Tired? Turn to the obit page.

Three matters bothered me this morning when I traveled to the Houston VA hospital for an EMG, nerve test, on my feet and legs. Nothing that was a bother had anything directly to do with the test.

First I woke at 4:50  a.m. I did so to catch the shuttle van from the local outpatient clinic to the hospital. As it turned out — my being the filling between almost 500 pounds of veteran sandwich in the van ride — my own drive to Houston with morning rush hour traffic and all might have turned out to have been more pleasant had I driven my truck instead. So the hour at which I awoke, the uncomfortable ride to the hospital and dealing with some of the VA’s most accomplished bureaucratic assh**es while trying to work out another matter completely were what made my day much less than perfect.

The EMG itself, performed by a friendly doc with a heavy Latino accent wasn’t really much of a problem at all considering I would get my legs or feet shocked from time-to-time. The shocks weren’t like getting shocked when one grabs hold of a live wire. Believe me. Been there done that — ow, ow s**t!!!

Mostly it was the early morning rise that got to me. Even though I somehow managed to sleep most of the way back from Houston sitting upright in the van, I still feel halfway dead. As such, it is most appropriate that I pay tribute here to a great man whose obituary I noticed today.

Many may not recognize the name Vic Mizzy right off, unless you watched the running gag with the television credits which opened the 1960s TV comedy “Green Acres.”  Mizzy, who died in Los Angeles Saturday at 93, wrote the theme for Eddie Albert-Eva Gabor farce. The Gabor character would make some bizarre comment about the opening credits which would feature Mizzy or other crew’s names, something one would hardly if ever see on any other TV show or movie.

But it was probably another of Mizzy’s TV songs which is more widely known, however, that being the theme of the “Addams Family,” complete with the song’s finger snaps.

True, Mizzy may not have cured cancer or polio, or have won a Nobel Prize (no comment please). But some of his songs help us remember some of the zaniest TV programming that aired during a time that cried out for hilarity, the 1960s. Those themes remain catchy and appealing today.

Snap, snap. Keep Manhattan just give me that countryside …