16-RIP Davy Jones. I'm glad they made a Monkee out of you

I have been teased for years about how immature and stunted my bubble gum musical tastes are because, I confess, I used to love the Monkees.  OK, I still do.

So it’s a pretty sad day on Feb. 29, 2012, when Davy Jones, “the cute one” ala Paul McCartney, has been reported dead of a heart attack at age 66.

Their “Headquarters” album, released in 1967, was the group’s third, but it was the first 33 RPM album I ever bought.  I was 10 years old.

I played it on a little primitive record player in my parents’ basement “rec room” over and over and over for hours, trying to understand the lyrics (which was tough on “Zilch”) and memorize them. 

When I emerged, probably in need of sustanence or a bathroom break, my dad said, “Did you wear that out yet?”  I thought he was serious and didn’t get the joke.  My dad was a cheapskate.  If he had known how many hours of entertainment that $4 or so album bought, perhaps he would have paid for it himself.

Davy, along with Mike Nesmith (who’s mom supposedly invented “White Out”), Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, was in the nation’s first boy band, a band created of strangers to star in a TV show.

The show played at the same time every week that I had a scheduled piano lesson in Miss Kroll’s house.  Miss Kroll was an older woman, her house smelled stuffy, and her musical tastes were infinitely stuffy.  “Beautiful Dreamer” did not hold a candle to “Last Train to Clarksville.”  I hated the lessons, I hated being forced to practice, and I hated missing “The Monkees” – there was no way to record it and play it back at that time.

“Hey, hey we’re the Monkees,” they sang.  Only Nesmith was said to have had any “real” musical talent, but nevertheless the show was a big hit for two years.  It was goofy and silly, with a Monkeemobile and a lot of speeded-up images of them walking that silly Monkee Walk, where people line up and you all put your right foot outside and over the other persons’ left foot when you take a step, then repeat on the left side and go centipede-like down the…beach, it was.

It is still known today as “The Monkee Walk” by children who have no idea who The Monkees are.

I’m sure Davy would be proud… 

He died in his home in Indiantown, Florida, located in the middle of not much between Lake Okeechobee and Jupiter, not particularly affluent.  He lived with his third wife, a Miami native who was 30 years younger than he and wasn’t even alive in the ‘60s, and stars on “Telemundo” dramas.  He has four daughters by previous relationships.

He’d toured a couple times with Dolenz and Tork – Nesmith refused.  I saw them once at the Minnesota State Fair.  It was about the same times a tabloid weekly showed a photo of Micky without his front teeth.

Several years ago, he had someone else write a book with/for him, called “They Made A Monkee Out of Me.”  It got him booked on a few TV shows for interviews.  I bought it and read it.  It was mostly about how many women he’d slept with, and how much sex and booze and drugs were going on in the late ‘60s.

Duh.

So maybe it’s a wonder he made it to 66. 

Sounds like he was just another pretty face who lucked out by being in the right TV casting room at the right time, and ended up an aging, washed-up teen idol, typecast until today, the day he died.

But consider this:

Davy earned a Tony nomination when he was 16 for “Oliver.”  He played both the drums and guitar, even though we only got to see him on percussion.  The Monkees eventually played their own instrumentals and sold 65 million records (64,999,999 without me).

Nesmith wrote a lot of their songs, Neil Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer” and “Love to Love.”  Carole King, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and a guy from the Turtles wrote songs for them, too.

“Pleasant Valley Sunday” was co-written by King.  It perfectly captured the tumultuous ‘60s rejection of suburbian “rows of houses that are all the same, and no one seems to care.” It was, and still is, a great song that gave voice to what a lot of us could not.

And Jones could sing.  Well enough so that he still toured, into his ‘60s.  He and David Cassidy, another teen idol of the same era, were planning a tour together.

We know Davy Jones really is no Paul McCartney.  No one is.

But if he is going to be remembered as a pop star who made Marcia Brady’s heart pound, as well as millions of others of us, and who made us laugh and dance in white go-go boots and be silly in the very-serious sixties, that’s not so bad, is it? 

I am glad his songs weren’t profane or mentioning body parts or sex acts, his life was not laced with public drug use or worse, and he didn’t feel a need to touch himself on camera or to, as far as we know, touch underage girls or boys. 

I will remember him as the Monkee who had a smile on his face in nearly every scene and every photo. (He even made Bill O’Reilly smile when interviewed about being banned from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwWKdQIiU90

Maybe it was the women and sex and drugs.  Maybe he was a better actor than we all thought.  Maybe he was just a happy soul  and he enjoyed what he was doing. 

I will hope for the latter.  Thank you, Davy Jones, for being my pre-teen idol. 

15-Humiliation continues with attempt at exercise/dance class

As if it wasn’t bad enough to be recognized, naked, by someone I know in the women’s sauna last week, this week I have furthered my self-humiliation with an attempt at an Latin-dance-inspired exercise class  that begins with the letter Z (insert registered trademarked symbol here).

This sounds like fun, instead of just “sweatin’ to the oldies.”  I need fun in my exercise or I won’t do it.

This was fun, alright, as in funny.  As in odd and ha-ha.

The class was just fine.  Just so you can imagine the type of moves, here is a link to Rob Lowe, Kelly Ripa, the Z founder and a woman named Vanessa in high stiletto heels – I kid you not – trying this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNZbU7QDkrA

The funny part was me.

A very fit instructor led about eight women in a room that, unfortunately, has full-length mirrors on one wall.  Since I am not a ballerina, it’s a bad sign when I show up and have to face those.

It’s worse when you are wearing a large hot pink tee shirt (pretty new) and the same gym shorts you have had at least since 2005 when you took the boys on a summer trip to Michigan, because there is a photo of all you together at the Sleeping Bear Dunes and you are wearing those shorts. 

Apparently in the last three decades since I tried an organized exercise class, women have changed to leotard-like pants.  I’m thinking they fit sort of like that Spanx-knockoff undergarment I tried a couple years ago, which I could not pull up past my knees. 

They also have on sleeveless tank-tops – sometimes in layers of two or more, which I do not understand (isn’t one shirt enough?).  And they appear to require special undergarments I am pretty sure I don’t own (surprised?).  That is always a bad sign, too, when you are the only person in the room who clearly didn’t get the memo on the dress code.

So the class begins, and it is clear almost immediately that I must be exercise dyslexic.  I simply cannot follow the verbal directions and the instructor’s movements at the same time, especially if she is facing us.  Everyone else is going left, and I’m going right.  They are kicking their right feet, and I am kicking my left.  Two beats late.  If I eventually sort-of get the footsteps, then I cannot at all get it when you add the arms (though I can walk and chew gum). 

And this is not just moving…this is sort of gyrating and shimmying in what I am imagining could possibly be a sexually attractive way – at least for the muscular instructor, who is not dressed all wrong, fumbling around and looking like an idiot.  And just when I start to get the step, at about the eighth time, the instructor changes to something else.  So I never get better. 

Does this bother me?  Actually, I found it absolutely hilarious.  All the other women are sort of doing the same thing, rotating their hips and shaking their shoulders, and there I am, flailing away and out of sync.  Oh, yes, I can laugh at myself (don’t you try it, however).  I can laugh, and I do, ‘til I am nearly crying.

This becomes even funnier to me as a vision comes into my mind:  what if I was leading the class?  I now picture some sort of odd Saturday Night Live-esque skit (or maybe Monty Python…the Ministry of Silly Walks) where a rather enlarged and poorly-dressed Kristen Wiig is leading a room full of svelte, well-dressed women who cannot possibly follow what she is doing, because she doesn’t know what she is doing.  This strikes me as even more hilarious.

Despite the patented moves and enjoyable Latin music, I find this is similar to an aerobics class and friend and I tried at the University of Minnesota fieldhouse (which I do not believe exists now) in the mid 1980s.  Aerobics were getting popular and she had a couple free passes, and we figured we wouldn’t know anyone on the large university campus, so what the hey?

It was the same sort of tragi-comedy, where we couldn’t keep up, despite our best efforts .  My friend lived in an expansion bungalow where her bedroom was upstairs.  The morning after, she called me in a bit of a panic.  “I cannot get down the stairs!”  Neither of us could hardly move.

I may be wrong, but I do not think I will be totally incapacitated tomorrow.  The worst may be my stomach, which is not used to so much laughter.  At the end, the instructor noted before I left, “You had a fun time!  Come back!”  That was very generous of her.

In the locker room, one of the other participants and I got talking and she said I "don't worry about what you are wearing, that doesn’t matter.”

She has been attending a class three times a week for the last four months.  She loves it.  She showed that love in her trade-marked logo shirt, featuring the name of the Z class.

And, without having altered her diet or other habits dramatically, she has lost 20 pounds.

If that isn’t inspirational, I don’t know what is.

We’ll see whether I am in pain in the morning, and, if so, how much.  And what the new clothes cost.  And where you get them, and if you have to try them on. 

Jury is still out, organized classes may not be for me.  But it was the cheapest comedy hour I have ever had.  I could be laughing all the way to a smaller sized leotard.

14-Horrors! Naked in the women’s sauna, someone I know sees me

After a couple of months of swimming laps, followed by a good long sauna in the women’s locker room, the unthinkable has happened:  I have been seen, naked, by someone I know (also naked).

In this town of 90,000 or so, I have been enjoying sauna anonymity.  It is the one benefit of being nearsighted, and because I am not looking at anyone directly anyway, I really can’t see them…and therefore assume they cannot see me, either.

But today, it was my distinctive voice that gave me away.  I said something about excuse me, I need to be hot on the top shelf. “Is that Laura?” she asked as I climbed, clumsily and naked as a jaybird, up next to her.

“Yes, who is that?”  I have to ask because I have been averting my eyes and can’t see that far, anyway.  It was Linda, whom I have known for roughly 10 years, since my oldest son was in school with her only son.

Pay attention here, because that is reference number 1 to children, and this thread will weave through this story.

What’s new with you? she asks, after she notes she has been hired to promote a band of 20-somethings out of Sarasota, Florida, called “Sleeping Naked.”  The irony of us being naked and talking about this is not lost upon us.  As well as this is February, and there are not a lot of Minnesota bands with a name like that, even if they do have flannel sheets.

I can only come up with, “well, I’m swimming laps again, the first time regularly in 20 years” – which is when my first child was born (reference number 2).  He is, of course, partly responsible -- maybe even half, since he is one of two children -- for the body I now inhabit that needs lap swimming.

I have not really done this a couple times a week with a serious sauna for 30 years, since I lived in Juneau, AK.  Juneau had about 20,000 people and a co-ed sauna at the high school pool, where we all wore swim suits and where I saw someone I knew more times than not.  Even in a swimsuit, that didn’t matter much in a 20-something pre-pregnant body.  About the only thing, physically, that has not changed since those days is my eyesight.  People in the Juneau sauna had to say they knew me first.

Linda and I then talked about how after quite a bit of lap swimming and diet modification, I have lost only two pounds.  Two, count them.  However, I have noticed my pants fit better and my legs, I think, top to bottom, have lost inches, although I have not measured them (I put on tights yesterday and did not want to die, as I usually do when wearing tights or, worse yet, pantyhose).

Thinner legs were confirmed recently by my youngest, who is responsible for the other half of my post-childbearing body (reference number 3).  He may be responsible for more than half, actually, since he was a 9-pound 4-ounce baby, and one friend has since told me that “you were the largest pregnant lady I had ever seen.”  Thank you.

(I do bear, so to speak, some of the responsibility for not weighing what I did pre-children, since I have never really permanently stopped eating like I was pregnant…)

This child, now 16, when I was in my underwear in the house the other day, remarked that, indeed, my legs were thinner.

“Yeah, Mom, you had really fat thighs.”

“What?”

“Yeah.  I didn’t want to say anything, but they were.” 

After I had regained my breath, I tried to turn this into a teachable moment, re: if he actually wanted to have a long-term heterosexual relationship with a woman during his lifetime, remarks such as this should not spring froth from his lips.  Ever.  And the word “fat” should be simply out of his vocabulary, unless perhaps in reference to trimming it from a steak or cutting out of a dead hunted deer while gutting it in the woods.

But, meanwhile, back to the sauna.

Linda and I finished our conversation, as Linda had reached her sauna limit and excused herself.  Then I apologized to the third woman naked in the sauna for interrupting her quiet sauna time.

She said she did not mind.

I didn’t admit it, but I actually love eavesdropping on other women’s conversations in the sauna.  As one might expect, many of the conversations are about body image, weight, hormones, and exercise habits.  Here are a couple of things I have overheard, whether I wanted to or not:

·         When I first started swimming, I overheard a conversation by a morbidly obese mother and daughter.  They were going to stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way home.  Not to judge…but I did not understand why they were at the fitness center in the first place,  which was admirable, if they were going to undo all the good they did.  This was discouraing.

·         Soon after that, I overheard a conversation by four young and thin (I can make out shapes)

women who were sauna-ing after an exercise class together.  They were talking about food, too, but it was as in how much water they drink every day and their favorite fruits and vegetables.  This was encouraging.

·         Two other young women (thin, having finished a class or working out on machines) talked about their workouts.  One said that she didn’t feel she worked out hard enough unless when she got in bed that night her legs hurt.  I thought this might be a bit extreme.

·         The most interesting conversation I overheard was one between two Russian women – who were young and incredibly fit, as well, in case you had lingering stereotypes about all those Soviet carbs.  I could only understand four words:  “nyet,” “hummmmmm,” as in what you say during a pause, and “natural selection.”  I have puzzled over this ever since.  Is there no Russian term for natural selection?  Were they college students talking about a biology class?  Or, speaking of lingering stereotypes, should I assume the Cold War is still on, and this is code for something, and I should be contacting Agent 99 via shoe phone?

For now, this winter, when I get into bed at night, my now-skinny legs do not hurt.  I am breathing deeply, inhaling the scent of chlorine on my skin, feeling calm, and tired enough to sleep well. 

And I’m thankful, as I always have been, I have those two young men in my life, even if my body isn’t what it used to be.  Truth be told, this body would need lap swimming with or without them.  And they have been, and continue to be, though I don't always remember it, a gift and a privilege (reference #4).

13-What’s in a name? Beezow, with 673,000 results, is finding Schadenfreude

A couple weeks ago my local paper picked up an AP story which was headlined, “Madison man with odd name back in jail.”  It was a small mention, about five inches, buried on a back page.

Irresistible, right?  Plus, it had this photo of a young man, long hair, parted in the middle, and the cutline read, in all caps, “ZOPITTYBOP-BOP-BOP” http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-01-09-Unusual%20Name%20Bust/id-5ea8af45a0b34f188683449ad3b3a565

His name, legally, is “Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.”  It used to be Jeffrey Drew Wilschke, until last November, when it was legally changed. 

Last April, this person was arrested in a Madison park because he had a loaded handgun in his backpack.

In January, Beezow was arrested near another Madison park, accused of marijuana use, along with carrying a concealed weapon.

Surprised?  Is it “name profiling” to assume that someone with a name like that might be more likely than someone with a name like Jeff Wilschke to engage in excessive drug and alcohol use?

These types of stories are incredibly fascinating. Perhaps it is my journalism background, where the commonplace news, after awhile, isn’t worth blinking an eye.  This type of thing makes the eye blink and the ears perk up.  It’s the kind of thing that make Chuck Shepherd create a column and website called, “News of the Weird,” for instance.

Now, because of the internet, I can find out all kinds of things “behind the headlines” that I never would have known otherwise.  And the internet can take the news and run with it. 

Beezow, it turns out, has a little notoriety that, along with the Nick Nolte-esque bad mug shot, has taken on a life of its own.

If you “google” just Beezow – no need to type further – you get approximately 673,000 results in less than half a second.

From his Facebook page, I found he is a heterosexual male who has more than 400 FB friends and lists his interests as “eating, standing, walking and thinking.”  He also has a penchant for Zombie movies and Mexican sitcoms.  (In addition, to eating, standing, walking and thinking, I also like Zombie movies, the hokier the better, and I find Telemundo weirdly fascinating, although I don’t have a clue what is being said, because of the unusual gender roles and attempts at humor.)

On one post about his legal name change, he wrote, “I could explain it as a jazz term that means the sum of all hysteria of all the chaos in the universe. or something.” 

Well, chaos is right.  It has been unleashed.

Seven Facebook pages now exist that say “Free Beezow” or some variation thereof. 

The story was reported as far away as Kingston, Jamaica.

On YouTube, a long video on something called the TYT Network by “the Young Turks” goes on and on making fun of Beezow, his name, his interests, and his charges.  It had, when I looked at it, 39,667 hits.  I suppose I was 39,668.

A rather catchy song, about freeing Beezow, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g687NWgALxM had more than 3900 hits.  Odd, since it was so short…  Here’s a longer “Beezow Anthem:”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Ou6NX3BTkjQ

The folks on “Atheist Forums” who were posting about him seemed to be upset that he allegedly was arrested in part for threatening cops.  Comments ranged from someone who thought has name was not that much weirder than a guy he knew whose legal name was “Sub Paragraph 9” to another person who  asked, “of all the insane assholes running for president, WHY IS HE NOT RUNNING?”

OK, so we have all had fun at Beezow’s expense.

In one TV report on You Tube, where you can “pause” the camera, I can see a Jan. 9 post by Beezow on his Facebook page.  This is the day of his arrest.  He posted, “A friend of mine told me today that I look more like Jesus Christ than any other imitation that has been made.”

Friends, this is a Big Red Flag.  People who think they are, or even look like, Jesus Christ are sliding down a very, very slippery slope to serious mental illness.

Again, surprised?

But serious mental illness is not funny.

Beezow’s attorney, David K. Saltzman, wrote on the Huffington Post, that a competency hearing required that Beezow be forcibly “medicated into competency,” which is extremely controversial. 

Mr. Saltzman is an excellent writer, so I will excerpt and let him say it himself:

“Even when defendants have documented histories of mental illness, courts commonly mandate treatment of the disorder's symptoms -- alcoholism, drug abuse, violence -- without mentioning therapy or medication. To ignore the root cause of a defendant's behavior and then be somehow shocked when he violates his probation is absurd. It's like asking a man with a broken leg to run a race, but only providing him morphine to dull the pain. Once any pressure is applied, morphine or no, his fracture simply cannot bear the weight.


“Then again, this viewpoint will prevail as long as society continues to treat mental disorders as less real than physical ones…


“That's the insidious thing about mental illness, and why the convenient ironies of Beezow's situation garnered such a reaction:  as much as we'd like to believe in empathy, most people simply don't care much about plights outside their individual experience.


“Let's be honest, though:  if we as individuals aren't particularly empathetic, it isn't a huge deal.  We make some ignorant comments, hurt a few people's feelings, miss an opportunity or three to make the world a better place.  Little things like that.  


“But an indifferent criminal-justice system is a much larger problem. That's why the actors who constitute that system, including myself, must attend to each defendant's individuality, even when it takes an unfamiliar form.  Perhaps especially then.


“So, what's in a name? When that name is Beezow Doo-doo Zopittybop-bop-bop, quite a bit. There's amusement, for sure, along with confusion. Maybe a hint of vertigo, if you spend too long reading it. But there's also a burgeoning awareness that something else might be going on. Not to say we shouldn't laugh at the infinite range of absurdity life presents -- we're only human, after all.


“But at the same time, as we smirk and judge and dismiss, we must strive to remember one simple fact: the most important part of any name is that there's a human being behind it.”


Yes, there is. 


And there’s probably a mother behind Jeff Wilschke, who probably loves him very much and is worried about him.  As one mother to another, I am sorry for her pain.


“Schadenfreude” is the term for the human reaction to laugh at another’s misfortune – typically pain, which is the reason we have a TV show like “Funniest Home Videos.”


It would also apply to those of us – me included – who laugh at the fact that Jeff Wilschke has made a very bad name for himself.


Knowing that there is a term helps to excuse our/my behavior. 


Now we can only hope to get beyond it and show some compassion.