January 20, 2005

• Oh my loyal readers, it is not just you who must endure these doses of surreality.

  
  

  Today I ended up skippin class (2 hours of biochem, 1 of physio) to go down to the city for a taping of

  
  

  JERRY SPRINGER!

  
  

  

  
  

  Yes, I woke up at 7:00 AM to join Deepa, Talayeh and Angie in being “trailer trash for a day”

  
  

  Haha no…we actually all got dressed up nicely to go see Springer…counterintuitive I know, but wait the story gets ever so much better.

  
  

  The car ride down was awesome as we were all pumped and saying all the comments we were gonna make like “You aint nothin but a hoochie mama” (hood rat, hood rat, hoochie mama!) or the your Mama jokes we would make (so fat, she has her own zip code) and lame med school jokes we would make (hey you, with the stippled epiphyses! Why you dating buffalo hump over there?)

  
  

  Heh, I still like that…hey you with the stippled epiphyses…go ahead say it out loud. Stippled is one of those words that is just musical to my ears, and I like to say it…it basically means your bones have a bunch of little holes in them, caused by a lack of thyroid and consequently growth hormone.

  
  

  We now return you to your regularly scheduled meandering

  
  

  We finally got down to the city, to NBC tower near The Magnificent Mile in Chicago, and got into line. Naturally we started people watching in line to see what kind of freaks, geeks, and weirdos would come to see an episode of Springer (us excepted of course…we were normal, we just figured it would be an experience, everyone else is weird, yes that’s it)

  
  

  There were some nascar dads, many a heavy person, more busted grills than a monster truck show, the occasional normal looking person, and some granny/motherly looking types that clearly had to have come to the wrong taping. I wanted to tell them, no grandma, Judge Mathis is the line next to us…but again, I get ahead of myself

  
  

  Got in, and sat in the waiting room for an hour, just chatting about random things and again making a bunch of jokes that only other med students would get, so i shall not bore you with the details…however, i do mention that some of the nascar dad types were sitting behind us and had ears like a bat….we were not talking that loud, but they were making comments based off everythng we said among themselves…even funnier, they were totally misunderstanding most of what we said

  
  

  So they finally brought us into the studio and we were given very specific seats. Here is where dressing nicely and being well groomed came to our advantage.

  
  

  ASK ME WHERE I SAT!

  
  

  ASK ME AGAIN!

  
  

  FRONT ROW BABY! OH YEAH

  
  

  I know it is probably bad to be excited about this, but cmon, as long as we were all doing something we wouldnt ordinariy do, might as well go the whole nine yards, right?

  
  

  Perhaps I should mention something else I noticed after the studio began to fill up. To put this in the least condescending way possible, there seemed to be a direct relationship between stage proximity seating, and attractiveness

  
  

  i.e., we were hot, so they put us up near the camera

  
  

  Alright, I should get on to the actual show for those of you who have not left my site shaking your heads in disgust yet. Although considering the random smut i throw up here, if the fact i went to Jerry Springer disgusts you, i would be surprised

  
  

  So This guy named todd comes out and gives us the skinny (haha some people could have used more than others….ZING! Naughty Josh, Naughty) on the show lowdown. Such as when he cues us we all stand up and clap, when we should shout Jerry, when we should cheer, or chant whore, along with other stuff.

  
  

  Then Jerry came out and did his monologue. I dont think they taped it, it was just for us, but it was quite amusing. One of the better parts was near us in the front row was a group of 4 girls who couldnt have been more than a year out of high school at most, had one member who was not all there.

  
  

  Girl: Jerry, what’s today’s show about?
  Jerry: It’s about an hour.
  {laughter}
  Jerry: No seriously, if i tell you it takes away the spontaneity…yu will find out soon
  Girl: No, I meant, what is the topic of todays show
  Jerry: *blank look* You and I are gonna get along real well

  
  

  Yeah, so then we moved on from that to the first guest. Since they didnt make us sign a waiver, it should be fine to tell you about it. Were any of you planning to watch the Springer show anyway? I didn’t think so

  
  

  So the topic ended up being something along the lines of …our relationship is over! yada yada yada

  
  

  1)There was a gay guy who had got drunk and slept with his overweight roomate, but wanted to stay with his transexual homosexual lover, but he/she was having none of it

  
  

  2)There was a blond whose b/f decided to leave her to go back to his ex

  
  

  3)There was a morbidly obese woman whose friend the “town whore”, also orca fat, had stolen morbidly obsese’s b/f

  
  

  I will briefly highlight each snippet for you.

  
  

  1) Nothing really exciting, except the transexual looked SCARY! :-0

  
  

  2) Blondie opened up with Jerry, my b/f and I are really serious and have been together a long time. Jerry asked how long…she answered…ready? 2 months!

  
  

  *If this seems like a long time to any of you out there in internetland, I am sorry, but I have long flings, so the idea it was serious after this length seems patently ridiculous*

  
  

  So she confronted b/f who seemed decent…..he said he decided he just didnt feel for blondie and wanted to get together with his ex again…hadn’t been sleeping around, it just the decision he made…blondie didnt like it…she cold-cocked (punched) other girl. Hard. Now I realize that most of this show is staged (more on that later…always later! you say) but believe me, blondie connected with this one…ex g/f had to be taken offstage for a while to reapply makeup to cover the bruise she will have tomorrow

  
  

  While ex was gone, blondie went off on a rampage among whose more memorable lines was, is she gonna help you get your college degree!

  
  

  *Note: I respect education…the reason this is funny follows*

  
  

  Jerry, who with the cameras not on him had clearly tuned out of his own was off daydreaming with the mike in his hand…at which point while blondie was biyotch-slapping b/f and made the college remark, one of the bouncer guys who pulls people apart stage whispered “Jerry!”

  
  

  Jerry snapped out of his reverie, and fixating on college, asked blondie what b/f was majoring in. Blondie has a loooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnggg pause, then responded…Boxing.

  
  

  *Tangent: My brother has decided after watching Naruto the anime he wants to major in “Ninja” using one of those design your own major programs. Picture that in your head…double majoring in film and ninja. back to post*

  
  

  So Jerry gave up on blondie and asked b/f what he was majoring in…he responded with the slightly more believable…I want to go to college and become a motorcycle repairman…good for him! End of that segment

  
  

  The third segment was the worst.  Morbid Obese said her friend was town whore. Her friend came out and agreed with her. i.e. orca fat said she was the town whore and pround of it. This frightened me…somewhere out there is an entire town that has slept with this woman. then Todd (the stage director guy) indicated we should start chanting town whore, which if you think about it is downright mean spirited…but everyone did it and the woman reveled in the attention. Very sad. It was honestly hard to be amused at that and I was kinda disappointed in myself for going to the show…but dont call me hypocrite just yet…I still went and wouldnt have changed that I did, I just thought it was in poor taste.

  
  

  Anyway, this skinny little guy comes out acting all sleazy and fights between all three of them ensue. However articles of clothing were torn off in these fights and things like why would he want you when he has this were said and there was a lot of flashing of things that should not have been flashed, especially to impressionable young eyes in the front row (mine). It was like looking into a solar eclipse…my retinas were burned. The guy nearby was like…its like looking at a train wreck isn;t it? you cant look away.

  
  

  So.Very. True.

  
  

  In another not surprising turn of events, some of the flashing is staged. While morbidly obese was done flashing her chest, she got pushed by orca. She turned around and in the audience we clearly heard one of the bouncers stage whisper to morbid “Moon the audience!”

  
  

  Audience: Yeahhhh!
  Me: Oh please no.

  
  

  Shallow of me? perhaps…but trust me, you didnt want to see it either. train wreck people, train wreck.

  
  

  I will omit the rest of the flashing of that segment, but there was way too much.

  
  

  Next was comments. If you are unfamiliar with the Jerry Springer show, this is the part where we all get to say stuff to the cast members, and or get jerry beads.

  
  

  Jerry Beads are like Mardi Gras Beads. If you flash Jerry, you get them. I will briefly sum it up this way: Ow. My. Eyes. There were people there who should not have been flashing because they were

  
  

  A) old (remember grandma who I thought had jerry confused with judge mathis? nope.)
  B) heavy (i didnt want to see it from the actors, i dont want to see it from you)
  C) did not have anything to flash (also sad)
  D) some combination of the above

  
  

  Regardless, they did. There were some comments made to the contestants too. The best one was to the guy who was dating/sleeping with the two heavy women:

  
  

  Hey man, aren’t you worried that bouncing between those two cows you gonna get mad cow disease?

  
  

  This was funnier than it should have been because we just learned about this in class. I really wanted to start chanting BSE! BSE! (Bovine Spongiform Encephaly), but I did not.

  
  

  Jerry Ended with his parting thought…soemthing about how people have to know when the relationship is over and let it go. Her is my take

  
  

  I saw a lot of examples of dysfunctional people today. Both onstage and in the audience. Entertaining though they may seem, we really should not be taking such delight in other people’s misery, staged or not. I am not placing myself above the bar here either…by going I was just as bad, however I justify it. Noentheless, every once in a while, people need to break away from their routines and do something out of character, even if it is not something that would be totally admirable. SO there is my rationalization

  
  

  Afterward, went out to lunch at a diner, and then came back home, took a nap, and yep you guessed it, studied. I know, I am lame. Also bought a carbon monoxide detector, since Deepa was telling us the other day how she came back to her apartment and it reeked of gas. Gas company guy came to check it out, said she had a leak from her stove, her furnace was broken, and furnace filter hadn’t been changed in years, oh and she had more than trace amounts of CO in her place. The maintenance guy for our apartment complex on the other hand told her nothing was wrong (before the gas guy was there obviously).

  
  

  How dorky are med students? When she found out carbon monoxide (CO) was in her apartment, in addition to worry her first thought was “OMG I’m left shifting!”

  
  

  That is a reference to the graph of the Hemoglobin Saturation Curve, a physio thing.

  
  

  So yeah, so the ineptness of the management could have done her serious harm, and then how would she have gone to Jerry with us? Shout out and thanks to her btw, for securing tix and inviting me, all my self righteous blatherng aside, i had a great time

  
  

  SO long story short, I freaked out, and had the gas guy check my stove (starts with a little more fuel than it should, but fine) and bought a CO detector of my own

  
  

  Yes I am becoming an old man. Oh well.

  
  

  Tomorrow it is back to my regularly scheduled life. Hope you all enjoyed my day as much as I did

  
  

  -J

  
  

  Josh is too hot for TV

  • 12:51 am
  • 7 Comments