Being excessively corny

I just finished by post for tomorrow's Hometown Photo Shootout on Sound. 

I feel (about tomorrow's post) the same way I sometimes do when I am in a business meeting and my compulsion to make a stupid, smartass comment starts working its way up my larynx like a verbal fart.  I know I shouldn't say it but the pressure is like gas pain and before you know it I've blurted out something.

In my own defense, it is never totally inappropriate and sometimes even clever.  But sometimes it is really just corny and dumb.  But it doesn't need to be said in a room full of people in coats and ties who are trying to be serious.  

Often it is just really corny.  Like tomorrow's shoot. 

People around the table stare blankly at me.  Sometimes they laugh.  Sometimes they just titter politely, particularly if I happen to be the senior manager in the room. 

I know that I am a humorous guy.  But I also know that it is more than that.  Being funny is not a bad addiction but it is an addiction.  When I think about it, it stems -- like many things -- from my mother's death when I was six.  From that early age onward, I found humor as a way of distancing myself.  There is a control aspect to it.  

I don't know if that makes sense.  

Friday Shoot-out dies in Flaming Ego Crash

Please forgive me, but I have just deleted 90% of my Friday Hometown “M”-themed photo shoot-out from the dashboard. I’m sure I’ll stick in a couple of photos with minimal words but I have dumped what had become a major opus with endless dialogue using every word I could think of that started with “M”. (I.e. massive monologues where Butler meticulously moderates Bagman’s mayhem.) You get the point. And lots and lots of dump snapshots to illustrate a blog-version of stand-up comedy.

I guess some of it was probably funny, but I realized early this morning that I was literally driving myself crazy. Somehow, blogging – particularly the shootout – has become less about connection, communication, sharing and more about performance. My ego has overheated. (Yes, I confess, I have an ego…in Alcoholics Anonymous, I’ve heard alcoholics and addicts defined as “egomaniacs with inferiority complexes.” I don’t like looking at it, but that definition fits me pretty well.)

When I’m writing the blog, it’s like I’m on amphetamine. When I turn off the computer, I crash. Over the last month I’ve slowly become more and more irritable, withdrawn, angry, depressed and disconnected. I didn’t make the connection until this morning when I was preparing to add what I thought was an absolutely hilarious photograph to the manic “M” blog. It was a self-portrait, supposedly to have been taken by Bagman with my cheeks stuffed with marshmallows and the caption: “Mark’s messy mandible masticating mini-marshmallows.” Yes, I had truly lost it.

But it wasn’t the idiocy of the attempted humor that made the connection for me that I was over the edge – it was seeing my face in the photo. The marshmallows extruding from my mouth might have been a bit funny, but my expression was scary. My “smile” was demonic. My eyes were crazed. I looked haggard and totally stressed out. Ego sucks. Ego is the center of addiction for me. And, at least for me, blogging has started to be about feeding my ego.

So I deleted my Friday Shootout blog with the same sad resolve I remember when I poured my last can of beer down the toilet in 1976. I’m still planning to put a small number of pictures up on Friday…I just need to…what is the phrase I’m looking for? Get smaller? Get real? Something like that.

And I have to laugh at the irony of this post. Having resolved to back away a little bit from self-explanatory pontifications, I immediately run to the computer and post a 448 word self-explanatory pontification! Clearly nuts.

BAGMAN and BUTLER (in unison for a change): Why don’t you just shut up, Mark?

The Passing of Father Martin

Several friends emailed me yesterday and I learned, sadly, that Father Martin passed away on Monday. Father Joseph Martin (October 12, 1924 - March, 9 2009) was one of the giants in the formative days of the alcohol and drug treatment profession. He founded one of the premier treatment centers, Father Martin’s Ashley in Havre de Grace, Maryland and was even more widely known for his educational film, “Chalk Talk on Alcoholism” made in 1972 and still used in many places.

Bah. I sound like I’m writing a newspaper obituary column. Easy to do since it was one of my first jobs out of college. But that’s not what I need to do here since a quick Google or Yahoo Search will get you anything more you want to know, including some U-Tube snippets of Chalk Talk – well worth the glance.

And I can’t say I’m devastated by the news. Father Martin had been around forever and retired from active speaking a while ago. I hate to admit it but when I heard about his death, my first thought was, “I didn’t realize he was still alive.” Which, of course, he isn’t. But he was. Aw, you know what I mean.

To the left is a picture of Father Martin posing with...I guess it is Bagman’s Head on Butler’s Body.

I had the wonderful fortune, sometime around 1984 or 1985 to be the marketing/PR guy for a small chain of treatment centers in Massachusetts. I managed to convince my boss – worthy, himself, of a blog someday – to spring for the speaking fees to get Father Martin to come up for two gala events we put together in Pittsfield and Worcester, Massachusetts.

I can’t recall the events (printing flyers, renting auditoriums, stuff like that) although I think they were successful. Mostly I remember what a great time I

had picking him up at the airport and driving around with him from place to place.

I was nervous at first. What should I say? What should I call him? Father? Mr. Martin? Joe? He got off the plane and before we got to the luggage carousel, he pointed at the men’s restroom and said, “Excuse me for a minute while I go and shed a tear for the Ku Klux Clan.”

He had disappeared behind the door before I got it. But it was just the beginning of non-stop entertainment with a message. Although the only other joke he told that I specifically remember didn’t really have a message. We were speeding along the Massachusetts Turnpike and he asked, “Do you know what’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield?”

“No,” I replied truthfully.

“Its asshole,” he said.

I almost choked. Did a Catholic Priest just use the word “asshole?” Is God going to strike us both dead?

Of course, now, I’m doubting my own priorities if I was able to spend two full days with this really brilliant man and all I clearly recall are two short jokes, neither of which have anything to do with alcoholism.

Oops! No. Thankfully, that is not quite true. I just remembered one other story he told over dinner about when he was first building Ashley. I’ve never seen the place but apparently the main entry way to the building has a large foyer and a beautiful polished wood staircase and banister going up to the rooms where patients begin their detox. He said that when the cost of the staircase became known to his Board of Directors, they called him in and demanded to know why he would spend so much money to make the place look so good when it was going to be used to treat alkies.

His answer was that, by the time alcoholics reach that point in life when they need inpatient treatment, they have lost all sense of self-respect and self-worth. That their families and friends had also lost all respect for them as well. He insisted that treating them as honored guests in a beautiful place was an essential step in changing that paradigm for them and getting them sober.

I’ve internalized that lesson, although until today, I’d forgotten where I learned it. The place I work, now, is not luxurious although it is clean and functional. But everyday, as I walk up the sidewalk to the front door, I will usually stop and pick up any candy-wrappers or trash that anyone has dropped.

Tomorrow, if I do that, I’ll look up at the sky and say, “Thanks for the reminder.” Although, I’m still not sure whether I’ll call him “Father Martin” or “Joe”.