me’s blog

HOORAY to America Ferrera, who won the Emmy last night for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her excellent work as the title character on the utterly fabulous Ugly Betty, which is this self-proclaimed tv addict’s uncontested favorite show now that Gilmore Girls is no longer a contender.  Unfortunately Betty’s Vanessa Williams and Judith Light didn’t win for their equally superb (perhaps even superber!) work in their respective categories of Best Supporting Actress and Best Guest Actress.  But no worries.  I just can’t wait until the second season commences on Thursday, September 27.  OMG THAT’S NEXT WEEK!  WO-HOO!

And HOORAY to Sally Field, who won a truly well-deserved Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her amazing work on a new favorite of mine, Brothers & Sisters.  But BOO-HISS to the censors who bleeped her impassioned acceptance speech.  This is what she said, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur:

"And let’s face it, if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place."

Also censored was the brilliant Kathy Griffin, whom I’ll be seeing here in DC once again on Wednesday night.  She won for Best Reality Series at the Creative Arts Emmys, or "Schmemmys" as she likes to calls them - the awards given out two weeks ago in the categories of lesser importance. (Less important than Best Writing in a Miniseries?  Whatever.)  The Schmemmys telecast aired on some cable channel this weekend, but her speech was cut.  Here’s what she said:

"A lot of people get up here and thank Jesus for helping them win this award, but I have to say nobody has been less helpful in getting me to this moment than Jesus… So I guess all I can really say is, ‘Suck it, Jesus! This statue is my God now!’"

Hilarious.  Absurd.  And pretty much, true.  But worthy of censoring?  What happened to freedom of speech?  There are no "bad words" in there.  It’s not like she said, "Jesus didn’t do shit to get me here!"  It’s not as though Sally Field went on a profanity-laced tirade about "the fuckin’ war."  So where is this invisible line drawn?  Does America - the U.S., not Ferrera - not have a sense of humor or a heart?  Sometimes this country is so retarded.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

Oh, and not that this is news or anything, but Ryan Seacrest? 

You’re a douchebag.

Anyone who has asked me for a piece of gum over the past few months has undoubtedly had to endure an enthusiastic spiel from me about the wonders of Stride gum.  You see, I’d always had problems with nearly all brands of chewing gum losing their flavor after about 15 minutes in my mouth.  Were I to continue chewing beyond that point, the gum’s taste would inevitably become increasingly heinous and would make my mouth feel fonkay, which always struck me as a cruel irony since the whole point of chewing the gum in the first place was to freshen my breath.

This spring I saw a commercial for Stride gum.  It’s the one where all the guys in the gum factory are talking about how Stride’s flavor lasts forever.  Then one guy pipes up about how that could eventually be bad for business, because with such enduring flavor, people will no longer have to buy as much gum as they used to.  Just at that moment, all the machines in the gum factory grind to a screeching halt.

A key part of my customary Stride spiel is that it’s the very first product I can ever remember buying strictly because of a television commercial.  I mean, the ad declares that the flavor basically lasts TOO LONG, so I thought, hmmm, I’ll be the judge of that.  Well you know what?  The commercial was right!  Stride’s flavor does indeed last a for a couple hours in my mouth, which was nothing short of a miracle to me.  For a while it seemed I’d found the answer to my prayers.

Then summer rolled around, and I began noticing something slightly disturbing.  The flat pack of Stride gum, once unwrapped, would sort of melt together in my pocket over the course of one moderately hot summer day.  Each piece of gum is individually wrapped in waxy paper, but the pieces would all kinda mush together and the paper would sort of melt into the gum, causing a kind of sweat to form on the outside of the wrappers, which would then adhere the wrapped pieces of gum to the inside of the pack.  Needless to say, it’s disgusting.  And once the wrapper comes unstuck from the pack, it’s a whole other adventure trying to unstick the gum from the wrapper.  By the time it’s ready to ingest, it looks like something that’s been scraped off a movie theater floor or out of the treads of some nasty-ass sneakers, making it a much harder sell to my friends.

"Um, but the flavor lasts forever!  I promise!  Just don’t look at it!"

I thought maybe this occurrence was unique to me, since I’d never met anyone else who was an out-and-proud Stride user.  I thought that perhaps when the awesome power of the gum’s unstoppable flavor was combined with my slightly above-average sweating tendencies during the summer, that the conditions were just right to fire up some kind of volatile chemical reaction in my pants and my pants alone.  Or something.  But last week my friend Hope confirmed that I am not alone.  She is also a Stride devotee, and she too has had to confront her own sweaty pack issues.

So today I decided to take action.  I called the now-blurry 1-800 customer feedback number on the soggy pack of Stride from which I’ve been peeling my gum today (pictured above), and I got a very nice young man on the other end of the line.  I expressed to him my great appreciation for Stride, then proceeded to air my concerns.  He said that the sticky pack situation was a huge concern during Stride’s first summer of production in 2006, and that they had taken steps to rectify the situation this year.  Obviously, however, the problem still exists, and apparently I am far from the first to sound the alarm.  He thanked me for my feedback, took down my mailing information, and said I would be receiving some Stride coupons in the mail within the next week.

It felt good to give something back, you know?  Maybe, just maybe, I made a little bit of a difference today.  And if nothing else, at least now I’ve got a little something to look forward to as the unpleasantly frigid - yet delightfully unsweaty - winter months approach.  Free, dry gum!  Huzzah!

My friend John had a bunch of people over to his place on Saturday night to watch my all-time favorite movie, "Clue". I think there were about 10 people there, two-thirds of whom were "Clue" virgins. HOW EXCITING! [Yes, I realize that this means 6.666 people in the room had never seen "Clue" before. Shut up.]

I’m one of those freaks who would typically rather rewatch a movie I’ve seen before than watch something new. When it’s my favorite movie ever and the room is full of several people who’ve never seen it before, well, the stakes are high. And you never know if the people you’re watching a movie with will be those kind of people for whom a special circle of hell is reserved. By that I mean those who talk or text or get up and walk around or generally distract in some way during the movie-watching experience. You people know who you are.

So you can imagine my sheer delight as the gang took in the movie in the way I’d hoped, laughing at all the appropriate spots and paying rapt attention to the rest. It was a perfect movie night experience. Until the end…

Those of you who know "Clue" are aware that a significant part of its brilliance stems from the fact that, in spite of all the detailed farce of the setup, the writing and blocking somehow manage to allow for three possible endings to exist. When the movie was in theaters back in 1985, viewers did not know which of the three endings they would be seeing. On the DVD, there is the option of picking one of the three endings, or viewing all three in succession. Unfortunately, since I was not the person who hit "Play" on John’s remoteless DVD player, I did not realize until the movie’s abrupt end that we were actually watching the version featuring only the first ending, which is arguably the least hilarious of the three.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that the BEST PART of the movie, and perhaps for me the best part of any movie ever, doesn’t happen until the third ending. Had the overall movie night experience been a drag from the start, full of texting talkers who’d seen the movie before or just weren’t that into it, I wouldn’t care. But these newbies were genuinely into the movie, and at the end they all said they really liked it. I was crushed that they hadn’t even seen the very best part.

Hopefully those 6.666 newly deflowered people from the other night are reading this, and hopefully they (and the rest of you) will take less than a minute to enjoy the classic clip below from the third ending of "Clue", featuring the late great Madeline Kahn.

Reprinted below is an email I sent to several friends and classmates after arriving home in the United States ten years ago today on September 1, 1997.  For the record, all of this took place before I embarked upon my reckless career as a drug addict.  Also for the record, the medical issue recounted below was gone by the time I left England and has never affected me since.  And I still have not seen any of the "Star Wars" movies.

**********************************************
From:  Me
Subject:  The Truth About Matt Bailer

Friends, Romans, countrymen, and everyone else I’ve ever met:

Sorry for the bulk email, but I wanted to let all of you know what happened to me this summer before rumors start spreading and the story spirals out of control like a game of Telephone gone horribly awry.  In the mother of all nutshells, I’m fine now, and I’ll be home in Maryland this semester, recovering from a mysterious near-fatal disease that kept me hospitalized in London for the past three weeks.  If you want the whole story (which you know I’ll make long but I’ll try to make entertaining and complete), read on.  If not, see ya later.  I’ll never know.

Brief warning:  Some parts may get a teensy-weensy bit graphic - nothing more graphic than normal body functions that I couldn’t perform for a while.  But you’ll deal with it.  I did.

Another brief note:  Despite my occasional tendency to hyperbolize and be a little bit jokey about what happened, everything in this message is true, exactly as it happened, with very very very few exaggerations, all of which will be painfully obvious.  But this is the story as truthfully, completely, and readably as I can tell it.

That said, here goes.

After seeing 30-some plays in 6 weeks during the brilliant Duke Drama in London program, I decided to stick around for a week after the rest of my group left so I could do my own sight-seeing and club-hopping and whatever.  So the entire group flew outta town on a Thursday, and I spent the next day bopping around London hitting this club or that cafe or whatever.

Friday night I was planning to go to my favorite place of dance, but I was feeling a little feverish so I decided instead to lie down and rest for awhile.  Well, as soon as I did that my entire body became really sore (like the kind of sore where you something brushes lightly against your arm and your entire body hurts really bad), and no matter what I tried I could not get comfortable.  I decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go out that night, sore as I was, so I’d just get to sleep early and then wake up early the next day.  Well, I didn’t sleep at all that night and instead tossed and turned, trying in vain to find a comfortable position, and hallucinating all night long.  At various points in these hallucinations I was in the court of some Jabba The Hut-esque king, then I was a math teacher, then one of a family of ants building a hill… I don’t know how I remember this, but I do.  When I was the math teacher, I was trying to come up with an equation that would help me find the perfect comfortable position I was looking for.  This part is not an exaggeration.  It was really freaky.

I got out of bed the next morning and followed through with plans I had to meet up with a friend.  I was still kind of sore, but walking around made it less bad.  I actually just felt tired and kind of sweaty, but it was a hot day so I didn’t think much of it.  I was supposed to spend the whole day with my friend (who had traveled two hours by train to come into the city and visit), but he said I looked awful at one point and advised me to go get some sleep.  He said he could come back later in the week.

So he went home and I went home, and I again laid down and again couldn’t sleep.  I tried for a while, but with no success.  And I was sweating like a pig in heat.  Then the really terrifying part happened.  All of a sudden, I could barely breathe.  I mean, I could breathe, but each breath was really short, and really REALLY painful.  It felt like something was stabbing at my lungs every time I breathed.  This was when I decided that I was sick.  I called my parents at home in the U.S. and told them what was up, and we decided I should head off to the nearest emergency room because, well, I couldn’t breathe and that’s kind of an emergency.

I went to the front desk at the dorm where I was staying and the girl who was working the night shift, Lisa, walked me to the emergency room which was thankfully only a couple blocks away.  There was a three-hour waiting list, but they checked my vitals upon arrival and, because my blood pressure was extremely low, they took me in right away and immediately began doing all kinds of tests.  Now, I don’t remember much about that first night or the next few days, but Lisa (who stayed with me all night that first night) tells me that they believed I might’ve had meningitis, so they put me in an isolation room for the night until the doctors could see me in the morning.

Well, I didn’t have meningitis.  What I did have, as they figured out a couple days later, was a condition called pericarditis, which is an infection of the sac surrounding my heart.  This infection caused the sac to swell up so that each time I breathed, my lungs would rub up against it and hurt like hell.  So they started treating that…

Then, two days later, they found by x-ray that I had developed a collection of fluid in  one of my lungs which, well, wasn’t supposed to be there.  Because of this, my lungs couldn’t operate at full capacity, so the oxygen level in my blood got really low, which made my heart have to work much harder to get its job done.  This condition is also known as pneumonia.  So now I had pericarditis and pneumonia.

They began draining the fluid out of my lung, yes, by sticking a drain through my back into my lung and providing me with a
little fluid-collection handbag to carry around with me at all times.  Well, not to carry really, because I wasn’t walking at all.  I could barely move while lying in bed.  I had to pee in bottles.

Then, the next day, they found out that I had developed an enlarged liver.  This condition is generally referred to as hepatitis.  So now I had pericarditis and pneumonia and hepatitis.

THEN, the next day, they found that I the sac around my heard which had been infected was now filling up with fluid.  The fluid was collecting between my heart and lungs, which once again made them start rubbing up against each other, again causing searing pain with each breath.  This time, however, the amount of fluid was growing and, basically, was closing in around my heart.

They quickly transferred me to a different hospital where they could drain that stuff out of the narrow space between my heart and lungs.  This advanced procedure was too difficult to do at my first hospital.  They did the procedure, with me basically out of it the whole time.  I began to recover from that over the next few days.

THEN, the following day, they found some fluid in my OTHER lung, and started draining that stuff out of me too.  By this time, I was a pro at the whole drain thing.  Just kidding.  I cried in my mother’s arms every time they dug into my back.  Oh yeah, so my parents flew over around the third day I was in the hospital, and I’d never been so happy to see them before in my whole life.  There were several points during that first week-and-a-half where all I could tell myself was that I wanted to die.  I mean, every day I found out something new was wrong with me, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the next day sure enough they’d come up with something new and awful for me to deal with.

And, maybe I’m weird, but I’ve never done two weeks before without walking, without showering or shaving, without seeing hardly anyone I know.  Fortunately, Lisa came to see me every day, and my parents, and a couple other people I had met over there.  I was losing my mind, really really depressed, and also physically in a TON of pain.  I mean, I’d never even been sick before in my whole life, never been in a hospital before in my whole life, and never been out of the country before in my whole life, and here I was, trapped in a hospital bed in London.  Some nights, despite quite strong and moderately successful pain killers (oral injections of morphine, anyone?), I simply couldn’t manage sleep, and I would just lie in bed whimpering and crying and tossing and turning (just a little ‘cuz it hurt to move too much), and the nurses - who are the closest things to gods and goddesses that I’ve ever stumbled across in this lifetime - would have to come by and politely shut me up for the sake of the others in the cardiac ward, all of whom were over 90.

It was not fun.

But then, when the third week rolled around I immediately started improving.  By Tuesday of the third week I was walking again, showering again, and using a toilet again.  Oh yeah.  Had my first experimentation with a little thing called constipation too.  After a week and a half of stillness, some things just don’t move so easily anymore.  Damn inertia.  After I’d been on that damned toilet for a half-hour, the nurse had to come in and hold my hand while I sweated and cried and tried to push, except I couldn’t really push without disrupting all the needles and drains and whatnot that were poking into my organs.  Goodtimes.   Anyway, slowly but surely, I got back to normal, if you can call me that.

Once I had pretty much recovered physically and mentally and emotionally, one of the nurses - Deborah, the one who had become sort of like my sister away from home - told me that at the point they drained the stuff out of the sac around my heart, if they hadn’t caught that when they did and drained it when they did, the fluid would have kept collecting around my heart and it would’ve tightened it up and soon - like, within a day of when they did the procedure - it would have drowned my heart and killed me.  The nurses from my first hospital kept calling the second hospital, just to see if I was still alive.  Seriously.  I’m convinced they had a betting pool going on behind the nurses’ station.

I spent a week recovering and, FINALLY, on the third Saturday, tI was released from the hospital.  The really bizarre thing, however, is that despite the dozens and dozens and dozens of blood tests they did on me (which remarkably didn’t get me any more comfortable with needles), they were never able to figure out what caused all of this to happen.  They said that my recovery was completely independent, and was not related to any medication they were giving me.  I just somehow got better.  Now, of course, that right there is a silver lining with an accompanying life-long dark cloud because, great, I’m better, but since they don’t know why I got sick in the first place, they don’t know if it will come back sometime or if it’s gone for good.  So the rest of my life could just be lived in constant fear.  What fun that will be.

I flew home Sunday afternoon, yesterday, August 31st, and will be spending the next four months at home in Maryland, armpit of the nation.  However, it’ll give me plenty of time to record the 30-or-so songs I wrote in England, and I’ll certainly rent a lot of movies (maybe I’ll finally see all the "Star Wars" flicks!), so maybe it won’t be too bad after all.  But I assure you that at many points I will be drastically, pathetically, hopelessly bored.  That’s why I’m asking for all of you, please, to stay in touch.

Oh, and thanks to those of you who actually cared enough to read all of this.  I’ll never know how many of you did, but know that, if you did, it really means a lot to me.  As Bette Midler put it, "God is watching us from a distance."

And there you have it folks.  That’s the truth about me.