Apres Paris, Le Deluge

I have nothing to say about Paris Hilton's hi-jacked cell phone documents. I don't care about Paris Hilton's hi-jacked cell phone documents. Nothing could matter to me less than Paris Hilton's hi-jacked cell phone documents -- no, that's not strictly true. One thing matters less. Paris Hilton.

It's sad to me that this is the state of celebrity in our culture. I mean, at one time, didn't you have to actually DO something to become a celebrity? Wasn't there some talent, or at least some involvement in a scandal required? -- And don't tell me that all of Paris' sex tape stuff qualifies as scandal -- she was already famous when that happened. What has this woman actually DONE? She was born rich with a famous last name, and used it to go to a bunch of high profile parties. She's got blonde hair. She's indiscreet. That's IT. Big deal. This is worth miles and miles of copy? Others have done all of that and also were able to act, or fornicate with a Senator or something...

The one thing I'll give her is that she is the perfect celebrity for the Bush Era II. She is all flash, no substance. She provides a distraction from the real stuff that's happening in the world. Spending time salivating over the evidence of her shallowness and stupidity prevents us from thinking about how much worse OUR lives are now than they were 5 years ago. She's junk food for a junk culture, and her picture makes copies of the "The Daily News" sell. There's no "there" there. In the new millenium, people are fascinated by shiny things.

It's all so sad. "That's Hot" is a catch-phrase? It's about as creative as "Do you want fries with that?" -- Which is what the rest of us are saying at our new post-Bush jobs. We can't seem to get it together enough to depose the American Juan Peron, but we push each other aside to devour the latest tidbit about Paris. Has she become our EVita? Picture it -- Paris OD's in a few years on bad party drugs, and the funeral becomes the event of the century. There's our Paris perfectly preserved in her glass topped coffin, little dead dog on her breast, be-jeweled cell phone pressed to her waxy ear while the millions weep. Laura Bush lays a wreath, Nancy Reagan does a reprise of her weeping at the bier routine. Andrew Lloyd Webber writes a musical. Lindsay Lohan as "Paris!"

Wake me when it's over...

Into the Cornfield

• Carson Daly


• Will Ferrell


• Paris Hilton


• Jessica Simpson


• Condoleeza Rice


• Ryan Seacrest


• Mary Kate/Ashley Olsen


• Jason Alexander


• Star Jones


• Dennis Miller


• Celine Dion


• Mariah Carey


• Ann Coulter


• Pope John Paul II

If Jesus is cool...

I just saw a piece on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (I do love "The Daily Show.") About "Rapture letters." Here's an example. Basically, they are pre-written little communiques that you leave in your car (or wherever) to explain to the sinners left behind what is happening after the Rapture comes. The Rapture, for those God-less foks in the crowd, is an event predicted in the Book of Revelations. Just before the "end times," the people who have folllowed the biblical rules (You know, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, etc.) will all get sucked up into Heaven immediately without having to die first. This will leave everybody still here in chaos, dealing with firestorms, floods, the Anti-Christ and thousands of suddenly abandoned vehicles swerving out of control. (I guess, we'll still have time to read email though.) In the Daily Show example, this guy will email the letter to your sinning friends and loved ones for you after the Rapture happens. -- Obviously, the internet will still be here, but the guy, of course, will not, having been raptured right up. Until then, he stops the mailing from going out every week, figuring that the week he can't get to it, it'll be because he's in Heaven.

The tone of these letters is so nasty! Basically, when you cook 'em down, they say "Na na na na na! I'm in Heaven and you're stuck in Hell! HAHAHAHAHA!" Being the loving caring types that the people who send these letters are, however, they try to mitigate the gloating a bit by telling you that even though you are stuck in Hell for a while, get yourself to the "correct" church immediately and pray, and if you do it well enough, you'll be able to join them eventually -- a bit singed, but heaven-bound nonetheless. Hallelujah. Of course, by then all the good houses in the "right" neighborhoods will already be taken, but hey, you can still use the community pool on Saturdays... Just make sure you keep an eye on those brats of yours.

I started thinking about life post-rapture, and the kind of people who will no longer be here. Smug, self-satisfied hypocrites who have nothing better to do than judge their neighbors will all be gone. Sunday morning will no longer be ruined by stern southerners with pained looks on their faces screaming at me from the television about my wages of sin. George Bush will be gone! (Although I imagine his daughters will still be here.) No Jerry Falwell. Barbara, the receptionist at my job will no longer greet me every morning wearing her "What Would Jesus do?" t-shirt, and the thought of visiting a red state won't make me cringe anymore. This Rapture deal might not be so bad after all.

And I think that's the point. You know, I have no problems with Jesus, he seems to me to have been a pretty caring guy who liked to talk about valuing others and who kicked all the lawyers and priests out of his church. I can agree with all of that. It's his followers I have an issue with. So I think that this Rapture is something Jesus and his pals have cooked up for the rest of us. A nice bait-and-switch on those who love to wag their fingers. I just think that's what Jesus would REALLY do (If he was cool.)

Anyway, I'll be having a barbecue the first Saturday after -- you're all invited.

Scarlet "A's" Return

You know, I can't say that I honestly believe it, but a London tabloid is reporting that the White House has told Prince Charles that his fiancee, Camilla Parker Bowles is NOT welcome there because she is a divorcee. (Uh, George? Hate to break it to you, but Charles is too...) Mitigating circumstances include "American's love of dead Princess Di" and the fact that Charles is considered a bit of a dweeb over here, but the big reason given for the decision is "to reinforce the President's stand on the sanctity of marriage."

I gotta say I'm a bit stunned on several levels. First of all, I don't give a rat's ass about Charles and Camilla (and don't want to) so the fact that the story has taken up any of my time at all is annoying. But the larger issue... As a born -in-America and still wanting-to-love-my-native-land type person, I am, of course, totally apalled. I'm amazed that the hypocrisy of this administration can sink to ever-new jaw-dropping lows. Remember that dead guy they laid out in the Capitol Rotunda last summer? (You know -- the one who ignored the AIDS crisis and let hundreds of thousands of Americans die in the '80's?) Divorced. Those bastions of the Republican party who become apoplectic about gay marriage? Divorced -- many several times over. Now a divorce is preventing some horse-faced woman from eating KFC (or whatever George and Laura serve) at the White House? So when do stocks and pillories go back up in village squares? Are we gonna have to wear those silly hats with buckles on the front? Will I ever stop feeling like I'm trapped in a never-ending episode of "The Capitol Hill-Billies?" The last few years living in America feels like that time Mom wore a robe and hair curlers when she picked you up at school -- Have we no shame?

And why did Arthur Miller have to die just when we really needed him to write "The Crucible 2?"

Of course, the other part of me - that liberal, left-wing side is absolutely thrilled. Part of me loves it when they do things like this because, being the eternal optimist, I hope that this will be the thing that finally goes too far. That maybe this will be the thing that pries American eyes off of reality-tv long enough to make them say "What the hell...?" To make it finally dawn on them that what we've been saying all along is true -- sure, they may START with trying to abolish gay rights, but their secret agenda leads right to your household pal...

I've always thought that people who drag out analogies to the rise of the Nazi party were overreacting, but the last couple of years, well, I'm just not sure anymore. We're seeing our news coverage turn into a right-wing spin machine (with the happy co-operation of our multi-mational media conglomerates) and now we're risking insulting foreign leaders (and England is about our only friend, George) because we're unhappy with their "lifestyle choices?" C'mon -- they used to let Barbara Bush visit them wearing her polyester dresses from K-Mart. Which is worse?

The pessimistic me (I'm not schizophrenic, just "multimdimensional") is afraid however, that this is yet another of those "Lucy with the football" moments. Remember the "Peanuts" comic strip? A running gag was that Lucy would promise to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he could kick it. Every time, though, just as he ran and kicked, she would whisk the football away, letting Charlie Brown fall flat on his back. Charlie Brown invariably allowed himself to be convinced over and over again that THIS time it would be different. It never was. So is Camilla just another football? Probably, I'm afraid. More than likely we'll be seeing all kinds of editorials praising Bush for his strong moral standing. But damn, that football looks tempting...

The Gates - Central Park, NYC

Just what you need - another opinion of "The Gates." Oh well, hey I didn't force you to read this. I went last Saturday, a very cold, but still sunny day, late in the afternoon. The park was more crowded than I've ever seen it -- even more than in summer. It was strange to see all of these people, bundled up in big coats and hats, walking around the park. Everyone was silent -- like they were in a library or museum, which added to the strangeness. It was definitely all about a (capital-A) Art Event.

I was really looking forward to going -- big public art things in New York are rarely so "de rigeur." You know, I thought it was really, well, interesting. I could blather on affectedly about how it reconfigured a familiar public place into something different, how it re-contextualized the natural and familiar elements of the park -- but I won't --oh wait. i just did.

My only issues with it were mainly,--well first, sadly, the color. I know that Christo and Jean Claude call it "saffron" and I'm sure they chose that color because it made the structures stand out strongly against the grays and browns of the park in winter, but if you live in NYC, that color means one thing, "Construction." It was the same color as that little plastic fencing material that they cover job sites with, the color of orange traffic cones, the color of "Sidewalk closed -- Use other side." For me, it transformed the piece into something a little too pedestrian. It should have been strange and astonishing -- not reminiscent of plastic Jersey barriers near the toll booth at the Holland Tunnel. Couldn't they have made the damn things blue or something??

The other problem is just in the nature of the installation. You KNOW it's huge, stretching for miles around the park, but it's hard to find a spot where you can see a lot of the structures in one place. The park is hilly and full of trees -- usually a very good thing, but it seemed like you could only see the few gates coming up ahead at any given time, I got no sense of the scale of the thing. I was hoping that I'd see orange (well, blue) stretching out before me, like a weird cloud, or lines of orange going into infinity. You just didn't get that, at least where I walked.

Of course, it's easier to complain than to approve, and there was a lot about it that I really liked. It has a certain strangeness to it. You can't avoid the whole question of "Why?" Why do this? Why expend the effort? It's interesting, and has people jabbering "for" or "against" all over the city. I also like the way it turns Central Park into "Bizarro-world Central Park," like the trees and rocks have retreated shamefully, allowing these weird orange curtains to take the stage, Best of all, I loved the way it made yuppie couples feel like patrons of the arts. Art that does that can't be bad.

Entering the blogosphere

Still figuring out a theme/purpose for this weblog, but thought I'd get it started...