“It shouldn’t make sense,” Crankensten said, staring quizzically at what I’d just shown her. Finally, with a bemused head shake, she concluded “But it does.” She was referring to this beautiful work of art I’d created years ago to illustrate the differences between IBD and IBS, which couldn’t be more disparate despite the frequency with which they’re confused.
“I believe Artforum called it ‘an abstruse diptych cri de coeur whose seemingly rudimentary juxtaposition of sitcom imagery deliberately invites comparisons to Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor,’ while Roberta Smith understood it was more rhetorically aligned with the central argument of Regarding the Pain of Others — that one can never fully comprehend horrors they haven’t endured,'” would’ve been my thoroughly nonsensical response if we hadn’t again been interrupted by the phone.* (It wasn’t reviewed anywhere, of course, and was made for something stupid.)
What reminded me of this portrait of the brothers Van Dyke was Jerry’s guest appearance on the Newhart episode we’d just paused. Since the series was removed from Amazon days before we finished The Bob Newhart Show, we’ve been watching it on heavily-scratched DVDs from the library.** I’d forgotten that Peter Scolari and Julia Duffy weren’t original cast members (and have enjoyed Steven Kampmann’s performance as pathological liar Kirk Devane so much that I’ll be sorry to see him depart at the end of season two), but what’s more relevant here is that I soon felt like Jerry myself when Crankenstein’s Church Mom started yapping at her over speakerphone.
After they caught up on recent events, with back-and-forth about how so-and-so’s getting their PhD here and Crankenstein’s funding comes from XYZ there, Church Mom hesitantly asked “And how is [Cranky]? What’s she been working on lately?” What have I been working on lately, besides a long-neglected review of a Judith Light/Rhea Perlman movie and empty promises of Janis Paige content? Nothing we’d tell her about, even if there was something worth sharing: for the entirety of our relationship, I’ve asked Crankenstein not to mention any specifics about my writing to our families, who I don’t want nosing around my pseudonymous work.
But there’s less to discuss now than there’s been in the past, which hurts. I’ve been uneasy with the naked snobbishness of Church Parents and others from Crankenstein’s church practically since the moment(s) our paths first crossed, but it never bothered me on a personal level until tonight — probably in no small part because I’d just opened a piece of mail about my upcoming disability hearing. “Achievement vultures,” we privately call congregants who are more keenly interested in which Ivy you attended and the nature of your professional degree than whether you’ve ever kicked a dog or stolen from a UNICEF donation box. What could I possibly offer them? There’s nothing left of me to nibble.
By the late 1980s Jerry Van Dyke had been reduced to a guest appearance on Charles in Charge and a minor role in a Frank Stallone movie. His fortunes changed in early 1989, when Coach premiered on ABC and began its interminable run. For his contributions to 800 episodes, or whatever the hell it spawned (199 episodes across nine seasons, according to IMDb), he was rewarded with four Emmy nominations that Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends never would’ve predicted. Maybe my Luther Van Dam is just around the corner and I’ll be able to proudly meet the gaze of all the new achievement vultures who’ve joined Crankenstein’s church. Hell, I’d settle for Big Lots commercials.^
* Sontag and I shared a birthday and unfortunate hair, and I was one of those insufferable kids who read Against Interpretation while my classmates tried to avoid teen pregnancy, but I suspect rereading her as an adult would lead to many frustrated “oy”s. Incidentally, it cracks me up now to think back on the books I used to read in front of my parents, who weren’t curious about any of it. If my teen sat at the dinner table with their head in Discipline and Punish, I’d remove it from their hand and say, “OK, Bernard-Henri Lévy, tell me about your day.”
** A complete series release is long overdue; the menus on the standalone seasons are terribly antiquated and the image quality is awful.
^ I’m aware of Big Lots’ tragic fate, but some of its locations are expected to remain open.