Nurse the Hate: Getting Checked Out, An Old Daredevils Record, and NFL Week 8

 

I was at the dermatologist.  It's not a place I normally go, but had been scolded that "you should be checked out" by so many various friends that I succumbed.  The great thing about being my current age is that medical calamities have now crept under the gates of my peer group and threaten unforeseen disaster at every turn.  There is now a smaller degree of separation from various physical misfortunes and the cozy confines of your inner mental security.  Regardless of the symptoms, someone will now pop out of the woodwork with a cautionary tale.  "Oh, you've had a cough?  My brother-in-law had a cough just like yours, didn't get it checked out, and he was dead in four days."  Wait... what?  The person telling you the story will probably leave out that the guy had been installing fiberglass for three decades without a mask, but it doesn't matter because now the thought has crept in "shit, maybe this isn't a cold after all".

I am not eager to switch my small talk with acquaintances from weather/local sports teams to medications/ailments as appears to be inevitable with the onset of age.  There is nothing worse than a group of seniors taking turns recounting their medication history and doctor's office visits with each other.  My fear is this is how it starts.  The "go get checked out" visit to the dermatologist turns into me talking about struggles with my insurance company for payment.  Next thing you know, all I am talking about with strangers is how I have to go pick up my special cream, and how I applied my special cream, and how much my special cream costs.  I just don't want to go down that road.

Still, in this moment of weakness, I did "go get checked out".  It turned out that the skin blemish I wanted to have looked at was no big deal.  But just like if you have a mechanic get under the hood of your car at a car dealership, they're going to find something.  I got a couple of things biopsied and then one of them was "A little irregular.  Not cancerous.  But it's a little irregular.  So we should probably remove that.  But it's not something you should be concerned about.  But let's remove that just to be sure."  Let's be honest, when I walked in there I was going to leave with a follow up for some sort of revenue generating procedure that could be rationalized to my insurance company.  Hence, I found myself reclined on a medical chair with a couple hillbilly girl assistants prepping me for a minor surgery while talking about their Halloween single mother lifestyles.  

When you have become an object like I have, Procedure #5 on the Thursday docket, the workers forget you are there.  The two women had a depressing conversation about how one of them had won Machine Gun Kelly tickets.  Both Mom and Child loved Machine Gun Kelly, but she would be selling the tickets. This greatly disappointed the kid, but what are you going to do?  She needed the money for Christmas presents.  That's when the other one asked about trick or treat, and there was discussion about a community event where the kids went from sponsor table to sponsor table getting candy and had a page of a book read to them as they went.  She was intending to take her kid(s) herself as the father of the child was busy "doing something for his Mom, and plus he really likes the freedom of his new place", which I took to mean he liked getting wasted and having intercourse with similar women as the one talking.  I had a vision of a guy with a goatee, beat up truck, threatening decal about guns/America, and Speedway Shopper Card.

Both women agreed that it was great that the kids heard a story as they went table to table, at which point I spoke up, slightly startling the ladies who had forgotten I was a person.  I asked, "What's the book?  Like if it's "Crime and Punishment", they better wear comfortable shoes because that's gotta be 587 pages long.".  I was quickly put at ease when they let me know it wouldn't be "Crime and Punishment", not because reading Dostovesky to 6 year olds in costumes wasn't a good idea so much as the community of Lagrange OH didn't have the necessary 587 vendors to work through all the pages.  With that cleared up to their satisfaction, they went back to jabbing my rib cage with a numbing agent.

The doctor finally came in, an older woman I had never met who said, "It's nice to see you again.".  She told me that I would have to take it easy for a few days after this skin removal thing.  I let her know I was playing a gig the next night and would be jumping around a bit which captured her interest.  "You're in a band?" is one of the deadliest questions someone that toils in a rock subgenre can be asked.  There is no way for the doctor and hillbilly assistants to have any grasp on what we do.  To them "a band" is either Machine Gun Kelly or a wedding band.  There is no way to conceptualize to them the idea of a scaled down concert tour circuit of clubs featuring original music that cater to weird subcultures.  It also feels a little ridiculous to try and explain how you make music based on some of the previous ideas of a bunch of bands they have not and will never have heard of in their lives.  

The doctor was working away and asked "what's the name of the band?".  After I replied, she directed one of the hillbilly assistants to switch the music (I had requested Miles Davis) to the Whiskey Daredevils on the Pandora feed.  I don't know why she thought I wanted to hear myself during a minor surgery, but that's what happened.  Thus, I found myself suddenly listening to the Whiskey Daredevils rarity "A Lid Of Bluegrass" from The Essential Whiskey Daredevils as a woman cut at skin on my rib cage with a scalpel.  This was an unexpected turn of events.

As you can imagine, the Machine Gun Kelly fans didn't suddenly embrace the idea of country punk even as "A Lid Of Bluegrass" gave way to "Jack Evans Wants His Lighter Back".  As they started to stitch me up I was thinking about that guy that was trying to find his Bic disposable lighter in the drunken chaos of a Charleston IL bar on a Saturday afternoon in the late 1990s.  The women had moved on from their curiosity of me and the music I was doing to joke around about all the mistakes they had made this week.  Hahahaha.  I had morphed back into an object again.  I sat there staring at the ceiling listening to the recording thinking "We probably could have done that better.".

Speaking of doing things better, I could have done better on my NFL picks last week.  It was Black Sunday over at my house.  But just like recording songs, you have to keep trying to improve.  I have a few ideas about the games this week, and I am hoping that last week was an abberation and not an indication that I don't know what the hell I am talking about.  I think the key to not knowing what the hell you are talking about is to keep pressing ahead with the idea that you do and if you just keep swinging away, eventually you'll be right and then scamper up again to the high ground.

The Browns are 4-2 and feeling good about themselves.  If not for two consecutive games where the officials inexplicably gave them the wins, they would be 2-4 and the fanbase would want to burn Deshaun Watson at the stake.  But, a win is a win in the NFL and the Browns are right in the playoff  mix as planned.  The problem is that you can't move ahead with a gameplan of "play good defense and hope the refs blow some calls late".  PJ Walker might have gotten a couple of wins, but he's not The Answer.  The bad news for the Browns is that they are on the hook to a guy for $60M+ the next three years that isn't much better than Walker, the 33rd-40th best QB in the league.  I don't see how they win a grimy game in Seattle against a pretty good Seahawks team with Walker probably turning the ball over 2+ times.  Seattle money line.

The Jets are sort of like the Browns in that they felt like they were one QB away from their dreams coming true, and it turns out their 2023 is going to be a repeat of 2022.  Yet, Wilson has played above his "that guy can't fucking play at all" level to a "that guy isn't very good" level, which doesn't sound like much but it is.  A Jets vs Giants game isn't exactly the peak of excitement when it's a Tyrod Taylor vs Zack Wilson game, but it does level the playing field when both teams have their backup.  Taylor's upside is that he doesn't make mistakes with the ball.  The downside is he doesn't take chances, so it's tough for his team to score.  The Jets are an average football team, and the Giants kind of suck.  The only way the Giants win is if Wilson makes some big mistakes.  I hate betting on Wilson to not make mistakes, but this is where we are on it.  Jets money line.  

For my weekly teaser, I am going to tie Pittsburgh into it.  The Steelers are doing what the Steelers do, which is win ugly by sheer force of will.  They are getting +2.5 at home versus Jacksonville, who is coming off a TH night game and extended rest.  I don't know if Pittsburgh wins, but they don't lose many games at home by double digits.  San Francisco is the only team to do it to them, and that was in Week 1 when the 49ers were healthy.  Pittsburgh +8.5 against a Jags team I can't quite get a handle on feels pretty good.  

I will take the Lions at home Monday night against the Raiders.  The Lions got smacked around and embarrassed last week vs Baltimore in a game I was on the wrong side on.  This is a Dan Campbell "let's be manly men" spot where a max motivated Lions get to go out on a national stage and play a crappy Raiders team led by Josh McDaniel And His Culture Of Losing and either Jimmy G trying to come back from a back injury that put him in the hospital or Aiden O'Connell.  I don't need the Lions to cover a touchdown +, I just need a win with the tease.  Pittsburgh +8.5/Lions -1.5

Current record: 9-12-1