THE SANTATORIUM

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THE SANTATORIUM

Written by

David Steven Simon
Thehollywoodragepage.blogspot.com


Now that Christmas is finally in our rearview mirrors, yet still closer than it appears, it is finally time for our official release from Merry Happy Hospital, or as I like to call it, the Santatarium, as we brace ourselves for that hard, Bogart gangster slap in the face known as reality.

I honestly cannot attest for my whereabouts since Thanksgiving. Evidently, I lapsed into a meal-induced coma and have been in some kind of Snow White Christmas state of vegetation ever since.

Christmas, counter to the #metoo movement, shamelessly flirts with us and then goes in for a full-on seduction, whose afterglow leaves us feeling uncommonly loved and blissful as we spend the rest of the season, twirling around like toddlers who got into the liquor cabinet, whose job one is trying to capture every snowflake, whether real or imaginary, on the tips of our lips and fingers.

I suppose Christmas music has a lot to do with it.

What would normally be relegated to the normal everyday elevator soundtrack, suddenly takes front and center, seeps into our cerebral cortex and just like that gray no longer matters and the voices that bounce around our heads, rather than our own, belong to Gene Autry, Burl Ives and Andy Williams.

The Christmas spirit is basically a highly infectious condition that according to the Center for Communicable Diseases, turns us all into compulsive shoppers who are as inebriated as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald on any given New Year’s Eve.

We all, sooner or later, give in to the madness.

We gleefully lose track of time and space.

We withdraw from the Jungle Fever crackhouse of cable news, walk directly into the light and take a giant step backward to those thrilling days of yesteryear, back to a time when we were wee, gullible, innocent and shamelessly optimistic.

Gone is the workday angst that strangles us like a toddler’s turtleneck sweater on any given day, we say hasta la vista to our compulsive Keto diets and do a headfirst swan dive directly into the spiked punch bowl like it was an Olympic sport.

We go from dull to indulgence without a smidgen of regret, casually block out stories about, say, an Indonesian killer Tsunami or any tale of local tragedy, and couch sit like a family of baboons watching Chevy Chase movies which has the same effect as eating an entire Costco sized pumpkin pie in one sitting until your brain starts to scream like a just-widowed goose.

When you think about it, we live the life of the Trumps who are, if you include what’s her name: the other daughter (Cartier? Tiffany?) the seven dwarfs: Avarice, Stupid, Selfish, Clueless, Illiterate, Self-destructive and Tweety.

We glide by the homeless, forget the poor and don’t care about the 800,000 Federal employees who are without a paycheck as easily as Mitch McConnell and the GOP congress, as they race like arm-flapping Stooges for the airport the second that their little useless playground goes into recess.

Because during Christmas, which really should be called Christ Mass, the actual Christian part of the festivities means virtually nothing. Everything that should be proactive quickly becomes reduced to a three or four-minute jolly song about compassion and good will towards man, while we tie another red ribbon on the car that we are inexplicably supposed to gift to our spouse.

But it’s almost over folks and life as we know it is about to make a huge comeback. Our national Olympia Dukakis is about to scream, “Snap out of it!” Moonstruck style.

Sadly, there is still a bit of Times Square drinking and puking to come as we welcome the new year, like a Trump rally goer, who can’t wait to buy the next hat, despite that pesky thing called an emoluments clause.

But this year there really is a reason to rejoice.

The grown-ups in the room are about to take over the Clean the House of Representatives whose marching orders were provided by millions of you.

But make no mistake about it. Trump/Stephen Miller pulled this whole shut down the government thing so that the Dems are forced to begin the new term in the thick of chaos which he and is prancing lemmings will no doubt blame on them. It will also deflect for a few minutes from the Mueller investigation and indictments to come.

Christmas may be over, but winter is coming.

And someone is about to lose the game of thrones.



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