Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

I have this rare disorder. Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia. ASD for short. Sounds like the name of a grunge band from Seattle. My friend Jaxon calls my disorder "dyspeptic paprika". Close enough.

Basically this disorder is a screw-up between the brain and the vocal chords causing a strained or strangled sounding voice often with vocal breaks. Bobby Kennedy Jr has this disorder...You know who he is: Kennedy family, environmental lawyer...hello?

The first time I saw RFK jr speak on television about a year ago I was devastated. I couldnt watch...the poor guy was grasping desperately for words to express himself. The sounds were so labored it pained me to watch. Now my voice is worse than his....but I have no self-pity and other than the fact that my dating life now sucks worse than ever, I dont really care. Jaxon makes fun of me which hurts a little, but what the hell. Of course I am an easy target these days....I sound like Marge Simpson after helium. This disorder hasnt really kept me quiet, although I've already begin wonder what its like to beg for sex in sign language.

On the other hand, Im otherwise healthy and grateful for that. The disorder started slowly. First time I saw the ENT Dr. my voice was near normal. Despite that I was lucky and got diagnosed after I got the "up your nose with a rubber hose" camera treatment. Thats where they put this mini camera up your nose and then down your throat to watch your vocal chords. Talk about youtube. Woo. If you ever have this procedure done, a bit of advice: "don't swallow". Those cameras are expensive and a little hard to digest. Also the Doctors office really doesnt want them back after you recover them. "What do you mean you won't take it back? it still works fine."

Given the fact that this disorder started slowly and was episodic in nature...you know good days and bad days, I took the traditional American approach to treatment. I call it the disinterested girlfriend dealing with horny boyfriend approach to medical treatment: "ignore it and hope it goes away".

I read through a lot of the literature. Lots of articles with big words. Very little of it made sense to me. I mean I sort of understand the medical literature....but it just didnt resonate with my experience.

The medical literature says that this is most likely a neurological disorder originating in the basal ganglia area of the brain. In other words its a movement disorder like Parkinsons. The medical literature also says there is no known cause and no known cures. Botox injections in the throat help. Needles putting toxic poison in my throat?????? What?? Nooooooo, Im not doing that. No way. They say surgery helps sometimes. Now here is where I get really confused. The theory on the surgery is that the vocal nerve is damaged, so the damaged nerve is severed and a healthy nerve is attached. But I still have moments especially as soon as I wake up in the morning where my phonation is near normal. I can talk okay. If the nerve was damaged, how can I have near normal moments? What happens during sleep that causes the nerve to temporarily function correctly upon awakening. Or what happens during the day to cause the nerve to stop functioning? And can those processes be augmented or inhibited as the case might be? Hmmm?

My intuition tells me that the nerve may have some damage, but its the brains reaction to the damage that causes problems. Once the voice begins to have problems, the brain sends a stronger and perhaps longer signal to the vocal chords to compensate for the weak voice. In this case the brain although well-intended is doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done....the brain needs to send a weaker and shorter signal to the vocal chords. The longer and stronger signal cause the vocal chords to slam shut and produce no sound despite the brains intentions.

So all this leads me to step 1. Im going to try and find a competent biofeedback provider with some expertise in this disorder....hopefully some expertise.

Well...let's see what happens.

Here is a vid of me speaking...Don't ask me why the vid is sideways. My phone is smarter than I am and a little bit insubordinate. Hopefully future vids wont have the same problem.

China Part 1

Written on Oct 9, 2009

A week ago I got back from my first trip to China...Southern China to be exact. Nanning, BaMa, Beihai, WuMing and PingGuo (the apple city)

The weather was perfect. I packed two light jackets and never even thought about wearing them...lightweight T-shirts were all that was needed even late at night.

I expected China to be an adventure. American perceptions of China are more iconic than real...we imagine bucolic scenes and pagodas....instead of an adventure I got an education. China has transformed itself and fast. I looked for ancient China and saw glimpses, but modern China prevails...modern China is everywhere. China may have assumed possession of Hong Kong in name, but Hong Kong has taken control of China in spirit. Highrises abound both businesses and residences...giant neon signs and zillions of scooters...zillions. Anthills of scooters. Bee swarms of scooters.

The thing about China that struck me the most was the industriousness of the people: China may wait but China never stops...the Chinese people dont stop working, they dont stop for street lights, they dont stop for other traffic, they dont stop passing traffic in front of them even when there are oncoming trucks. They don't close their shops...China moves at a slower speed than the US, but we in the US start and stop...China doesnt stop. They don't stop learning, they don't stop negotiating, they dont stop trying to excel.....THEY DON'T STOP!!!

Bicycle Ride...more thoughts of being 8 yrs old

Just got back from a 30 mile bicycle ride in the summer heat..both cathartic and transformative.....the sights and smells of Sonoma County: Ripe blackberry, clover grass, wild anise and the cow manure...the manure being a smell that somehow felt comforting, strange I know, but what was stranger was the lady in Sebastopol walking her llama alone the trail...as I rode along I felt like I was 8 yrs old and it was the endless summer vacation....suddenly I could hear the playing cards in my spokes...fwap fwap fwap...and I was sure that when I got home I could turn on the radio and hear Vin Scully's golden voice announcing the Dodger line-up in the brand new Chavez Ravine stadium....Sandy Koufax would be pitching....Johnny Roseboro behind home plate....as a kid I knew nothing of prejudice. Sandy Koufax was jewish and Johnny Roseboro was black...all that mattered to me was that they were the greatest

Riding the Bicycle on the Roof of the Garage.

Good friends....they hang out together for no particular reason other than they enjoy each others company. My friend Steve Jaxon (aka Jax) was doing a remote yesterday. By remote I mean a live remote radio broadcast from the Wells Fargo Center. I go hang out...well "just because". You know that logic your mother would use when you were eight; the "just because" logic. You would question your mothers decision on something, thinking that you could do some sort of Vulcan mind trick and get your mother caught in a logical contradiction. The sort of logical contradiction that would change the ground rules from that moment forward, forever allowing you the free will to be yourself at eight years old...superior to all other eight year olds, forever able to decide your own fate without parental intervention. "Ooh cake for breakfast." Then your mother would turn Zen-like and respond "just because". A response against which there was no additional argument. The terminus of reason. It was at that precise moment you realized you never would get to ride your bicycle on the roof of the garage after all. Yeah, I was hanging out the remote for no logical reason...I was there, "just because".

The remote broadcast was in conjunction with a Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce networking event. 60 or 70 local merchants had set-up booths to promote their services and /or products. An event which sounds boring as hell [caution: momentary cynicism ahead] thank god there were no attorneys there....but in the process of hanging out I noticed something...something powerful. There was a vibrancy among the merchants and attendees, a palpable energy...sometimes I wonder why I live in Sonoma County when San Francisco is so close....yesterday I felt more alive than being in San Francisco...yesterday was more reminiscent of being in Manhattan than sleepy Sonoma County. And that vibrancy was driven by women....the women merchants of Santa Rosa were smart, well dressed, sharp and positive...this wasnt West County Birkenstocks and Tie Dye skirts...this was $600 Manolo Blahniks, well-used gym memberships with optimism and initiative. This was sharp independent conscientious women driving local commerce. It wasnt until two hours after the event that something struck me...profoundly struck me....there was no talk of recession or a down economy at that event....nothing symbolic that would indicate any fears about our local economic future...there was only a buzz. I felt truly alive and happy that I was in Sonoma County...it was a "happening place". It was as if the injunction had been lifted and I had been permitted to ride my bike on the roof of the garage after all. Maybe even adding in a pillow case as a cape while I considered riding my bicycle off the edge. Yeah I felt that alive. [Caution:editorial moment ahead] To the extent that Santa Rosa & Sonoma County are able to transcend the world wide recession, I will point to the local women merchants....local women with global awareness making a difference. They are more than our green shoots...from what I saw yesterday, they are our foundation.

Independently, Jax noticed the same thing I did....our observations parallel, providing reciprocal affirmation of our respective thoughts. Uh oh that sounds way too snobbish..."reciprocal affirmation" ??? Okay let me re-phrase that....um, er, we was thinking the same. Yeah, Jax and I was on the same thought page. And while Jax normally harbors a silent disdain for remote broadcasts...this one was a little different. During the course of a three hour broadcast, Jax had maybe 20 or 30 people come up to him...many gushing, "are you Steve Jaxon?" followed by "we love your show". Radio shows are not inherently interactive...its hard to know if your audience likes or appreciates what you do. A comedian on-stage tells a joke and gets instant feedback from audience laughter....A radio show host does not get the same kind of feedback, there is a long long lag between doing your shows and getting any kind of metrics to gauge audience appreciation....as such it easy to become a trifle insecure, to second guess yourself...but to be among a group of people, a sampling of the community and to get that kind of appreciation was tremendously gratifying...Jax doesnt need the ego boost of the appreciation, but the validation that what he is doing has some meaning in peoples lives was about as good as it gets....yeah, Sonoma County was happening yesterday...I might stay for a while. Anybody got a pillow case?

a salsa with matching socks?

So I'm going to be a judge in the Great Petaluma Chili Cookoff. I wrote a bio...I tried to write a normal bio. I just wasnt feeling it...in the words of Yoda, "incapable was I" of writing a normal bio....I finally ended up with the toned description of my salsa credentials as follows:


Despite his free-spirit Michael is a salsa traditionalist. He believes that a great salsa should remind him of an afternoon in Cabo drinking Pacificos watching the whales or a night in Costa Rica eating fresh ceviche. He believes a champion salsa should remind him of a girl of dubious character named Consuelo.


Actually I think a great salsa should be slutty and tawdry...wearing ripped fishnets like a jammer for the Sonoma County Homewreckers Roller Derby team. A great salsa is like exceptional food...highly evocative. Great food evokes powerful memories: sailing in the Chesapeake, scuba diving in Aruba, walking through the Hong Kong airport your first time, a cabana in Honduras, your first little league baseball uniform,....great food is a chance meeting with intriguing celebrity...noticing Paloma Picasso sitting on the bar stool next to you, Mick Fleetwood asking you directions....great food is hitting a perfect drive on the 18th at Pebble Beach....great food is an insulted girlfriend throwing a drink in your face in public. Okay so great food isnt always perfect, but its memorable.

Yesterday was a little salsa pre-event in studio at KSRO....one salsa stood out before we even started. I could see fire-roasted tomatoes and fresh cilantro...a beautiful contrast in colors.
The other salsas were commercial entries, I was skeptical. And three salsa entries were mango based, one was described as a key lime salsa...I was momentarily enchanted by the words key lime, I could almost taste the key lime pie melting in my mouth...mmmmhhh, but when Laura Sunday called them fruity salsas I snapped to my senses...there is a word for fruity salsas....the word is CHUTNEY!! a salsa that goes better with tea and crumpets is not salsa....I don't want a salsa that tastes good over ice cream....I dont want salsa that listens to Kenny G or has matching socks, I dont want a salsa that has car seat covers...a smooth jazz salsa with sheepskin??? Pass....next entry please

I want a salsa with worn out floorboards and an arrest record....I want a salsa that cheats on her boyfriend....I want a salsa with a secret life....slipping away to Vegas for the weekend to do lap dances for $20 a pop...I want a salsa that likes mud wrestling. I want a salsa that failed economics in college. I want a salsa that has stayed up for three days. I want a salsa that has been to rehab.

There is no such thing as a good christian salsa...no such thing as a salsa that resists temptation...no such thing as a salsa that doesnt kiss and tell, no such thing as a salsa that drives a Volvo at the speed limit.....I want my salsa in a convertible, half-naked causing commotion on Highway 1 near Ft Ross. I want my salsa wearing leopard print to a funereal....I want my salsa doing Jello shots and shooting pool. I want my salsa hung over and bleary eyed. I want my salsa to be grumpy and irritable. I want my salsa throwing chairs like Bobby Knight. I want my salsa to have a golf swing like Charles Barkley.

So with a little bit of trepidation I will head to Petaluma on Saturday...and look for Consuelo...

...to be continued

The competition was fun...pure Americana....the top three finishers were described as follows:

1. A salsa that would get the most beads at Mardi Gras...the full Consuelo.
2. A mean tattooed salsa that hangs around in biker bars looking for a fight...but like Mickey Rourke in Barfly, he loses more bar fights than he wins
3. A genuine suiza tomatillo surprise....

...til next year

Texas Style, Kitten with a Whip meets the Grateful Dead

As mentioned before, one of my best friends, Steve Jaxon, (real name: Stephen Cole Vicario) hosts a live afternoon radio talk show called The Drive (KSRO 1350 AM)...its a talk show that is really Steve's personal canvas and palette...he paints the show with his own guests & music....management is gleefully happy to stay out of Steve's way as the ratings continue to grow....I make small contributions to the show and in exchange get to share the perquisites of Steve's local celebrity status...free passes to many local community events and concerts....the one show alone: Zappa plays Zappa was worth all of my contributions...

This coming Tuesday Steve will have Dan Healy as a guest....Basically Dan is the genius behind the sound of the Grateful Dead...Not many things evoke powerful memories these days....I have had my share of drugs and alcohol...but the mere suggestion of someone connected to the Grateful Dead being on Steves show sent my synapses into overdrive...memories and sensory sensations colliding...images, sounds, people, venues, parking lots....

Growing up in the bay area in the late 60's & early 70's I came to love The Grateful Dead....I dreamed of what it would be like to be backstage....to be friends with the band...to be immersed in the adventure, to be part of the extended Dead Family...it was 1968, I had visited my mathematician uncle in Santa Fe, NM...my uncle put me on a Greyhound bus back to the bay area...I took my seat with a cheap suitcase in tow...on the empty seat next to me was a paperback version of "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"....the intro still permanently embossed: "One flew east, one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo's nest"....my personal adventure with the extended Grateful Dead family had begun...being 15 I was happy with six degrees of separation...

20 years later my dream about having at least a peripheral association with the Grateful Dead family came true, [caution:name dropping ahead] In fact, I ran into Ken Kesey...literally ran into him...smacked right into his big barrel chest...I was backstage at a Oakland Auditorium New Years Eve show....yeah those degrees of separation had slowly collapsed through time (thank you Clyde Taff)...unfortunately I was drunk and gacked to the gills when I collided with Kesey.....barely able to mumble an apology let alone use the opportunity to say something so cosmically clever that it would make Kesey pause and then demand I join his weekly LSD poker game..."okay we are now playin 3 card bisquick...one eyed pukers are wild...everybody anteup...potato poker chips only..." in fact I probably would have been forcefully removed from backstage if not for the fact that half of the security personnel had been supplied drugs via yours truly and the Medellin cartel..."hey man its going to be a late show...you got any more of that, uh stuff...?...and don't be smackin in to Ken Kesey anymore...thats not cool"

A few years later with at least one trip to rehab in my personal rear view mirror....I was living in Las Vegas....The Dead were going to play for a few days in Sam Boyd stadium...my bridges had not been completely burned and I scored some all access passes...woohoo laminates: "I rock"...I had been hanging out at Ballys Casino a lot because of a hot Texas cocktail waitress...Teresa Duren from Lufkin Texas...Teresa was a small town girl with breasts that reminded me of Dallas & Ft Worth, killer legs too, sugary Texas voice....God I wanted her bad...She was the embodiment of the adolescent lust I felt the first time I looked at a playboy centerfold...mmmmhhh....mesmerized by the big cities I ignored the signs of our cultural disparity and invited Teresa to go with me to the concert...figuring that if an all access pass didnt impress her enough to sleep with me...nothing would. And when I say I was blinded by cultural disparity...I mean blinded with a capital B...Teresa once told me in a syrupy rural Texas drawl that she "liked sushi...but only the cooked kind of sushi"...I listened but didnt really hear her...the big cities were in the way of my auditory nerve...Teresa's comment about sushi should have been a major clue that Teresa and the Grateful Dead were alternate and antithetical universes....but lured by the big cities and the prospect of sleeping with my personal centerfold, I extended the invitation anyway. Teresa cheerfully accepted....I should have seen it coming: Teresa at a Grateful Dead show was a pure Ellie Mae Clampett disaster...epic, surreal and unfixable...

I picked up Teresa at her Las Vegas condo on a blazing hot Las Vegas afternoon, middle of May...there was Teresa in 112% Halloween style Daisy Duke glory...short short cutoff levis, black 5 inch high heels, long white waxed legs...big teased two-toned Texas hair and a half shirt that showed off most of her stomach and the major urban areas of the big cities...I could see all the way from Dallas to Ft Worth and the surrounding areas....hello Weatherford ...it was major cleavage, Dolly Parton shaking her head cleavage...her look was so wrong that there was no fixing it, the girl had no flip flops and Tie dye in her closet...there was no little change I could suggest that would make it better, her look was pure Hee Haw Hooker...Junior Samples drooling and stammering...I decided to make peace with the surreal....looked right at Teresa...well I sorta looked at her mentally imagining the drive from Ft Worth to Dallas, then taking a big right turn toward San Antonio, wondering if I would get stopped by the Federales if I tried to go "south of the border"....I finally looked up and said..."you look perfect, lets go" hoping that Teresa would be oblivious to her own Anne Margaret, country style "Kitten with a Whip" spectacle once we arrived at the show....yes Teresa understood less about the Grateful Dead than she did about Sushi....




There is a lesson here...while I imply that Teresa was clueless about the Grateful Dead...I was obviously clueless as well....Why was I surprised that a Las Vegas cocktail waitress from rural Texas was dressed like a big hair porn star? It seems we all have blind spots....a few years later I got married....I think I was married six months before I realized two things about my wife that were horribly wrong...two thing I missed...completely missed, two glaring red flags, two things I was clueless about....How the hell could I not know my wife was an NRA member and kept loaded guns unlocked in the house? And while that was egregious enough....(egregious on both our parts) perhaps more egregious was that my wife was of the firm opinion that Roger Moore was a better James Bond than Sean Connery...how could I have over looked that...how could I have been so clueless...???? If I had known about her blasphemous James Bond ideas I would have called off the wedding and sent her for de-programming

So a tarted-up Teresa and I arrive at Sam Boyd stadium for the Grateful Dead....even Bill Walton swallowed his tongue...maybe because Bill could see Dallas and Ft. Worth clearly from his vantage point ....[cue the Bill Walton voice: "Un--bee leave ah bil"] It would have been less a sensation if I had been with Madonna and Jenna Jameson...the thing I found fascinating was the stares from the young hippie guys there with their hippie girl friends...I thought the guys would look at Teresa as some sort of cultural freak of nature....Nooooooooo...the guys were staring at Teresa with mouths open and tongues hanging out....hoping desperately their hippie girlfriends wouldnt see their blatant lust....I can only imagine how the discussion would go later...trying to explain to Sunflower why she should suddenly start shaving her legs and wearing heels....I can only wonder how many young hippie girls stormed out of the yurt later that night angered by their boyfriends mental infidelity

Well thats my long strange trip...oh in case you are wondering....I never did have any fun with Dallas and Ft Worth...never made it down south to San Antonio....who knows I might have been clueless once I got there....Of course I might be in good company, I hear a lot of girls complaining that most guys don't know that The Alamo is right in the center of San Antonio...

April 28, 2009: Blog is glob inside out...sorta...

Okay...its not time to promise anyone I'll start writing again, but it does seem worthwhile to try and pop out a blog or three...especially as my mind seems verdant enough to spew out an ingenious thought or too (sic) these days...wait wait wait, I think verdant means "lush and green" which means I have used the word out of context or alternately I need to reshape my syntax around the word verdant..., hmm shaping syntax...do I need a lathe for that? Frankly though I don't give a shit about following grammatical rules these days...I'd rather my readers be slightly puzzled and annoyed rather than lulled to sleep by structurally correct commentary...oh who am I kidding...I have no readers....

I went to see Comics Stripped last night in Petaluma...at the fabulous Cinnabar theater....I managed to irritate Ellie the GM, ironically as I was trying to defuse what was only a mildly awkward situation....either my diplomacy skills have been horribly corrupted or Ellie is a trifle brittle these days....I still like her though....her thin features and delicate chin are endlessly fascinating....she is an art subject come to life. I went to Comic Stripped primarily because my friend & compadre, Steve Jaxon was doing a little emcee work.....Steve has a big deep resonant voice....a voice that is almost addictive...like smelling the Cinnabons at the mall, you are drawn in.....and women love his voice...I mean two syllables of love....long long bubble bath love his voice. Oh my oh my....thats much higher praise than anything I could ever ladle out.

I wasn't overwhelmed by Steve's intro though, but the crowd laughed and seemed rapt...so when Steve asked me later about his intro, I employed the same diplomatic skills that seemed to have failed so miserably earlier with Ellie. Fortunately Steve had been drinking Bob Sarlatte's scotch and failed to notice my evasiveness, in fact he actually seemed to be pleased with my answer as I told him content was subordinate to vocal quality and delivery....I then followed that comment with a Marshal McCluhan reference and waved my hands....and presto change-oh: smiles all around!

The fact is that Steve's authoritative delivery and his vocal quality are extraordinary....he does capture peoples attention, I'm constantly in awe of how commanding he can be with a microphone in his hands...I just wasnt overwhelmed with his Bye Bye Birdie reference....of course then again Steve is singularly unimpressed by my fascination with the song: "The girl from Ipanema" or the fact that I watch "American Idol"...so that seems like a fair enough skid row poe...er quid pro quo.


That brings me to natural segue...that kid on American Idol, Adam is absolutely brilliant....let me re-phrase that: he is triple fucking absolutely brilliant with sprinkles...oooh sprinkles...he seems to be the love child of Chris Issak, KD Lang and David Bowie...every time I see the kid I think of David Bowie singing "Little Drummer Boy" with Bing Crosby and thinking he could have pulled it off just as well as David Bowie did...and of course his androgynous look: guyliner and painted fingernails doesnt hurt either....I would love for that kid to discover Dan Hicks song "I scare myself" and cover it....his voice is perfect for that song...

Oops I forgot to mention something...[caution: narrative backtrack ahead] during his time on stage, Bob Sarlatte in an obvious bit of irony mentioned Steve's voice....he called Steve's voice the only human voice that dolphins can hear....muy cle-vah boy that Bob Sarlatte....muy cle-vah.
"...they call him Flipper, Flipper....faster than lightning"....ah Flipper....Lassie with a blowhole...Flipper, er Lassie get help, Timmy's hurt!


Suddenly I feel like a trip to the mall....the Cinnabons are calling...thank god you can smell them for free.

Tomorrows glob preview: Chinese women online. Or not.