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Group therapy was never like this.
Group therapy was exactly like this.
 Sessions — a new musical revue starring Robert Newman in which In Treatment meets A Chorus Line — will make you wonder if group therapy could possibly be that much fun.
It couldn't. Trust me. But the play is, and I'm really getting to really like The Algonquin, the small theater complex where we saw A Night At The Carlyle a few weeks ago.
In the group I went to, the therapist didn't look anything like this gorgeous actor, and hadn't been a star of Guiding Light for 28 years. In fact, I don't think he could even carry a tune. Certainly no one ever broke out into dance, unless you counted that guy who tapped his feet incessantly or the woman who pranced out of the room on a regular basis.
But the problems were basically the same: mother, father, heartbreak, jealousy, fear (not to mention loathing), loneliness, insecurities, failure, success, and, in this play if not my group, the couple who squabble about Scrabble and everything else, and one really poignant case of abuse.
Like therapy itself, the play isn't perfect, and some of it is not immediately clear. Personally, I didn't get the connection between group therapy and dancing, although it was a good excuse to see Rachel Raks in action once again, as a very sexy lady with a problem with men, who herself becomes an issue for the therapist who is on the verge of "crossing the line" with her. Yes, that plot line again.
Gabriel Byrne, who can delve into my psyche any time he wants, has the
same issue on his show, In Treatment. And who can blame either of these guys, what with all these gorgeous women and all that pesky transference. . .
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The Art of Procrastination
You gotta have a plan, or you'll never be able to procrastinate in peace.
Say you really don't want to see that exhibit at the museum, the one everyone says you absolutely must see. Here's what you do: write it down in your date book with as much sincerity as you can muster. When you get to that day — make it far enough in advance so that lots of things can crop up — you almost certainly will be busy with other, more urgent things. But you can say with a straight face that you were planning to go and had to miss it.
As Stuart Smiley would say, you "should" all over yourself about lots of things: movies you should see, hikes you should take, goodies you should bake.
If you don't have a plan, these "shoulds" can nag you incessantly, and your unconscious guilt could bubble up to the surface. You might even find yourself blurting out something like, Why don't we hit that show (or climb that mountain, or make those brownies) this weekend? But that's okay if you say it it early in the week, like Monday. Anything after Wednesday is dicey. However, if pushed, promising to go the following weekend usually works. Indefinitely.
Are you getting the idea? As long as you have a plan, you can procrastinate forever.
But getting out of going to an exhibit is easy. Let's look at something trickier: A Trip to Antarctica.
You might have read about this in that fancy travel magazine you get for "free" after paying some obscene amount for an American Express platinum card, which has now been eclipsed by a tonier black card, but who can keep track of these things.
Anyway, it seems that all the cool people, so to speak, are going to Antarctica . . .
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How do I get into trouble by blogging? Let me count the ways.
First of all, the usual: Readers don't always agree with what I say. Or they don't like getting emails directing them to my site where they can read what they don't agree with. Or they just don't like getting these kinds of emails.
But, being me, I get in trouble in new and exciting ways, too.
 I sent out an email blast the other night, not realizing that the webmaster was working on the site, which made him wonder what the hell I was thinking. Meanwhile, readers were being sent to an Under Construction site, not to the blog. This is not a good way to win readers and influence the blogsphere.
The most humiliating thing I've done was to send a very nasty email — by mistake — to someone who didn't want to provide names for my mailing list.
I wrote this vile piece of vitriol, in a fit of irrational anger, to another friend, hit the wrong name on my address book — and had one of those "Oh shit, what have I done now!" moments that are all too common in my life . . .
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The blogging adventure continues.
Today I got my first expletive-deleted reply to an e-mail blast.
The expression was nothing special, just the usual three little words, beginning with "go" and ending with "yourself," with a four- letter expletive in the middle, suggesting an activity I might want to perform on my person.
I hear this suggestion made to others all the time, on every street corner, bus stop, and store in the city, and many, many times in every cop movie I've ever seen. I've even had it shouted at me, in a memorable scene at a restaurant when a friendship was undone. (This town wasn't big enough for both of us anyway.) But this is the first time I've seen it in print directed at my blog.
Well, there's a first time for everything, but now I have to figure out how to reply to this reply.
When I get requests to remove someone from the mailing list, and we all get a few of these, I send an email right back saying, "Done." And I do. Take the name off the list.
But "Done" doesn't seem to cut it in this case. I mean, she didn't ask to be taken off the list, now did she? So what would I have "done?" What she suggested? I don't think so . . .
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 What good is a "secret" that's been out for thousands of years?
Well, if it's news to you, it could change your life.
The Secret, which had everyone buzzing on Oprah, is that everything in the universe is connected, including your thoughts, so that what you think directly affects what happens to you. In fact, you get what you ask the universe to give you.
This is not praying or begging, but like placing an order in a catalog. You have to be specific, and you have to work towards your goal. But if you do this, you will get what you want.
Trust me, folks, this is nothing new. I'm not saying it's bad, nor am I mocking it. Maureen Dowd called it a cross between Dr. Phil and the Da Vinci Code. Well, yeah, a little around the edges. If I were bitter, I'd say that's it's a new way to make money from an old idea. All I know is that when I went to the web site, it asked for $4.95 to enter it, and when I didn't pay up, that colorful whirling ball came up and wouldn't stop until I shut down the computer and rebooted. Coincidence? Retribution? You decide.
Anyway, this whole philosophy goes back to the time of Aristotle (a lot of good it did him!), or maybe even to some cheery caveman — one who hadn't seen those poignant Geico ads . . .
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