THE MOST FUCKED UP THING I’VE EVER SEEN: Jon Glaser
Aug 18, 2010
So very: in which the comedian and Adult Swim ("Delocated") star ponders pricking babies and campers.
BY JON GLASER
When I was asked to write this, nothing immediately popped to mind. My first thought was to be thankful that a lot of seriously fucked up things weren't flooding my memory bank. My second thought was slight envy that I hadn't experienced at least a few more profoundly fucked up - and thus, probably cool - events that would stand out. But as they say, you can't choose your parents, you can't choose your children, and you can't choose the fucked up things that happen to you.
Any-hoozies, I took a look at some of the fucked up things that have been written about in this magazine. I read stories that involved death, blood, fire, guts, or a combo of those things. I thought of going the other way with it and writing about the birth of my son. Not the obvious bloody part where my bloody son came out of my wife's bloody vagina. I'm talking about the part where he had to have his heel pricked a few times to draw blood to put on a piece of paper that went to the New York Department of Health. The part where the nurse took his one day old foot and his one day old shin in her hand, pricked his heel, and squeezed the foot and shin together. As in, the foot was pulled back towards the leg so the toes were touching the shin (or pretty close, I can't remember exactly since I was in shock). Try doing that right now. You can't. I understand babies are very flexible, but it was a horrible thing to witness. It was also horrible to stand helpless as my son screamed and cried. I watched in horror as the nurse did this several times. It was like she was trying to break him. I tried to control my tears (I'm trying to control them right now just writing this and thinking about it) and trust that this was something nurses did every day with every baby. It was next to impossible to stay composed. I had to call our midwife for reassurance. Finally, the nurse finished. My son stopped crying as soon she stopped squeezing. It was one of the most fucked up things I've ever seen. But it's not what I'm going to write about today.
I'm going to write about something I saw when I was a camp counselor for 9 year old boys. I was a junior counselor, actually. Which meant that I wasn't in charge of my own group of kids. I would rotate from bunk to bunk, taking over when a counselor either had a day or hour off. Before I proceed, I need to explain a TV commercial that was airing at the time. It was for a lotion called Keri. The commercial had a husky male voice-over say "Keri, is so very..." It would then cut to a woman gardening. She'd finish his sentence, "...concentrated", and then say a few more nice things about Keri. Then it would cut back to the man's voice, "Keri, is so very...", and then cut to another woman, this one in her photography studio, and she'd have another word to describe Keri, and have other nice things to say about it. Several women in all would describe how very (insert description) Keri was during each ad. But the best part was the guy saying "Keri, is so very..."
Back to the story. There was one kid, Evan, in one of the bunks, who was really mean and really funny. There was another kid, Cary, who would be otherwise unmemorable except for the fact that he happened to have a name that coincided with the airing of a TV commercial for a woman's lotion that sounded exactly like his name even thought it was spelled differently. Evan, being the 9 year old hilarious asshole he was born to be, would constantly ask Cary if he was so very. I would have to pretend to be mad when I asked Evan to stop saying that. But to this day, it is one of the funniest things I have ever heard.
God or karma or whoever didn't find it so funny, because that summer, Evan was stung in the face by a bee. Which brings us to the most fucked up thing I've ever seen. Skin pink and puffy, cheeks, chin, forehead, all bloated, Evan's entire face swelled up like a balloon. You could barely see his eyes they were so swollen over. It was completely grotesque and utterly fascinating. He looked like a freak. It was hard to look at, yet impossible to look away. This was in the days before the internet and millions of images at your finger tips. I had never seen anything like it. In short, it was so very.
Comedian Jon Glaser's hit Adult Swim show Delocated returns for a second season on August 22. Also check out reruns of his other A/S show, Stroker and Hoop, airing now.
blog comments powered by Disqus
More Photos
