I admit it, and not even grudgingly: I am fascinated with conspiracy theories.

I’m not one of those people that has to follow them or go after them or do anything to spur them on. However, from the time I was A.J.’s age (9-ish), I remember being fascinated by things that were of a titillating nature. Do they really exist? Unsolved Mysteries was some serious stuff for me growing up. There were many nights, after watching that show, that I didn’t sleep. It didn’t matter if it was a school night. I was sufficiently freaked out that sleep was out of the picture. My eyes were glued to my window because there were most certainly aliens coming through it to do a probe if I closed my eyes even a little bit.

I was a naive child. My son is much smarter than I am. Even if there were aliens right outside his window, he wouldn’t for one minute presume that they would bother probing him. He’d be more concerned about whether or not they’d touch his stuff, eat the junk food in the house or make enough noise to get him in trouble. He’s a skeptical little guy. He loves shows like Paranormal State.

He’ll curl up on the couch and talk to both me and the television. I’ll be minding my own business and farming my Farmville (don’t you judge me, I love my farm!) and suddenly I will hear, “Ohhhhh, no! Don’t go in there. Mama, he shouldn’t go in there, should he?” After a couple days of this, A.J. looked at me from the backseat of the car. He’d been quiet and this usually tells me that something is coming that I’m not going to be able to explain. The gears were grinding and he finally came out with it. “Mama! I don’t think Paranormal State is real. They keep going into house after house and I still haven’t seen a ghost.”

…

…

“Mama, do you think it’s real?”

There’s the question. What’s real and what’s not?

Here’s the deal, A.J. Perception is a tricky beast. There are things out there that are difficult for me to prove exist, but I know they do. There are things out there that I think may exist that I know don’t. There are things I wish didn’t exist but do. I’ll tell you what I’ve always told you in that you need to make up your own mind.

“Well, mama, I don’t think it’s real, but I like to watch it anyway. It’s a good show.”

Well, alright then.

When I was A.J.’s age, I read everything I could find on aliens, UFOs, ghosts, Loch Ness, Bigfoot, you name it. It then, as I aged, extended to government theories. What I’ve determined is that people need to make up their own minds about things and that curiosity about questions that are on the edge of reality have led to a curiosity in research for my profession that propels me immensely.

This would explain why I’m sitting here watching a television show about the Loch Ness monster and devouring it like a starving woman discovering bacon for the first time.

Sometimes, 9-year olds have the answers that adults don’t have. I subscribe to A.J.’s theory in that I don’t know if it’s real, but I like to watch it anyway. It’s a good show.

This Sunday, my loving wife took me to see my first live comedy show, which was Ralphie May at Zanies in Nashville. She has graciously allowed me to write a guest post here about the experience, which I must say easily exceeded my expectations.
 
Sunday was a miserable day, weather-wise, but when we were actually driving up Franklin Road to get to Zanies, the skies cleared and it appeared that the weather would clear up. We were advised to show up by 6:45 in order to get good seats for the 7:30 show, and we arrived more or less right on time.  The parking situation at Zanies was atrocious, however, and we had to park a couple blocks away (as we had been warned that parking at any of the nearby businesses would result in our car being promptly towed).  Nonetheless, we were still in the door at or near 6:45.  We found out that this was not nearly early enough, as we were seated at a couple of bar stools near the back of the first floor, and near the door.  Our seating was, however, literally the only complaint I had about Zanies as a venue.  Although my back got sore from not having anything to support it while we sat there for three hours, the sight lines were still good, the food was delicious and reasonably priced, and the service was shockingly prompt and attentive (especially given that our server appeared to be waiting on at least 9 or 10 tables).  The warm-up acts were some guy from the Bob & Tom show (apparently neither Bob nor Tom), and Ralphie May’s wife.  Both were good for a few chuckles, but neither had the talent to be a successful television comedian. 
 
Ralphie took the stage at around 7:50.  I was prepared, to some extent, for some recycled material, especially since I have been a fan of Ralphie’s since Last Comic Standing, and I was worried that I might have heard most of the jokes before, but I needn’t have worried.  I didn’t hear a single recylced joke from any of his 4 DVDs or from any of his Last Comic Standing material.  It was all new and fresh and quite a bit of it was obviously pulled from the events of the last few weeks and months.  Ralphie had clearly put a lot of effort into keeping his material fresh for an audience that had doubtless heard him before (Ralphie is a relatively frequent guest at Zanies).  During the middle of the show, the weather apparently turned inclement and we eventually briefly lost power.  Ralphie picked up without a beat and continued the show.  In fact, due to the weather, Ralphie extended his show an extra full hour, nearly doubling the length of his show, and did so without recycling anything I had ever heard before.  At the end, he stayed around and took free pictures and gave free autographs to all who had stayed.  I was truly impressed with his generosity with his time, especially given the fact that his wife delivered a baby less than 3 weeks ago and by his own admission, he is recently recovered from the flu and sleep deprivation. He furthermore displayed a remarkable knowledge of Nashville and surrounding localities, perhaps because he may have actually moved here (I think he said at the end that he and his wife had moved here, but I can’t be sure. It could just be that he visits frequently enough to have been briefed on these things).
 
Ralphie as a comedian is of course not for everyone.  His jokes are not appropriate fare for the faint of heart, nor the politically correct.  His show suffered somewhat from a needless and extended jag into pro-Obama politics.  I more or less expect this from a comedian of Ralphie’s variety, so the problem in this case was not the politics, it’s that the jokes were not especially funny.  Ralphie sounded more during these jokes like a talking head, less like a comedian attempting to entertain his audience.  Thankfully, given the overall length of the show, this portion more or less faded into the background of an otherwise hilarious experience, especially since he quickly redeemed himself with a bit about Chick Fil-A that was… well, look for it to come to a special on Comedy Central soon. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.  When he was finished, a grateful audience gave him a standing “O” and we waited in line for less than five minutes to meet Ralphie.  I got a copy of “Austin-Tatious” (the only one I didn’t already have) and Ralphie signed it (as pictured here), although he was clear that he would have signed a picture for free as well. We then headed back home, late but satisfied with our first comedy experience.  Whenever we get the chance, we’ll be seeing Ralphie again soon.

The focus of the show was on a program called “Puppies behind Bars.” The program gives puppies to inmates in prison and has them train dogs to be service dogs for disabled, handicapped and ex-servicemen from the military who have needs. The show focused on how the dogs change both the lives of the prisoners and the lives of the servicemen for the better.

Now, I have no problem showing emotion, but I was doing everything could to hold it together for this one because if I let it start, it wasn’t going to stop. Dogs are special to me because I know what they can do to heal someone’s spirit. I’ve long considered using my dogs in therapy and it may yet happen. To watch these incarcerated men, some for violent crime, break down and weep because of these dogs, was heart-wrenching. To see someone with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder slowly healing with the help of a dog was humbling. We all want unconditional love, don’t we?

When my husband got Tivo, I winced and then glared and then was passive aggressive for a nice long time. For me, it was just another shiny new gadget that would ultimately get stuck in some orifice of the house and would do nothing to enhance our life. I was wrong, so, so wrong. There are many reasons I was wrong, but the main reason I was wrong has to do with my obscene love of the television show Scrubs.

For the last several years, Scrubs has been my “go to” show. The show itself addressed this phenomenon in one if its episodes. We get attached to the show, the characters and the way it allows us to go somewhere outside of the hectic activity or stress of our own lives for a while. I have used Tivo to its fullest and through the wonder of Tivo, I frequently have no less than 5 episodes a day that just wait for me to watch them in an insomniatic daze.

I have my favorite characters (Elliott and her neuroticism reminds me of me), my favorite lines (when J.D. tells a potential suitor that Elliott is a dude) and my favorite episodes (air banding). I think there are plenty of commentaries out there about the finale, so I won’t add to them other than to say that I think it was superb. It’s exactly what I wanted and the haters can hate. It took the show back to its roots and the die hard fans know that it was the only true way to end the show. I would have liked a little more J.D./Turk interaction, but the thing is that they have moved past that point as characters. As a viewer, I am the one who hasn’t moved past that point.

For us, as viewers, there is a grieving process as our favorite characters go on without us. I think it was keenly felt at the ending of “Friends.” I feel it more now, as these characters were always accessible to me in a way that I never felt that “Friends” were. They were realistic. They had the thoughts I had. Dr. Cox said the things I keep in my head.

From here, we give the characters the privacy to move on with their own fictional lives and we search for something else to fill the void. Or we buy the full series and watch them over and over and over again. Or watch them on Tivo. Thank you, honey, for buying tivo. I wish I could say I will never doubt you again, but we both know that’s not true. Quit buying shiny gadgets. Now that I have Tivo, I’ll never be hungry again. Or something like that.