Humor/Comedy

HIM: Did you see Sarah Palin on SNL?

ME: Not yet.

HIM: Republicans really don’t have a sense of humor.

ME: There’s no humor in the Republican Party, but there’s a lot of comedy.

HIM: Ouch.

Weird

A quick nap this afternoon and I woke from an weird dream.

I was at the AEG GenCon 2009 booth. I had written an L5R "short story" in celebration of the 15th Anniversary thingy that John Zinser talked to me about in Indianapolis. The short story was a 60+ collectible book with the novella and guidelines for an adventure–playing in the time of the novella. The book came complete with 12 cards–Events, Personalities, etc.–for the CCG, unique to the set, designed by the team.

Of course, the subjects of the novella were Kachiko and Hoturi.

Weird.

I’m in the chair. I haven’t been in this chair for at least five years. I’ve been smiling, laughing and joking with the nurses because I’m trying to hide a deep, piercing and paralyzing terror. They smile and laugh and joke with me. They can’t sense my fear.

But then, the dentist comes in and he shakes my hand. My palm is sweating. He picks up the tools to look inside my mouth. Not to drill, not to scrape, not to do anything close to that. Just so he can look.

And my hands grip tight on those bars. My skin goes white. My eyes widen. And the dentist stops right there.

"Okay," he says. "Let’s use some sedative."

____

I’m going to the dentist tomorrow. They’re using new technology to put me in a "waking sleep." The dentist tells me I won’t feel a thing. In fact, he tells me, "You probably won’t remember what happened." In fact, my insurance covers this special treatment if the dentist feels I qualify.

After watching my absolute terror, he signed the piece of paper that says I qualify.

I’ll be completely out tomorrow as the dentist performs two root canals, fills two cavities and cleans the plaque off my teeth. Five years worth of plaque.

I’ll be in the office in the morning and loopy for the rest of the day. See you when I make my dentist loopy post!

Greatest Movies Ever Made (#1)

On the weekend of its opening, two individuals approached me–one on Saturday and the other on Sunday–and said the exact same thing.

"It was like watching someone playing in one of your games."

I beat the hell out of my players. I really do put them through the ringer. I make them fight for every last inch. That’s because I don’t like wish-fulfillment fantasy. I don’t like finding out that my parents aren’t really my parents and that I’m really someone special and that a secret world is just waiting for me to return and be the Redeemer-King.

No. I don’t dig that at all.

Because sooner or later, we have to come to terms with the fact that we aren’t secret orphans. No faerie queen is coming to take us away. We aren’t special. We aren’t unique. We are flesh and blood and bone and memory and love and pain.

We have to come to terms with the fact that we really are momma’s boys and daddy’s girls.

Because who we really are is how we act when it matters.

It’s a movie about all of that. And about how far a man will go to save his brother’s life.