Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Kinda like when that guy in Ghost Busters thinks of Stay-Puft, the Marshmallow Man...


I will admit, the first thing that came into my head on hearing of John Ratzinger's elevation to pope, and the name he took, was this guy:





link

Seafield Center was my dream when I was first in recovery. I dreamed of a gracious and peaceful setting with a loving and nurturing environment where individualized treatment programs would restore dignity to the addicted and communicate to the entire family that, through treatment, there is help and there is hope. Sobriety is just the beginning. We focus on restoring self-esteem and rebuilding strength within the family. Using advanced state of the art techniques, we help one person at a time, one day at a time.


George Benedict used to have these commercials on in NY late at night on WPIX (Channel 11), and whatever Channel 9 used to be called, that is, the low-budget channels, in which he'd rail against the viewer for being up too late at night, in a grumpy, angry, hardly serene voice, purportedly to encourage the viewers to get themselves into rehab pronto.

He sounded, actually, as if he'd been on an anger binge; it used to give my friends and I great entertainment as we quaffed a few in his honor way back when, before engagement, before career explosion, before child.

My only regret is that Ratzinger didn't take 2 given names for himself, following the example of the last 2 popes; he could well have been Pope George Benedict, and then the metaphor would be even better.


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