Cold truth

There are a lot of things I’ve forgotten as I’ve gotten older, not to mention a few I’d like to forget.

Like that spontaneous date I went on with a very attractive temp receptionist I met at an agency I was working at that shall go unnamed. Wells Rich Greene.

Because I thought it’d be an impressive thing to do, we drove the ninety-five miles from L.A. to Santa Barbara for dinner and back. Had I put a little more thought into it, I would've realized just how long a drive that is after a hard day's work, not to mention a whole lot of conversation to fill with someone you don’t know. And the Chart House in Malibu would've worked just as well and had me home a lot earlier.

Live and learn.

I might be getting off topic here. We were on things I’ve forgotten.

One of them is how to be sick.

Last week, for the first time in over two years, I got sick. Really sick. It wasn’t covid, although at first I wasn’t sure. My symptoms — runny nose, sneezing, coughing, aching, mild difficulty catching my breath — were right in line with the dreaded 'rona virus. But come to find out the months and months of masking, keeping my distance from people, tons of hand sanitizer and washing my hands more obsessively than Howard Hughes paid off. After home testing every day for the last five days, I had what I like to call a case of novid.

It wasn’t that nasty flu going around either. Although some symptoms were similar, the telltale flu fever never arrived. It was some killer cold/respiratory/bronchial thing that saw me and decided since my immune system hadn’t had a real workout in a couple years I was an easy target.

Anyway, not being able to focus on much more than breathing and trying to score two-point shots lobbing used Kleenex from my bed to the trash can, I did something I haven’t done in years: I called in sick.

Calling in sick when you’re working a 100% remote is a different experience. In the before days when I had to commute to an office, calling in sick meant sweet relief from having to get ready, fight traffic and slog through the day.

Now it meant I didn’t have to walk from my bed to my desk.

Speaking of getting older, here’s another thing I noticed: I don’t bounce back as quick as I used to. Colds, even bad ones, were always a 24 or 48 hour ordeal tops. As I’m writing this, I’m on my seventh day of it, although it does seem to be easing up.

In between watching The Social Network twice a day on HBO and the third season of Dead To Me and Neal Brennan's comedy special Blocks on Netflix, besides what being sick is like I remembered another thing I'd forgotten.

Business goes on without me.

And it’ll all be there when I get back.

This one goes to eleven

We have a flatscreen television in our living room. And while flatscreens are known for their beautiful, realistic and highly detailed pictures, what they're also known for is their awful sound.

Apparently the doctor was out when they decided to put the speakers on the back of the flatscreen, facing backwards. Which would be bad enough under normal circumstances, but when the television is in a cabinet, all the dialogue sounds muffled and muddy.

Interesting fact: Muffled & Muddy was the title of my first album.

Anyway, as a result of bad speaker placement, when my family watches TV in the living room, in order to hear each other they have to scream what they're saying. And to hear anything coming out of the TV, they have to ramp up the poorly built, bad sounding speakers almost all the way to the breaking point. Then those little suckers become deafening, they sound distorted and they're virtually unlistenable.

And the speakers sound pretty bad too.

In order to alleviate the problem, we bought a Yamaha sound bar. It delivers high fidelity sound, except because the cabinet is the size it is, the sound bar has to sit behind the flat screen. But at least its speakers face forward.

The problem is no one ever bothers to turn it on. I guess since it's behind the TV and not really visible they forget it's there. That or learning a new button on the remote is too much to deal with.

I suppose we'll just keep blasting the tinny little TV speakers until they blow out, at which point we'll be forced to use the sound bar.

Or maybe just maybe one night, while it's late and we're fast asleep, elves will sneak in the house, take the flatscreen out of the cabinet and put it in its rightful place on the mantle, where the picture will look great, the sound won't be boxed in and dad will be really happy.

You never know. It could happen.