AUGUST 1998:

OWIE OWIE OW OW OW!!!

This isn't a Spew. This is simply me letting you know why there isn't a new Spew, and hasn't been one for a couple months. To begin with, I've been on a hellacious deadline with a new script. A deadline not made easier by the release of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, which sent my agent into a fit of "Get the script done in two days - I have the feeling somebody's gonna buy a comedy this week!" Which of course ignored the fact that they were probably not going to buy a crummy, unfinished comedy, especially one that shares very little in common with the Farrelly Brothers' film. Oy. Add in the fact that I've been battling a chronic, sleep-depriving cough for the better part of a month, only to have it diagnosed as 'acute bronchitis' (believe me, there's nothing too a-cute about what I've been a-coughing up) and you can understand why I haven't been in a mood to sit down and pump out yet another in my award-winning (well, in my mind anyway) series of Spews about the state of the movie biz. And that's before the shit really hit the fan...

So I'm out playing softball on a warm, humid Friday evening. My team is in the championships, which are held in a best-of-three format. It felt great to get outside, as I've been cooped up trying to hammer out this script (and hawk up lung cookies) for the past month. Our team wins the first game 23-7. Looks like an easy night. Looks can be deceiving, to say the least. Unfortunately, the other team's star pitcher, a guy capable of tossing the ball twenty-five feet in the air and hitting the plate for a strike each time, shows up for game two. In retrospect, this is what sealed my fate. It sealed my fate because the other team went on to win the second game, forcing a decisive third contest. Fuckers.

I call them fuckers because... well... because if they'd have just lost the second game and awarded us the championship none of what happened would've happened. (I realize this is not sound logic, but it's as sound as I'm-a gonna git.) Anyway, I'm at bat in the third or fourth inning, right? The guy pitches the ball, I swing, and the next thing I know my right leg exploded. Well, that's what it felt like. I grab the outside of my leg as I fall to the ground and realize that I'm holding my kneecap in my hand. I also realize - even though I'm no expert on anatomy - that said kneecap isn't supposed to be on the outside of my leg. To make a long story short, the ambulance came, my wife was called (upon hearing it was our team's manager on the line she said "He'd better be dead"), I was taken to the emergency room, and went through four hours of the worst pain I've ever gone through. Can you say 'dislocated patella'? You know an injury is bad when they cut your clothes off you, speaking gently and reassuringly the entire time, only to go 'eeeyewww' when they finally uncover your knee.

It was so bad that the doctor comes in and starts feeling the knee, right? This is the part where I'd heard other people who've had broken bones tell me they try to be all casual, like they're just gonna check it out and BANGO! they set the bastard when you're not ready. Well... he tried. But it just wasn't gonna go. That's when he told me they were gonna put me under 'conscious sedation'. Eh? What? What the hell is that? Isn't that a contradiction in terms, doc? He explains that 'conscious sedation' allows them to give you enough sedative to allow them to work on you, but not so much that they have to put you on life support, as with surgery. He went on to say I'd still be mostly conscious, but the drugs would induce amnesia, and I wouldn't remember a thing. Now I'm laying there, unable to move any part of my body without causing searing pain to shoot through my leg (You know the old song, 'The hip bone's connected to the leg bone...' and etc.? I learned that EVERYTHING'S connected to the frickin' knee bone!) and all I can think is, "This sounds like the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard". I mean, I'm a screenwriter, I know - amnesia never works!

Well, fortunately it did. I went from laying on my side in pain, to waking up on my back in no pain. Looking down at my knee, I noticed it was wrapped in an elastic bandage, and seemed to be back in its correct position. I even asked my wife, "Is my knee back in the right place?" She confirmed that it was, more or less. And since then I've been laying in bed in a brace, waiting anxiously for my appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to find out what, if any, soft tissue damage exists. I also went back to work that next day, finishing up our script before my partner left for a vacation to Michigan the following Wednesday (a trip to Michigan in August - who books his vacations, Dante?). So that's why there's no Spew coming until next month, kids. Sorry. It's been an exhausting, painful, depressing period for your little screenwriter friend here, and I'm just not really in the mood right now. I will say, however, that throughout this ordeal I have learned one thing...

... if anyone ever offers you some of that 'conscious sedation' drug, you say yes!

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