South of the Border

#24 in an occasional series of repressed 70's memories that turn out to be true.

His name is Pedro.  He lives nowhere near Mexico (say it in Spanish) but on 301S on the border between the Carolinas.  The "South" you are entering is South Cuh-lyina, a different country indeed.

In its day, it was the Tijuana of the east coast, where beer and explosives could be found after enduring the drive through the dry northern counties where cigarettes are farmed.

It took some digging to find the official website.  They need some SEO help from the Googles.

But you better believe Google can see Pedro from space.  He is 97 feet tall:

SOB has dining, shopping, overnight accommodations, attractions, all in quotation marks.

But don't think Pedro is lost in his kitschy past.  SOB also has a blog, and sometimes it gets updated!  It's name is blog.  Enjoy.

I am going to open the comments section up to the Readership to share their SOB memories.  I expect some of you have driven right through it on your holiday travel this week.  Pop a Blenheim for me and unwrap a Moon Pie.  You are going to have to wait for Memphis stories to be posted later.  I have a hand cramp.

Share your Pedro stories, and enjoy paging through these archives.

SC Information Highway

Billboard Gallery

Bill Warren Photography

Stuckey's... just cuz

Back by popular demand

The Palin turkey slaughter video

Permanent contraception

or... don't name your baby Adiana.

I came across Adiana in my job hunt.  I have just linked you to it, so you could read the rest, but something tells me that it not what you come here for.  You come to see what threads the Drawing In Room can weave together with this to find something wholly new.

As Tevye says, "Well I'll tell you.  I don't know..."

Adiana is the trademark name Hologic has given its outpatient "alternative" to tubal ligation.
"You know you're done with childbearing. You also know the form of permanent contraception you want - no hormones, no anesthesia and no surgery. For women like you, there's Adiana Permanent Contraception."

uh-HUH.  Go ahead...

The failure rate is slightly higher than ligation (your or his) and has the same "risks/disadvantages" of having surgery except, says the fact sheet "Most women return to their normal activities within a day."

"It works by stimulating your body's own tissue to grow in and around tiny, soft inserts that are placed inside your fallopian tubes."  Again with the inserts.  You guys and your inserts.  You would keep the barbeque in there if you could.

"It leaves nothing in the uterus that might limit future gynecologic procedures."  Am I having more procedures?  Of course it leaves nothing in the uterus.  You just told me you left it in my tubes, this piece of styrafoam.  It is actually made of silicone.

Other things they stuck in us they were wrong about
- Dalkon shield
- Carboxymethylcellulose

The procedure takes 12 minutes, they say, which is how long it took to kill 500 people at The Cocoanut Grove.   (just something else to link to, in case this bores you).  You have to click a little further to find out how long the entire process takes. 

Here's your timeline:
- decide you are ready. 
- wait for your next ovulation - before it, actually.  You might also want to stop having unprotected sex, though the website does not advise this.
- if you have just given birth, wait 3 months.  Everything in medical science takes 3 months. 
- 1 or 2 hours before, take an anti-inflammatory (you know, so you can resume those normal duties)
- accept a local anesthetic into your cervix.  (scooch...scooch..)
- 60 seconds of "radiofrequency energy" in each tube
- now count your 12 minutes
the website says, "Before you leave the doctor’s office, you will receive discharge instructions."  That's not what they meant.  This is where a 2nd proofreader comes in handy.
- for the next 3 months you are still fertile.  Keep using your preferred birth control method.
- have your uterus filled with dye and x-rayed.  If the earplugs they put in there have sufficiently closed off your tubes, you are permanently sealed
- continue to menstruate, which you enjoy so much
- live with it, because there is no do-over

You can watch the vaguely described procedure here.

thirtysomething in retrospect

I have been working my way through Season 1 of "thirtysomething," a series which divides friendships just as much now as it ever did.

For every one of my dear friends who enjoys vampires, space travel, Middle Earth, and Lost, there is a show about whiny self-sabateurs that love just as much.

Dr A said to me, in her literary criticism
professor's assessment, "I think we have found the difference in our ages."

Yes, one's attraction to thirtysomething is driven to some degree by the age they were when they originally watched it, but it is not that simple.  Plenty of people exactly my age (23 when this show came on the air) would rather shave their in-laws than impose these people on themselves.

But we are not talking about them.  We are, as always, talking about me.  ("Deal with it, Michael," says my inner Stedman)

I have tried to encapsulate what attracted me to this show, and for me it holds up Plus.  Plus the crazy hair and the fashion show, the "hippy" flashbacks which I had not remembered, and which i think are anachronistic.  If this crew is thirtysomething (Melissa, the youngest, says she is 31 in the pilot) then they were born in 1948 at the latest, and this crew is not 39.  They are 36 at best, I will say, which would make them born in 1951 and just barely Flower Children.  But I'll play along.

Thirtysomething premiered the same year Cagney and Lacey went off the air.  Out with the brown, in with the pinstripes.  I chose this cast photo because both Michael and Eliot are wearing their signature pants.  This is Ellyn's best hair, and she had some nightmare hair.  Sadly missing: Nancy's butterfly hairclip.  That did not catch on.  Combs, yes, randomly placed binder clip, no.  But Michael and Eliot will wear these pants every day like cartoon characters.

I had just moved to the big city to begin my Adult Life.  This program became my manual of how not to be, and how to deal with those who were.  In my life, I do not encounter many of the undead, or Hobbits.  I do, however, encounter Hopes and Michaels, and very many Garys (Garies?) in my day-to-day.

Understand that as much as I loved-loved this program, I hate these people as much as anyone does.  I do not want to be at dinner with them, much less in a marriage.  And yet they are us, aren't they?  Their fights are not clever, their expressions of love are awkward. Their compliments back-handed.  This is not Aaron Sorkin -- who we love, and whose characters we want to be like because they always say the right things, with footnotes and hyperlinks.   This is not Edward Albee, all shreiks and scotch, and giant Pronouncements.

This is Zwick & Herkovitz.  They wrote Family; they will eventually bring us My So-Called Life.   They know that the harder we try to say the right thing, the worse it comes out.
It makes us uncomfortable just to watch.  We grab our hair and moan, and flop back on the bed.  Just...like...Michael.

Recently an NPR reviewer gave the thirtysomething boxed set a so-so review -- admitting that the show finds it stride after a few choppy starts, but rolling its radio eyes at some of the plotlines (Michael keeps cancelling squash!  Janie doesn't want to nurse!).  Later in the series when the plots get bigger and ickier (just like life - the new Boss is an asshole!  Nancy has cancer!) our characters have not learned much that lets them handle these problems any better.

Just...like...us.

You are one of these.  You are all of these.  And you are surrounded by them.  Maybe you don't need another hour to see it in front of you, but it is cheaper than analysis (with suspenders and shoulder pads).

Hope: peaked too early, experiencing her first real hardship: ordinary life
Michael: aspired to the Madmen life of his father's generation without knowing how hard the old man had it
Eliot: married too young to his first girlfriend
Nancy: aspired to the domestic life of her mother's generation without realizing she hadn't married her father
Gary: very sad the 60s are over, even though he was a teenager during them
Melissa: very sad the 80s are over, even though she appears to deny it
Ellyn: resents living in the shadow of her best friend, but won't move on
the kids: the center of everything and completely ignored

Sentimental lady

So you're singing along to the radio, and you find yourself thinking, "Those are the words?  What does that even mean?"    If it is not a Paul Simon song, chances are you are singing it wrong.

This is not the kind of moment where you are singing "Tonight's the Night" in front of your 7 year old, then realize you sang that song when you were 7, and maybe they should have had helmets for that.  My childhood next-door neighbor woke up to the line "Just a come on from the whores on 7th Avenue" when we were about 20, but again... I am not talking about Paul Simon.

This is more that kind of mis-heard song lyric moment like "There's a bathroom on the right," and "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy."

I looked up "Sentimental" on the Kiss this Guy website before I looked up the real lyrics, just to see if others were as misinformed as I was.  What I sang was, "Fourteen jars and a will to be married."  (what?) so I tried again.  14 chores?  A will to be merry?

I started from the top again: "You are here and warm, but I could look away and you'd be gone.  Cause we live in a time when meaning falls like... "  summer?  "...from our eyes.  That's why I travel far, cause I come so together where you are."

Ok - stop here.  He's a trucker of some kind, or a drifter who follows her a far way in order to get himself together.  But she keeps leaving.  She is not very sentimental.  Or her journey is.

Let's get to the chorus, because what I am singing is what an Up With People ambassador troupe might sing if they had learned the song phoentically.  If, by now, you are screaming the lyrics at me... I can't hear you. 

"Sentimental gentle wind.  Come into my life (love?) again, sentimental lady, gentle one."

Christine McVie whines "all that I need is."  He interrupts her.  This may be why she leaves everytime he looks away.

"All of the things that I said that I wanted come rush awry? in my head when I need you.  14 jars and a will to be married.  All of the things that you say are very....(catch breath) Sentimental gentle wind..."

Sentimental Lady is listed three times on Kiss this Guy.  Here are some variations:

"14 joints and a barrel full of cocaine"

"14 joints and a well-diggin' Mary"

also "Sacramento lady, share the wine."

Now, "Sentimental" is already provided for you, so why would you mess that up (ya well-digging Mary...)

here they are, as written by Bob Welch

You are here and warm

But I could look away and you'd be gone
Cause we live in a time
When meaning falls in splinters from our lives
And that's why I've travelled far
Cause I come so together where you are

And all of the things that I said that I wanted
Come rushing by in my head when I'm with you
14 joys and a will to be merry
And all of the things that we say are very

Sentimental gentle wind
Blowing through my life again
Sentimental lady
Gentle one
Now you are here today
But easily you might just go away
Cause we live in a time
When paintings have no color, words don't rhyme
And that's why I've travelled far
Cause I come so together where you are
 
I've decided that she's terminally ill, and not just a tease.  Leave it to Rider to point out that Bob Welch and Jame Gumb were separated at birth.  She didn't "go away," she's in the cistern.  Jame comes "so together" where she is.