Matt Said...Jay Said 2.1

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Matt exfoliates….Jay sweeps up the dead skin because it's gross.  You listen.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDZusQ0sR8uVWxdMoVt2TTgfVI-NyhlrO6Dkpio0_lzxLI1ccEeMWiz5Mmr7O-kMu2Bpt8kbBy-4MwHwrmWdwOp3sOY7dzRggbCHM8E0_5mFkXuYhKGCVGLry43yLcckknui-bmiaUGM/s1600/Schmoop's+Busch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDZusQ0sR8uVWxdMoVt2TTgfVI-NyhlrO6Dkpio0_lzxLI1ccEeMWiz5Mmr7O-kMu2Bpt8kbBy-4MwHwrmWdwOp3sOY7dzRggbCHM8E0_5mFkXuYhKGCVGLry43yLcckknui-bmiaUGM/s400/Schmoop's+Busch.JPG" width="215" /></a>Jay:  No kiddin’ around tonight.  How’s Schmoop?<br />Matt:  Easy fella.  She’s only been in the hospital for four days, you don’t expect to know anything after a mere 96 hours do you?<br />Jay: Well, let me think………Yes!!<br />Matt:  Eh…We don’t know squat other than her bill is probably about 15 Grand by now and they haven’t even done anything.<br />Jay:  Ouch…That’s a serious affliction to overcome.  She may never recover.<br />Matt:  IKR?<br /><br />Jay:  So how’d the surgery go?<br />Matt:  Well…It didn’t work.  The procedure they used couldn’t open the plugged bile duct.<br />Jay:  That’s sucks.  I hate to see a person, let alone a bile duct, unable to be free.<br />Matt:  I guess they are trying a different procedure today.  It’s gonna be straight through the stomach.<br />Jay:  Well, that’s better than a rear assault<br />Matt:  Oh trust me, she would never go for that.<br />Jay:  Even if it made her better?<br />Matt:  Nooooo.  I have been trying to breach her rear for years and she refuses to open that levee.<br /><br />Jay:  Sad.  Soooooo?  Can she call in on Sunday’s show from the hospital?<br />Matt:  Ha.  This is what the ultimate bullshit is.  If it goes well today, she may be released in order to come home Sunday prior to the big surgery that they think they may want to do.<br />Jay:  Screw that.  We need her to call into Sunday’s show from the hospital.  Fucking outrageous!!<br />Matt:  IKR?  Oy Vey.<br />Jay:  This medical crew sounds like the same screwed up staff at Blog Talk Radio.<br />Matt:  I know.<br /><br />Jay:  By the way…What should we talk about on Sunday’s show?<br />Matt:  I had a great idea.  We could do a Halloween Spooktacular!!<br />Jay:  Not bad, but shouldn't that be our Wednesday show?  This Wednesday<b><i> is </i></b>Halloween.<br />Matt:  Oh it is, isn't it?<br />Jay:  Being the numbers guy that you are, I find it amusing that calendars confuse you.<br />Matt:  Is today Thursday or Friday?<br />Jay:  Yes.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4jbCejOjyikxWDvHIfVGCTM4tPFjVb4dEFd-z-2iJSLKYE8wlPzpkn_jKbYsla4nAmZvU1LUJ2xcuSeXGYBveUnsciOENcoxJ15MbRdQPlI9yMw0A3poT6dJ0XzHmY3UzW0rbqD76l0/s1600/Hot+Phone+Call.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4jbCejOjyikxWDvHIfVGCTM4tPFjVb4dEFd-z-2iJSLKYE8wlPzpkn_jKbYsla4nAmZvU1LUJ2xcuSeXGYBveUnsciOENcoxJ15MbRdQPlI9yMw0A3poT6dJ0XzHmY3UzW0rbqD76l0/s320/Hot+Phone+Call.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><br />Jay:  How ’bout this…We are in limbo with Schmoop, so we could just wing it and beg people to call in?<br />Matt:  They really should.  We <b><i>are</i></b> the Number One BTR Comedy show every week and deserve callers.<br />Jay:  IKR?  They could call in…wish Schmoop well…talk about Halloween, and tell us how sexy we are.<br />Matt:  I like it, and it requires little thought or preparation on our part, which I love!!<br />Jay:  Ha…Genius!!  Another Number One Show in the making!!<br /><br />Matt:  Gonna be huge, IF…Our diverse and worldwide audience decides to call-in and chime in.<br />Jay:  For once, this show is not on our shoulders…it’s on theirs.<br />Matt:  Damn right.  Talk to you on Sunday.<br />Jay;  Okay…Give Schmoop a grope for me.<br />Matt:  Will Do.<br /><br />And if you'd like to catch the next IWS Radio Show LIVE this Sunday at NOON ET, you can click right <i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/im-with-stupid/2012/10/28/open-line-sunday" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</span></i></div>

Matt Said...Jay Said 2.1

Matt exfoliates….Jay sweeps up the dead skin because it's gross.  You listen.Jay:  No kiddin’ around tonight.  How’s Schmoop?Matt:  Easy fella.  She’s only been in the hospital for four days, you don’t expect to know anything after a mere 96 hours do…

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Fair Trade

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iByvi2HX30YjW_hsrS63BEGVldy-651WGwXp2ybKZt6TkJyTVkaJwZHB1-NNm9JxWPtcgaXoHo-wnuVteiVBs4fWzdXPE0llycTr18BXbH5-gJwUfI-pMik_Y_2w1nML-2ugvXNKrdw/s1600/mail+call.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0iByvi2HX30YjW_hsrS63BEGVldy-651WGwXp2ybKZt6TkJyTVkaJwZHB1-NNm9JxWPtcgaXoHo-wnuVteiVBs4fWzdXPE0llycTr18BXbH5-gJwUfI-pMik_Y_2w1nML-2ugvXNKrdw/s320/mail+call.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhraqmahGb3mH4ocO9eVPNIPdutxmcWNFmtNIvZ1ZyVjFCEmMe78OK65g_y32MJM18MvxCzHfUTqNTTsKBdXFoh_n_pZzh3YoHyWdtIQ79p2uCRmTo0aUiYbxmR97V0Qcj2BmKQLP8bxHA/s1600/fair+trade+perk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhraqmahGb3mH4ocO9eVPNIPdutxmcWNFmtNIvZ1ZyVjFCEmMe78OK65g_y32MJM18MvxCzHfUTqNTTsKBdXFoh_n_pZzh3YoHyWdtIQ79p2uCRmTo0aUiYbxmR97V0Qcj2BmKQLP8bxHA/s320/fair+trade+perk.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">After coming home from work today I was very surprised to see this mail haul! I am member of Klout where I get to test and keep products. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Being Fair Trade month I received this box full of wonderful organic snacks and drinks. I love coffee and chocolate. It works great together. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Since I had coffee already today I tore off the candy wrapper as soon as I saw the Noir chocolate bar. I was hesitant at first to try it. Then I thought hey why not! </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">So I did just that and I was shocked on how yummy it was! I loved how it didn't melt and most of all I loved the chocolate taste because it was sweet and not too bitter. I can't wait to try everything else! </div>

Fair Trade

After coming home from work today I was very surprised to see this mail haul! I am member of Klout where I get to test and keep products. Being Fair Trade month I received this box full of wonderful organic snacks and drinks. I love coffee and chocol…

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Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

<strong>Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation</strong>  - <span style="color: #48286d;"><strong>E.C. Scranton Memorial Library</strong></span> in Madison, CT, part of the 25 library LION Consortium, seeks an individual with strong technical and computer skills to join our Technical Services and Circulation Department (part-time, 25-30 hours/week). Duties include assisting the Head of Technical Services/Circulation with maintaining and troubleshooting the Library’s Integrated Library System, public and staff networks, running statistical reports, copy cataloging, processing of library materials, working at the Circulation and Information Desks, and assisting Library members with computer questions and other electronic devices such as tablets and e-readers. Qualified applicants must possess an Associate’s or Bachelor’s Degree, Internet and computer networking and software experience, excellent customer service skills, a strong attention to detail and the ability to handle multiple tasks in a busy library setting. Public library experience and a working knowledge of the Millennium iii integrated library system a plus. Salary is $19.90 per hour and includes paid vacation, sick time and retirement benefits. No healthcare benefits are associated with this position. Schedule includes evenings and rotating Saturday and Sunday hours. Please send resume to: Beth Crowley, Library Director, E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, P.O. Box 631, Madison, CT 06443 or email to <a _fcksavedurl="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org" href="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org">scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org</a>. Closing date: <span style="color: red;">November 16th, 2012</span>.

Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation  - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library in Madison, CT, part of the 25 library LION Consortium, seeks an individual with strong technical and computer skills to join our Technical Services and Circulati…

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Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

<strong>Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer</strong> - <span style="color: #48286d;"><strong>E.C. Scranton Memorial Library</strong></span>, located in the beautiful coastal town of Madison, CT, seeks a dynamic, forward-thinking librarian to join our Adult Services Department (full-time, 35 hours/week). Duties include collection development, assisting Library members with reference and reader’s advisory questions, and providing instruction in the use of online databases, downloadable e-book and audiobook collections, and electronic devices such as tablets and e-readers. This position is also responsible for planning, publicizing and implementing library programs for adults as well as collaborating with the Children and Teen Services Librarians to provide multi-age, library-wide programs. Qualified candidates must have an MLS from an ALA-accredited institution, familiarity with current trends in library services and programs for adults, excellent customer service skills, knowledge of print and electronic resources, experience with Internet and computer software, strong written and verbal communication skills, and the ability to work across library divisions. Public library experience and a working knowledge of the Millennium iii integrated library system along with basic public relations and marketing experience a plus. Recent graduates are encouraged to apply. Salary is $48,230 with generous health, vacation, and retirement benefits. Schedule includes evenings and rotating Saturday and Sunday hours. Please send resume to: Beth Crowley, Library Director, E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, P.O. Box 631, Madison, CT 06443 or email to <a _fcksavedurl="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org" href="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org">scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org</a>. Closing date: <span style="color: red;">November 16th, 2012</span>.

Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, located in the beautiful coastal town of Madison, CT, seeks a dynamic, forward-thinking librarian to join our Adult Services Department (full-time, 35 hours/week). Duties…

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Current Health News | HealthDay

The HealthDay news service, a division of ScoutNews, LLC, provides daily health news for both consumers and medical professionals. <br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://consumer.healthday.com/">http://consumer.healthday.com/</a><br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://www.physiciansbriefing.com">http://www.physiciansbriefing.com</a>

Current Health News | HealthDay

The HealthDay news service, a division of ScoutNews, LLC, provides daily health news for both consumers and medical professionals. http://consumer.healthday.com/http://www.physiciansbriefing.com…

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My Multiday Massage-a-Thon - NYTimes.com

<base href="data:"><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">About a month ago, editors from this magazine, which employs me, and from which I am therefore loath to turn down assignments even when they are horrifying, assigned me to get a series of massages and other body treatments here in the coastal town where I live, Wilmington, southeastern N.C., Port City of Progress and Pleasure. There was a semi-legitimate journalistic impulse behind it, but it was also billed as an act of mercy. I'd been traveling and writing a lot for them, spending a lot of time in middle seats on international flights, and my body had reached new levels of vileness. The yellowish gray-green circles under my eyes had a micropebbled texture, and my skin gave off a sebaceousy sheen of coffee-packet coffee. My calves had developed a vague thrombotic throb. It was the kind of premature aging where you think, I'll come back from this but not all the way.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">When you feel like that, you don't leap to be naked in rooms with an assortment of strangers while they rub their hands all over your bare flesh — there's probably a fetish group for becoming as physically disgusting as you can and then procuring massages, but that's not my damage. Also, there's something about massage in general that makes me less, not more, relaxed. The boredom of it, the entrapment. Like you, probably, I know a couple of people who go around parties rubbing other people's backs, and I cringe at their approaching hands. One of these shoulder-pirates laughed at me for it once, after I flinched, telling me I needed to "learn to receive love," and I thought, That's probably true, I'd bet I do. Faux-wise passive-aggressive hippie maxims always seem true and wounding in the moment.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Still, everyone, including my mother, who was visiting, said: "Your job! To get paid to get massages!" So I tried to embrace that. It seemed churlish not to. Even my body deserved to be touched, to be kneaded and ministered to. I drove around town checking out different places — only a couple looked sketchy; I think Wilmy has a pretty light scene when it comes to massage of the highway-billboard variety. I made a few appointments and then canceled them. Massage and I were just teasing each other.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Then one morning, inevitably, I woke up with a headache. Not a migraine, but a kind of necky, achy number. I rang up Miller-Motte College, a technical school on Market Street with a locally recognized department in Massage Therapy.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The next morning, a brown-haired young woman who looked to be in her very early 20s — and turned out to be 19 — introduced herself as Victoria and said that she would be my therapist. The room she led me to was spare, with a kind of maroon-gray-olive palette, hotel-conference-room colors. Victoria opened the blinds on the door window — it was one of the things the therapists had to do, so that their teachers could look in.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The erotic element of nonerotic massage is somehow comical. Even to mention it seems louche, but to glide past it is bizarre. My spouse, for instance, would say it's creepy that I noticed it, but if I were blind to it, that would mean I was a sexually dead person, and she wouldn't love me, and would be seen to be keeping me around purely in a "Weekend at Bernie's" kind of way. When you think about it, there's no other situation in life in which a man or woman touches you the way a massage artist touches you except in bed, or on the way there. It doesn't matter if your person is attractive to you or not, and it can be the opposite sex from the one you're attracted to if you're attracted to only one. It's just the simple act of someone rubbing her hands all over you, and not with the precise, deliberate motions of a medical procedure, but with, you hope, a certain tenderness and warmth. Even the traditional phrases — "I'm going to step out; you undress <em>to your comfort level</em>" — imply a problem, that a wrong move could make things uncomfortable. Nothing wrong with all this, of course — it probably adds to the health benefits — I merely mark the static.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><strong>I can't say that</strong> the first massage penetrated very far. I had thousands of hours of Quasimodo-like keyboard-hunching stored in my torso, so it would have taken a genius to break through in an hour. Thankfully, Wilmington is full of massage places — there's one in every strip mall practically — and I'd soon booked some tables. My take had shifted. The first massage was nice, and now I remembered that I could get unlimited free massages anywhere, which suddenly seemed exciting and like something I'd been cryptically but deeply deserving for a long time. I shaved, I took a shower, I took a couple of walks, I didn't want to be quite as gross for the next one — motivation was creeping in. It's like what they say: If you leave the house, you'll want to go out more.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">I got facials, something I never thought I'd do. It was like impersonating someone. For the people doing the facials, it must have been like having a grime-encrusted hillbilly come out of the forest and ask for a Brazilian. I did a couples thing with my wife at Paradise Body Works and Day Spa, where a woman named Rose worked on me. Rosita Messier is her full name. One lotion she put on me had a certain evocative smell I couldn't place ("Pumpkin," Rose said — they'd gotten in new scents for the holidays). Later, at the slightly more upscale Sambuca Modern Apothecary, I got a blissful two-hour biodynamic facial/massage from Tracy Meyer, learning about Dr. Hauschka's skin-care products, said to be pure in ways that others aren't. That procedure left me almost unable to rise from the table. I wanted to lie there like a glowworm in the feeling of cellular wellness. Tracy had good stories about her years traveling the world doing massages on cruise ships and a European ferry. More than a few of the people in the bodywork world, I noticed, had done significant international travel before choosing the profession. Massage can be one of those jobs you fall into when other things don't work out. But that's true for so many of us — we fall into our lines of work like coins dropping into slots, bouncing down off various failures and false-starts. And just as many of the women seemed sincerely passionate about their art. I was moved by them, and by the strip-mall salons and parlors where they do their healing work.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">My face looked markedly better when I got home. Blood was getting to more of the cells. I had extrication performed on a few bad pores. I had that gleaming countenance you see on people who've just come back from the spa. This is why they do it, I thought. No wonder there are more and more metrosexual men. Why wouldn't you want to look slightly less ghastly? I bless their rage against the dark, saluting them as they pass by into a future of prolonged sexual plausibility, while I remain hobbled by my father's midcentury notion of manhood, that any male who spent more than five seconds considering his physical appearance might as well be living in Liberace's guesthouse.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">That night, I went with my mother to the Asian Relaxation Center, better known among locals as the Asian Foot Soak Sanctuary, in the same strip mall as Fuzzy Peach fro-yo shop. You walk through a vestibule into a dark room, with black leather chairs, like beauty-shop chairs but as comfortable as those coin-massagers in airports. My petite mother sat in the chair next to mine. We got our feet soaked and I hope desanitized in tubs of fragrant red fluid, she by a powerfully built man in his 40s, and I by a woman, equally strong-looking. They started on our heads, which I loved, but which my mother could have left off the ticket, because it messed up her hair. But when they moved to our feet . . . there's something about the feet and the ears, I noticed across the various sessions. This woman was practicing Chinese reflexology on me. She got her fingers up into the bones of my feet and started playing Rubik's Cube. I yelped when she popped my toes. It's easy to hurt the feet — which seems strange, when you consider all the abuse and weight-bearing they're heir to. I've read a theory that possibly they evolved so many nerves because they're prone to infection as well, and the more you can feel them, the less liable you are to slash them open and die of some disease. My mother at one point announced into the silence, "This foot massage is incredible!" It was. But the remarkable thing happened later that night, in the shower, when I bent down to wash my feet and found that I could feel them in a way I hadn't done in 10 years. They felt almost strange, as if they belonged to another body, the way a limb feels when it has fallen asleep, only not numb in this case but newly sensitive, and softer. The woman was a magician. But quiet. I hadn't even been able to extract her name. She'd been in the country only three months. She spoke very little English and mainly just smiled and nodded to questions, so I gave it up as awkward.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">One woman I visited was unlike the others, a multimodality healer from New Mexico named Susan Chavez. She had silver bangs and was seemingly in her early 50s, though she professed to be many billions of years old. When she answered the phone the first time, she told me that she was outside gathering kale, and I pictured her in a field or forest, but as it turned out, when I showed up to her charmingly cluttered one-story house in a tucked-away neighborhood, she was growing kale in pots out front. She put me on a table in her side treatment room and used different psychometric devices on me, tuning forks and Tibetan singing bowls, also a vibrating eye mask. She told me I had a giant glass ball around my head, which needed cracking, and after she cracked it, she performed a Lakota Sioux raindrop treatment on my back.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Susan's was the most complex of the treatments I received. She was full-on spiritual, whereas I, like Esqueleto in "Nacho Libre," believe in science. So I was torn between my uncontrollable skepticism toward her techniques and the fact that some of them seemed to work — the singing bowls really did seem to be vibrating certain zones of my body in an obscurely powerful way. I don't know. I'm still working through stuff I got into with Susan. I felt newly open to massage after meeting with her, but also vulnerable to it. After all, even if there's something inherently funny about massage, down to the very word, <em>massage</em>, there's also something unavoidably intense about paying that much attention to your body, not as an abstract concept but as the physical dying fact of it, lying in all its animality like a study by Lucian Freud. At certain moments I missed my old mode, which was to proceed as if I had no body at all.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">But the treatment that left the deepest impression on me was one that in the moment left almost no impression at all, the craniosacral with Mindy Totten, at the Oasis Center. You may know what craniosacral is already — I'd never heard of it. In fact I thought that "sacral" referred to sacred, and that it was more mystical than it is, but really it refers to sacrum, the triangular bone at the bottom of the spine. That said, it's still somewhat mystical. There's little hard science yet to show that people who practice this treatment are actually helping to regulate and balance the flow of craniosacral fluid through your body, or to indicate what such a balancing would achieve. But people subscribe to the method like you wouldn't believe.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Mindy said, "We generally work in silence." For an hour I lay in a room while she barely touched me. At times I actually didn't know if she was touching me. Her hand would hover above my leg, or lie under it, in perfect stillness.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Some profoundly emotional memories rose to the surface, the kind that can follow a troubling dream. I was thinking of people who died with whom I was not sure I had perfect transparency while they lived. It felt at the time as if the natural magnetism of Mindy's palms was conjuring these thoughts. Whether something <em>was</em> being effected through the laying on of hands, perhaps through some unknown mechanism of the physical world, I can't say. It seemed to matter less and less. Maybe that's what massage is to a lot of people, those who don't have chronic pain or migraines — it's enforced meditation for those of us too distracted to meditate. You're paying someone to meditate you. It's not anything they're doing, necessarily. It's that they open a little window. They give you an excuse to lie there in silence and pay a deeper attention to the fact that you exist. The true value of shamanism may be a concealed one, that it holds us in place and says <em>this</em>.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: static; z-index: auto; ">Also, in the end I did look better. My mother before she left to go home commented on my skin, which had gone from looking like two cigarette holes in a white blanket to something more alive-seeming. I can't say my immersion in the world of massage gave me calm — my anxiety proved impenetrable to all modalities, none of them touched the core, none of them breached the sarcophagus. But I am alive, and ready for fresh insults. I can feel my feet, albeit less and less each day.</p></div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/my-multiday-massage-a-thon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/my-multiday-massage-a-thon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>

My Multiday Massage-a-Thon - NYTimes.com

About a month ago, editors from this magazine, which employs me, and from which I am therefore loath to turn down assignments even when they are horrifying, assigned me to get a series of massages and other body treatments here in the coastal town wh…

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Prize Pack Giveaway this Weekend for Upcoming "To Kill a Mockingbird" Screening...Plus...

<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjIANNiG0J-GTBlgvQZkxBD3KjrN0uzwkQ0hKspP4_P15LBTOrLNkC8HLGqvWqLcTrUIuNk5pZoyomeN-2bTKiWjhkK-siJDpIlbNYWHNhM-ZPl4B-NkQYF1eNm4VB-Q7Hv6IM3FxhE0/s1600/To+Kill+a+Mockingbird+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbjIANNiG0J-GTBlgvQZkxBD3KjrN0uzwkQ0hKspP4_P15LBTOrLNkC8HLGqvWqLcTrUIuNk5pZoyomeN-2bTKiWjhkK-siJDpIlbNYWHNhM-ZPl4B-NkQYF1eNm4VB-Q7Hv6IM3FxhE0/s1600/To+Kill+a+Mockingbird+2.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The Lady Eve's Reel Life is pleased to take part in a "prize pack" giveaway sponsored by Fathom Events and Harper Perennial books in celebration of the 50th anniversary of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, the 1962 film version of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1289793/Dont-mention-mockingbird-Meet-Harper-Lee-reclusive-novelist-wrote-classic-novel-mesmerised-40-million-readers.html"><i><b>Harper Lee</b></i></a>'s acclaimed novel. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The prize pack consists of a pair of tickets to the special presentation on Thursday, November 15th, when movie theaters throughout the U.S. will screen the film -<b> </b><i>as well as a copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book</i>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">Update: ClassicBecky's name was drawn, she's been contacted and will soon receive her prize, a pair of tickets as well as the novel, from Fathom Events/Harper Perennial.</span></b> <b><br /></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To participate, <span style="color: #073763;"><b>first</b></span> <i><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><a href="http://www.fathomevents.com/upcoming/alllocations.aspx?eventid=1106" target="_blank">click here</a></span></b></i> for a list of participating theaters to make sure there is a screening at a theater near you. <span style="color: #073763;"><b>Next</b></span>, comment on this post (and feel free to share it on your own blog, Facebook and/or Twitter). <span style="color: #0c343d;"><b>Finally</b></span>, <span style="font-size: small;">I'l</span>l select a winner at random on Sunday, October 28. (For more information contact <span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><i><a href="mailto:ladyevesidwich@gmail.com">ladyevesidwich@gmail.com</a></i></b></span>.) </span></div><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnzB6MOWGrxLXzBF8EBYkmZyOCVW1oSbjARjeAo8pRxNrD1u2B9mVzcHDyIL8h3P-x7iaXsJumPel_DaLcRyoJtF_3pa0IupeBTTnKen0urv1l7Vyt-g9LVj_CAYVJu_TBgL8FiBruyIQ/s1600/Gregory+Peck+with+Oscar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnzB6MOWGrxLXzBF8EBYkmZyOCVW1oSbjARjeAo8pRxNrD1u2B9mVzcHDyIL8h3P-x7iaXsJumPel_DaLcRyoJtF_3pa0IupeBTTnKen0urv1l7Vyt-g9LVj_CAYVJu_TBgL8FiBruyIQ/s200/Gregory+Peck+with+Oscar.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gregory Peck with Oscar and Sophia Loren</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This special presentation is the fourth event of the TCM Event Series in conjunction with NCM Fathom and Universal pictures. The film has been newly restored by Universal in celebration of its 100th anniversary. The presentation will begin with an introduction by Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz, who will take viewers behind the scenes on the making of the timeless classic via interviews from the TCM Archives. <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It garnered three - Best Actor for Gregory Peck, Best Sceenplay and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. Future Best Actor Oscar-winner Robert Duvall made his big screen debut in the film as the enigmatic 'Boo Radley.'</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> is a film with both a message and a heart. The event and book make for a perfectly serendipitous lead-in to the Thanksgiving season.</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">  </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b></b></span> <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9C9p5eHeLOM" width="560"></iframe></div>

Gregory Peck Harper Perennial NCM Fathom TCM The Lady Eve (author) ticket giveaway To Kill a Mockingbird Prize Pack Giveaway this Weekend for Upcoming "To Kill a Mockingbird" Screening...Plus...

The Lady Eve's Reel Life is pleased to take part in a "prize pack" giveaway sponsored by Fathom Events and Harper Perennial books in celebration of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, the 1962 film version of Harper Lee's acclaimed novel. …

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