We saw the news story about the Florida Man who recently got busted by the cops in Ormond, Florida after he stole a BMW and when he was stopped for going 130 mph (about 5 mph over the local speed limit), he thanked the police for saving him from the extraterrestrials who evidently had teleported him into the BMW. Well, that explains everything!
This is just further evidence on top of what has already been thoroughly documented by Dave Barry in his 2016 documentary book, “Best State Ever; A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.”
Did you hear about the blackout in Florida?
People were stuck on the escalators for 4 hours.
I used to have a ton of Dave Barry books. I got hooked on his humor shortly after I graduated from Iowa State University back in the 1980s. I was in a post graduate program in Medical Technology in a Des Moines hospital and back then you could always find a newspaper on some tables in the cafeteria.
Over the years, I lost many of his books during moves. Sena would ask me something like “Do you really still want all these Dave Barry books?” I knew better than to say “These are very important examples of timeless prose exemplifying humor literature that will be excavated in the distant future by archaeologists who will preserve them in hermetically sealed glass bookcases so people can admire the covers.”
I just threw them out. Please don’t tell Dave.
Anyway, I have managed to preserve a photo of Florida Woman, taken in Miami many years ago. Let this be a lesson to you: never call your wife “Florida Woman” unless you want to live the rest of your life in a refrigerator packing box—although you can use duct tape to seal off those cracks to keep the wind and snow out.
Did you know there’s a song titled “Florida Man”? Believe it or not I heard it a couple of years ago on the Big Mo Blues Show on KCCK radio. It’s by Selwyn Birchwood who is from—that’s right, Tampa, Florida. The song was released by—you guessed it, Alligator Records.
And here’s Iowa Man:
Jim with 48 inch pusher plow shovel and new coverallsYou’re doing it wrong, man!Strong-and stupid!
I got an urge for a Hurts Donut so I walked on the Clear Creek Trail to Coralville get to the little hole in the wall shop. You can easily walk to several places in Coralville on the trail. Actually, I wanted to also check out the Coralville Public Library and see S.T. Morrison Park. I’ve never been to that park so it was a novelty all by itself.
It took about 45 minutes to walk to that part of town. It’s great exercise and beats the traffic. You have to walk under some railroad tracks and there’s a sign warning you not to stand in the culvert below while the train is passing over the top. I can see why.
There are funny signs in the rustic Hurts Donut shop. You can see the corny “Wanna hurts donut?” jokes on the walls. There’s another sign saying “School is important but donuts are importanter,” which reminds me of my coffee mug which says sort of the same thing about cribbage: “Education is important but cribbage is importanter.”
The Old-Fashioned donuts there are so good, but so bad for you. I had two.
The Coralville Public Library has a beautiful skylight. I haven’t been in a public library for ages and so it was fascinating to see that libraries haven’t changed much.
In fact, after I found one of Dave Barry’s books, “Dave Barry Book of Bad Songs,” (published in 1997; I had a copy but it got lost in a move) I asked one of the librarians about the old rule I learned as a kid. You might remember it too if you’re old enough. When you pick a book off the shelf and go to a reading room to look it over—can you just put it back on the shelf where you found it or do you have to give it the librarian who will reshelve it?
If you guessed that you have to give it to a librarian, you’re right and you’ve probably dated yourself. The librarian joked that some things never change. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Among the things that never change are the difficult to understand lyrics in some songs. Dave Barry wrote a whole chapter about it in the Book of Bad Songs, “Songs People Get Wrong.” He mentions one of them, which I always got wrong but never told anyone about it because it was embarrassing. It’s a lyric in the song “Blinded by the Light” that Barry said was done by Bruce Springsteen, but which I didn’t hear until Manfred Mann’s Earth Band covered it.
So, here’s my deal with that lyric. I always heard “wrapped up like a douche” instead of “revved up like a deuce.” Barry notes that many people made the same mistake. Funny thing, Barry never mentions what that common mistake is called and it’s a mondegreen (a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from mishearing the lyrics of a song). Music is important but mondegreens are importanter.
I finally saw Morrison Park and it’s a very restful place. You can contemplate the sculpture which is placed in the center of a pond. Ducks paddle around it. It’s called “Silver Lilly” and it was made by Professor Hu Hung-shu. Art is important.
Hey, how ‘bout them Nielsen’s surveys? I can’t remember getting any Nielsen media rating surveys before I retired and I’ve gotten two of them since then. They send you a crisp, new dollar bill in the mail to entice participation. More likely, it elicits guilt. You’d return the dollar bill but not in the mail, would you? Is this some kind of rite of passage or what?
Technically, you’re not supposed to talk about whether or not you participated in the survey, but I saw one blogger’s post about his radio diary survey. Is there a penalty for admitting you’re a part of “Nielsen Family”? Are there Nielsen Enforcers who come to your house and break your kneecaps while listening to the Godfather soundtrack through their earbuds if you don’t obey the rule?
One white commenter thought Nielsen just targets old white guys for some reason. Then a black commenter pointed out that Nielsen mails the surveys to old black guys too, so it didn’t have anything to do with skin color—and he did it with a sense of humor. He speculated that Nielsen might just target grouchy old retired guys with strong opinions because we remember what the value of a dollar bill was back in the day.
It reminded me of what I used to listen to on the radio in my younger days. Back then, the radio was what you had to use to listen to music. Well, there was a TV music show called American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark. The format was pretty much young couples dancing to the latest tunes while the camera panned over the dancers randomly. I remember watching it one day and noticing the camera was moving a lot less randomly and kept focusing on a young blonde woman in the crowd in the middle of the dance floor. That is, it did until she made a very lewd gesture which immediately led to a return to very random camera meandering—and possibly higher Nielsen ratings.
I listened to the radio a lot when I was a kid. One of the local radio stations was KRIB, which the announcer always pronounced “K-OW-I-B because he talked so fast. Many of the songs were bad, so bad that a humorist named Dave Barry published a book about it in 1997, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs. He’s a Miami Herald newspaper columnist who has written a lot of funny books. I had nearly all of them at one time, including the bad songs book. I have only a few now, including an autographed copy of one about getting older, Lessons from Lucy (2019).
One of the worst songs in my opinion was a 1976 tune “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. It’s actually a cover of a song by Bruce Springsteen. I kept hearing a lyric I definitely thought was “wrapped up like a douche,” which I swear I never shared with anybody nor looked up on the web (or as Dave Barry would say, “I swear I am not making this up.”) until just today to discover I’m far from the only person to hear that. I also found out that kind of error is called a “mondegreen” (a mishearing of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning). The actual lyric was “revved up like a deuce.” That was the kind of bad song Dave Barry wrote about—although I don’t remember that specific song being in his book.
Nowadays I listen to KCCK (88.3 FM) for blues and jazz. Years ago, I used to listen to Da Friday Blues show starting at 6:00 p.m. every Friday. It was hosted by John Heim, who is still doing the show, even after a devastating accidental neck injury which left him paralyzed from the neck down a few years ago. He was hospitalized at The University of Iowa and his family and friends donated a lot of money to help him get to a rehab center in Omaha, Nebraska. John actually retired from teaching in 2004, but has been a DJ at KCCK for years because music means so much to him. He’s a brilliant example to retirees everywhere.
There’s a lot more to radio than Nielsen ratings, no disrespect to Nielsen Families everywhere—and just a reminder, I have no kneecaps worth breaking.
I think a sense of humor is a wonderful thing. I was the
class clown in my youth. I remember my English teacher, Miss Piggott, wrote in
my report card that I was “A little too exuberant.”
Actually, I was a great deal too exuberant. My sense of humor tends to fall into the broad category of what author Dave Barry would call “booger jokes.” By the way, I just finished his latest book, Lessons from Lucy: The Simple Joys of an Old, Happy Dog. I highly recommend it. He mixes a little wisdom in with the booger jokes.
Dave Barry can do more than booger jokes.
As a psychiatrist, I’ve learned to look for a sense of
humor, exuberant or not, in the patients I’ve met. I point it out to them when
I think I detect it. They usually like hearing that. Only a very few are
nonplussed.
One of my teachers was George Winokur, MD, who everyone knows was a giant in psychiatric research. Dr. Winokur was the department chair at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 1971 to 1990 and had a unique and memorable style. I thought he had a fair amount of exuberance. He had a rolling, sort of gravelly laugh, especially during rounds when he would sometimes make a point of reminding trainees like me that we had a lot to learn, “You all don’t know how to diagnose Somatization Disorder!” I made sure I learned how.
When Winokur was department chair, he created a set of
“commandments” regarding personal behavior and comportment that have stood the
test of time. I don’t know if anyone else has tried to ensure that Winokur’s 10
Commandments be remembered, maybe even cast in a pair of stone tablets. Read
them and follow them.
Winokur’s 10 Commandments
Thou shalt not sleep with any UI Psychiatry
Hospital patient unless it be thy spouse.
Thou shalt not accept recompense for patient
care in this center outside thy salary.
Thou shalt be on time for conferences and
meetings.
Thou shalt act toward the staff attending with
courtesy.
Thou shalt write progress notes even if no
progress has been made.
Thou shalt be prompt and on time with thy
letters, admissions and discharge notes.
Thou shalt not moonlight without permission
under threat of excommunication.
Data is thy God. No graven images will be
accepted in its place.
Thou shalt speak thy mind.
Thou
shalt comport thyself with modesty, not omniscience.
More evidence that a sense of humor is prevalent amongst psychiatrists is the work some residents put into making a video (in two parts) about managing violent patients. I realize that the recent news stories about health care professionals often being the victims of violence from patients might make some think this is nothing to joke about. They were not joking. The video makes a good case for a method to manage the violent patient. It just makes it with an exuberant sense of humor.
Violent behavior by patients in the general hospital is often
caused by delirium. The proxy for delirium in the form of violence could be
what is called the “Code Green” here at our hospital.
The Code Green team at our hospital consists of a group of
people specially trained to use non-violent measures to help patients who are
violent get under control in order to minimize the risk of injury to themselves
and others. These events are often intense encounters in patient’s rooms,
hallways, lobbies, and other places in the hospital where patients who are
confused and out of control can wander. First and foremost, we try to contain
the patient to maintain everyone’s safety, and then ascertain why the patient
is confused and at risk for imminent violence or already perpetrating acts of
violent behavior toward themselves and others. This has to be done quickly so
as to minimize injury.
One mnemonic, described in my chapter in our book, Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry is [1]:
1. Amos, J.J., M.D., Assessment and management of the violent patient, in Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, J.J. Amos, M.D., and R.G. Robinson, M.D., Editors. 2010, Cambridge University Press: New York. p. 58-63.
Containment before
Assessment before
Non-violent
Intervention before
Take down
Shameless plug…
The so-called CAN IT mnemonic is a reference mainly to
containment before all else in order to protect everyone involved in a Code
Green situation. An excerpt from the chapter on the importance of containment
is:
“Containment refers to ensuring that you and the patient both feel relatively safe in the assessment area. Preferably, both of you should have easy access to the door for escape if necessary. At first, it may seem odd to recommend letting the patient escape from the room, but the point is not to force the patient to run over you to get to the door.
Another issue of containment is to ensure that the patient gives up any weapons before you agree to do the evaluation. Sometimes, offering food or drink (not hot enough to injure if hurled in your face) will help set a non-threatening atmosphere. It’s helpful to avoid making intense or prolonged eye contact with the patient, because this may be viewed as threatening.
Always make sure that plenty of other people are available to help you if a take-down situation develops.
Containment under these conditions sometimes is achievable by simply being honest with the patient who is still able to hear you by admitting that he/she is saying or doing things that make you afraid. This may seem counter-intuitive. But, provided it’s delivered calmly as a statement followed by reassurance that you and everyone else involved are committed to maintaining the safety of all persons present (including the patient), this may capitalize on the patient’s own fear of losing control by assuring that you’ll do everything in your power to keep the lid on the situation.”
You can see the exuberant YouTube videos below, illustrating
these principles made by talented trainees in our psychiatry residency program
in 2008.
In 2009, Dr. David Mair, MD was the producer and director of the video. I see he’s now with Innovative Psychological Consultants (IPC) in Maple Grove, MN (they get a lot of snow up there!). Below is his introduction to the videos:
Early in my training, I didn’t quite know how to react with potentially
violent patients. No amount of knowledge
of medicine, physiology, or the DSM provided me the skills to address these
situations. Though we had excellent
training during orientation, I really learned by observing skilled clinicians,
and through my own encounters, both good and bad. This was exemplified during my rotation in
consultation-liaison psychiatry, when working with Dr. Amos, to learn his
logical, step-wise approach, see him in these problematic scenarios, and to
practice what I had learned.
In making this educational video, I wanted to give incoming residents a
quick way to make these observations, and present it to them in a way that was
both useful and entertaining. It helped that I had a cadre of multi-talented
peers and a faculty supervisor who recognized the utility of such a
project. Though managing these patients will
be an eternal source of anxiety for all psychiatrists, my hope is that with
this video, they will feel just a little better prepared. —David Mair, MD.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 