So, I’m still in the damn hospital, and I don’t mind telling you, I’m pretty sick of it.
The graft in my shoulder was all gross and infected, so they grabbed some blood hose from my thigh and replaced the bad section by my collarbone. The issue is that I can’t leave until the slow-growing and “insolent” (as the doctors called it, excitingly) infection is definitely confirmed to be out of me, because if that mess gets to my main aorta graft, I’m, to use a medical term, boned. So, I have to stay here a bit longer, and it’s getting to me a bit.
It’s not any one thing: it’s the endless cavalcade of pokes and blood draws and IV insertions and the always surprising pain of adhesives pulling out hairs and being connected to wires and drain lines and being woken up at all hours to get blood stolen or something injected into my abdomen. It’s just so many nonstop little annoyances, a situation that always makes me think of that famous engraving of St.Anthony tormented by demons and his amazing look of just being fucking over it. And, to shoehorn cars in here, let’s talk about a car named for a Saint, the Dodge St.Regis.
I’m not Catholic, but I have always liked the Greater Catholic Cinematic Universe, populated as it is with so many exciting characters like Saints, lots of whom are depicted in really memorable ways, like St.Sebastian looking like a human pin cushion all the time, or St. John the Baptist, looking like when you order lunch without really reading the menu. This 1470 engraving of St.Anthony by Martin Schongauer always sticks with me, though:
I love the demons here, with their strange animal-derived forms and cruel claws and strange suction-cup appendages and, on at least one of them, a fierce-looking anus. But what I like best is Tony’s over-this-shit face:
He’s fucking done. He doesn’t even bother to grimace or scream out anymore. These miserable demons are just a constant annoyance to him now, and they’re not going anywhere, and while he’s not happy about it, he’s too over it to make a Big Thing about it, either. Just another day, full of more stupid demons.
I get the easy saint tie-in would be to do the car from the old British television show The Saint, which featured a lovely Volvo P1800:
I had a P1800 (well, the 1800S version) and loved it, but I decided to make it harder on myself and find a car actually named for a saint, so instead we’re going to talk a bit about the Dodge St. Regis.
And if you’re wondering what sort of saint St. Regis was, he seems like a pretty good guy. Before he got his post-mortem gig as a saint, he was Jean-François Régis, living from 1597 to 1640, and doing a lot of work for orphans and at-risk women. He’s the patron saint of lacemakers (so all of you with doily seat covers on your Toyota Crowns should know him), along with bastards (the kid kind, not the kind that snipe parking spaces from you), and medical social workers.
He’s one of only two saints to have a Dodge named for him (St.Neon being the other, of course, unless you count St.Viper, but Viper’s beatification has been held up in red tape at the Vatican for centuries).
My friend Jeremy’s dad had a St.Regis, and referred to it as the “flagship of the Chrysler fleet.” He loved that car, and one morning woke up to it resting diagonally across the street, smashed and battered by another car, the absent driver of which just left a woefully inadequate note saying “Sorry, fell asleep.”
He was devastated.
My friend’s dad’s ardor aside, the St.Regis was kind of a half-assed car, only lasting from 1979 to 1981 and being a sort of rushed full-sized fill-in after Chrysler discontinued their previous huge full-sized cars. The St.Regis was an R-Body car, which was really just the old 1962 B-body with more modern body bits grafted on. Man, I can’t escape grafts!
Marketing for the St.Regis seemed to really embrace early ’80s yuppiedom, with the mentions of “soft Saxony and Whittier cloth,” whatever the hell that is, and the “Feelings” headline there next to the nuzzling yuppies, all in front of the former World Trade Center.
The best part about the St.Regis were these transparent headlight covers. I remember them always having condensation inside them, but they were still strangely cool, a novel way to dress up boring old square sealed beams.
These came with slant-sixes by default, but you could get a fairly disappointing 318 or 360 V8, too, the 440s sacrificed on the altar of fuel economy. A big chunk of St.Regises were earmarked for police and other fleet uses, and they all got pretty well used up, making a St.Regis an incredibly rare car to encounter today.
I just got another IV shoved into me. I’m so sick of this. Oh well. Soon, I’ll be free, like a St.Regis on the open highway, with my 85 hp slant-six shoving me relentlessly into the unknown!
Jason, my best to you. Hope you are on the mend and soon to be home with family. Glad you are up to writing your column in spite of your medical situation.
Hey, there’s a pope in my pizza!
Which Pope did you find in your pizza? I found Papa John in mine recently. #Selling The Vatican by the Slice.
Get well soon.
I hope to be long dead before we have a Patron Saint of Tail Lights.
I don’t want to be around for the annual day of brake checking and laughing.
Every other week I go in to get an infusion and connected to a pump for two days that slowly delivers my “medication”. They call it chemotherapy but it is really just a sanctioned poisoning. I have seen enough true crime dramas to know that if my wife did this to me, they would throw her in jail for attempted murder. 😉 The side effects last about a week. At the end of the second week, I feel great. The memory of how bad I felt has faded. It is not until I get hooked up again that I recall exactly how crappy it all really is.
My point is that the way the human brain works, things will not seem as bad in retrospect. Hang in there Torch. You just need to get through it. It will get better.
Best wishes for you too, Friend.
I had no idea Regis Philbin had been venerated.
I wonder how Joyce and Kathy felt about that?
It’s nice that there’s a hotel in Manhattan named after him tho.
I suppose having a big Dodge named after you – even for a couple years – is nice too.
I wonder how many other cars are named after hotels and morning show hosts?
I seem to recall there was a Chevrolet Greenbriar, as well as Plymouth Plaza, Savoy and Belvedere, Ford Thunderbird and Fairmont…
…but not so many morning show hosts.
Please don’t provide fodder for the marketing geniuses working for auto manufacturers, or we may have to deal with car names such as the Chevrolet Oprah, Chrysler Hoda, Jeep Jenna, Alfa Romeo Roker, and Ferrari Wendy. We’ve already got the GMC Savannah, and that’s quite enough thanks.
Al(faromeo) roker is genius.
Hang in there, Torch, we look forward to many more installments of your musings.
Saint Regis in that picture looks like that rap battle parody gif, with the saint being the rapper just delivering the ridiculous rhyme and all the demons are the kids overreacting wildly to his prose
In Brazil, there even was some kind of „holy sportscar“ with the name of Santa Matilde:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Matilde
Ooooh, I like that…
I hate what you’re going through, Pal. Speedy recovery. For your trip home a smooth riding St. Regis wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Praying for your Jason. So sorry you are having to go through this! Keep up your dope sense of humor!
Torch, I’m sorry to hear the news of your tormenting stay at the hospital. I imagine you are slowly gaining the face of St. Anthony. Legal note: the fierce anus is what happens when demons and dudes alike eat one too many tacos.
I hope you get better soon. Meanwhile, you might try to mix pills with your keyboard, just for research purposes and your readership’s enjoyment.
Also, Volkswagen Santana. And the Spanish Land Rover Santana.
Do get better, you.
Hugs for the family, too.
In that case, while you’re laid up I highly recommend Jenny Nicholson’s 1 hour 20 minute YouTube video on the Church Play Cinematic Universe.
And get well soon!
I’m so very sorry to hear the never-ending shitstorm this has become for you.
Also, it looks like the other building (besides the twin towers) in the Dodge ad is famous for bad engineering reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicorp_Center_engineering_crisis
The Catholic Cinematic Universe is so tiring sometimes. Here I was, excitedly – and foolishly – believing this was St. Anthony of Padova, who, despite the name, was from Portugal and is right up there as far as Portuguese saints go; on his day people throw a demented all-nighter of booze and sardines.
But oh well, this is not that St. Anthony. This is St. Anthony the Great, AKA Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Anthony the Hermit, or Anthony of Thebes. Entirely different guy from a different continent and millennia.
And my mother wonders why I strayed from the church; their plotlines are complex but dull, and it’s just too many characters to keep track of (also: almost none of them turn out to be that great, just wave after wave of baby killing assholes).
Oh and get better soon!
Of course we cannot forget the whole Hyundai theme with Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) and Santa Fe (Holy Faith) for those such religiously inclined.
Get well quick Torch!
You can pay homage to those saints by playing a soothing sonata.
“Insolent” Sounds like Gomez and Morticia are in attendance post Pugsley removal. trying to keep Fester at bay. Here’s hoping all is sorted by Wednesday.
Good luck Torch. Really, it’s about time.
We all know you are just trying to extend your stay because you crave the great food there.
Who doesn’t love green jello and cold fish sticks 3 times a week? /s
Strength! May all your blood hoses swell in good measure without insolent infections lurking in the damp shadows. (It’s a very Gigeresque world you’ve summoned!)
Your commentary made me take a closer look at the engraving, and…isn’t that a cloaca?
And I hope you heal quickly!
Good luck Torch, if you can survive chainsawing lead acid batteries in half you can survive anything. Plus I’m crossing my fingers for you, and that’s got to help or we wouldn’t keep doing it.
I’m pretty sure I’m agnostic, so I struggle to enjoy religious stuff, but your genius phrase “Greater Catholic Cinematic Universe” has genuinely changed how I view all those old-timey superhero stories.
The other Saint vehicles are from the 1920’s. The Wills Sainte Claire was produced from 1921 to 1927. Mr. Wills was a perfectionist in quality and used utting-edge metallurgy. One model was called the Gray Goose.
Jay Leno has a Wills Sainte Claire in his collection.
“Catholic Cinematic Universe”, that’s awesome, a lot of my knowledge of Catholicism comes from shows like Supernatural so right there with you.
Hopefully you heal up good, not sure how much tubing you have left in the lower chassis to repurpose for the main oil pump there.
For being arguably the malaisiest of the big 3 (Ford puts in a decent case too), the St. Regis and contemporary Dodge Magnum put a pretty interesting spin on Brougham that’s aged pretty well.
Torch – You’re a scholar and a gentleman. And a helluva of a soldier as you continue to report despite constant attacks behind the enemy lines of the healthcare zombies. Your country (the sovereign state of Autopia) salutes you!
The ssecondary chool I attended was called Regus and has now “rebranded” as St Regis. Having read your piece I assume it is in recognition of the large number of lacemakers being educated by it.
Please tell me you guys are renaming the vinyl and cloth membership levels “Oxford Vinyl” and “Saxony and Whittier Cloth” to go with “Rich Corinthian Leather”.