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LA Woman My televison viewing is sporadic and almost always accidental. It usually occurs at night when I flip channels to "relax." My husband, twisted sweet soul that he is, can watch hours of the Home Shopping Network and feel as soothed by it as if he had washed down a few Ambien with a glass of warm milk. Something about the sheer ennui of it all....and a fascination with the highly manipulative tactics involved by the on camera salesfolk selling Americans more crap they don't need. But my favorite 'show' has become the MSNBC show "Captured" when they feature the
L.A. County Coroner's Office! I detest all those CSI shows and their clones but LOVE the real thing! First of all almost everyone working in the office is chipper. No one seems to be bummed out about collecting dead bodies all day long. In fact they seem pretty darned happy-go-lucky about it. And none of them, thankfully, look like daytime soap stars. These ordinary folk come in all shapes, sizes and colors ...just like the corpses they collect (and few, if any, of those look at all like brutalized blonde babes misogynistically featured on the cold slabs in those CSI shows). There is something so life affirming about watching a show about death; something so homespun about watching our local coroner's office at work; something so comforting about knowing that these dedicated forensic experts are driving the same streets we are here in L.A. There is something oddly reassuring about knowing that one fateful day you might end up amoung the hundreds of dead bodies that show up at the coroner's every week. It's a like shot of gratitude that lasts and lasts and lasts. At least until the next new episode featuring the next new "cast" of stiffs. It may seem like some macabre gothy affectation but I am endlessly fascinated by the infinite ways people can die. I can't change the channel whenever an episode of this show plays ...or when another dead body is found dumped on the side of the road ....or turns up OD'd under a freeway underpass.......or is discovered bloated and completely unrecognizable floating in the L.A. River. I never thought I'd be able to watch an autopsy without vomiting but the other night I found myself riveted to the small screen when one cheery rotund young woman arrived to do the impossible -- identify an old rotted corpse given up for...well, not dead. She was already that. But all hope of identifying this woman had been abandoned. So they called in the big guns -- a fresh faced, apple-cheeked young woman (a woman who would not be out of place selling raspberry cream cheese pretzels or bedazzled Bob Mackie mu-mus on QVC) to solve the case. This gal happily pulled out an array of scalpels and saws and dug into the decomposing mummy all the while chatting way about her process as if she were relaying a recipe for homemade fudge. After some bloody sawing and hacking she emerged triumphant with two pelvic bones, a few ribs and what looked liked a tibia -- which she then cheerfully scrubbed free of blood and gristle, measured and discovered the defining characteristics that helped give the anonymous corpse some kind of identity (information then matched with missing persons records). I've learned so much watching this show -- what rigor mortis looks like and how long it lasts; how easy it is to hang yourself; how one can saw off a finger then remove the flesh from an unidentified and nearly totally rotted corpse's hand then treat the decayed flesh with chemicals, pull it onto one's own finger as if it were a glove then take the dead man's fingerprints as if your hand were his thereby solving the mystery of his identity! All of this without a single wobbly camera move, quick edit or rehashed Miami Vice soundtrack! And best of all? After some quick googling I discovered that the
L.A. County Coroner's Office has a giftshop! One filled with merchandise featuring coffee mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, keychains and
office supplies emblazoned with the coroner's name or with chalk body outlines! My favorites? The "Body Bag" Garment Bag (who wouldn't want to step onto an airplane with that?), the Toe Tag Keychain and the Body Shaped Post It Notes! (see photos above) Just in time for Halloween! And in PLENTY of time for Christmas! (Don't those Post It Notes look like something from Keith Haring's Pop Shop?)
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