You’re going to get cancer, okay? Just chill out, okay, and embrace it. Breathe it in, and plant the word in your psyche. Now don’t breathe out. And when you do get your cancer, The James will be there for you. Like the mad dash to open shipping lanes and lay claim to the unimaginably horrifying melting Arctic, hospitals and Big Pharm will trample each other to plant their corporate flag right in the high point of your tumor. The James just got tired of waiting, that’s all. With a one-in-seven breast cancer rate, statistically speaking, you may now know more cancer sufferers than you do homosexuals, and supposedly the gays are everywhere! The James has started a visual marketing blitzkrieg that, like cancer, began at a primary site, the wall-sized bald woman at the airport welcoming you to “C”-bus, but recently has metastasized, with secondary billboard and banner lesions all over town.
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| upstaged. |
To be
honest it really started a few years ago, with the christening of the massive Stefanie
Spielman Breast Center, where we find yours truly, in the exam room at my
yearly oncology check-up, wrapped in a plush terry cloth robe, sipping Chai tea, and of
course, waiting for the doctor. When she
asked how I liked the new Breast Center, perhaps I should have just said,
‘fine’, and not, ‘wow, there’s a lot of money in breasts’, to which the doctor
gave a short nervous laugh. As it was we both kept an eye on the ever-present turd floating
in the cancer punch bowl for the remainder of the exam. I am a grateful fifteen-year survivor of
bilateral breast cancer who needs you to know that should you have cancer in
your lifetime, there are a number of great medical outfits in Columbus,
including The James, to treat you. But
because I am a complex human being, who enjoys live synapse and opposable thumbs,
I am therefore able to be simultaneously hateful and grateful. I’m
hateful of the cancer industry yet grateful to be alive to complain about it.
So,
honestly, why shouldn’t The James advertise? It’s a free country, mostly, and
The James is one of those corporation-people with every right to peddle its
wares. And I appreciate that they are
laying off the “supple mounds of dread”, formerly known as breasts, for now, and
fantastically voyaging into new cancer territories. And let’s look at the message itself.
“There Is No Routine Cancer”
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| Show us the prostate already! God, it's like reading Playgirl! |
Hold the presses, I love it!
That hot rocket flew out of committee like a chunk of Heimlich beef, and
why?— because it’s timeless. It doesn’t
chide you for shitty way you treated yourself up to that point and it doesn’t
make promises of a cure. It just floats
in the now. And it speaks to Millennials, who somehow
altogether collectively think they’re individually unique. Baby Boomers strive to fit in, but youngsters
need to know that their tumor markers are as signature as their Otter
case. Yes, Dakota, Brittany and Owen,
your cancer is different than your mom’s, your next door neighbor’s and your
boss’s. For God Sakes, you’re each a
superstar!
If we
just relax and accept that cancer treatment and research is our industry here in Columbus, we would be able to open up a
little, you know, maybe grant some naming rights. This would at least interrupt
our current practice of naming things after closed manufacturing sites, like
the pre-cancerous Lennox Town Center, The Wonder Bread Lofts, and of course,
The Sofa Express Royal Academy of Advanced Online Learning K-8. We’ll wave goodbye to ‘Value City Arena’, a
name we despised so much that we refused to use it, and welcome, ‘The James
Malignancy Plaza’ featuring Prostate Arena and Chemo Field. “Just Watch Us Grow!”
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| ..need to get cancer cat food at cancer Target while I'm here. Cancer, cancer cancer... |
What’s
devastating about this onslaught is that by design, and ubiquitous placement,
it is subliminally desensitizing. At
least with global warming, I can join the deniers if I choose and stick my head
in the hot sand. But no one is denying
cancer here, on the contrary, they’re bitch-slapping me in the face with it,
constantly imploring that when I get it, they’d like a piece of that action…….. okay? It’s like your kids sticking post-it notes
on the furniture they want when you finally kick. I accept that I’m sensitive to it, but I
firmly believe if it doesn’t bother you, or you don’t really notice it, you may
have already drunk the Chai tea. You may
be doomed.
There
is room for Columbus to have the greatest zoo, the most awesome Pride festival
and the finest cancer treatment facility.
I’m not trying to deny The James their inalienable right to advertise,
but how about empowering the individual with some tips on how to take cancer
rates backward a bit? Ads like,
“Could you eat a piece of fruit today?”—Love, The James
“Try to quit smoking, okay?
We don’t want to meet you.”—Fondly, the staff at The James
You see the problem is that the machine does not get fed that
way, and the machine eats money. So what
the hell, let’s go with it, let’s carpet bomb Malignancy Plaza with all sorts of
billboards.
“WHEN IT COMES BACK, WE’LL BE HERE” --The James
MARLBORO PINKS—“I’ve tried to quit and just can’t. But it feels good to know I’m helping others
when I smoke Pinks!”
THE REAL RACE FOR THE CURE—Obstacle Mud
Run July 2nd and 3rd. Open to uninsured cancer
patients only. First prize free
treatment!
|
| above: Alzheimer's Blvd. in the Cancer Shopping Plaza |
Or let’s
hold hands and jump off this speeding train together, because cancer is a formidable
disease, not a rite of passage, not a fact of life, and not a rallying cause
for all of femininity. I can certainly
think of better causes to bring together generations of women, like equal pay,
or the worldwide end of rape and war.
Cancer can be a somewhat avoidable disease when you begin to make
changes in your life to prevent it, instead of praying for King James to ride in once you
have it. And let’s give the word cancer the deference it deserves, ascending
it from hypnotic ad-speak and isolating it from the same eye-shot as Three
Olives Vodka, the latest Lotto scratch-off and the IPhone 5C. I beg you, do not go gently into that plush
terry cloth robe, because you might not be able to get out of it, and it will
never be in The James’ interest for you to know that.
