Jews Never Had This Problem

It seems these days that marketing companies insist on sinking their fangs into the most unholy of places. Nickelodeon is the highest grossing cable network on television, mostly because advertisers are so eager to cater to this immense market demographic. Children spend more money on unnecessary crap than millionaires and old people do who, lets face it, might as well spend it while they’ve got the time. This is probably because most children don’t have to worry about providing for the basics in life, shelter and whatnot. Moreover, I imagine that many parents have bought into that line of crap that raising children is the greatest reason for existence. That belief has manifested itself into providing monetary extravagance for their children, whose wants are often unconventional by adult standards (I mean, honestly, who else would spend five dollars on a bundle of cardboard vials filled with flavored sugar?). Giving in to the constant nagging of a child who has no shame and is perfectly comfortable whining for hours on end if for no other reason than to see what kind of weird voices he or she can make with his or her young vocal chords may also be a reason.
But another marketing demo being exploited these days by both advertisers and politicians is the evangelical Christian 18-45 group. These people are gaining a lot of influence, and it’s either by God’s own will, or their ability to convince themselves they are right and all others are going to hell that they’re their voices are being heard, and therefore must be sucked up to. But we must be careful when looking at how politicians and advertisers are exploiting the theologically faithful, because it isn’t just the straightforward, say what they want us to say, method that’s getting the job done. Just ask Dan Brown. He’s using religion to exploit his book’s popularity by insulting the religious and getting them to create his own media campaign that bashes his novel, but will certainly ensure that millions will read it. All over the world, people are fighting for or against the legitimacy of “The Da Vinci Code” by debating a question that both answers itself, and yet has opened a world of conflict wherein both Brown and Christian leaders can profit: is a work of fiction factual?
Now I know what you, my faithful readers, are saying right now, “I would have thought you’d be on Dan Brown’s side. After all, aren’t you a staunch defender of the first amendment, and the right for everyone to be heard, regardless of what they say?” Well, I am, and fuck you for questioning my judgment. As the voice of the people, I am obligated to preserve the right to free speech, whilst ensuring that all are heard, and the truth is found. I am, after all, a man of science. And what more fundamental concept is there in my world than the search for truth? It wasn’t until tonight that I was turned around on Dan Brown. There have been a flux of articles in the past few months about “The Da Vinci Code” and I read them all. But it wasn’t until I read a New Yorker piece that I discovered Brown to be staunchly defending the facts stated in his book. Before I heard this, I assumed that Brown was going with the same argument Tom Hanks and Ron Howard had used, that this was a fictional story not to be taken seriously. Whether facts used in the story are true is insignificant. But Brown is now saying that his book is well researched and what he’s talked about has some truth to it. But the problem is that he fails to draw a line where the factual part ends and the fiction begins. He has created a very hazy middle ground, and decided to use both sides for protection. Of course he’s shouldn’t be questioned. This is a novel after all. But he can now also say that what he’s saying has some historical basis, and is to be taken seriously.
This is dangerous ground for a species with such a wild imagination, and a willingness to believe in anything (including the existence of an all-knowing being that created our universe). We love our tales to be as wild and improbable as possible, but there’s nothing we love more than when these tales have a hint of truth to them. That just gets us frothing at the mouth.
Hence, the tendency of movies to slap the “The following is based on real events” tagline at the beginning of a movie is becoming more common than ever. Does this violate Aristotle’s laws of impossibilities and improbabilities? It’s hard to say. After all, if a probable impossibility is preferable, wouldn’t the fact that it’s just a little bit truthful add to that impossibility? Can something true make something seem more false? It’s a question for serious men, and I’ll take care of it at a later date.
But that brings about an even more serious question; does it really matter what is perceived as true and what isn’t? I would argue that it does, but I’ve been wrong before. There are several thousand members of Opus Dei. If any of them commits murder, then they’ll surely be prosecuted and sent to prison for it. Outside of that, what does it matter for the other 5,999,950,000 of us who have absolutely nothing to do with any of this nonsense? Imagination fosters progress. If we are so easily whisked away to a world where an albino monk murders in the name of God and the preservation of truth, a world where Tom Hanks can get a girl like Audrey Tautou with hair like that, why must we be brought back when our imaginary world will never intersect with the harsh strains of reality that seem to offer little interest? Interesting things happen every day. Is it possible that “The Da Vinci Code” is factual? Absolutely, as much as it is possible the entire story is bullshit. I live in Portland, Oregon, and the only time I was at Westminster Abbey, I never ran into Ian McKellen as a cripple, staging a climax of a thrilling story near the Isaac Newton sculpture. Therefore, I don’t care if it’s real or not, and it shouldn’t matter whenever you open a novel (a poorly written one, I might add) and look for a good time.I was planning on talking about gay marriage tonight, but it’ll have to wait, because I found a crack in my airtight argument while I was writing it: why on earth shouldn’t Dan Brown create this kind of stir? He may be right or wrong, but he has created a debate about truth that needs to be had. He has also created, or at least perpetuated, a mythology that has captured our imaginations beyond that which can be done in a novel. The mythology of the Da Vinci Code has entered our public lives, and seeped into areas of life where fiction is rarely able to travel. Casual conversations on the bus, theorizing while on break at work, and musing about possibilities of a world outside our own everyday lives where crazy things may or may not happen. Most discussions overheard at my office usually regard television programs, mostly American Idol, and these do so little to get us to say more than whether we liked something or not. Brown has also got over forty million people to open a book and actually read it (although they should really read the epilogue before flying to Scotland to find the Holy Grail for Christ’s sake). Few people have or will ever achieve such an accomplishment. Brown should be praised if only for that reason. Step two: teach people the difference between fact and fiction. Good Night.

Lou’s Not Here

I’m sure if one were to trace the lineage of one Mr. Loud Dobbs back to the beginning, he or she would find his family’s existence in North America to date back before the Mayflower, and even the lost colony of Roanoke. His family surely must have existed before any “Native” Americans crossed the Bering Strait. Certainly the Dobbs clan dates back to when North America was part of one giant continent, and surely his must have been the only family to actually have survived on this piece of land after the great quake. It must be, because that’s the only way he would be entitled to say the shit he’s been saying about illegal immigration. In the great tradition of failing television “news” personalities, Lou Dobbs has picked a hot-button issue and taken a controversial stand on it in order to win some ratings. He has spent the past few weeks whining about the immense problems illegal immigration has caused lately, and his dog and pony show seems to be working. News outlets spanning the continent (mostly CNN, Dobbs’ own network) have been talking about the controversy this man has stirred.
I have a funny past with Lou Dobbs that seems to emulate many of my first experiences with television personalities. I thought he was all right at first. I watched his show a few times, and I thought it was balanced, and that Dobbs wasn’t trying to be inflammatory, or outrageous like so many other news personalities do. They usually do this while boasting their complete lack of journalistic standards as if it was the way news should be and that whole “objectivity” thing was just a fad, something your daddy was into when he was growing up but is now square, and only for people who wear white pants and spend their time feeding the pigeons at the park on a fair-weathered afternoon. Levelheaded objectivity has no place in this world. We want infotainment, with more of a focus on the “tainment” part. But I digress, and this is an argument that has been staged a thousand times, we need not go there again unless we decide to fix it. The point I was starting with was that Dobbs seemed like a good shit there for a while, but I guess he wasn’t really blowing the advertisers’ skirts up, so he had to go medieval and it will probably work for about five minutes. After that, his ratings will plummet just as fast as they were a month ago, and Dobbs will have no preserved soul to speak of when he’s a copy-editor’s bitch in Poughkeepsie.

It takes a man to admit something like this, but I had a similar experience with Bill O’Reilly. I need to be clear that this was when he was first starting out on television and his reputation as a world-class prick had not become common knowledge. I had never even heard his name before this, so you can understand why it may have taken me a while to come around. But Bill O’Reilly was impressive to me the first time around. He violated every code of journalistic ethics in one show, but I was getting used to that. What impressed me was that I couldn’t tell if he was conservative or liberal, something that’s usually all too easy to find out, and I was relieved to hear someone who spoke their mind and didn’t cater to any one political ideology.
He covered a story about how the show “The Sopranos” was violent, but still important to watch as it carried some valuable lessons, though not suitable for children (liberal). And then he spent ten minutes bitching about a service in Las Vegas where rednecks can pay $10,000 and hunt naked women in a forest (While people in general probably have a problem with this, his argument was tailored to the conservative mind). No, they didn’t use real bullets, they used paint balls and the women would pretend to die when they were hit, wherein the men would be able to walk up to them, and inspect their quality as if they had just shot a ten-point buck. O’Reilly railed on the women who did this degrading thing, and on the owner of the company, though I think the men paying that kind of money for what is obviously a Freudian issue playing itself out on a scale the size of which we have never seen should probably be using that money on a world class team of psychologists. But as you can see, O’Reilly wasn’t promoting one political side, but his own opinion. Not too bad, eh?

But as I would soon learn, that was all bullshit. I must have caught him on a bad day, because it certainly didn’t happen again. I can’t watch for ten minutes without throwing something at the television, and I almost threw my parents’ cat last time. These guys win you over with their quaint old-fashioned ways, but then they are anally raped by the ratings-nistas to steal a line from Colbert. The same happened with Donny Deutsch, but the fact that he uses reading glasses as his way of distinguishing himself (like Tucker Carlson and bow-ties) should have been my first clue on that one.
So Lou Dobbs is on my douche bag list, which is getting pretty long. But I saw something else that made me upset as well. Two Latino radio DJ’s are offering someone $500 in gifts to name their newborn Lou Dobbs. They’re doing this in protest of Dobbs’ stance on immigration, so as the voice of the people I am obligated to ask what their point is exactly. I assume they’re trying to taunt him in some way; the idea of sharing a name with someone you despise can be frustrating. After all whenever you hear your own name, you will be met with conflicted feelings, certainly a terrible situation.
But I have to say I think this plan will backfire. I had to pay someone to name their kid after me, and it cost a lot more than $500, believe me. It was great though. I now have my own heir, and I don’t even have to raise her. I know what you’re saying, I’m not a girl. Let’s just say I should have asked for a sonogram before forking over the money. So I’m not sure what these two guys are doing, but I think they should find a better way to pick on Dobbs. Besides, he’s just the kind of conceited prick to get a god-complex from this. Who knows what kind of sick shit he’ll say tomorrow.
But I’ve been rambling, and you’re probably bored by now, so I’ll leave you with just one more thought. When the hell did the Clippers become a good basketball team? Did I miss a meeting? I’m a man of the twentieth century, and there a some things we can be sure of: The New York Yankees will always buy their championships, the Raiders will always play dirty, and when you talk about L.A. in the playoffs, you’re talking about the Lakers. So you can imagine the surprise I was met with last night when I turned on the television and saw Jack Nicholson in his usual seat, but on the wrong side of town. The Lakers were bounced by the Suns last week and now the Clippers are in the second round. It’s going to take me a few days to get my head around this, but I think in the end, my decision will be that the Clippers still suck, and no amount of playoff victories will change that. It’s like the sun rising in the east. If we wake up one morning to find the sun rising in the west, who knows what might happen. What we do know is that it won’t be pretty, and neither will my mood until this is all figured out. Ciao.

The Boys Are Back in Town

I must apologize for my extended absence from my writing. I was offered a slot at the last second to roadie for the Def Leopard/Journey tour over the winter, and you don’t say no to that kind of offer. It was a pretty sweet six months. We spent four of them waiting to see if there was actually going to be a tour. That one armed drummer from Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall was demanding more money for his work. Since losing his arm, the band insisted that he only be paid half his previous salary, because he was only doing half the work. He complained because the group had failed to take into account the fact that he used both his feet as well, and therefore was really doing three quarters of what he had previously done. Their lawyers met for months, and a secret agreement was finally made.
While this was going on, I felt it would be good to get in shape and be prepared for what was an opportunity of a lifetime. I measured the distance from the backstage area to the lead singer’s microphone at sixty feet, and started doing wind sprints at that length. After a few hours of this every day, I got to be pretty fast. Also, I spent a lot of time building up my tolerance to drugs as well. I started by smoking pot and drinking, but soon realized this would not suffice. So I started doing cocaine and acid. Surely the rock stars were still doing this kind of stuff. Why, when I was touring with Thin Lizzy, we would finish off an eight ball on our way to a show before even arriving at the venue.
But I was wrong. I broke out my bong on the bus only ten minutes after heading off on tour, and had the shit kicked out of me by the bassist from Journey whose name I can’t recall. Apparently these guys have gone straight. “It’s about the music now,” claimed the rhythm guitarist for Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall, “and if you’re not down with that, we’ll drop your ass off at the next town.” I couldn’t tell if he was an American speaking with a terrible English accent or just English and slightly retarded. Either way, this meant I was going to have to go cold turkey on my new, strongly developed addiction to pot, cocaine, acid and alcohol. By the third show, I couldn’t even get on my feet to pick up the mike when the lead singer dropped it while attempting to do Axle Rose’s crab dance. You’d be surprised how spry you have to be to execute that move correctly.
We were in Wichita, playing a county fair when I was asked to leave the tour…in a manner of speaking. I couldn’t stop staring at the one armed drummer. It just looked so funny, and the fairgrounds did not live up to its reputation as the most exciting place on earth. The Ferris wheel was about fifteen feet high, and the ticket girl gave terrible head. I spent much of my free time during the concerts on the side of the stage, laughing at the one armed drummer. I think the shock of going through sudden detox after developing a drug addiction so rapidly sharpened my sense of humor. My laughing must have been really loud, because the bassist from Def Leopard whose name I can’t recall came back stage while playing that “sugar” song, grabbed me, and threw me into the crowd. Rednecks beat me senseless with beer bottles after the lead singer told them what I’d been doing. Honestly, these are the same people who not one hour before had spent twenty minutes marveling at the bearded lady. When did laughing at one kind of deformity become so worse than laughing at another?
By the time I came around six hours later, the tour bus had long since left, and Blue Oyster Cult was setting up their gear for the next night’s show. I felt it was time to return to the Rose City, but I was broke and without any means of survival. I would be forced to walk back to Portland, and walk I did.
It only took me a couple of months to return. It may have been quicker, but I was picked up by the wrong people while hitchhiking. If you ever go hitchhiking and someone has a sign in their car that says “Ass, Gas or Grass, no one rides for free,” make sure you have money for the last two, because the “ass” part of the deal is not necessarily what you think it is.

But I’m back, and not a moment too soon. You leave your post as the voice of the people to fulfill a lifelong dream, and look what happens. President Bush is having a little trouble with those enviro-Nazis regarding gas. First, they want us to be independent of oil, then they start to bitch when oil prices sky rocket. You’re like a bunch of women. I also heard a thing or two on the road about some sort of hurricane last year, but don’t those things happen every year? Who gives a shit? We’re obviously not focusing right now. The importing thing to remember is that President Bush is sorry for what he’s done and now he’s trying to make up for it. Surely you’ve read about the “Whitehouse shakeup” going on. It’s all over Fox News and CNN. All kinds of important people have resigned or been indicted. And now I know what you’re thinking, “oh, these people were forced to resign in order to give the appearance of change to raise President Bush’s dipping poll numbers.” But you’ve heard the man say he doesn’t pay attention to poll numbers. He’s above that, so what the hell are you talking about? And wouldn’t he fire these people if he wanted to give an impression of change? It just doesn’t make any sense. Even the head of the CIA has resigned. Something about poker games, strippers and limousines.
It sounds like honest to God change to me, and I for one am looking forward to a productive final three years. Maybe we’ll finally be able to stop those goddamn Iranians. We should have no problem surprising them, what with all our troops already being strategically situated in Iraq. You have to hand it to Donny Rumsfeld, he really thinks ahead. I bet he’d be good at chess.

There’s so much for us to discuss, and so much for me to fix, and I plan on doing it all in the next few months, or at least until I get bored with this again. Oh, and sorry about the Summer Serial, for those of you just dying to finish it, the main character died the next day. No one went to his funeral.
Oh, and when we get a chance, someone will have to fill me in on this whole immigration thing. Is it true that people are crossing the border illegally? How did we not know about this?Anyways, you can rest for now. I am back at my desk, drinking again, and listening Charlie 97 FM, only the greatest music stretching over the entire span of the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Right now, there’s this great song I used to listen to while making out with my dry-hump friend in the back of the family Previa in college. It’s called “Don’t Stop Believin’” by some group whose name I can’t recall. Good night.