Don DeLillo, �End Zone�
Sorry, sorry, I know it�s been a while. It�s been a little hectic lately. We started a war, I had a short story fiction piece I had to write, I�m dealing with preparations for graduation and the Dean�s List ceremony, and, in what�s taking the majority of my time, I decided to start my Vice City game over from the beginning, except this time I�m not using any of the cheat codes.
And I read during this time as well, though still not as much as I need to. It�s already April 9, and I still haven�t finished one book for this month. Good thing I still have these other books that I need to write about.
Not that I�m going to write about the books, because at the same time we started our liberation (har har), I decided to actually use my newly-acquired insurance plan to take a trip to the dentist. See, about eight years ago, I got jumped by somebody who didn�t really like my writing style. Or subject matter. I�ll leave it at that.
Anyhoo, one of his punches got me square in the mouth, shattering my left front incisor. I had to sit through four hours of surgery in order to get the broken nub out of my jaw.
As much as it was bad luck that caused the problem in the first place, it was fortunate this event came at a time when I had just started insurance with my former workplace. Insurance took about half of a $4000 bill. The next step was to work toward getting an implant, or perhaps making a bridge between my remaining teeth.
Amazingly enough, I still had some insurance left. The problem was the surrounding teeth were pretty unstable. So they fit me with a retainer that had a fake tooth glued on and welded a metal bar across the front in order to try and strengthen the remaining teeth. They said I�d be stuck with this big hunk of plastic in my mouth for another month while my jaw healed.
But the dentist also smelled money, and mentioned that I should get my wisdom teeth pulled. I didn�t see the point � they had fully grown in by this time, and they weren�t bothering me. They convinced me to go through with it with two arguments: They might bother me later in life, and wisdom teeth were covered with my insurance plan.
Have you ever tried to read an insurance option form? It�s like trying to slog through DeLillo�s Underworld � there�s a lot of jargon, two million subsections, and it�s about 850 pages. So of course, I didn�t realized that the wisdom teeth extraction would exceed the amount that my insurance would cover.
And then I lost my job. Or, as Bobcat Goldthwait once said, I didn�t lose my job, exactly. I knew where it was, they just had some other guy doing my work. The retainer that I was supposed to wear for a month turned into the retainer that I wore for seven years.
No longer! I went into the dentist, and after slipping into the next room to dance around in joy, realizing he was going to send his kids through college through me alone, he settled in for a massive Shock and Awe campaign in my mouth. I sat in that chair for five hours straight. I had needles shoved into my gum line that were longer than my dick � and I�ve been complemented. I watched as they used instruments that ranged from something that looked like a bread knife, to a thing that was heated with � I�m serious here � a blowtorch, which then shot little mushroom clouds of smoke from my agape mouth.
And holy crap, I look GOOD! Plus, with the recent bleach job I had on my hair, I�m the new blond Adonis! As The Vandals once said, �Illa zilla, Illa zilla, Illa zilla, � Lady Killer!� But there�s still one problem. My new insurance didn�t cover the entire procedure this time around, which means I don�t have money to do anything but sit home and admire myself, for the next six months, until this is all paid off.
Good thing my birthday is on the 17 of this month, so I expect lots of people to buy me drinks! C�mon, this is the year I beat Jesus!
Oh yeah � End Zone. Not bad. Much better than most of the other things I read by DeLillo, with the exception of White Noise. The hook here is DeLillo mixing his metaphors between football and nuclear warfare. That�s cute and everything, but I�m betting he could probably do the same thing with football and dentistry, and it would probably be more horrific.
