Jay Leno finally spots my husband in the second row. It had just been a matter of time. He stops searching the audience and points.
“Hello sir, what’s your name?” Leno asks.
About half the audience in the packed comedy club answers on my husband’s behalf.
“Mark!”
This startles Leno.
“Well, clearly you have been called on before,” he says to Mark.
Yes, that did happen. Several times.
We were at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California, a small club known for its occasional celebrity hosts. Jay Leno regularly appears on stage on Sundays, and this Sunday was no different. He was the fourth and last comic that night, and the fourth one to call out my husband.
I love going to comedy clubs. The only part I don’t like is the chance that I might be singled out to engage with the person on stage. While that chance is my great fear, it is my husband’s great wish.
One can tell when the person at the mic is in search of a participant from the audience. At that point, I slouch low in my seat, my head retreating into my neck until only the crown can be spotted just above my collarbone. Conversely, Mark will sit up tall, his E.T neck managing to launch his head higher than anyone else’s in the room. Then Mark takes on a clueless expression, he will blink looking around like a person who isn’t even sure where he is.
Mark has mastered a skill no one wants, and that is to appear an easy target for any comic.
“Well, I hope you haven’t been asked this too,” Leno says, “what do you do for a living Mark?”
The previous comics hadn’t asked this. Their questions had been more about whether Mark and I were dating or married. Mark’s need for attention roping me in to being comedic fodder by proxy.
Mark is ready with an answer for Leno.
“I am currently unemployed,” my husband responds.
Hmm. Technically, this was true. He had just left a training program and we were relocating to Colorado where he had secured a job to start the following month.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Leno says, “really, I am.”
In person, I like Jay Leno. I had never had much of an opinion about him before now. I just knew I had been a bigger Conan fan when it came to host options for the “The Tonight Show.” But, seeing a celebrity in person tends to make one an instant fan. And, I have to respect any TV personality who still likes to keep sharp by working on a small stage.
“I’m sure your luck will change soon,” Jay says sympathetically. “Do you mind if I ask, when you are working what is your line of work?”
“I’m an orthopedic surgeon,” Mark responds.
The audience bursts out laughing, and Leno lowers the mic and shakes his head, smiling. Now he has something to work with.
“Okay so what does an orthopedic surgeon do in between jobs? Are you, like, working the window at Burger King?”
More laughter.
Mark is glowing, he is very proud of himself for what he sees was his big opportunity to assist.
If Mark had said any other job title people probably wouldn’t have laughed. Actually, Mall Santa might have gotten a laugh. Or possibly Wizard. But the reason the audience laughed at surgeon was that you just don’t often hear of a surgeon sitting around unemployed. It is a job that is always in demand yet one relatively few pursue. Assuming you get into and get through med school, there are the many more years of intense training and accruing school debt. And then there is just the pressure of being responsible for the person on your operating table. As a copywriter, the worst pressure I might have is having to re-concept or tweak a line about coffee beans or something.
Now, Mark has some more time on his hands. With the Covid-19 Pandemic, Alaska has mandated a three month hiatus on elective surgery. His outpatient clinic has come to a halt, because of the danger of spreading the virus during an exam. In anticipation of Covid-19 positive patients, Mark is reviewing how to run a ventilator, something he hasn’t done since he was an intern. And he is spending more time with us, and we are in quarantine as in, #quarantinelife.
Is it Weird to Envy How Our Neighbors Do “Quarantine.”
“Mom, you’re so creepy,” Tatum tells me as I snap yet another shot of our neighbors. Our neighbors, who are on their snowmobiles. Okay, I’m going to go ahead and switch to calling them snow machines instead, because “snowmobile” is a word only used by people in the lower 48. And I’m no longer a lower 48’er.
I am a little jealous watching from my living room as these snow machines fly across the lake.
I’m like Jimmy Stewart in the movie “Rear Window” with my camera and binoculars. Now all I need is to witness a murder on the lake (“Murder on the Lake,” could be the movie title)
“Should we be worried that our 15-year-old daughter picked out a board game called Poopyhead?” Mark asks me as Tatum blows up the Whoopee Cushion for another round.
We had just started our self-quarantine after a run to Fred Meyers (The Target of the Northwest, Alaska, and Idaho) for necessary supplies, and that included Cheezits and a batch of board games.
In Poopyhead you quickly play your cards in this order based on the card visual:
1.toilet 2. poop 3. toilet paper 4. wash hands with soap.
When you are out of cards, you hit the Whoopee Cushion and win the game. It may be as satisfying as it sounds, I wouldn’t know. I have only been a loser, and losers wear poop hats.
As people went nuts in the stores due to the Pandemic, the news focused on the hoarding of toilet paper. But, what about those Monopoly game hoarders? The store was out of Monopoly, the classic version that is. All that was left was a small stack of Ms. Monopoly. I didn’t even know there was a Ms. Monopoly. We threw it in the cart since it was the only option. I just hoped that the tagline, “The First Game Where Women Make More Than Men,” wasn’t this version’s big twist.
Turns out, it was the big twist.
“It says here that Female players start out with $1900 and Male players start out with $1500,” Tatum says reading the rules.
“That can’t be right,” I say. “Are you sure it isn’t the reverse?” Perhaps Hasbro is trying to make some political commentary?Kind of a dark place to take family game night though.
“Females start out with more money,” Tatum confirms, “and they make more than males when they pass GO. I’m not playing that, it’s like saying that females need extra help to win! And dad and Anders are just going to say my win doesn’t really count.”
What is Hasbro trying to teach my daughter here? At least Poopyhead teaches you that hand washing comes after pooping.
Ms. Monopoly’s intent appears to be to teach girls about female empowerment, but I have no idea how.
Anyone who managed to sell this concept under the guise of “female empowerment” deserves a bump in salary. If that person was a woman, maybe she already started with one.
My guess is, it probably was a female the marketing team nominated to be the one to pitch this idea to a room full of men (been there myself) and the resulting conversation once she left the room might as well have gone like this.
“Does this game twist empower women? I wouldn’t know as I have male body parts.”
“I have male body parts too. The person that presented it had female body parts, so I trust that she would know.”
“Frank, what do you think? Does Ms. Monopoly empower females?”
“I have no idea, because I have male body parts.”
“Jason? Your thoughts on this?”
“I have no thoughts on this.”
“Because you have male body parts?”
“Yes.”
“All right, well, I say we go ahead and green light this concept of a woman needing multiple advantages in order to win at a game, because we want to be seen as a progressive company that understands that women and men are equals, and wait, where is the person with female body parts to explain this to us again?”
I would continue to make fun of this version of the game, but I did a search and it looks like plenty of people already did. It mostly got panned on Amazon, people bought it as a joke, or because they thought it might be a collectors item.
Monopoly the Airbnb/Vrbo version!
One last note here. If Hasbro is so desperate to conceive of new versions of Monopoly I’ll pitch them this idea, for free.
Description: The first game that allows you to choose if you want to rent your properties as short-term vacation rentals in order to make 3x more income. The risk? Just hope you don’t pull the “New HOA Ruling” or “Pandemic” cards or you’ll have to refund reservations and have weeks of vacancies. Maybe we drop the Pandemic card idea. Too soon.
Accepting the New Reality
Spending so much time as a family doing things like playing board games has been quite nice in a way. If my kids have to play with me because I’m the only one around, I’ll take it. It has been the one, small silver-lining when it comes to an epidemic that is sad and horrifying in all other ways.
I will say though, that I had grand plans for our quarantine life when this all started. We were going to read and discuss classic novels as a family. “Don’t you see mom? Heathcliff did get his revenge,” Anders might say to me as we discussed Wuthering Heights, “he did it by marrying Isabella!” And we were going to journal side by side, one hour every morning. And we were going to organize our rooms, folding every sweater until it was no larger than a pack of playing cards. And together we would learn to cook organic, sit-down meals where we would find a way to sneak peas into every dish including dessert.
But plans change. Or wait, they don’t. They’re just never executed.
“I already know how to cook,” says Tatum as she layers pepperoni and sliced dill pickles on a slice of bread, and throws a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Aside from Cheezits and the occasional banana, a pickle and pepperoni sandwich and popcorn are the only things my daughter eats.
We have been taking walks, armed with bear spray (remembering that we still need to worry about bears almost seems cute). And the kids have their on-line classes. But otherwise our quarantine life almost instantly settled into what it was always going to be; lots of absent minded snacking, watching movies, and playing games. And that’s okay. If I want anything more exciting I can just look out the window and live vicariously through my neighbors quarantine lives.
https://pokingthebear.org/minding-your-own-business-in-alaska/