Tuesday and our STI clinic is reopening on a limited schedule again, so I get to spend the day trying to remember how to draw blood from people efficiently and how to do paperwork I haven’t really thought about much at all since sometime in March. It’s hard to believe this has been going on since March–but on the other hand it seems like pre-pick-your-crisis was a million years ago.
My stomach is still messed up, but I’m trying to take in as much clear liquid as I can. I’ve pretty much concluded that I am dealing with dehydration-related exhaustion, and the answer to all my ails is hydration. I am also hopeful that this slow and gradual return to what I actually do for work during the day will help me stay centered and on course; I’ve felt very unanchored these last few months. We shall see, won’t we?
Yesterday as I worked from home I had Jonny Quest streaming on the television while I sat in my easy chair and worked. I loved this show when I was a kid, and it still holds up relatively all these years later–it’s also weird that Tim Matheson was Johnny’s voice–and it also was a formative part of my childhood; getting me interested in mysteries and the supernatural and espionage, and there’s also the complete absence of females. The family unit on Johnny Quest reads queer, queer, queer: the parents in Dr. Benton Quest, scientific genius and obviously wealthy beyond belief (like Tony Stark) and Race Bannon, former spy and world class athlete who is both bodyguard and tutor to the two boys; Benton’s son Johnny, and the Indian child they adopt off the streets of Calcutta, Hadji. (I also became extremely painfully aware as I watched at just how big of a stereotype Hadji was; and there are other problematic issues on the show…reminding me of that time period, the 1960’s, very viscerally). There’s also Jonny’s dog, Bandit, who is the comic relief on the show; but unlike Scooby Doo Where Are You?, Jonny Quest was serious–people were actually killed on this show. What humor there is, is fitted into little asides that literally serve as comic relief to the serious tone of the show (and yes, it was plenty serious for kids–as I said, there are any number of times in the episodes I watched where bad guys were killed when their car/boat/airplane crashed and exploded right in front of Jonny and Hadji, who nonchalantly just shrug off the deaths they’ve just witnesses). Dr. Quest is totally Tony Stark, the genius who knows everything–he literally is one of only two white men who speak the language of a remote indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest—and Race is a hot muscle daddy if I’ve ever seen one.
As I said earlier, it’s kind of problematic in some ways–the afore-mentioned indigenous tribe is described as “savages” repeatedly in that episode–but it’s still fairly entertaining, and it’s one of my earliest cartoons on Saturday morning memories; undoubtedly it helped push me along my path as a mystery fan and eventually a mystery writer.
Elite continues to enthrall us; the second season is even crazier than the first, with three new characters added: a party-hearty half-brother of one of the main characters who has a very weird relationship, bordering on incest, with his half-sister; a girl who works as a maid and whose mother is on the janitorial staff who is working very hard to convince the other kids she is just as rich as they are; and a gangster’s daughter. Paul and I are completely fascinated by Carla, whose mother is a marchioness and owns a wine company; she’s extremely manipulative, so much so that it’s difficult to figure out what she really wants and what she is really after. She’s fascinating. There’s also all kinds of queer characters and relationships on the show, and while the whole point of the show is star-crossed lovers…it’s nice seeing the queer storylines given equal importance to the straight ones. And it moves so fast! So much is constantly happening! It’s excellent.
And now I have to get ready for work, without having any coffee. It’s going to be an interesting day.
Queer and Loathing in America 