Depression and Comedy... Birds of a Feather

Saw Wayne Brady's interview on ET is trending on here (you can find it easily, not gonna put a big picture sharing thing on here.  Text will do).  Comedy is often part of a program, a way to deal with people when we would rather be alone.  Most people would think it crazy that I'm an Introvert, that all the voices and meows and snarky remarks aren't to get attention at all, but as a part of my own mechanisms for living in this world.  I have depression (I've talked about taking Prozac many times, and it helps), and it's a brain chemical imbalance, something that, I think, most comedians have.  It's what divides the serious from the funny, one part of their personality from the other.  It's a program, just like Word or Netscape or Minesweeper is on a computer.  I've had people ask if I was ever suicidal... nope... I'm too self-centered for that.  Life is too wonderful and there is so much beauty in the world (not to mention good food) for me just to give in to all that negativity.  But I do know what Wayne Brady is talking about.  And I know that the comedy is just as important a part of my life as it is to Wayne's or Robin's (RIP) or anyone else that is funny.  The important part is not to silence it, not to say "you should act more serious, more grown up," but to understand that it's part of who I am, that I need to be funny just as I need to breathe, to eat, to pee.  Think of it as the by-product of whatever brain chemicals are going around up in my head.  That's not to say that "Shut Up Denzil" isn't a wonderful response. I need that, too.  That's the ADHD (same brain chemical imbalance, just like Robin or Jim Carey has) kicking in.  

I remember sitting in the center of my bed (at home in Georgia) with my room a mess, and needing to clean it up, and not knowing where to begin.  I can't tell you what day it was, like Wayne can, but I can remember it vividly.  After that, my family decided that I should go to a psychiatrist and she gave me Prozac, which helps, but a lot of the issues I had (and some still have... go ask me to balance my checkbook, see what response you get), had to work themselves out naturally, through time, through circumstances beyond my control.  I'm not over some of it yet, and obviously this past couple of years has helped in some way, but not in others.  You keep having those memories of difficult times that flash into your head when you're sitting at your desk at work, and you have to lock them back up in the filing cabinet, saying "That's the past, I can do nothing about it." It is best to think of the future, or of the present, of things you have control over.  The complexities of my mother's death, those are hard to deal with, even with the obviousness of it all, looking back.  But I can't do anything about any of that now, because I'm not a time traveller, nor would I want to if I could.  I have to learn from my experiences and continue my journey, now here in Dallas.  I've made decisions which I think will help me out in the future.  I also think that I have still other decisions I must make (weight, health, diet...etc.) which I will make in time (some of which is a direct result of the Prozac and the depression side effects).  But for now, I will go to work, and sit in on the conference call slated for today, and figure out how to get Dr. Pepper stocked into our coolers (cause, you know, it's Dr. Pepper!!), and I will come home and read and make snarky remarks on Facebook, and Martin will tell people not to encourage me, which is quite all right, it wouldn't be him if he didn't. I'll continue down this road, and whatever I'm supposed to do with my life (which I'm sure writing these blogs are a part of it) will present itself, as it always has.  

Teletubbies and the Apocalypse.

Everyone wakes up at 3 in the morning. At least, from the Tweets and Facebook statuses I've seen, it's all "Awake again, sigh..." And no doubt Fox News put Red Eye on at exactly that time, as it's ratings are often more than shows on during prime time. Take the scene in Psychonauts where everyone's brain is stolen. They awake from their total lobotomy with the only urge being to watch TV. But I digress. And I usually have ESPN on, for Sportscenter is about as mind numbing as you can get, but at 3 they switch over to a replay of whatever game they had going the night before. So I turn it over to Fox News, for if I'm going to be brainwashed, I might as well use something I agree with. Or I'll have it on the Disney Channel, where I watch their brilliant sitcoms.

So it's on this particular night that I wake up at 4 hearing this loud squeaking noise coming from the tube. It's on Disney Channel, and they have switched to their little kids programming, where blobs of computer generated bubbliness bounce around with nothing to say but squeaks and squawks, utter foolishness. Even those shows that claim to be educational are enough to make a sane person want to go on a rampage. I usually wake up to Little Einsteins, and I only hope I can find the remote and switch it before any of my brain cells die.

Whatever happened to the shows like Sesame Street, or Electric Company, where the shows actually did educate as well as entertain. I know that Postman decried the usage of 30 second educational commercials that were spliced together to make Sesame Street. But looking at the cognitive processes of children growing up during the age of Television, it's obvious that most children now learn visually, from quick flashes of information through colorful lights and stimulating sounds. It's a wonder that everyone doesn't have ADHD in one form or another. But it's better to have some educational value than none at all. It's the advent of education in the MTV generation. Entertaining, disconnected, flashy, and relatively shallow.

I think the change harbors back to the hit show Teletubbies. Let Falwell and Robertson complain all they want about the purple one with the purse, the real problem about this, and other, shows, is what Harold Bloom called the Closing of the American Mind. Let's not even attempt at learning, but let's put together a show whose only purpose is to keep the children stimulated and, most importantly, quiet. At this point (and followed up by Barney), Television became a babysitter, something for parents to use to escape their own children. And that's necessary, perhaps, but not because the children have no discipline at all. And when we do use TV in this manner, shouldn't there be something on that at least marginally educates or molds a child's mind in other ways than bright lights and visual stimuli? Give me the early Nickelodeon shows Mr. Wizard's World or even Blue's Clues. Now there was a good, educational show on the level with Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

***
I had a couple of complaints about the lineup on Disney. I never got up at all before 6am, although I guess at that time the TV stations that we had didn't come on before 6. Now, with hundreds of channels and 24 hour broadcasting, there is always something on for almost any demographic. But nothing that I want to watch, or at least, nothing I want on in the background while I sleep. And I certainly don't want something on at 4am with loud squeaky noises. I guess I could use music, and have in the past, but it just doesn't work as well. I did try some of the Internet radio stations, with New Age music, but they used some music with Native American chants on them, and they can get loud. But I digress. My point is that Disney should put something on that isn't toddler related in the middle of the night. I'm sure there are reasonable, even useful reasons for that, but for me, personally, it's annoying.

Also, Disney has a huge library of specials, series, movies, etc... that it can use to entertain people of all ages at all times of the night. I remember back in the 90's when Disney would show episodes of Zorro and other black and white shows for the older generation. And that is something they should consider doing again. They have a Disney for toddlers, Disney Jr., one for boys, XD, and the regular programming for Tweens. So let's have a Disney channel for adults.



Good, wholesome family shows based on the huge library of media that Disney already owns. It would be a good channel to fall asleep to, and would rival Nick at Nite in variety and in ratings. Let's not forget about the older generations, even as we gear toward the young folk with their credit cards and their flashy, short attention spans.

A Rubber Ball in a Tile Bathroom

"A rubber ball bounced high in a tile bathroom." That's what Grady Lee Nutt called one of his friends in a comedy skit. I can relate. Take a look at the comedy ramblings of Robin Williams, and you can almost see his brain bouncing around in his head, cultural and historic references combining as atoms do in a super-collider. I'd love to see his dreams, if his brain is that active, it would be a thrill indeed to see what is mind comes up with when all barriers are taken down. Dennis Miller is another example. The only problem with him providing insight on MNF was that his comparisons were so far above those of the average football watcher.

You can go to any website about ADD and find a list of the most important and intelligent people who were said to have the condition (I say condition because "disorder" is too negative, and "disease" is outrageous), from Einstein to Mark Lowry. I wonder if it's a natural side effect from increased brain chemicals and firing neurons that keep a brain working and making connections. Maybe we work our brains so hard that it has to stop and reset sometimes. Like a person with high blood sugar, the lows needed to balance the highs are sometimes not pleasant.

I know from personal experience what living with ADD is like. I'll be walking along, taking a customer to a book, and by the time I get to where I'm going, I've forgotten the title. Or keeping a checkbook. You can ask the bank, which has gotten filthy rich over my transgressions on that subject. My mom found a report on a prominent ADD website that showed how people with ADD could not handle money, or credit, well at all. It was (and has been) a constant struggle. Possibly because anything that keeps us from reaching our goals and dreams is quite easily ignored. Of course, that does not rid ourselves of those obstacles, it just keeps us from seeing them until it's too late. Then there's the depression and lethargic moments, the need to eat to keep up energy, the times when the mind is doing backflips, but the body is tired (Lowry).

But the advantages of having ADD far outweighs the negatives. I can memorize large amounts of data, inventory stock, and the like. I can pull out information that has been lying dormant in my head for years, and surprise everyone while watching Jeopardy. I sincerely believe that ADD is simply a state of a brain adapting to the massive amounts of stimuli that this world throws at us everyday. The people that can hadle it become productive members of society. Those that can't, well...

Actually, though, I wanted to talk about those highs and lows. Modern Psychologists would say that the best thing for people to do is to keep things in moderation. Keep everything level, and the doctors are quick to give people medicine to help them do just that. I am not dissing Prozac. It's my friend and helps me to keep the lows a little less frequent. But I feel sorry for the people who have zombied themselves into a state of banality. Without the need to experience those highs, nothing worthwhile can be reached. No goals, no dreams, no joys or sorrows. And then what is your life like? One could spend a whole lifetime traveling roads with no hills, no valleys, as straight as the plains of Kansas, and they would see nothing and experience nothing. But the traveler standing on the heights of the world, as in the Caspar David Fredrich painting (see my "About Me" part of Myspace), or the monk looking out at the vast seascape and looking up at the sky and feeling insignificant, as in another Friedrich painting, would experience joys and despair, but would be experiencing something. Would you have died, not having lived?

There is more about this subject, examples in literature, contemporary culture, etc... but I'll let that go for another day. I just finished reading Dove by Robin Lee Graham, and I'll want to do a short review of that next. Wonderful book.

[Addendum: After a not so good night sleep, my brain reached into the filing cabinets and realized that I had quoted Nutt wrong. The proper quote is: "A golf ball hit full swing in a tile bathroom." But the title image works as well. I love those bouncy-ball things you get from grocery store vending machines. Mine always wound up bouncing behind the washer and dryer. ]