The Phenomea of Comprised Neurological Function, Grand-Mal Seizures and God’s Mercy

James Yerry, March 2021.

Disclosure: I'm not a doctor but I know if you sock someone in the puss and get away with it that’s arguably pacifism. 

You’re probably going to think that I made this story up. God as my witness it’s true, and the details are too significant to be easily forgotten. There is no exaggeration in what I’m about to tell you, there is no gain in telling you an absurd farce for the sake of it. This is long and as usual I went of course a few times but stick with it if you want to read. 

My father was a good man, a Christian and a Law Enforcement Officer in that order. He was something of a natural athlete as well. I don’t think he was a racist, he was ignorant like all men and he had seen the worst in everyone regardless of their last name. Cops tend to see the bad side of people more than the good but when it came to seeing good there was no color prerequisite with my Dad; you were good, or you were an asshole, there was no grey area. You got bonus points of you played baseball for the Boston Red Sox or happened to be an American Indian. Dad was respectful of that part of his family’s lineage, tribe members got a free pass. 

When I was about seven or eight years old my father had a 2nd job working as a roofer when he wasn’t working as a Nassau County Police Officer. My father had no fear of heights and he didn’t waste time with no pansy-assed safety measures when there were nails and shingles to get hammed before the sun went down. One afternoon he fell from a 2nd story roof and was severely injured. I have glimpses of memories being told he would not live, saying goodbye (just in case) to this thing in a hospital bed. There are dusty memories of tubes and bags dangling from spindly stainless steel poles, dripping down into someone sleeping in that hospital bed. Weeks went by with him holding on long enough to suggest a specialist be brought in to perform a very experimental surgery; maybe more on that in a bit. 

My father survived that ordeal but afterwards he experienced seizures that had a habit of triggering at any given moment. Seizures are generally considered epileptic but are not exclusive to epilepsy Seizures are categorized into three severities; low to high: Petit Mal or "Absence Seizure", Grand-Mal, and Jacksonian. My father was prone to Grand-Mal; these are intense and uncontrollable, they can sometimes turn violent. A person having a Grand-Mal seizure can injure themselves and others. Understand despite my dads injuries he could still mop the floor with the best of them and his short fuse could barely be measured in angstroms. Seriously; despite spending months in a hospital bed on the razors edge of life and death from severe physical and neurological injuries my dad was still strong as freakin’ ox. Dad was prescribed Tegretol and Dilantin to help with this but every few months you could expect a seizure episode. Rokee (Short for Cherokee), the dog who had more friends than I ever will could pick up on them before it happened but that was far from the most interesting thing about that dog and I will regal you with tales of the “‘Mazin’ Rokachip” some other day. 

My father returned to work as an NCPD but was given a desk job. Dad had been studying to become a detective at the time of the accent but because of the potential for sudden seizures that was no longer an option. Sometime in my later teens my father fell off another roof cleaning gutters, this time it was ours. Again there was damage to his head. A second surgery where the doctors were flabbergasted to see what the first surgeon had done in the mid 70s using the limited resources available to him in the infancy of neurosurgery including wrapping part of his brain in plastic. My father continued to have periodic seizures, they could last a few minutes, but a few I remember going over a half hour. To this day if someone is having a seizure I'm confident I could aid them; this isn't bragging, I’ve had first hand experience with them since I was a kid

But at some point after his retirement my father began having seizures more frequently. My mother described to me that my dad sounded like he was trying to speak, but it was all gibberish. I asked her to record it on the cassette radio my dad would take on the back porch and chain smoke cigarettes and listen to the Red Sox broadcasts from across the Long Island sound under the night sky. My dads awareness of nature was preternatural, a story for another time though. I apologize for all this information, I’m remembering things I don’t want to loose as I write this.
My mother recorded the audio of with my father speaking what appeared to be and dismissively sounded to be nonsense but as I listened to it I could hear patterns and cadence and a tempo. I’m a musician (ok I'm a guitar player, I know how to play notes not read them), that tends alter the way you listen and hear as a necessary skill. I took the tape and transferred it into my Amiga computer, created a wave file, reversed the wave and played it back. What came out was my father was reciting (in its entirety) the Act of Contrition, which is sometimes called Act of Penance. The inflections were off due to the words being spoken in reverse but each word was clearly discernible.

The prayer begins;

“My God, I am sorry for offending thee”  

If you’re curious about the rest it's here; I’ve never memorized it and when my father would drag me to confession at St. Gertrudes church in Bayville, Long Island and the priest would suffer through my debauchery, and after he’d tell me: “Say three ‘Our Fathers’, two ‘Hail Mary’s’ and an ‘Act of Contrition’”. My most grievous sin; I didn’t want to tell him I could never remember the Act of Contrition. I’d substitute an Our Father or two atoning for my earthy transgressions. Despite the perpetual brain fart I had with this prayer My father could recite it forward and backwards, literally.

My father passed in October of 2001, by that time the athlete that could line drive baseballs between first and second and could get on base before the outfielder his mitts on it now required a wheel chair to get around, he had no recollection of what happened earlier in the day but tell you what type of tree he climbed to avoid Mr. Earnst throwing a cinderblock short of 100 feet to knock him out when Dad suggested to him the Nazi's were going to get their asses handed to them at the end of WWII. Dad would wheel to the kitchen door and open it a crack to technically smoke outside since it was banned in the house . Rain, snow or inclement weather that door would be open blowing smoke back in the house. Dad was the post office of smoking. He could literally fall out of that chair, lay on the floor immobilized and finish his cigarette. He was in terrible shape by then and it's fortunate that at his wake my brothers best friend Codge who is a funeral director had him dressed in his officers uniform. NCPD posted a police honor guard at the casket and a full police escort to the Locust Valley Cemetery, our cemetery was designed by Fredrick Olmestead, the guy who designed Central Park, it's stunningly beautiful . I'm fortunate to have this memory of him, it restored much of what was taken from him in his lifetime but he never complained about it. He complained about having to smoke on the floor, but not the seizures and physical damage he suffered.

Locust Valley Cemetery, Locust Valley, NY

To this day that phenomenon of my father reciting this prayer, in its entirety and entirely backwards both amazes me and terrifies me. It’s amazing because; how insanely amazing was that!? It was terrifying because I think about his mind buried under layers of a Grand-Mal seizure was trapped beneath it all consciously beseeching Almighty God to forgive his sins and deliver him through this punishment. 

Years later I was at a medical event with my Father-in-law and this event I spoke with pair of brain surgeons over viking sized martini's. Admittedly I have at most the most rudimentary knowledge of the brain and the science of seizures but I knew enough to converse causally on this topic. When I mentioned the episode with my dad and his reverse recital of words they both stopped me. “Bullshit.” they said “it’s not possible”.They weren’t having it, they dismissed me, dismissed my claims, dismissed even the possibility of this.  My Father-in-Law; Pop Pop, as the girls call him is highly respected in the fields of medicine by many other doctors; smart doesn’t begin to cover it and even until very recently was retained by a handful of NYC law firms for his insight and expert testimony on medical malpractice court cases. Now in his mid 90s Pop Pop is as sharp as a scalpel. I explained I had nothing to gain from lying to them, and my father-in-law was attending this event, why would I try to embarrass him by inquiring if they had insights? They shut me out, and laughed at the notion.

In some daydream a neurological researcher comes across this, connects the dots and gains insight into the treatment of Grand-Mal seizures from my stumbling here. Obviously this scenario is so remote that in the off chance someone did accomplish something with this information my name would be nowhere to be found. As I close this out I really don’t know if I spoke about a medical phenomenon that only I appear to have witnessed first hand or if I just wanted to write about my dad and remember event that will undoubtedly get lost in time.

My God, I am sorry for offending thee

I Remember Jeep (I'm not apologizing to George Harrison)

We named her "The Prowler" in a nod to the police cruiser in the film Fargo, and it the first vehicle I ever purchased over $700. A 2001 Jeep Cherokee Sport; straight 6, 4.0 liter, black. Jeep had ceased production sometime in 2000 when I bought mine and would release a line of shitty jeeps from then on, all of them falling short of this blue collar Toledo workhorse.

The windows don't go down any longer; or up, or go up and wont stop and I've replaced the motors, window console (on my 3rd) thinking it might be the bushings in the switch (it's not) the A/C wont hold a charge but there is no leak, it disconnects from the computer logic board randomly (how fast am I going? let me lick my finger and stick it out the window, oh wait, the window doesn't go down!) Three speakers are blown, even AM radio sounds like shit, and the tailgate has tried to guillotine me on many, many occasions. Somewhere in the darkest depths of Facebook one can unearth image of repairs that I didn't know were possible; welding the drivers seat back into the frame after it snapped out which was a commute I'll never forget, a transfer case that leaked so slowly it took 12 years to fail, from an accident in 25A  in Kings Park, NY in 2001, to Jake Alexander Blvd in Salisbury NC in 2012. 

She saved my wife's and my own lives that night in Kings Park. We had bought the Jeep three weeks before, Val had a Toyota MR-2, two seater, rear engine. Mr.2 stayed home that night. Had it not I would not be here writing this, listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, glancing at a lone blue hydrangea that looks right at home with the leaves and branches of fall outside my window. 

We were heading home from a Super Bowl party at the Sterns when the drunk in the a weaving in front of me cut into the oncoming lane and instigated a head on collision. Airbags deployed and the interior filled with the smell of cordite and white mist like Heaven when seen from TV. Val asked me if we were dead but my Dave picked us up stayed with us at the hospital for several hours to make sure we were okay, he drove us home at sunrise after Val was finally checked for injuries. Dave was a great friend before, and still one of a handful of best to friends to this day.

She's carried us safely around several states, back and forth on the Long Island Expressway and the country backroads of Rowan Co. NC. She's four wheel drive and she'll climb a hill like an espresso fueled sherpa. The body is falling apart around the engine which seems to be a common ailment in vehicles creeping up on a quarter century. I've gone from knowing nothing about repairing cars to knowing enough to get me in trouble, I can change a header gasket despite more grease on my hands than there is in the jeep when I'm done.

Twenty one years later I no longer travel on Super-bowl Sunday, but I would not dream of parting with her. I'd likely get nothing for a trade in and there is no way she's getting hauled off on my watch, but this week I decided to retire. She'll be hauling split logs to the fireplace and cast iron heater up and down the hill, and like the day we bought her, still part of the family.

The '76

  

My ’76 Trans-Am already had some years on her in 1994. The paint job, interior and tires were all pretty distressed by a score of blisteringly humid Long Island summers and snowy winters. She had faded some, but adorned on her hood; the last vestiges of a faded decal: 

The legendary Firebird; a treasure rare and difficult to possess. 

 

I swapped out the bologna skin tires with a set of Camaro rims and Z80’s, dropped in front and rear speakers and a 2x12 sub in the trunk; Hendrix, Stravinsky, Beasties and all points in between thundered in her wake. This was the street monster dubbed ‘The Rockford”

 

The first time my wife Valerie let me drive her home; this was her chariot. I cautioned her about the power amp and subwoofer and she rolled her eyes and said something that I cannot repeat here but she had raised the gauntlet. Then I proceed to electrify her with 600 watts of ‘Dem Bones’ by Alice in Chains. She was happy, I wasn’t playing the Heavy D tour-de-force “now that we found love (what are we gonna’ do [with it]) from those speakers, and so was I. 

Stones, Zeppelin, Chris Cornell, we were musically compatible; also her parents did not approve of me or the car, mostly me, at least at the time.

 

The ‘76 roared like a dragon, she ate gas like that dragon would eat a petting zoo if they were on the Atkins diet.  She was my companion as she journeyed with me across the Stephen King inspired landscape that is Suffolk Co. Long Island when I worked for Hampton Magazine as a layout artist. She prowled the streets while millionaires and posures sipped pomegranate mimosas al ‘fresco, the soft purr of her 8 cylinder 5.7 liter power plant strutted boldly among the gluten free valium pasturing antelope. Alerted all too late they would lift their gaze nervously above their hand painted Champaign flutes;

The lioness approaches. 

Despite her brute force she graced me with some of my most loved memories. The wet nose of my dog pressed against the window, tail thumping excitedly on cracked vinyl seats as we drove to Welwyn preserve to walked the shore of the Long Island sound, the wind and salt air stirring in us both. When my best friend passed from this world I could not bring myself to wipe away the marks that nose made on the passenger window. In the bitter winter that followed I would roll down the windows which he loved and drive in the dead of night in stinging cold, and miss him profoundly. 

 

I drove her until her until she fell apart, literally fell apart. The day before I was to move to Ann Arbor MI my brother-in-law put her up on a garage lift and showed me where paper thin sheets of rust were the only things holding the frame together. He would not allow me risking a 600 mile journey that would likely end with me scattered across a Pennsylvania valley. Instead I made the trip in a late 80’s Hyundai Excel, a car made that was made for and made by elementary school teachers. I have no memories of this car with a sewing machine for an engine except for "The Great Ohio Ice Storm Breakdown" which rendered me and Louie stranded somewhere on the Ohio Turnpike for many, many hours and that same cars magnum opus “Bob Nelson's Mystery Oyster Mishap”.

Alas, these are tales for another time.

 

‘Hold on to sixteen as long as you can, changes come around real soon make us women and men” 

– Fredrick Douglas 

My list of Stand Up Comedians.

first off, some explanation. This is strictly Stand-Up Comedians and nothing else, if this was comedians in movies and TV it would be entirely different (about a dozen females right off the top of my head for instance) and many of my top 10 comedians of all time I've never seen do standup so pretty much all of Monty Python who would dominate that list I've never seen on stage telling shit to a crowd.  also this is dependent on when I saw the act or caught the bit and if it was funny at that time, not if it's still funny now, not all of this stands up to the test of time, though much of it does. Also if the comedian in question did something shitty to someone or many people but I didn't know it at the time and their shit was funny they stay on the list. It's how I reacted when I saw it. This is my list and if you take umbrage with it well, fuck you.

and yea, I can't spell.

Hall of Famers:

1) George Carlin

2) Richard Pryor (tie Dave Chappelle) 

3) Steve Martin

4) Eddie Murphy

5) Robin Williams

Hall of fame honorable mention: Bob Newhart, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Andy Kauffman,  Rodney Dangerfield

Sublime Motherfuckers:

6) Patton Oswalt

7) Mike Birbiglia

8) Louis C.K. Bill Hicks

9) Eddie Pepitone

10) Aziz Ansari 

Honorable Mention, and some of these guys would probably rank higher if I knew more of their sets so in no particular order, and the list would be larger if I got out more often: Jim Gaffigan, John Pinette, Zack Galafanakis, Eddie Izzard, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Chapelle (see top5) Mario Joyner, Dave Attell, Bill Burr, Dave Barry, Bill Hicks (see sublime list), Big Jay Oakerson, Michael Keyton, David Cross, Taylor Negron, Jim Bruer, Colin Quinn, Dennis Leary, Billy Conley, Brian Regan. Ron White, Sinbad (met him by chance in 2017 he was wonderful and genuine and talented beyond all my expectations), Chelsea Peretti, Jerry Sienfeld, John Leguizamo, Kamul Nanjani, Marc Maron

Dishonorable Mention, any puppet or prop based comedy sucks and I have a deep respect for puppets (list deleted, you already know who you are)

Jimmy3K's Pitch For the Fall Lineup and the New Renaissance of Network Television.

Here are some show ideas I'm looking to pitch, you may think "Jim, why would any television studio want to rekindle the beloved 1970's idiom of television shows when there's so much left to do with steroid infused italians who slap each other with hot olive oil on the boardwalk?" or you may think "Jim, he's off his medication again and sends us these disturbing emails" (both are right btw) so without further adieu: 

McSquid and Wife:

She is a southern debutante that married outside species much to the dismay of her traditional parents (Colonel Jefferson Flapjacks  jr. and Mammy LaRue) 

He's a crime solving squid who can only solve crimes that happened in the sea!

Together they are a land based and sea dwelling crime solving couple everyone wants at their next soirée! 

There's also a giant clam named Red and he's street wise and calls everyone "Jive Sucka", he also insists he never sees anything since he lacks eyes.

Their neighbors are ultra conservative Orthodox Jews (Chiam and Yahodal Rothman), who never fail to tell them they look like a very nice couple when they meet in the elevator, they also like the idea of s squid for a neighbor since he has 30 foot limbs and can switch every light in the apartment at the same time at the high holy days.

Vast Albert:

A anime version of Bill Cosby's classic animated and often fictionalized childhood (Who really hung out with a guy who's head was a tortoise shell, really/), the show is hosted by noted Astrophysicist Nell DeGrasse Tyson who uses his understanding of physics on a galactic scale to describe just how enormous Albert is. Each episode ends with Alberts speech impeded little brother calling someone an asshole.

Other titles I'm working on:

Yea, They Were Totally Gay: Paul Lynde ! Waylon Flowers and Madame! Sandy Duncan and a box of goddamn Wheat Thins. A show pointing out gay entertainers the Nationalist Socialist Party pointed out anyone threatening to pollute their pure white bloodline of their perfected master race vision since pointing that shit out never seems to be the centerpiece of family fights for generations.

David Bowie's Cocaine Fueled Variety Hour: Yea, that cars been parked there a long time even if it is night and its owned by the same people who live in the house Hey man stop fucking looking, your head is like a melon, someone's probably in that car taking pictures right now!f Fuck it's DEA! Stop looking out the goddamn window already we only have three packs of cigarettes left and they need to last the next 45 minutes. I cut this with kitchen cleanser by-the-way, thats why your pores are bleeding.

Old men chasing around girls in panties, it will be big in England and they'll bring it here after the fat funny guy is involved in a sex related fatality with a member of the royal family. 

I'm at work and they're so crankin' Loggin's "Ride Like the Wind", Speakers are right over my desk and I'm so stoked and then I'm like: "Oh dude! Is that Michael McDonald singing in the background? You don't know me but I'm yo' brother mutherfucker!" That shit is tiz-ight! I hope they spin some Jimmy Buffet, get my Margaritaville swagger on yo! Hungry Eyes Bitch!

Without fail any article that has "10 Best Whatever" never fails to stoke my inner pique.

10 best songs to work out to always contain Metallica's crap-epic "Enter Sandman" or G&R's "Welcome to the Jungle". I've already stated my complete and umbrage to this nonsense. In the pages of Rock History these two items can be stated as the Big Mac and Whopper jr. offerings. They are shitty songs from shitty corporate centric phonies. If you ask me to spot you and you have this playing I will leave you with 350 lbs. of Ferrigno Iron on your trachea while I'm rocking to the slightly less dumb "Jet City Woman" by Queensriche. Points added for adding "Black Eyed Peas" to that list, do you just open your mouth and be the music industry to shovel hot loads of shit straight down it?