help me listen towards the future.

and

maybe

it will allow me to keep 78% of the studio permanently set up in the living room. so each track is easier to approach. without asking folks to change cables and lug stuff.

******end of topic #2 1/2

the joke is, ok, number one, we need to get organized, and B.,

napnea.

that's what my sleep has become. I'll sleep for an hour and a half, be awake 45 minutes, sleep for an hour and a half. if I do it four times a night, I consider I have had a night's sleep.

but it ain't what I want.

maybe I need to look at the naprosyn I'm taking. I don't want naps...I want giant droughts of healing, in sleep. if I am on dilaudid, a morphine, then why is Morpheus no more accommodating?

today's BND...Big New Drug...may solve that.

started the etopaside today.

that's the famous "palliative chemo" drug Dr. Gore prescribed. I've held off taking it, though I've had it since Friday...I wanted a few more days of feeling my best, while company and sessions were coming through.

............see if you can see this coming...I don't know how it will affect me.

so I have nothing scheduled for awhile, for the greatest response- ability.

but, guys...it's a move. on the chessboard. maybe not the chessboard of beating the cancer. but the chessboard of more days like today.

something that could help.

and if it induces a little fatigue...makes me sleep though the night...I could be ready for that.

last 50% topic...

Longsuffering Longterm blog Readers...have you ever seen me use an emoticon?

I'm guessing not.

and it goes with this idea I have about masculinity, which as anyone who knows me knows is really the most important quality I try to cultivate:

I am not cute.

I used to read the Man from U.N.C.L.E books. only to fill the time between when the show was actually airing. I remember the villain of one was named "Tixe Ylno", because his name spelled Exit Only for the western world.

this guy wrote this book in a bar someplace.

anyway, a foxy female spy said to Illya Kuryakin, "say, you're cute!"

he replied, "Madam, I am not cute. A batch of mongrel puppies is cute."

I thought it was a good distinction.

so, leave the emoticons to the mavens of cuteness in this world, say I. but I did kind of decide to strike back when I received some sideways (literally) email from a very cute source, and did this:

l l l l l l l l ( l l l l l l l .................I said, ATTENTION, soldier!

maybe a couple more:

}{ (United Artists, like on the Hard Day's Night album cover!!)

as the British loan officer said, #4# >*

(pound for pound, this is greater than I'm asked to risk)

Scott

p. s. United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. I knew someday, lives would depend on my knowing that answer. like "Klaatu barada nicto" which is what you say in The Day the Earth Stood Still if you need to stop the robot from destroying the earth. thought it might come in handy.

now...without Googling....Mr. Waverly and his boys fought the world conquest dreams of THRUSH.

anyone know what that stood for? I'll write the answer in a subsequent entry if there is popular demand...ok, any demand whatsoever.