Volume II,
Issue VI
June 2000
"I know you've got Arago in there! Let me in! I must take a picture! Let me in!" (June SpokesTourist Leslie Strom is both Editor and lover of the obscure in Paris - see July issue)
E
D I T O R I A L -
Your editor expounds on Howler monkeys and long distance telephone rates, more graceless health lessons, and getting naughty with Seafarin' men.
F E A T U R E S -
Lisa Cornwell-Collins discovers pirates, murder, ghosts, and hospitality at Louisiana's Chretien Plantation.
Half-time at the Anthro Bowl: Dave McBee explains all that mystifying male behavior to us. We remain mystified, but, hey. He tried.
Oh, baby. Naomi Sayagh negotiates the maze of modern-day adoption options.
McBee reads the map, follows the directions, and still finds himself on the Hoh river Getting Loster.
Let someone else conquer it: Mark J. Van Ryzin is moved by the challenge and beauty of Mount Everest and loves it for itself.
Nick
Mistretta investigates the whole scene in Amsterdam.
E A T S -
Gail Boysen cooks with fire and smoke in that great Get Lost Magazine tradition. Next issue, after we put out the flames, Get Lost tackles truffles and wine tasting.
L E T T E R S -
In this month's mailbag: So much for deep and meaningful literature... last month's favorite article was McBee's "What Color is Your Underwear?" on how to deal with telemarketers. Seems there are lots of people out there with their own tricks. Also, a nice letter from our revered friends at Krispy Kreme.
C A L E N D A R -
June and July bring us weird summer activities throughout the galaxy.
The Science of Long Distance rates
This month I discovered how the phone companies come up with long-distance rates. In their secret phone company development labs, they have a specially-trained Howler monkey who chooses random numbers from 1 to 999 from one of those little organ-grinder monkey hats. The numbers are collected from the floor and put on a large board under a picture of a pouncing jaguar. A second specially trained Howler monkey gets a load of the jaguar picture and throws its feces in terror at the board. The numbers still visible through the feces are entered into a database by one of the phone company's telemarketers. This is how it comes to pass, so to speak, that one can pay either $3.50 a minute for a long distance call to Ottawa, Canada, or five cents. I know there's a story in there somewhere... perhaps next month we'll do something about it. But for now, we'll just continue creatively tormenting telemarketers.
Mammotron 300 and the Great Feelies Challenge
Not three weeks after my great week in Las Vegas just Being Myself, I go for routine mammogram (where I get to spend many minutes pressed up against the "Mammotron 300" wondering how much a person gets paid for coming up with such a name), which turns into "enlargement imaging" on an area of suspicion, which turns to a full-blown biopsy. Breast biopsy at any modern hospital involves lying in a graceless position on a bizarre table with a hole in it, and having a special computer-guided needle remove wee strips of tissue. It's all rather remarkable, since seven years ago the same procedure would have meant a lot of cutting and fishing in a less-precise, more-traumatic fashion. Pain was minimal, dealing with post-procedural discomfort involved an ice pack, some Tylenol and a few glasses of wine. It turned out that the irregularity was a bit of scarring and nothing more.
My advice to any woman over 40 (or if there's a history in your family, earlier) is to just go get a mammogram. Here's the thing about getting a baseline mammogram when you have absolutely nothing to worry about: It gives the doctors something to compare years down the road, which can be tremendously valuable as a diagnostic tool. It's not THAT bad an experience, radiation is much lower than a bone x-ray, you get to catch up on "People" magazine. Catching things early can arrest the nightmarish work of dealing with cancer.
And I bet you can't beat my record for getting felt up by four different people in the same appointment. Not sure about two of them but they wore lab coats.
Catch Hell With the Seafarin' Man
If you're a regular reader of Get Lost Magazine, you probably noticed how late the June issue is. My mother's (Martha Strom, coordinator of the Eats column, will be back next month) older sister Irma passed away at the age of 89 and so we all got together at my brother's house in San Diego. One rather interesting thing we found amid the work of dealing with Irma's stuff, was a picture of her in 1955 with someone we referred to as "the Seafarin' Man," posed on a sleek yacht the man owned. She spent two years with him between husbands two and three. Her relationship with the sailor was scandalous for the 1950's, and Mom couldn't recall much about it, but Irma looked very happy in the photos. No one really knows if the relationship worked for her, but I hold the image in my mind as proof that for so many of us, doing the "wrong" thing can be the absolute rightest thing to do. I resolved to get on with being naughtier, wear better underwear, and never say no to a new experience, so long, in the words of author Roy Blount, it isn't "painful, faithless, or trashy."
So... stay up late. Talk to your friends until dawn. Buy tickets to Paris you can ill-afford. If you indulge in rich food, make sure it's excellent. Keep several bottles of wine on hand to go with the jigsaw puzzle of Pee Wee's Playhouse. Turn off the teevee and take a walk. Do stuff you want to do and avoid the things you don't. Instigate a few dumb-ass trips for yourself and your friends. Earl Warren once said, "Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for." I never had a chance to ask Irma if this applied to her, but it sure applies to me. Disapproval is a good gauge to measure whether you're doing the right thing, since most of your loved ones are going to be resistant to change and kvetch about your behavior no matter what. So I think I'll go out and catch a bit more hell before I go to bed. Where'd I put that spandex and spray paint?
- Leslie Strom Your Editor, who's thinking about writing a popular platitudes book called Chicken Soup for the About to Get Arrested Person's Soul.
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