I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, throw up, pass out, or just do them all at once like I usually do when I, uh, wake up every morning. I was dreaming about the movie I’m going to make — Mission: Impossible IV: Tom Cruise Tries To Make It With a Woman — and I awakened to a “news” report about George Bush suddenly having a twin. Yep, TWO George W. Bushes. Actually, it was about that comedian, Steve Bridges, who appeared with Dubya at the White House correspondents dinner and did the remarkable impersonation of him, which even I must admit was pretty funny. But what scared me was that I didn’t quite have my wits about me and thought, in my confusion, that there actually were two George W. Bushes. It was quite frightening — almost as frightening as the fact that Dubya has nominated the man who developed the domestic spying program to be head of the CIA! This was all on the heels of recuperating from watching a paid programming show at about 4 a.m. on my favorite new network, which I think is called the Health News Network. From what I can tell, this is a network dedicated to infomercials about the colon. Yes, hours upon hours of actors posing as doctors giving advice about colon care. Most of it was about colon cleansing and people who do it. Apparently, there is a sizeable subculture of which I was totally unaware until now. The first segment I watched featured a man named “Mr. Health,” who shouted about his colon for approximately 30 minutes while standing on the beach in Hawaii. Why he was shouting about his colon in Hawaii was totally lost on me, but it was still riveting. He maintained that until he discovered the benefits of colon cleansing, he was carrying around 20 pounds of “unevacuated” fecal material that had been building up on the walls of his colon since birth. And he seemed happy to have discovered this. But the next colon show was even better. It featured a panel of people posing as doctors talking about the colon, along with a man who was selling colon-cleansing pills. The salesman looked very much like John Waters with really oily hair, and he was talking about his infant daughter’s colon, which had not had time for its walls to be built up with “unevacuated” (I know that’s not a word, but bear with me) fecal material. Because it was a new, fresh colon, he said, his infant daughter was able to have bowel movements that scared him. They scared him, he said, because “they were the size of my arm.” When he compared hers to his own, he said, he realized that his were “inadequate.” One of the “doctors” on the panel kept squinting her eyes and nodding with a smile, as if she had measured her infant’s colon in the same way and had discovered the same thing. The entire time the colon team bantered back and forth about the fecal material in the “average adult colon,” they all sort of faked a knowing laugh and rolled their eyes like they were superior to the rest of the people in the world who haven’t discovered this yet. So I had to do a Google search on colon cleansing. If you haven’t done this yet, you must. One of the first products I came across was an herbal remedy named Colon Blow. At first I thought this might be something one snorts through an orifice other than the nose and wondered what kind of straw or spoon this would require, but it turned out to be a pill. The best thing about this product is that if you order a certain amount of it, you become a member of the Colon Blow Club and receive a T-shirt with the Colon Blow logo. Of course, I want one. The Colon Blow Web site also had several testimonials from happy customers. Here is just one short example: “After the first serving [of Colon Blow], I was starving, so I ate a few Buffalo wings and drank about 6 beers. The next morning, I had Colon Blow for breakfast and Colon Blow for lunch. Then, the strangest thing happened. About 1:00 in the afternoon, I went to the bathroom to take a leak, but had a new magazine, so I sat down, and had a read. Usually when I sit, I crap anyway. I can’t explain it. Well, it happened again. A loaf that I would classify as big to huge. I got up and inspected it, finding that my loaf was not only huge, but dense, with many colors and shapes throughout.” Well, I had to stop there. I still have this burned into my mind and I may never be the same. All I know is that if there really are two George Bushes, perhaps 25 pounds of unevacuated fecal material is located in each of their colons. Somehow, this makes me feel better about the world.
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