DAN'S PAPERS, January 16, 2009 Page 14 www.danshamptons.com
Kidney
You lean over and start munching, and behind you, the door gently shuts. Then the people begin brushing you down. It feels really good, and what they are doing is brushing you with this liquid pesticide that keeps ticks off you. I am not making this up. I am not exactly sure why it is they are doing this either, except that either it is because they want to calm down the deer (it is hunting season), or because they don’t want the deer to get sick from the tick bites, or because they want to keep the deer from spreading the ticks to new areas in the Hamptons, where there have never been ticks before. It’s one of those. In any case, the tick brushers — they let the deer go after they brush them, of course — have come into conflict with the deer meat testers, who examine deer meat to see if there are any bad chemicals in it, a thing they do because there is this other group of people who have arranged for deer that have been shot to be butchered up, frozen and then brought to homeless shelters to be served to the less fortunate. So they test the deer and they find there is this poison in it at a level that could be harmful to humans, if eaten. How about that? By the way, with the current economic slowdown, there are going to be new job openings for people who would like to be hired to do yoga with the deer, set fire to the deer, tell the deer jokes, teach them to tap dance, and to listen to their problems, as long as you have a degree in psychiatry. Oh, and we also need people to teach them not to run into the road to be hit by cars. And people to teach them TO run into the roads to be hit by cars — only during hunting season, of course.
ZE RI O T O M
! IT
(continued from previous page)
year old kid who appeared at Buttafuoco’s house in Amityville one morning with a pistol and shot his wife. (She lived.) And Jessica Hahn, a secretary in a Massapequa church who claimed she was raped by TV evangelist Jim Bakker when he came by the church to deliver a sermon. Her claim pretty much ruined Bakker, the king of bad hair, who would give his TV sermons with his long false-eyelashed wife Tammy Faye Bakker by his side on the podium. I cannot prove this, but Dr. Batista waited four years after starting his divorce case to ask for his kidney back, and he only did so after Barbara, his new attorney, got involved. It may not have been such a wise move. The national media attention, which has resulted from this demand, could negatively affect the reputation of this surgeon, who for the last 15 years has been affiliated with the Nassau University Medical Center. I mean, would you be inclined to go under the knife at this point with this man? Well, maybe all the media attention will pass. The upside to this, I think, is that Dr. Batista means well. As Alec Baldwin pointed out in his new book A Promise to Ourselves, going through a divorce for five years or more, as he has with Kim Basinger, can be a form of hell on earth because of the gleeful encouragement of the legal profession. Dr. Batista says today that when he donated the kidney, he did so without hesitation. “My first priority was to save her life. Today, even with all I have been through, I would do it again.” He also says there is no feeling on earth like that of saving another person’s life. His move — legal papers have been filed in Islip — was taken out of the enormous frustration he is going through today getting through the thicket of barriers his wife has
Wishing You A Safe & Prosperous New Year 375 County Road 39, Southampton (Located in the Home Furnishing Center)
Beautiful Custom Drapery
www.wwunlimited.com
GeekHampton
™
Family owned and operated Since 1985
Call Linda & Paul 631-287-1515
1147407
(continued from previous page)
©Ronald J. Krowne Photography 2008
Dear
MAC SERVICE ¥ MAC SUPPORT ¥ MAC STUFF
all Mac all the Time SMALL CLASS TUTORING ONE ON ONE TUTORING Mac Basics ¥ Mac Mail ¥ Web iPhoto ¥ iTunes ¥ iPod ¥ iPhone
Mac Accessories ¥ Computer Cables ¥ Backup Drives ¥ Battery Backups ¥ Ram Upgrades ¥ Hard Drive Replacements ¥ Mac Repair ¥ Mac Tuneups Program Installation ¥ Geek Gadgets & Gifts
A TWIN PEAKS GEEKS PRODUCTION 154 West Montauk Hwy Hampton Bays macs@geekhampton.com 1197410
put up to keep him from seeing their three kids, age 14, 11 and 8, he says. He also says he doesn’t really want the kidney back, just the value of it in terms of what it cost him, both in medical costs and in the value of the organ, in making the financial settlement with her. As far as attorneys go, it is a financial jackpot. The time passes, the clock clicks off the costs. The more time, the more bucks. Dawn Batista is now going to have to bring legal and financial experts in to court to state whether a person can ask for financial compensation for a kidney, and to calculate what a kidney is worth. Apparently, organ donors sign agreements that say they give their organs willingly and without expectation of financial remuneration at a later date. (Joe Organreceiver wins the lottery. Bill Organgiver cannot ask for a percent of it.) “It’s a non-starter, this claim,” said one legal expert, probably billing somebody for 0.1 hours of his time for saying that. Dawn Batista’s attorney, Douglas Rothkopf, has already waded in with a claim that Dr. Batista is in violation of agreements made in court that he wouldn’t say anything derogatory about his wife while this divorce is in session. So she may sue him or have him jailed or something for that. I read somewhere that the value of everything in the human body, if sold as metals or mineral on the open market, is $27. I think the government puts this value on the death of a person when they die in some calculation or other, and I think I read somewhere recently, due to the sudden increase in the value of copper and aluminum, that this value has now been recalculated to be $55. On the other hand, this doctor really did spend a whole lot of money to save his wife’s life, no doubt about it. A few final thoughts. “She’s a wonderful person,” Dawn Batista’s mother recently told a reporter. Another reporter asked Jill Brooke, the editor of FirstWivesWorld.com for a comment. “What next, he wants his sperm back for his kids?” Thank goodness for those high walls on the LIE.