Dear Carolyn,

My name is Jeff. I don’t think you know me. Certainly, I have no idea how you got my phone number. You might have misdialed, Carolyn. Someone might have even given you the number in error.  Whatever the genesis of the misunderstanding that occurred between us last night, Carolyn, I want you to know that I think you’re a bit of a psycho and that I strongly urge you to seek help.

You see, Carolyn, during the period between 1:08AM and 1:36AM, you called me nine times. Nine times, which is the number of times Fifty Cent was shot. Do you remember hearing that Fifty Cent was shot nine times and not only survived but fully recovered? Do you remember how incredulous you were at the stunning overkill insinuated by that two-word phrase: “Nine Times.” You can hear the capital letter suggest themselves as they roll trippingly off the tongue.  Do anything nine times in a row and an unbiased observer will tell you that it’s a bit of overkill.  Do anything nine times in the span of twenty-eight minutes and you’re bound to end up hospitalized in a fair number of plausible scenarios.

Strange phone calls in the middle of the night from strange phone numbers?  It’s not a bad start, Carolyn, but then you left me two voicemails.  In those messages, Carolyn, you do not speak; you merely breathe heavily, perhaps trying to suss out why whoever you were calling has changed his or her name to Jeff.  Or maybe you were calling a different Jeff; it’s not an uncommon name.  It is, I can tell, a Herculean task on your part.  You did, after all, leave two messages, Carolyn.

Finally, Carolyn, you sent me a text message at 1:41AM. In it, you tell me:

Its Carolyn I’m suprising shawn so can u open the door for me lol

You should know that I don’t know who Shawn is.  I didn’t consciously lock you out of wherever you were.  But maybe, if I did know you, I would have, Carolyn. I don’t think I like you much, and not just because you called nine times and left two voice messages in the span of twenty-eight minutes.  That “lol” is obviously forced, a mask for the furious rage I imagine you feeling just then, standing outside Shawn’s door and waiting, wistfully, for the door to open. The door that would never open, Carolyn, because my phone was in my jacket pocket, sound off, while I lounged on a couch watching Sex and the City with my significant other.  It was a scene that was perhaps similar to one you wish you could stage with Shawn, him cuddled up next to you on a sofa, you huddling close for warmth against the cruel and snowy night outside.

I have to tell you, Carolyn: even if I knew Shawn, I don’t think I’d open the door.  The nine calls, the heavy-breathing voicemail, they wouldn’t have put me at ease.  It reminds me, Carolyn, of a movie.  A movie called The Strangers.  You remember Ben Covington from Felicity, Carolyn?  Well, in The Strangers, Ben Covington gets brutally killed because he answers the door in the middle of the night.  Unlike Ben Covington, I’m not dumb enough to choose the psycho on the porch over an attractive brunette.  I’m of course taking it for granted, Carolyn, that you aren’t a brunette and that Shawn has a porch.  But my argument stands.

Perry demands: “Describe various acquaintances as comic book characters without explicitly saying who each is supposed to be, leaving it as an exercise for the reader to determine the secret identity of each.”

This is fun for nobody. An interesting mental exercise, to be sure, but one that is preloaded with divisiveness.

First of all, there’s the ‘why wasn’t I included?’ thing.  And then the ‘I disagree with what you said about me!’ thing.

This is written proof that sometimes things that Perry (and I) think are good ideas are actually bad ideas.

Once, right after college, we were organizing a Halloween party and, spurred on by Perry, I floated the notion of doing some horror-themed role-playing. The twist, as it were, was that we’d be playing ourselves. The twist on that twist was that our characters were going to be made by the person to your left or some randomly determined person. The specifics are, at my advanced age, fuzzy. Anyway, this led to progressively more heated questions from the players,  like, “Why did you give me Icy Demeanor as a character flaw?”  Friendships may have ended during the character creation process and, suffice it to say, we never did actually play as we’d initially planned.

More content of the user-generated variety ensues!

Bill says: “Write a post about me!” So here goes that….

William Gatevackes is a garrulous drunk and an irascible curmudgeon of a gambler. He is a cheat and a liar and by that barometer of character he is the finest man I have ever known.

I met William Gatevackes in Tay Ninh. He was losing a fistfight with a Cao Dai holy man. A fistfight where the fists were full of knives. He was bleeding into his eye from a bad cut. Apparently, Bill told me later over stale American beer, calling a Caodaiist a Buddhist is a good way to get shanked.

Once William Gatevackes wrestled a lion. We were on safari and our rifle shells had gotten wet during a freak hippo attack that we barely escaped with our lives. We were drying ourselves by the campfire, Bill cooking a fresh zebra steak and myself playing selections from Cosi Fan Tutti on the harmonica when the lion rampaged in out of nowhere, as if created ex nihilo by an angry God.

Okay, I can’t keep this up. I was going to do this ‘strenuous man’ faux-Hemingway thing about Bill, but I can’t top wrestling a lion and losing a knife fight to a monk.

I’ve known Bill for about 8 years, ever since he (and friend Rich, as well) was a co-worker of mine at a former job. I knew this about Bill right away: that he was a giant nerd and a Steelers fan, and that led to hours and hours of nitpicky conversations about the Avengers. It was a glorious bromance, and then Bill’s wife sent him to Bel-Air to live with his high-powered lawyer uncle because he was targeted by a violent gang Bill moved to New York with his wife. Rich could barely cope. We’d mill around Bill’s empty cubicle and say “Man, isn’t Triathlon seriously underrated?” and “If you misguidedly believe that the Celestial Madonna arc is better than either the Kree-Skrull War or the Serpent Crown storyline, then I have no choice but to shun you,” and we’d pretend that Bill was there to get flustered at our statements. When the Steelers – both mine and Bill’s favorite team – disappointed me (which was often), I would call Bill to rant uncontrollably at him while he ranted uncontrollably at me.  And sometimes, in the still of the night, he’d call me, weeping, and tell me that he completes me, sniffling and then hanging up when I tell him he has the Jerry Maguire quote backwards.

When he’s not doing any of that stuff, Bill is going back to school full-time and writing for a crapton of sites: BrokenFrontier, PopMatters, Film Buff Online and whitehouse.gov.  He also penned an article for Comic Foundry, the short-lived yet super-awesome comics magazine.  He has a blog that he never updates because he (rightly) spends that time being a father to his rad daughter Vanessa, who is named after the wife of Marvel Comics supervillain The Kingpin.

Being a doctor is a lot like being hit by a bus. Sometimes you get up, dust yourself off and keep going. But other times, you become a contrived plot device. In the end, you realize you’ve been driving the bus the whole time, the same bus that hits you. Because you’re a doctor and that’s what doctors do.

Straight up, watching Grey’s Anatomy for the past two seasons has been rough. Even despite the addition of that guy that Sarah drools over from Journeyman to the cast as a psychotic war vet love interest for Cristina and contriving to make Meredith and Derek a non-dark, non-twisty couple, we still had some questionable medical stuff like the whole Izzy cancer thing (which came with bonus hallucinations of Denny, proving that Shonda Rhimes’ real talent is not writing or showrunning but contriving reasons for Jeffrey Dean Morgan to appear; I’m waiting for a Denny episode of Private Practice*) and, well, Cristina’s new boyfriend being a crazed war vet. Oh, and George gets hit by a bus and dies.**

How do I still manage to get through it each week? Alcohol. But if I just sat there with an open bottle and no structure, well, I’d be blind by now. And that’s why I, after careful research, have constructed the Grey’s Anatomy Drinking ‘Game’.

Drink when:

George’s death is juxtaposed with completely mundane tasks like putting things in a locker or answering a pager. (This only works for season 6 onward; in previous seasons replace with (1-3) George being harangued by family members or (4-5) George being awkward around Izzy)

Izzy does something irrational, like murders her fiance or cuts all of her hair off or mysteriously vanishes

Bailey sasses someone

Alex yells at Izzy (obviously as a sign that he loves her, of course)

Someone says “dark and twisty”

Someone says “you’re my person” or some variant thereof

A song by The Fray or a band that sounds interchangeable with The Fray plays

Arizona describes herself as “awesome” (I can’t take credit for this one but I will shamelessly steal it I have been informed that citing something as not belonging to me is not the same as giving proper credit; thank you for the suggestion, Ace.)

Arizona has an impassioned speech about respecting the viewpoints of others

(In pre-Arizona eps, drink when Erica Hahn is bitchy to another series regular)

Lexi tells Sloan that she can handle something that she clearly can’t handle

The Chief broods (I did not include “Meredith broods” because I don’t want deaths on my hands, just to foster a slow descent into alcoholism)

A conversation consists of 2 or more consecutive utterances of the word “Hey”

Yang says “cardio god”

Someone cries

A non-Lexi intern has dialogue

A patient dies because of physician negligence stemming from relationship issues

Chug during:

Conversations in elevators

Meredith’s opening monologue

Meredith’s ending monologue

*No I’m not; that would imply I watch that catastrophe.

**Obligatory “I’ma let you finish George, but Keanu Reeves in The Lake House had the most touching off-screen traffic-related death of all time. Of all time. Shrug. Walk away.”

Although Jim Henson’s Wilkins Coffee ads are probably most notable for the unmistakable traces of The Muppet Show that appear in their DNA, the thing that I always appreciated about them was the wanton puppet violence.

In an era where Crispin Porter + Bogusky can make The King work as a viable campaign for Burger King, why hasn’t this kind of pitchery come back?

Puppet A: “Hey, do you bank with Citibank?”

Puppet B: “No, I hate them!”

*Puppet B is attacked by hyenas and torn into tiny pieces*

Or a puppet, standing in a room with a sleeping child, holding a pillow in its puppety hands, saying, “Shhhh.  Her parents don’t drink Pepsi Cola.”  Fade to black.