Doc says Mom's not crazy

I took Mom to the doctor’s office to see if, as she suspects, she’s losing her mind.

My amateur diagnosis is no, she’s not crazy and that her forgetfulness has become her schtick. At 77, she’ll forget one of her 12 passwords to one of her 12 computer functions and she’ll insist she’s losing her mind.

No, she’s just lost amidst her clutter the slip of paper listing the 12 elusive passwords.

Like my dear widowed Mom, many seniors reflexively self-diagnose Alzheimers anytime they forget to include milk on the weekly shopping list. It’s a legitimate fear and she’s forgetful enough I thought a professional opinion would put her mind at ease or instigate any necessary treatment.

Really, it’s a miracle anyone’s sane these days. It’s like the old obesity standards. The Centers for Disease Control reports the average American weighs 25 pounds more than he or she did in 1960.

People who used to be considered ample are now average.

I believe we’ve gained an equivalent amount in crazy weight. We just have too much to remember. Author Larry McMurtry remembers growing up in a small Texas town where his first phone number was “9.”

Like him, Mom was raised in a small town -- Punxsutawney, Pa., home of Groundhog Phil! Now she has more Facebook friends than she knew in the first 20 years of her simple, happy life.

But in the rare role of good son, I agree to go to the doctor with her to help answer health history questions and provide anecdotal support.

First of all, the doctor wants to know why she’s here.

She has no idea. Neither do I.

His eyes light up like he thinks he can get away with charging us double.

A friend recommended him, we finally agree.

He says she’s duplicating what her regular doctor is already doing. Yet we decide to press on.

He asks all the usual questions about smoking (not for 30 years), surgical history (breast cancer survivor since 1983) and family health history (excellent).

He even asks unsettling questions about parts of my mother that haven’t concerned me since she gave birth to me 47 years ago in that very hospital.

He takes us down the hall to a room where a nurse will administer a memory test. The nurse asks if she’s had one before.

She says she can’t remember.

That’s Mom. This woman whose endearing sense of humor will always remind me of Carol Burnett is either making a deadpan joke or something’s wrong.

The test is really simple and, surprisingly, a sound indicator of advancing Alzheimer’s.

They ask about the date, the year, the season. They ask her to start at 100 and subtract a series of sevens.

“100, 93, 86, 79, 71, 64, 57 . . .”

Damn.

They ask her to repeat the following three words: apple, table, pencil.

“Apple, table, pencil.”

They ask her to write a simple sentence on a sheet of paper. She writes, “It’s a beautiful day outside!”

Again, that’s Mom. Take away all her concerns and she’s a lovely and sunny person. And, yes, it is a beautiful day outside, which makes her answer even more euphoric.

I make a mental note to remember if I’m ever given a memory test to write, “I enjoy screwing beautiful nurses!”

In my head, I’m thinking . . . apple, table, pencil, apple, table, pencil . . . and hoping I can psychically transmit
those three nouns four feet across the examination room from my brain to hers.

She asks Mom to fold the paper and set it on the floor. She does so. She asks her to pick it up. She does so.

She asks her to draw two odd geometric shapes on the page. She does so.

She asks her to repeat the three words she asked her to remember. I squeeze the muscles of my face together to kick my brain into a higher gear . . . Apple! . . . Table!  . . . Pencil!

Maybe she’s not my real mom because she cheerfully blurts out, “Apple, table, mirror!”

The nurse says, “Well, you do not have Alzheimers.”

She tells a heartbreaking story about how people with even the early stages of the dreaded disease are unable to understand a simple request like, “Fold this piece of paper, put it on the floor and pick it up.”

Mom scored 26 out of 30 on the memory test and those are numbers I’ll remember with loving relief for a very long time.

The nurse says she just finished a revealing book called “The Myth of Alzheimers: What You Are Not Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis,” by Dr. Peter Whitehouse. She says the book tells us the aging brain is going to struggle to remember so much thrown at it these days and none of us should panic about forgetting all the unnecessary minutia inundating us.

Unlikely, I think. It’s been four hours and every ten minutes my mind is still chirping . . . apple, table, pencil.

She hints we’re raising a generation of addle-brained morons who will slide across the surface of their lives thinking multi-tasking isn’t harmful to learning.

She says the surefire ways to keep all our aging minds supple is to exercise our bodies with sunny strolls and exercise our minds with reading and puzzles. It makes a difference.

I hope this puts her mind at ease. I hope she remembers to not be so hard on herself if she carelessly calls my daughter by her sister’s name.

That’s not a symptom. It’s a slip of the tongue.

Thus ends my adventure with Mom at the doctor’s office.

And, yes, I’ll go again anytime she needs me. I want to support this still vivacious woman even in trying situations.

Make that, especially in trying situations.

I’m just not all that crazy about the whole idea.

Kim Jung Il should try PGA Tour

Many narrow-minded American golf fans have been upset by the onslaught of talented Korean golfers crowding the LPGA leader boards.

They ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Because the world’s best golfer now has time to play more and if past ambitions are any indication, he’s bound for the PGA Tour.

It’s soon-to-be retiree Kim Jong Il, the despotic president of North Korea.

State run media reported in 1994 that Kim was eager to try golf on his nation’s first course when it opened near Pyongyang. The results stunned the world.

The first time he ever played, Kim is said to have shot a jaw dropping 38-under-par in a round that included 11 holes in one.

It’s impossible for a non-golfer to appreciate the staggering scope of this achievement. For perspective, I’ve been golfing an average of about 25 times a year for 35 years or so and have never had a single ace.

That’s about 15,750 aceless holes.

Kim played 18 holes and snagged 11.

Two of the greatest and most prolific golfers ever, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, have only had 20 and 19 respectively.

Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising. This is a man so powerful his subjects believe the weather is controlled by his moods and his body so evolved it produces neither urine nor feces, a bit of a pity, perhaps. You’d think the sprinkled tinkle from a body so divine would be nourishing enough to feed the millions who are starving to death under his tyrannical rule.

But having a man of Kim’s accomplishments would be a boon for the PGA Tour, a realm so priggish it spent the entirety of the 2010 season rattled by the private shenanigans of Tiger Woods.

Golf’s never had a real villain and Kim’s a real villain. He regularly cracks the top five of the world’s worst despots lists. There’s rampant starvation, disregarded international nuclear weapon treaties and cruelty and eccentricities grand enough to smack of sheer lunacy.

From 1993-94, he was Hennessey’s best customer and spent $750,000 a year to import the stuff to a country where the average worker earns just $900 during that same span.

So having him on the PGA Tour would not be without its PR challenges.

Still, there are sound reasons why Tim Finchem should consider recruiting Kim to try his hand at Tour Q school.

It is reported in all the school text books that when Kim was born on February 16, 1941 -- he’s an Aquarius just like me! -- that spring suddenly bloomed and the country was showered with a spontaneous outbreak of rainbows like what happens in the Care Bear stories I read to my 4 year old.

And we all know how cool that looks on hi-def.

For ratings purposes, it’s a can’t miss for the PGA. People would tune in for the controversy, for the aces and all those rainbows.

And, really, how much worse could he be than John Daly?

Ed. Note: Much of the "research" for this found on Sam Greenspan's hilarious site, http://www.11points.com. Check it out.

I hate my dog

I wonder if there is a hell for dog owners who are mean to their pets.

I don’t mean like Michael Vick mean.

I’d never put my dog in a pen to fight another suitable opponent, which in this case would be an ill-tempered hamster.

I’m not inhumane to my dog. Just rude. I treat him the way people used to treat dogs before they started treating dogs like children.

We live in times of rampant venom. Hostility reigns. There are wars, ethnic hatreds and daily assaults on refined manners that makes life such a heartbreaking endeavor to those of us not raised by wolves.

Yet, I never stoop to incivility. I treat all my fellow man with high regard. I encourage their success, sympathize with their failures and cheerlead their every effort.

Not so with Snickers, the dog with the two-syllable name I never fail to address with fewer than six. We were told he was a little pug, a little shih tzu, maybe a little terrier.

The best I can tell is Snickers is composed of a little Moe, a little Larry and a little Curly. Individually, I love them, but imagine if you combined Moe’s meanness, Curly’s violence and Larry’s stupidity.

You’d have an unholy mix like something old Doc Frankenstein would have conjured in his lab.

He’s high-strung and nervous, the Andy Dick of dogs. As I’ve said before, he’s the kind of dog more likely to ignite blazing fires than cuddle up beside them.

Still, I know many humans who behave like that and I tolerate them with equanimity, albeit an equanimity softened by multiple bourbons and mindless nods meant to mislead, yes, I’m listening and, yes, I care.

The girls love him.. But I’ve never been as frustrated with another creature in my entire life. I’ve had angry run-ins with DMV clerks, surly mechanics and idiot editors.

But, even in the heat of dispute, none of those bone-headed miscreants has ever expressed their contempt by waking me up out of a sound sleep to pee on my bare foot at 5 a.m.

Please, send no tips, no advice. We’ve done it before. We have the crate. We have the bell by the door. We have the treats. And the only time I ever say anything positive to the 16-pound doggie is when he successfully targets the yard for his relief.

“Yeah, Snickers! You’re the best! Good boy!”

I’ve never cheered for Penguin captain Sydney Crosby as enthusiastically as I do for Snickers when he craps in the yard.

We’ve had the dog in the parks and are often met by friends and strangers who say how adorable he is. The girls all gush in agreement.

“I hate him,” I say. “He wakes us up every night at 5 a.m. He’s wild. He barks when a single leaf falls to the ground. If I’m out having fun someplace, I have to arbitrarily end the fun so we can go home before his thimble-sized bladder bursts.”

What’s been heartening to me is how many people share my hatreds. Here’s a little secret: in every partnership, one person or the other hates the dog and how much the other fusses over it.

In rare successful marriages, the hatreds merge.

“We got rid of our dogs when our daughter was 2 and it was just too much,” confided one friend. “I felt sad for about 40 minutes, then felt a zen-like peace. I told my husband how I felt and he high-fived me.”

My wife was away this week and it was hell. I’m not cut out for the Mr. Mom routine, especially when the baseball playoffs are on.

My mother came out to give me a break and by the happiest of coincidences it happened the night of Roy Halladay’s historic no-hitter. When I got home from the bar, the house was in chaos. Snickers was loose and had peed in the kitchen.

Val called later and asked if my mother hated Snickers as much as me.

“Ah, honey, nobody hates Snickers . . .” I said.

“How sweet! I knew a little bonding time would do the trick.”

“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, ‘Nobody hates Snickers . . . as much as I do.’”

In some corners of the world, calling a person a dog is the most vile insult.

It goes to show how I can find human harmony with all cultures.

Snickers is a real dog.

I just can’t fathom what kind.

Praying for free firewood

It happens every autumn. I get about four or five e-mails that make me feel like a real jerk.

Hold on. That’s not true. I get about four or five e-mails a day that make me feel like a real jerk. These are stinging rejections, editorial insults and frequent reminders that I voluntarily signed up for Facebook.

So, I lied. Now I feel like a real jerk.

Again.

But the e-mail I got Monday goes beyond that. 

See, I always feel like a jerk whenever anyone gets in touch about free firewood. My website, www.chrisrodell.com boasts I am the world’s leading purveyor of free firewood.

I’ve written about it enough that I won’t regurgitate all the details here, save to say the canard is built around the line: “Free Firewood! Don’t let the other guys fool you . . . this stuff really DOES grow on trees!”

It's a blunt joke I explained in this "Free firewood a shady deal" post.


It makes me wonder just how much free stuff is out there if someone really thinks to google “free firewood,” and that there’s a guy in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a writer, who in his spare time will send free firewood to any address in North America.

But I got a letter Phoenix Marie (last name withheld) in Evanston, Illinois, that makes me wish I could drop everything I was doing to ensure she’d never be without something to warm heart and hearth.

Check it out:

“Dear Mr. Rodell,

I have no idea if this is still a real offer, or if it was ever real in the first place.

I’m writing because my sig. other and I were recently privileged and incredibly lucky enough to find and move into a beautiful 100 yr-old apartment finally large enough to have breathing room AND gifted with a working fireplace (that was shockingly in our price range). It was a result of years of me praying and a very rare combination of a rental company too lax to require deposits or offer the care and maintenance that ups the rent and validates the deposit’s existence, and a ‘lifer’ maintenance man whose undying love for the aging building provides a safe enough environment for tenants to burn wood in their living rooms and pretend that they exist in a much higher income bracket than they really do.

Still unsure of how we managed to live in such splendor, we’ve been musing how to find free firewood for the time we’ve now entered between the predictable extreme Chicago temperature drop and the management’s delayed motivation to crank up the free radiator heat. Even under normal circumstances given our incomes, finding funds for firewood would be a challenging adventure, but as of late, I face a life-threatening illness without insurance and can’t work, so have been reduced to begging for donations and holding charity auctions to maintain the medical treatment I need to recover and avoid happy outcomes like permanent brain damage and a weakened heart. So, wallets are tight, psyches are strained, and being a stranger in town, I left the hunt up to google. I found your blog and several references to your free firewood giveaways, though all the dates I found attached to said information were long gone by. I wanted to get very excited and make high-pitched giggly sounds, but I’m wary.

Are you still shipping people free firewood anywhere in the U.S.? Could this be real, and are you the firewood fairy, so to speak? A firewood angel? Isn’t it grossly expensive to ship something so very heavy? We are one week shy of taking to the nearest forest preserve with a Phillips head screwdriver and a butcher knife (it’s one of those ‘Ginsu’ jobbers, cuts through tin cans like they were butter). It would be much easier on our psyches and my health if you were still sending people free firewood. This would be like a crazy dream come true. Please if you have time, let me know if this is still possible. We could name our next pet after you, or better yet, erect a Chris Rodell shrine above our mantle in your honor!

Cold, anxious, and curiously yours,

Phoenix Marie

It’s one of the nicest letters I’ve ever received. It exudes joy, hope and mirth in spite of what are clearly difficult situations.

She described everything I aspire to be. I’d love to be a firewood fairy. I’d love to play Santa and drop down cold chimneys with sacks full of oak, cherry and other hard woods so needy people could wake up Christmas morning and wouldn’t have to burn furniture for fuel.

Then before I had time to respond, she wrote back a sheepish note that she got the joke. There is no free firewood. She actually apologized to me for having distracted me..

Boy, do I feel like a jerk.

I may have failed at providing firewood, but I can wrangle prayers with the best of them.

I’m going to say a few small fast prayers that the winter is mild and God will help people like Phoenix get through the bitter days with her hope and joy intact. I ask you to do the same.

Can you imagine how beautiful a person who writes a note like that would be with her health intact and her earthly concerns allayed? She made my day even as I dashed hers.

During a friendly exchange, she confided without whining that her need is great. Friends have set up a webpage http://hachimanwebdesign.com/phoenixmarie.html. It’s poignant enough to qualify for Lifetime movie consideration.


A Facebook support page has been set up, too: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-SUPPORT-THE-MEDICAL-EXPENSE-FUNDRAISER-FOR-PHOENIX-MARIE/325263728918

I checked them out and they look legit. I wish I didn’t have to include that legalistic sort of endorsement, but we have to be wary these days.

We all know the internet is awash with real jerks posing as firewood fairies and it’s difficult to find anything pure enough to believe in.

1993, Hollywood's best year

I hate to sound so cantankerous on a Monday but, consarnit, movies have been going down hill ever since 1993.

This occurred to me during a recent visit to the magnificent Kinzua Dam in northwestern Pennsylvania. 

A monumental dam like the Kinzua is one of man’s most impressive structures.

As a boy I used to build dams in creeks everywhere. For juvenile engineering purposes, certainly, but also because it let me shout a forbidden-sounding word whenever Ma asked how I’d spent my summer afternoon.

Dam!

That has me wondering if profanity-averse parents insist on referring to one of the seven wonders of the world as the Hoover Darn.

But as my wife and I gazed upon the waters of the Allegheny River gushing through in a raging spray from the Kinzua spillway, we each thought the same thing:

Dr. Richard Kimball: “I did not shoot my wife!”

Lt. Philip Gerard: “I don’t care!”

Yes, we each thought of the riveting scene from “The Fugitive” where the wrongly accused Dr. Kimball, played by the dashing Harrison Ford, leaps off the face of a massive dam to either annihilation or uncertain redemption. At the time we had just discovered re-runs of the original David Janssen series that ran from 1963-67. The shows are still among TV’s most compelling ever.

So, fired with the recollection, we raced home, rented the film and popped it in to show the scene to Josie.

She was mesmerized. True adult entertainment done well is riveting to all ages.

Plus, at the end of it, foul-mouthed Joe Pantoliano steps up behind Gerard to utter an incredulous barnyard profanity that, of course, delighted the surprised 10 year old.

Thus, we take another step in our long march away from endless viewings of “Finding Nemo,” “Madagascar” and the three saccharine versions of “High School Musical” to entertainment emancipation of adult films awash in profanity and violence.

I can’t wait.

When we deem her ready for such viewing, I’m taking her straight back to 1993.

I don’t know what kind of recreational drugs that were consuming in Hollywood some 17 years ago, but I wish they’d become fashionable again.

Here are the top 10 grossing movies from 1993:

1. Jurrassic Park
2. Mrs. Doubtfire
3. The Fugitive
4. Schindler’s List
5. The Firm
6. Indecent Proposal
7. Cliffhanger
8. Sleepless in Seattle
9. Philadelphia
10. The Pelican Brief

I’m not going to play critic on the merits of each of these movies when the market already has. It’s given 1993 a huge thumb’s up. Each of these movies has demonstrated remarkable staying power. 

And that’s not all. Here are some other 1993 classics.

There was highbrow: Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” and the highly acclaimed Holly Hunter movie, “The Piano.”

There were two comedies that I consider classics of heartwarming mirth: No one would dispute “Groundhog Day” as a classic, but have you seen “Dave,” the Kevin Kline/Sigourney Weaver movie about a presidential look-alike who is pressed into actual duty? It’s outstanding.

Again, I’m not going to comment on the merits of “Free Willy,” “Grumpy Old Men,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Wayne’s World II,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” or the Schwarzenegger film “The Last Action Hero,” but each of these movies attracted rave reviews and massive audiences.

Two of our favorites from 1994 both starred Clint Eastwood, one you remember, one you probably do not.

“In the Line of Fire” is Eastwood as a decrepit Secret Service agent in pursuit of a homicidal John Malcovich. It’s one of Eastwood’s best.

Lesser known is “A Perfect World,” a wonderfully offbeat film that co-stars Kevin Costner as a down-on-his luck hoodlum who runs away with a young boy. Great film.

The year year also saw the release of the greatest chess movie ever made, “Searching for Bobby Fisher.” There was even a great cowboy movie, “Tombstone.”

Had 1993 been extended by two months one of the greatest movies of all-time would top this list: “The Shawshank Redemption.”

It was the year Bill Clinton took office, the year “The X-Files” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” debuted, the year Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband; a gallon of gas cost just $1.05.

But I’ll remember it as maybe the best year Hollywood’s ever had. And I can’t wait to sit my daughters down and show them all these great adult movies.

Am I the kind of father who’d risk a little salty language in the ears of impressionables just for the sake of a really good flick?

Er, dam straight!

Even stink bugs need love

I can’t help but think right now some stink bug dad is telling his stink bug daughter she is beautiful and can grow up to be anything she wants to be.

And it breaks my heart to know the stink bug daughter is wailing in despair, “But, dad, I’m a stink bug and a stink bug is all I’ll ever be!”

It saddens me whenever the world imposes pre-conceived notions on any of God’s creatures simply for the way they were born.

I’m so liberal even stink bug bias offends me.

Man, do stink bugs have it tough.

Talk about having the decks stacked against you. Being called “Stinky” is one of the worst things that can happen to a kid. How would you like it if your entire race was referred to with that loathsome pejorative?

Even third world leaders would be loath to welcome the stink bug president into his or her office for a friendly meet ‘n’ greet.

I can only guess stink bugs were created so even the lowly dung beetle can sometimes feel a necessary surge of self-esteem to help it endure its universally grim 36-month life span spent rolling balls of dung across arid cow pastures

Dung Beetle: “Oh, woe, is me! I spend my entire day balling nutrient-rich dung to feed a family whose breath is so foul we never dare kiss or show affection. Oh, well. Least I ain’t no damn stink bug!”

I think most of the world’s wars were started by people who are determined to compensate for some slight that led to low self-esteem.

I vow that’s not going to happen with my precious loved ones. Not on my watch.

I may be failing at providing much in the way of material goods for my two daughters, ages 10 and 4, but, by God, these girls will know they are loved, they will know they are smart and they will know they are beautiful.

They will know all this because their Daddy made it a point to tell them so each and every day.

My fear is at some point they will one day read this and know their Daddy is an idiot because he spent a lot of time writing about things like the feelings of stink bugs instead of seeking a pay check.

I’ve seen scores of people on the news complaining bitterly about stink bug infestations. Some say that when squashed they emit a skunk-like smell. Others compare the odor to that of rancid old sneakers.

It’s a smell I cannot describe because I’ve never squashed a single stink bug and I never will.

Unlike so many of my discriminating brethren, I’m perfectly at peace with the stink bug.

In fact, I admire that, unlike blood-sucking bedbugs, the stink bug does nothing untoward to humans until we extinguish them. Then, like a foul soul ascending to stink bug heaven, the smell begins to rise.

To avoid that eventuality, experts advise homeowners to seize the stink bug and flush it down the toilet -- a not unreasonable place to dispose of something whose first name is stink.

Me, I cradle them in a tissue, march them to the back porch and give them a little pep talk.

“I have no quarrel with you, stink bug, so I’m setting you free. I wish you health, happiness and a competent press agent who’ll help you overcome the stigma of your off-putting name. Now, go and be free! And if you come back, better not let the missus catch you or else she’ll flush you down the crapper.”

I don’t know whether my little speech is heeded or is met with deaf ears. Heck, I don’t even know if stink bugs have ears. Despite my heartfelt promotions, all I really know about stink bugs is it’s unwise to squash ‘em.

But I believe every stink bug should have the opportunity to overcome hateful perceptions.

I hope one day teams of entomologists will reveal that a rare stink bug has been witnessed transforming itself into the most beautiful butterfly ever seen.

Dedicated entomologists would no doubt be bug-eyed at the sight, but that would, of course, be redundant.

How can dedicated entomologists be anything but bug-eyed?

But I will not rest until we banish all hateful bias from man, animal and insect.

That kind of obnoxious behavior really bugs me.

I think it stinks.

Frank Burns eats worms, redux

At Christmas, many newspapers are of the custom to re-publish verbatim the original Francis Pharcellus Church editorial, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus,” from the New York Sun in 1897.

I intend it to become my custom on this day to re-run verbatim my 2009 post celebrating the birthday of Maj. Frank Burns. He would have been 71 today.

I realize it’s kind of lazy, but I think I exhausted the topic last year and without the benefit of a spiritual seance will have nothing to add.

So here I re-run my salute to Frank Burns.

Later today or tomorrow I’ll come back with something fresh and relevant.

I’m thinking stink bugs!

Take the day off and do something incompetent and mean-spirited: It’s the 70th birthday of Maj. Frank Burns.

Larry Linville, the man who crafted perhaps the most indelible character in American pop culture, was born on this day in 1939. The five-times married Linville, whose only other claim to fame was, coincidentally, a series of ill-fated romances aboard the fictional “Love Boat,” died April 10, 2000, at the age of 60.

But to me at least, ferret-faced Frank Burns will live forever.

It’s a measure of the esteem in which I hold Burns that when Matt Lauer saluted former Today Show colleague Bryant Gumbel on their shared birthday, I thought of calling up and demanding equal time for Burns. 

M*A*S*H remains one of the most endlessly fascinating TV shows in history.No other show has ever ranged the gamut from fall down funny to train wreck terrible. From 1972 through 1983, the show was compelling, sometimes for all the wrong reasons.

Many argue on www.jumptheshark.com about when the show leaped the great white maneater.

Was it when Klinger stopped wearing dresses? When B.J. took over for the incomparable Trapper John? When the insufferable Sidney Friedman became a fixture? Or was it when Col. Blake’s plane nose-dived into the South China Sea, a riveting episode that to this day lands like a punch to the solar plexus.

The show took hits with all those dramatic transformations.

But nothing caused the essence of the original hilarious premise to leak out of the storied series like when they lost Frank Burns.

He was the moralizing prig who cheated on his wife. He was the flag-waving patriot who stole purple hearts from wounded soldiers for his own self-glorification. He was a bumbling doctor who kept getting promoted over worthier physicians.

I’ll never forget the episode when Radar was a budding writer doing an assignment about amusing anecdotes. Burns told a story about growing up in Indiana next door  to a little wheel-chair bound boy named Timmy.

With evident glee, Frank tells of how Timmy was happily waving at the Burns family when he lost control of the chair. It plunged down the stairs, across the lawn and crashed the flailing invalid into the Burns family sedan.

He cackles witch-like through out the storytelling as B.J., Hawks and Radar listen in horror. When he concludes, B.J., the designated voice of conscience says, “That must have been awful!”

Frank says: “No, he just scratched the paint a little.”

Then he gets furious when the cheerful buddy-buddy reaction he’d sought results in scorn.

It’s brilliant. It combines a kind of malevolence and mean-spirited pettiness that used to unite the nation.

Today, all our bad guys divide us. You either love Barack Obama or hate him. Same goes for Sarah Palin.

Even deliberately cast evil doers like Montgomery Burns and Tony Soprano have their rooting sections.

That’s why we need more men like Frank Burns in our lives. We need people so bumbling and loathsome that the whole world can point our children to and say, “See that man in the white smock with the stethoscope. He’s pure evil. You don’t want to be grow up to be like him. He’s a mean, cheap and selfish stooge from whom no goodness results.”

So today, in honor of the great Frank Burns, I’m going to try and do something incompetent and mean-spirited.

Looking back over this incoherent blog post, I can surmise the incompetent part’s already taken care of.

Now, the hard part. Can I go against my gentle nature and do something deliberately mean-spirited?

I suppose while I’m thinking about it, I could call up Matt Lauer and demand he salute Frank Burns, too, instead of his suck-up buddy Gumbel, the egotisical poser who’s been on the fast track to Nowheresville since leaving the Today Show and whose head is becoming so big he ought to be called Giant Gumball.

Hmmm . . .

Maybe this mean-spirited bit won’t be so difficult after all.