When is the last time you had an experience that made your heart race? OK, some things are best kept private but life gives us plenty of opportunities to make that personal pump surge into motion and sound the alert to all the valves and switches to get ready for some serious action.
Let me share a recent event that got my heart pumping in moon-shot velocity.
Three or four months ago when I moved into my lodging at Russellville Park I was issued a small name tag that I was told to wear whenever I was moving about in the public areas. It would help the servers at the restaurants to charge my account for meals and also help fellow residents to get to know me. I always tried to remember to wear my name tag. It was an attractive gold plate that attached to whatever I was wearing by a magnetic bar lined up with the name bar from inside the garment.
After doing my alternate day workout at the gym and returning home I discovered I had forgotten to remove the name tag from my shirt before leaving home and as I took the tag off I noticed the magnet bar bore this inscription: "DO NOT USE WITH PACEMAKER".
YIKES!
I have been wearing that thing directly over my implanted pacemaker ever since moving into this place. So I called Dr. Davies, who implanted the pacemaker, and his nurse told me he thought no harm had been done to the device or to me but to definitely keep it away from the pacemaker. He said he would contact the pacemaker company and they would call me, which they did. They reviewed my data records and found definite signs of the magnet affecting the device and sending my pulse rate well over 100 many times. God knows what it did this morning after my pulse-raising workout and then slapping the magnet on top of the pacemaker when I donned my shirt.
The Russellville office apologized for not telling me about the pacemaker issue. Thanks.
I think I'll light up my Sonos and see if I can find some Lawrence Welk music.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Lights, Camera, Action
Did you ever wake up one morning and after wobbling into the bathroom to brush your teeth you discover from the mirror-messenger that you have become old? Yeah, bummer. Then, after denial and the other steps to acceptance, you start composing your obit, and as the years drift by, you do many, many revisions. One line in mine might read, "...he was one break short of becoming a giant star of the silver screen."
A verse in the Rubaiyat of Omar Kahyyam reads:
"The moving finger writes and having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Yeah, Omar, no do-overs, right?
In the early 1970s Hollywood came to the University of Oregon in Eugene with a plan to make a movie about basketball using the university's iconic MacArthur Court as its principal location for the shoot. After the huge success of the movie, "Easy Rider," one of the emerging stars of that film, Jack Nicholson, got the go-ahead to direct a movie about his favorite sport: basketball. The movie titled, "Drive He Said." would use well known actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black. As the associate athletic director at the time, I became the liaison between the movie company and the university.
It was the first day of my contact with the movie's production manager. After introductions and make nice chats he said, "So, Bill, have you ever done any acting? You look like our man to play the coaching assistant to our head coach, Bruce Dern." Bill:{nervously modest) "Well, I did have one of the leads in a high school production of, 'My sister Eileen'".
PM: "I think you're our man."
Bill:(to himself "YeeHawww")
How to grease the skids for future production needs.
First day on the set I'm seated on the bench next to Bruce Dern. I ask, " Is this going to be a good movie, Bruce?"
Dern: "Bill, this is a piece of shit."
I had one close up scene where I delivered the line, "Nice shooting Bloom!" Bloom was the young star of the movie who's only future roles would be standing in food lines). With Nicholson behind the camera, flood lights on me, I delivered the line (without forgetting the words.)
One take. Time is not wasted on scenes that will never make it past the cutting room.
Bruce was not wrong about the movie. In the Time magazine review of "Drive He Said" the critic summarized, "When future bad movies are made, this may well be the model they choose."
I could'a been a contender, but Jack Nicholson didn't give me the break I needed.
A verse in the Rubaiyat of Omar Kahyyam reads:
"The moving finger writes and having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Yeah, Omar, no do-overs, right?
In the early 1970s Hollywood came to the University of Oregon in Eugene with a plan to make a movie about basketball using the university's iconic MacArthur Court as its principal location for the shoot. After the huge success of the movie, "Easy Rider," one of the emerging stars of that film, Jack Nicholson, got the go-ahead to direct a movie about his favorite sport: basketball. The movie titled, "Drive He Said." would use well known actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black. As the associate athletic director at the time, I became the liaison between the movie company and the university.
It was the first day of my contact with the movie's production manager. After introductions and make nice chats he said, "So, Bill, have you ever done any acting? You look like our man to play the coaching assistant to our head coach, Bruce Dern." Bill:{nervously modest) "Well, I did have one of the leads in a high school production of, 'My sister Eileen'".
PM: "I think you're our man."
Bill:(to himself "YeeHawww")
First day on the set I'm seated on the bench next to Bruce Dern. I ask, " Is this going to be a good movie, Bruce?"
Dern: "Bill, this is a piece of shit."
I had one close up scene where I delivered the line, "Nice shooting Bloom!" Bloom was the young star of the movie who's only future roles would be standing in food lines). With Nicholson behind the camera, flood lights on me, I delivered the line (without forgetting the words.)
One take. Time is not wasted on scenes that will never make it past the cutting room.
Bruce was not wrong about the movie. In the Time magazine review of "Drive He Said" the critic summarized, "When future bad movies are made, this may well be the model they choose."
I could'a been a contender, but Jack Nicholson didn't give me the break I needed.
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