It seems strange to write a post just to share good news — as a Jew, I don’t feel quite right unless I’m complaining a little — but since I took to the blogwaves to tell you all about my accident, it seems right that I should do it again to say: I’m just fine. Two weeks plus two days after the accident, the injury has faded to a more sore/stiff back, and almost my entire range of movement has returned. I’m off the pain meds (for the most part — does mega-Ibuprofen still count?) and while I won’t do the Chicago Triathlon this weekend, I’m actually thinking I have a shot at the Chicago Marathon on 10/10/10. Although I don’t think I’m going to be a threat to win it.

Thanks, one last time,  for all your good wishes and kind thoughts, and apologies for not responding to everyone individually. As I said to my producer, “It’s comforting to know that if I had been killed, people would have missed me.” He said, “Well, sure… you know. For a while.”

Good enough. Thanks again.

PS: I picked up the bike from the police on Wednesday, and it also was in surprisingly good shape. It’s in the shop now, and my genius Bike Guy will let me know if there’s any hidden damage. I think in the moment of crisis, I instinctively decided to protect it with my lower back.

PPS: You still won’t hear me “live” on the radio this week, but it’s not because of the accident. This is the second week of our scheduled hiatus, so it’s a clip show this weekend (though a new, and particularly good one.) We’ll be back with an all new WWDTM next week.

Last summer, I did something I hadn’t imagined doing until pretty much right before I did it. I decided to use this platform (and my Twitter account) to ask you, most of whom are strangers to me, to donate money to a dear friend who was in dire need of it.

Her name is Jo Carson, and she is, as much as anyone or anything in my life (ie, parents, teachers, peers)  responsible for who I am now. She’s a writer and lifelong resident of Eastern Tennessee, and I happened to meet her when I was in my early twenties and she was around the age I am now, and I needed someone to both show and tell me the necessity of being a writer. I took her advice, and followed her example, and starting writing my own stories down (though transmogrified into various other forms and shapes) and that led to this which led to that which led to the other thing which led to you reading this here.

Last year, she got very sick, bowel cancer, and didn’t have enough money or health insurance to pay for her treatments. (She told me, way back when, that writing was important work, not that it was remunerative, and she turned out to be correct.)  I decided to use what small fame I have (which, as said, I owe in part to her) and see if I could help by asking you to donate to her cause. You did. You, and others, mostly the many who’ve known her and have been touched by her life and work, saved her life. 

Good work, everyone.

But…

Though she’s defeated bowel cancer, doctors have found a cancerous spot on her lung. This is not a recurrence; it’s another big problem, and one again, she doesn’t have the financial resources to fight it on her own. (She didn’t have much then, she has less now.)  So I and another of Jo’s friends, the marvelous and tireless Lisa Mount, have decided to mount another fundraiser for her, using our various platforms, to once again raise enough money to pay for her medical treatments and related expenses.

The first time around, a year ago, I felt I could dance around the central topic, but this is Round Two, and people require I think a level of frankness. The reason I’m doing this, and asking you again to donate money — any amount, from five bucks on up  — to somebody you don’t know, simply on my word that she’s important and wonderful and really needs it — is because as uncomfortable as it is to ask strangers for money, I’d much, much, much rather do this than ask you to contribute to her memorial fund.  Okay?

By the way, this was supposed to be the Big Reveal to the Texas Saga: I was going to send the $2000 from the State of Texas to Jo’s fund.  Just because I managed to make a hash of that shouldn’t mean Jo goes wanting,  so I’ll make that donation anyway.

Here are a bunch of things you can read about Jo:

Here is the original post from last year, in which I first wrote about her, and here are some related posts that followed.

More importantly, here is Jo’s own account of her illness, and her experiences over the last year, and here’s a video of her performing it at the Alternate Roots Festival just a month ago. Go take a look whether or not you’re inclined to donate.

Donations go through Alternate Roots, a non-profit, so they should be tax-deductible (though check with your accountant, etc.) and ALL money collected goes directly to Jo.

If you can’t donate — and many can’t — please send a link to this post to anyone who might be so inclined. Thanks from me and from Jo and all of us who know her and have been affected by her life and work.

There’s an old saying: what begins as a ten minute, two character comedy ends as farce.

A couple of weeks ago, I put up a post that described an interesting moral quandary posed to me by the State of Texas and its education contractor, Pearson, Inc,  what I had decided to do about it, and why. Go read it, if you haven’t, I’ll wait.

Hey, welcome back, we missed you. Okay, well just a few days after putting that up I was creamed by a car while out for a morning twenty mile ride (turned out to be ten miles on the bike, two in the ambulance, about 600 feet on the wheeled bed) and while I was sitting in the hospital, enjoying legal opiates, I got an email from Aman Batheja, of the Dallas Ft. Worth Star Telegram, saying he had seen my post, wanted to write a story about it, and had contacted the Texas Education Agency to get their comment.

I figured this was something actually better dealt with on morphine, so I gave him a call from my hospital room.  As he told me, and as he eventually wrote, the TEA had no idea I had blogged about it (I’m betting they had no idea the play had even been selected for the testing program) and told Aman that since I had gone and blabbed about it, now they couldn’t use the play after all. Because it’s no longer a “secure testing item.” The presumption: ambitious/dishonest Texas highschoolers, knowing my play might be on their final exam, will order it up from Samuel French, read it, study it, maybe even stage a performance or two to mine its subtleties and thus do better on their test than they deserved to. I would argue that any high school student who puts that much effort into acing a test should probably be appointed to the State Board of Ed, but nobody asked me.

So, it all ends with a humorless bureaucratic bleat. No play on the test, no $2000 to donate to a Still Unnamed Recipient (although the article gives the surprise away.) Much ado about nothing, to mention another play that — heavens forfend– also has the word God in it. A couple of ironies to note:

All my public agonizing over it turns to naught because… I publicly agonized about it. It honestly never occured to me to keep it secret, and I read over the original letter from Pearson (the testing company) and there’s nothing about confidentiality in it. (Bet there will be from now on.) Who that makes the stupid one in this case, I don’t know.

And, while I’m sure the content of year end tests need to be highly confidential, harumph harumph, I would also bet a mixed meat platter at Iron Works BBQ in Austin that the good people at the Texas Education Agency were motivated to pull the play partially because  I had gone and complained about the whole thing on a blog. Now that it’s in the newspaper, though, it will live on the Internet forever, adding to the legend of Texas: the only place in the Union where whey worship a God Who Must Not Be Named.

And let’s not hear any more blue-state grumbling about those dumb Texans.  I know Texans, I have dated a Texan, some of my best friends (really!) are Texans, my own father is a graduate of Highland Park (Dallas) High School. In fact, to those of you who are irritated, enraged, amused or otherwise inclined to wring something positive from this whole kerfuffle, I highly suggest a donation to the Texas Freedom Network, Texans of good heart and true who are fighting to keep reason, science, and historical accuracy in Texas classrooms.  I just chipped in a bit myself. I mean, the whole thing shouldn’t be a total loss, for God’s sake.

In the next post: what I was going to do with all that Texas moolah, at last.

Just got back from a five day trip with the family to the Internetless wilds of Door County, Wisconsin, which, in case you didn’t know, is where doors come from.  I did my best to relax rest and recuperate — honest to God, or as Texas would prefer I say, honest to Pete — but those who know me could have guessed that it’s not the easiest thing for me to adjust to being less than well. Turns out: breaking two bones in your lower back really slows you down, whether you want to or not.

Turns out it was a pretty bad week to check out,  blog-topics wise. There’s much to discuss, and what I was going to do with that money from Texas, and why I won’t be getting that money from Texas,  and why the place I was going to send the money is going to get money anyway, and I’ll get to that, I swear, but first, thank you all, all hundred plus of you, strangers and listeners and friends new and old and near and far (How’s Gitmo, Jackie?) for all your well wishes and kind words and cheerful imprecations aimed at the person who hit me. (Let us cease with that, and instead agree that nobody involved had a very good day.)  There is some debate in the comment threads below as to how “lucky” I am — we agree it would have been truly lucky not to have been injured — but let us agree I am blessed,  to have so many people tell me how happy they are I’m still around.  Can I say “blessed” in Texas?

More, soon.

Four days after my accident, I’m back home, with a nice sackful of pain meds. Wiser folks than me — especially my brother, a lawyer — advise me that it’s not maybe the smartest thing to blab in public about what might turn into a legal case, but the fact is, being able to write about the incident here, and mostly to hear all of your comments, good wishes, and yes, even well-meaning criticisms, has been a great help to me. Stuck in a hospital miles from home, surrounded by very well meaning and caring strangers, can be a lonely place, even with my good friend morphine. So it’s meant a lot to me to hear from all of you.

And since one of the things I learned years ago was never to leave an audience hanging… here’s the rest of the story:

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So I went for a bike ride yesterday morning and got whacked by a car. She hit me with her left front fender, I think, not sure, but it was LOUD. I spun up in the air, came down on my back on the ground, possibly hitting the car again on the way down. I hit my head pretty hard on something, or somethings, but I was wearing my helmet and it cracked instead of me.

I didn’t get knocked out, but felt pretty bad lying there on the ground. I did an inventory and all my parts were still there, and nothing felt broken, but I was having trouble breathing so when somebody ran up I asked them to call 911 and tried not to move. Ambulance came, EMTs checked me out, and by that time I was starting to feel a little better and thought maybe I could shake it off and just call home for a ride. Then I tried to sit up and an invisible angry dwarf with a knife stabbed me in the back. So I enjoyed a relaxing scream and  lay back down, carefully, and they put me on the backboard with the neck brace and put me in the ambulance and I stared at a series of changing ceilings until I got the emergency room at a nearby hospital.

They did Xrays and MRIs and everything was negative — no broken bones, no internal injuries — but every time I tried to move at all the angry dwarf stabbed me again, so I was admitted to the hospital here. I’ve been on morphine and other fun drugs all night, and have mostly slept. This morning I felt a little better… the invisible dwarf is just phoning it in. Sure, he’ll stab me, that’s his job, he’s happy to have the work, but his heart is no longer in it.  I’m told that this is just a bad contusion, a deep bruise, etc, and yes, it does hurt that much, and it does get better.

The doctor– a gentlemanly older trauma surgeon who enjoys illustrating how lucky I am by telling me about other, much more gruesome/fatal accidents he’s dealt with — says that we’ll see how I’m doing this PM, and either they’ll let me go home or stay here for another day. At any rate, the news is that I’ll be fine, but in pain for a while, and that I am indeed very lucky.

Haven’t seen the bike yet… the local police have it, and I’ll go pick it up when I get out of here.

Thanks to all of you who have written with kind and encouraging and concerned notes on Twitter and Facebook. I feel lucky to know that so many people wish me well.

About a month ago, I received a letter forwarded to me from Samuel French. A company called Pearson, which contracts with the State of Texas to provide education and testing materials, wanted to use a very short play I wrote some years ago called Game Theory (published in Ten Minute Plays from Actors Theater of Louisville, Vol. 6) as part of a test called “End-of-Course English III Assessment.”  For ten years to come, high school students taking this exam would read my play, and then have to answer questions about it. Neat.

But… they wanted to make a change in the text. They wanted to cut the phrase “From God’s sake” from one of the lines.

I emailed  a very nice person at Pearson and confirmed that they wanted the play, and what they wanted it for. I was assured they would use the whole play — it’s so short an excerpt wouldn’t be of much use — and that they would pay me for its use. (I’m a big proponent of writers getting paid for their work, even when that writer isn’t me.)  I asked about the requested change, and was told, “It is the Texas Education Agency’s policy to keep anything that could possibly be offensive out of its assessment tests.  Apparently “for God’s sake” falls into that category.” 

What I decided to do about it, and why, is after the jump.

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I’ve been appearing on Fridays, the last few weeks, on “John King USA” on CNN, reviewing the week’s news, and previewing of the material we’ll be doing on the weekend’s edition of WWDTM.  Every week, I find something new about my appearance by which to be horrified. This week: What’s up with that shirt collar?

First, apologies to those those remaining readers of this blog, who have not entirely given up on me. This blog seems to be on the verge of joining various screenplays, planned trips, and my high school literary magazine, as things I began and then lost interest in.

But, to paraphrase St. Augustine, not quite yet.  Last week I performed at Wootstock, a sort of celebration of all things geeky, nerdy, Internet-oriented and goofy, organized by Paul and Storm (known in geekworld as Jonathon Coulton’s backing band) and hosted by them, Adam Savage (of Mythbusters) and Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek TNG, and books and blogs and performances of all kinds.)  I got to know P and S via Coulton, and was flattered when asked to be a “guest star” for their Chicago show at Park West. The only question — which I immediately asked — was “What should I do?” Well, I was told, people do songs or readings from their work or short performances, some sample of what they’re known for. Well, I didn’t want to do a quiz about the week’s news, and I can’t sing, so was at a bit of a loss…

… and then I thought about a long running gag I’ve had going this year with my 9 year old daughter, Gracie.  One day, she asked me how work was, and since I was bored with the truth, I told her that instead of hosting a radio show, I go to work as a henchman for a supervillain named Dr. Apocolypse, whose secret base is under Navy Pier in Chicago. I told her about attending henchman class, during which we are taught to shoot at but never hit the superheroes, and being dunked into Dr. A’s piranha tank, which is really filled with goldfish. Gracie was delighted with this, and of course told me about her day, attending classes at the superhero school that is located under her purported elementary school.

So: I sat down one day, turned on Freedom, and wrote a monologue in the voice of a guy who really has that job. I bought a $40 coverall from the US Postal Service uniform store on Roosevelt Rd in Chicago, and got it customized along with a hat at t-shirt shop.  The result, a performance called: “I, Henchman,” is below, as videotaped from the audience.  Many many thanks to Paul and Storm, and Adam (a mensch like you wouldn’t believe) and Wil (a mensch like you probably would believe, given his overt menschy-ness) and everybody else who was there, especially my fellow refugee from the American Theater Bill Corbett (of MST3K and Rifftrax) but mostly to the Geek Army who showed up in their pale multitudes to make me feel I am not, as I always feared, uniquely strange.

(In response to a number of questions, under the jumpsuit I am wearing a Flash (the superhero) T-shirt. Read it as a generic superhero suit.)

When I taped my last appearance on Late Late Night With Craig Ferguson, I was walking off the set when Craig called over his producers and huddled. I was then told “He wants to do it again.” I thought that he felt our segment hadn’t gone well, and wanted to re-do it.

I was wrong. He wanted to tape another segment with me, for broadcast at a later date, probably April. And lo, it came to pass, this past  Friday night 4/30/10.  This explains the comic uncertainty about the present date, and references to “back in February.”   The segment went to some unexpected areas, as I was totally unprepared. But that has its pleasures.

By the way, the Law of Anecdotal Value was first formulated by Professor Stephen Weeks of Lewis and Clark University, whom I should have credited.