Doctor, doctor, gimme the news...

It takes a special kind of person to become a physician. Not because of the intense schooling involved, or a career devoted to peoples’ health, although those factors are certainly worthy of mention. No, the real wondrous feat of these folks is adherence to the rule of doctor-patient confidentiality, the ability to not blab to their friends about all the strange things they see at the office, like weird moles, and birthmarks shaped like the Horn of Africa.

 

This is how I know I’m not cut out for it. I’d squeal like a little piggy. “Hey Chaz, you’ll never guess what I saw on someone’s inner thigh today! Vericose veins that spell out the preamble to the Declaration of Independence!”

 

Bet it’s happened.

 

Unlike me, the vast majority of physicians aren’t schmucky, immature man-children, so “the mum rule,” as I like to call it, is a welcoming blanket of comfort. Without it, check-ups would just be way too creepy. There’d be nothing distinguishing an annual physical from the cavity probing they give you when you get tossed in the slammer. Except, after a doctor’s visit, you can at least cry out your shame in the car, as opposed to a cell with a busted toilet and a cellmate named Brick.

 

The mum rule, aside from upholding the twin pillars of tact and decency, is perhaps the one aspect of a physical that allows a person to continue feeling like a real human being through the whole process, as opposed to underperforming livestock. Humans are indeed an animal species, but we don’t like to be reminded of that, so we concoct ways to distance ourselves from other mammals, like wearing clothes and memorizing Weird Al lyrics. Getting poked by a finger wrapped in latex is the closest we get to acknowledging our animal roots, followed closely by sex and bare-knuckle boxing. Activities which should never be combined, by the way.

 

The reason all this comes to mind is that my own annual physical is mere weeks away, and while I’ve no reason to sweat – I’m a gooshy marshmallow, but otherwise a passable specimen – the thought of going through the whole process brings to mind past physicals, which merge in the memory into a disconcerting melange of forced nudity and foreign appliances. And what appliances they are. If a doctor’s various tools were all laid out on a table end to end, it’d be hard to tell if they were medical apparatuses or the instruments seized by police in the busting of a high-tech meth lab.

 

These intimidating devices also accomplish the uncomfortable goal of reminding us of the frailty of our own biological processes. When you’re sitting at your desk at work, you generally don’t think about your heart beating, or the various fluids slooshing through you at all times. Those are behind-the-scenes phenomena, the set designers and lighting gurus that allow you, the actor, a stage on which to stand. They work best in the dark. 

 

A doctor’s office is a spotlight revealing all, and it usually starts with the blood pressure screening, whereby a nurse or doctor’s assistant straps your arm into a sling that was once used to strangle dissidents in a Soviet gulag. In many respects, it’s the simplest and least offensive part of the whole deal – someone gives a few quick pumps on a plastic squeeze-thingie, checks a watch, releases the pressure, checks the watch again. To see them do it, you’d think they were running diagnostics tests on a race car engine. 

 

Easy stuff, but I always think about what’s actually going on in my arm when this is happening; the blood being cut off, then the slow trickle back into a full flow. It makes my arm feel tenuous and unsubstantial. We think we’re made of steel until something happens to remind us that, actually, the body is about as sturdy in the face of hardship as a weepy animal-rights activist at a screening of “Free Willy.”

 

But all that is warm-up, of course. The mum rule exists, essentially, for two reasons: To protect your sensitive health information, and to mitigate, as much as possible, the awkwardness of getting naked and showing your genitals to a stranger in a mask. Unless you’re a swinger in Amsterdam, this is a highly unusual activity. When the first proto-humans were walking upright on the Saharan plains, do you think there were members of their little societies whose purpose was to examine everyone else’s junk in a non-sexual, clinical setting? I would think not. As a species, we just haven’t evolved sufficiently to feel comfortable with that kind of thing. Generally speaking, if there’s somebody down in my area, it’s because we know each other personally and I bought her dinner first. Every time I have a physical I feel like I should bring a long-stemmed rose and a bottle of wine.

 

It’s rather obvious to point out that people should get check-ups as often as possible – particularly women, whose complex biology allows more opportunities for system failure than the control panel of a NASA module. It’s an odd experience nevertheless, and it doesn’t get less odd with time. If anything, it gets odder. Our bodies have limited shelf lives, and the longer they’ve been running, the more they need specialized attention given to various problem areas. That assertion should ring true for anyone who’s had a colonoscopy, which is probably the closest humankind has ever come to those invasive alien probes you hear about from wide-eyed farmers and shut-ins. Come to think of it, I suppose it’s technically possible that there exists a race of bug-eyed galaxy surfers, green men who exist solely to abduct isolated whack-jobs and give them routine colon exams.

 

It’s a marker of immaturity that the only reason I’d consider becoming a doctor would be to voyeuristically scope out peoples’ eye-popping abnormalities. The stories, I’m sure, would be endless, and I’d have to start a blog just to keep track of them all. Which would have repercussions. A justifiably vindictive patient would see fit to expose my own fear of needles, which make me squirm like a nun at a screening of “Caligula.” 

 

That’s why I’m sitting on the exam table and not wielding the stethoscope. Good thing mum’s the word.

 

I tell ya, kids today...

After a while, it becomes tiresome to care one fig about “scenes.” The dance scene, the fashion scene – these are things that are important only to a very specific and narrow age group, early twentysomethings with bellybutton piercings and purple streaks in their hair. Past 30, the only scene that really matters is the beer-and-recliner scene. And maybe the fresh-load-of-laundry scene. Depends how gross you are.

 

Nevertheless, I lately find myself decrying the state of the music scene, maybe the one youth-oriented concern that still perturbs my hackles. (Speaking of gross.) This happens to a lot of people the longer in the tooth they grow; we become attached to music of a certain era, and everything that comes after it sounds like a litter of kittens scratching the insides of a hollow trash can. The technical term for this is Fuddy Duddy Syndrome, symptoms of which include cynicism, a need for quiet, and a tendency to yell at teenagers from our front stoops over mugs of bad coffee.

 

What’s different about the current stage in music’s evolution is that the entire scene, the industry and its points of entry, are changing dramatically, due mostly to the prevalence of technology. The Internet is a great equalizer, which is fantastic for amplifying the voices of the powerless, but less fantastic for music, not all of which is strictly equal, and much of which belongs in the waste bin alongside old banana peels and opened packages of tube socks. When guitar virtuosos toil in obscurity while trouser stains like Justin Bieber find international success through YouTube, you know something alarming is happening.

 

There was a time when finding success through music was the result of talent, hard work, and liberal doses of mind-altering drugs. Boy, those were the days. Musicians could play instruments. Singers could sing. Image was still a consideration, but it wasn’t the be-all, end-all; you put on a sparkly outfit, teased your hair in a manner that would embarrass the curliest of poodles, and made a music video in which you ground your crotch against the exhaust pipe of a Ferrari loaded with booze-swilling volleyball players. You know. Innocent stuff.

 

No more. Now, anyone with vocal filters and beat-box programs on their computer can become a sensation simply by tapping into the Internet’s subtly shifting zeitgeist. It’s all about timing, looks, and the number of hits you get, which has supplanted record sales as the new metric by which success is judged. A well-crafted song no longer counts for much. If popular music was once a juicy steak, it’s now a soggy, grease-laden fast food burger, all taste and no nutrition. And at least burgers don’t make you want to drive a switchblade through your ear while leaping from the rails of an elevated train. Unless it’s White Castle.

 

Of all the musical genres that get my blood pumpin’, the blood-pumpiest of all is early-1980’s thrash metal. A below-the-radar subset of heavy metal, it’s populated by the ugliest long-haired freaks and brutes this side of an ancient Viking settlement. There are about two dozen people who still follow it, most of them single, hard-drinking, and riddled with adult acne – but while it’s the musical equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons, the artists that find success in thrash tend to do so the hard way. No get-famous-quick schemes for these angst-filled shock rockers. While my affinity for these artists is primarily musical – I like riffs, I can’t help it – I have to admire the fact that most of the artists cranking out squealing guitar solos come by their success honestly. Drunkenly and belligerently, but honestly.

 

Which isn’t to say they haven’t figured out the Internet, of course. Everyone uses technology nowadays, even artists who have been around for decades; they sell their music on iTunes and express “anger” when their sex tapes are “leaked.” But when it came to their rise through the ranks, they did it by touring their butts off and writing quality music – two activities which are sadly becoming old-school, like churning butter. Or wearing neon windpants.

 

Generally, I try to be understanding when it comes to the views and habits of all the ’Net-happy kiddos out there. One of the afflictions brought on by Fuddy Duddy Syndrome, after all, is a knee-jerk tendency to decry any youth-oriented endeavor as naive and inferior to those of one’s own generation. Few things make a person sound old like uttering the phrase, “Today’s music is junk!”

 

Except today’s music is junk. It’s not a coincidence that, since the onset of digital home studios and easily-pirated MP3 files, shockingly few artists and bands have emerged that are prepared to grab the torch of those who came before; most are fly-by-nighters with shelf lives shorter than raw meat. Where are the future legends? The next Led Zeppelins, the next Rolling Stones? They’re nowhere. The industry is no longer an industry, the “scene” diluted by  look-at-mes and wannabes. Miley Cyrus is a perfect example. She got a heapload of attention recently for her “Wrecking Ball” video, in which she swings about on a giant wrecking ball with her tongue wagging about like that of a bulldog on the verge of heat stroke. Salacious and titillating, sure, but that just masked the fact that the song itself is more headache-inducing than the warbling death cries of a Brazilian spider monkey.

 

So I’m a fuddy duddy. So be it. It’s probably time to let go of the whole scene, anyway, and focus on a more age-appropriate concern: The excited-over-a-new-pair-of-slippers scene. 

 

Hey, it had to happen eventually.

 

It takes leather balls to play soccer

Maybe there’s something I’m missing. Some hidden quality, perhaps, something that would inspire a “Eureka” moment on the scale of Newton discovering of the laws of gravity.

 

That’s about the level of insight it would take for me to understand the appeal of soccer.

 

This has been a strange World Cup, at least from an American’s perspective. Until this year, most Yanks marked the occasion by not marking the occasion; usually you stumble upon some half-buried sports article online or in a newspaper, and go, “Hey, look, the World Cup’s going on. Hmm. Who knew. I wonder what Garfield’s up to.” Then you eat your toast and go to work and forget about soccer for another four years.

 

Except now I can’t really use the pronoun “you” when describing these common experiences, because maybe you – yeah, you – no longer share that experience. Maybe you’re a convert. There certainly seems to be a lot of them these days, and that’s what makes this year’s competition so odd. Aside from times of great strife or triumph, I’ve never felt a particularly acute sense of solidarity with the great mass of my American brethren; but they could always be counted on to back me up in giving less than one-half crap about this boring European sport. I mean, yeesh. If I wanted to see grown men run around for three hours and not accomplish anything, I’d watch a Three Stooges marathon.

 

It’s a hugely popular sport to play in high school, so undoubtedly there’s no shortage of teenagers, dressed in too-short shorts and knee-high socks, who would kick my head in with their cleats for espousing such blasphemy. The key observation here, though, is that these sweaty-browed footballers get to actually play the game, while we in the stands root around the bleachers in the hopes that some hipster has dropped his bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms. As a spectator, the game is only redeemed when the field is made of candy, and all the players have the heads of giant babies.

 

Oh, and I’ve indeed been a spectator. Many, many times. My first job as a professional writer was covering high school sports, and so, against my will, I would frequently be forced to attend some match to try and find the drama in a 0-0 snoozer. Not only did I have to watch the game, but I actually had to pay attention, or else my stories would have read more or less as follows: “Kids from School A and School B met up in a soccer match on Friday, and did much running around before not scoring anything. Johnny Wigglefarts ran particularly fast for School A, and School B’s Dimitri Applebooger dove into the grass a lot, so he’s probably doing tons of laundry today. There was this one parent who wouldn’t stop yelling. He sounded like Don Rickles and looked like a canned ham. The end.”

 

So it’s not like I was some passive, bored lump. I was an active, bored lump. I had to learn about the game in order to cover it effectively, and you’d think this would have given me an appreciation for some of the sport’s hidden virtues. It didn’t. All that stuff I learned, and there’s still a long list of objectionable things I’d rather do than watch a soccer match. This includes, but is not limited to: bursting into a crowded mall with my chest hair on fire; getting a tattoo on my back of Glenn Beck in a Power Rangers suit riding a unicorn; stuffing my nostrils with live piranha; wearing the skin of a freshly killed deer and walking into a pack of wolves; drinking a half-bucket of bleach while jumping a motorcycle over a kiddie pool filled with venomous snakes; watching a Pauly Shore movie; and running a 5K in a beekeeper’s outfit covered with live scorpions.

 

Keep in mind, I say all this as a fan of baseball, which many people consider to be almost PBS-level boring, what with its long pauses for spitting and butt-scratching. What’s particular about baseball, however, is that even when it looks like nothing’s happening, something’s happening. A pitcher plots a strategy for the current batter, a baserunner digs his toes into the dirt and waits for his chance to steal – anticipatory actions which lend a sense of tension. These are the kinds of things that are revealed after repeated viewings, if you’re hardy enough to withstand exposure to giant tobacco wads, and grubby stubble smeared with pine tar.  

 

Surely, there are plenty of folks who’d tell me it’s the same way in soccer; that there’s a beauty in the playing of the game itself. To these people, I say: Here, I think you dropped this bag of ’shrooms.

 

Increased national interest in this year’s World Cup is likely due, in large part, to the relative success of the American team, which sucked marginally less than it has in the past. They’ve now been eliminated, and that was inevitable, because – let’s face it – soccer’s not our game. Never has been. When the pilgrims left the Old World to seek refuge in the new, they did so for two reasons: Freedom from religious oppression, and the belief that European football was crap.

 

But we hung in there, outlasting Great Britain and Spain, and while I’m genuinely happy for this year’s team – who else am I gonna root for, Argentina? – our respectable showing inspired a lot of American sports fans to disingenuously claim interest and expertise in soccer, as though they liked it before it was cool. Suddenly, soccer conversations are happening in workplaces. I’ll be honest: It’s freaking me out. The only people who should be taking about soccer are parents of players, and ... actually, just them. They’re the only ones.

 

As a grudging concession to these high-kicking ninnies, I will say it’s nice that Americans had something that brought them together for a while, what with political divisiveness and blah blah blah. If we really want to reclaim some semblance of national identity, though, we’ll do the most American thing of all. We’ll crack open a gross, watery beer, spit on our driveways, and put soccer on a shelf for another four years. Real football starts in a couple of short months.

 

Heck, I’m feeling patriotic just thinking about it.

 

II's company, III's a crowd

An era has come to a close, my peeps. Sound the funeral trumpets. Break out the black arm bands. Drug addicts, this is your chance to blow through the rest of that black tar heroin you’ve been saving for, well, anything.

Starting in 2016, the Super Bowl will be dropping Roman numerals from its logo.

You read about this kind of thing, but you never think it’ll happen to you.

At least we’ve got some time to get used to the idea. When the 49th Super Bowl is played in Arizona next February, all of the graphics and promotional materials for the event will be smattered with that comforting string of nonsensical capital letters, just daring you to guess what the hell they signify. In that old-timey numbering system, “49” is written as “”XLIV,” which I’m pretty sure is a common first name in Botswana. 

But the following year, when groundskeepers in the San Francisco Bay area paint the giant Super Bowl logo in the middle of the field, there’ll be nothing Roman about it. It’ll read “Super Bowl 50,” and that’s that. There’s something pedestrian and unimposing about that, a perceived demotion in status. It’s like the biggest football game of the year is transitioning from a glamorous, worldwide spectacle to a podunk 5K road race benefiting victims of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Roman numerals just make things seem more important. It’s that simple. It implies an unimpeachable tradition, a phenomenon immune to the rigors of time. When the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI (and XXXVIII, and XXXIX), it felt like a bigger deal than just victory in a football game. It was like they had etched their name onto an epic history dating back to the Romans themselves. One pictured toga-clad men and women with fig leaves in their hair, waving giant foam fingers in a marble stadium and paying ten bucks for gross domestic beer.

As a wee tot, in the days of slap bracelets and M.C. Hammer, I was a huge fan of professional wrestling. Sure, I admit it. Nowadays, if I watched five minutes of it, I’d probably tie my knickers in a noose and hang myself from a shower rod, but 25 years ago, whoa Nelly. I was a Hulkamaniac to the nth degree, a bodyslam-lovin’ buffoon. Each year, the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) would host an extravaganza called Wrestlemania, an event that still takes place to this day. They always tack a Roman numeral to the end of it, and it’s a good thing they do. Otherwise, it’d be exposed as a three-hour-long jamboree of grown dudes in garish underwear slapping each other’s man-boobs. 

They needed the old-fashioned numbering system to lend it legitimacy, and it worked, at least when I was 8. And children have a warped sense of what numbers mean; chalk it up to a youthful inability to fully comprehend the scale and scope of things. When I sat down to watch Wrestlemania VII – in which Hulk Hogan took back the championship belt from creepy uncle look-alike Sergeant Slaughter – it felt as though I were witness to an important world event. On a conscious level, I knew that “VII” only meant “seven,” which made Wrestlemania younger than I was. Subconsciously, I figured if it had a title in need of careful deciphering, then it must have deep consequences for the fate of the world. As far as I was I was concerned, Hogan winning the belt back meant there’d be world peace, an end to hunger, and free ice cream for everyone. None of those things materialized. I’m still hoping for free ice cream.

Ah, and lest you think this grand numerical tradition is limited to sports-like events in which giant meatheads smash into each other, let’s not forget about movies, especially the ones in which giant meatheads smash into each other. Not every movie franchise does this, but certain iconic series have turned Roman numerals into a kind of badge, one that says, “There will be at least five of these, and each will be totally epic.”

Specifically, I’m thinking of the Rocky flicks. Sylvester Stallone hasn’t done a whole lot of things right, and that extends to the simple act of speaking, an arena that makes him sound like a swollen-tongued drunkard awakening from a deep coma. But the one spot-on decision he made was to slap a Roman number at the end of each Rocky sequel, of which there are roughly 73 total. They vary in quality from pretty-darn-good to oh-crap-this-is-embarassing, but even if you watch one of the weaker ones, it feels like a pivotal happenstance. “Rocky IV,” when you get right down to it, is a train wreck, all musical montages and lingering shots of rippled abdomens. You enjoy it anyway because it’s “Rocky IV.” If it was just “Rocky 4?” Gimme a friggin’ break.

Perhaps the reason we view ancient Rome as a testament to grandeur is their pioneering work in the arena of spectator sport. The nature of sports has changed pretty dramatically since then – fewer lions, less blood, and the newfound prevalence of beer hats come to mind – but the essence is the same: A bunch of people sitting around a stadium seeking thrills. (And booze.) The Super Bowl, more so than other sports championships, is one of the few remaining vestiges of that era, a brightly lit stage besmattered with a liberal splash of tradition. 

Now granted, 50 in Roman numerals is simply “L,” and “Super Bowl L” looks more like a T-shirt size than it does the pinnacle of football. But the pivot to run-of-the-mill digits is a wimpy move, a cold shoulder turned to our Roman forebears. Stripped of confusing characters, the event suddenly seems like just a simple football game. 

And what a warped perspective that is.

And now, I mess with Texas

It’s not like there haven’t been some good things to come out of Texas. They’re the undisputed leader in waistline-destroying barbecue concoctions. Willie Nelson’s from Texas, and I’ll defy anyone who says he’s not the coolest octogenarian this side of Clint Eastwood. And those Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders? Yowser. I’ll take a valium and a cold shower, please.

On the whole, though, the state is a hot mess, even discounting those bull-riding ninnies with the tobacco stains on their Wranglers. The latest travesty to come out of the Lone Star State is a Republican-backed platform endorsing gay conversion therapy, which sounds like exactly what it is: A program that aims to turn gay people straight. Which is sort of like trying to turn a duck-billed platypus into an insurance salesman.

The platform – which was adopted recently by the Texas GOP without so much as a debate – has been enthusiastically endorsed by Governor Rick Perry. Not surprising, given he’s demonstrated the cognitive prowess of a gas-huffing water buffalo. Perry, you may remember, ran for president during the last election cycle, and in 2011 made headlines during a primary debate by stumbling spectacularly on what should have been a relatively easy question. After claiming that he would immediately eliminate three government agencies upon assuming the presidency, he was asked which ones. He named two and couldn’t name a third, which was both cringe-inducing and comedically awesome.
 
“The third agency of government I would do away with – the education, the, uh, commerce, and let’s see,” he said. “I can’t the third one. I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”
 

Oops, indeed.
 

That’s old news, of course, but I bring it up because it speaks to the man’s judgment, and not favorably. Yet he’s got an entire party backing him on this hair-brained endorsement of gay conversion therapy – which is being dubbed “reparative therapy,” perhaps to take some of the bigoted edge off of it. Re-worded that way, it sounds like something you might do to your car.
 

That a statewide legislative body can lay claim to such ridiculousness is scary, for two reasons. For one thing, it’s tone-deaf. The states that prohibit gay marriage are toppling faster than a row of tipped-back dominoes, and nationwide, there’s a clear majority in favor of it, one that’s growing. Maybe it’s an increased presence in the media and in peoples’ lives; maybe it’s common sense, but somehow, the general public is awakening to the realization that there are a lot of things scarier than simply being gay. Take cheese-stuffed pizza crust, for example, or the moles on Morgan Freeman’s face.
 

But the other reason the whole scenario is frightening is that, simply put, reparative therapy is complete crap. And there’s an entire political party in Texas that doesn’t get that.
 

Mysteriously, over the past several years, we’ve become a country that ignores the twin pillars of facts and evidence. To pull a random but ubiquitous example, it’s a fact that current changes to the Earth’s climate are both real and human-made; it’s simple particle physics, backed by decades of data and research. Yet someone gets on TV and claims it’s a debatable issue, and people believe him because he’s wearing a tie, and a hairpiece that looks almost real, if you squint.
 

Likewise, it’s a fact that gay conversion doesn’t work. More importantly, it shouldn’t have to. Even if it hadn’t been completely discredited by the American Medical, Psychological, and Psychiatric associations – which it has – the very concept of reparative therapy implies there’s something wrong with homosexuality.
 

The rapid shift in public sentiment toward acceptance of gays and lesbians is predicated on the idea that it’s okay to be who you are; it’s okay to love someone despite how “traditional” or “untraditional” the nature of that love may be. Because ultimately, it boils down to the same thing: a desire for closeness to another person. That’s universal.
 

To thank for this overdue moment of acceptance is the power of facts – specifically, the fact that some people are simply born gay, now a scientifically accepted certainty, and backed by the life experiences of millions of people. Following this, logic would dictate that circumstances beyond someone’s control are deserving of neither judgment nor condemnation.
 

Try telling that to Rick Perry and his band of jug-hatted gunslingers. Perry, who in the past few weeks has been making the rounds on the big cable news shows – sporting a pair of black-rimmed glasses, perhaps in an attempt to look scholarly – has compared homosexuality to alcoholism, in that some people may have a natural tendency toward it, but can control the impulse. Never mind that Perry has placed sexual orientation on the same level as a condition that causes health problems, kills motorists, and destroys families. Never mind that he’s essentially looked all gay people in the face and said, “You are diseased.”
 

The most disturbing thing about his assertion is the complete disconnect from reality. Truth is, humans are but one species among hundreds that exhibit homosexual behavior, including lions, elephants, and desert tortoises (not kidding). The idea that it’s “sinful” or “unnatural” is indisputably false, and yet Texas Republicans exhibit symptoms of a pandemic in American life and politics: A knee-jerk aversion to any science, research, or moral recompassing that challenges a long-held belief.
 

Look, in a way, I almost get it. I hate to be wrong. I hate admitting it. That’s human. But if I were to hold up a bottle of water and proclaim, “The inside of this bottle is dry,” then my opinion would be demonstrably incorrect, completely overwhelmed by the evidence of water’s wetness. When Texas lawmakers promote pseudo-science to alter a natural and common behavior, they waggle their Poland Springs brazenly in the air while bemoaning an imaginary drought. Their pride outweighs their willingness to acknowledge what is clearly a mistake – and a damaging one, at that. Meanwhile, they do irreparable harm to their own image by taking their case to an incredulous news media, and a public increasingly closed off to their brand of insipid pablum.
 

That tarnished image will have political consequences. Marriage may be a right that’s relatively new for gay men and women, but one thing they’ve always been able to do is vote. If Perry still harbors aspirations for the White House, he’s effectively ended that dream by sponsoring a program which is offensive to a sizable constituency. Thwarted by his own ignorance and shortsightedness, he’s now rendered the Oval Office a permanently unattainable fantasy – and this time, he didn’t even have to wait for a debate.
 

Oops.