IT'S SHOW TIME!

 The movie All That Jazz is reportedly a roman a clef  about the director Bob Fosse.  In the movie, no matter how bad his previous night and day had been, the actor Roy Scheider, portraying the character Joseph Gideon, does his morning routine:  putting Visine in his eyes, drinking Alka Seltzer,       taking Dexedrine, smoking a cigarette in the shower, and all    the while listening to Vivaldi's Concert In G;  he then finally looks in the mirror and says, "IT'S SHOW TIME, FOLKS!"  (see the YouTube segment below)

The movie was made in 1979, but after seeing the movie, on each day since, when I get out of my car to be in public, I say, to myself, "Show time!"

When I'm asked how I am, I invariably say, "wonderful", "marvelous", "fantastic" or "fabulous", and even on a really bad day, I can still muster a "great"!  With family and friends I will tell the truth because I know they actually care.   

I wish people would put on their "game faces";  if only just occasionally. The repetitive moaning and groaning is, frankly, quite boring.  Perhaps it's their lack of any other conversational gambit or they don't realize that very few people actually want to know "How are you?" I never use that phrase as an opener, mainly because I know I would be in for an iteration of their maladies. 

Please see the following article about smiling from THE WISE GEEK:

Physically expressing an emotion - such as smiling - can trigger happiness.

Smiling has been found to increase feelings of happiness. Psychologists believe this is because the brain interprets the flexing of certain muscles to be indicative of a particular mood. For example, the zygomatic major is the facial muscle responsible for controlling the corners of the mouth.

When this muscle is flexed, it is thought that it triggers the neurological response that controls emotion. Another possibility is that smiling while around other people leads them to smile back, and the brain reads this as a social cue to feel happy. 

My friend Chiquita calls me "Suzy Sunshine";  I told her nobody wants to see "Suzy Sourpuss"!

Even worse than the constant moaners and groaners are ones who hack and cough and keep telling how bad they feel and risk infecting others.  Last week, a man was coughing repeatedly in a group setting, and even after my telling him to go home, he remained, coughing and telling how sick he felt.  Today, a friend who had been present, was feeling poor, and wondered if she had been infected by him.  It reminded me of the definition of Patient Zero from THE URBAN DICTIONARY:


Patient Zero

Typically an asshole that spends between five and ten minutes talking to you before mentioning casually that he/she is sick, causing you to wonder if you've now been infected by what this mouth breathing stick has. Usually it's just the common cold, but it could just as easily be ebola.
"I can't come in today, Patient Zero there got me sick yesterday when he was breathing all over the coffee cups."