Look out, kid--it's somethin' you did--

God knows what--

but you're doin' it again...

Bob Dylan

So there I was, minding my own business--well, at least as much as I ever mind my own business, when she said-- and I kid you not-- "I blame the media on everything."

I was aghast. I was agog. I awash with astonishment.

But mostly, I was just amused.

I run into this kind of thing on an almost daily basis, and usually from people who seem to be from the same planet as me. And I'm always reminded of Jack Nicholson's line to Karen Black in Five Easy Pieces: "Everything would be just fine if you didn't open your mouth." Unlike Jack, I've refrained from beating the crap out of a steering wheel to emphasize the retort.

So far.

I smiled thinly, and asked her, "Doesn't that fall under the category of shooting the messenger?"

She was on a roll now, eyes flashing ice and voice speaking from another plane. "No," she hissed, "and I'll tell you why. The media just tells us every day we deserve this and it's everyone else's fault we don't have it. And I'll tell you what else," she leaned in, as if to impart the secret of life to me, "the Democrats started it all.."

And with that, she scurried away, back to her daily routine of marking inventory down to sale prices in the vain hope that the company will turn around, if not in this quarter, then the next.

You think I'm making this up. Folks, you can't even buy this kind of material.

I guess I'm a member of that nebulous entity known as the media. And I'll readily admit to recording history--it's called writing. And I'll even cop to injecting an opinion here and there. But I am at a loss to explain how I, or my peers (Fox News notwithstanding)

am responsible for global unrest, the war in Iraq, the Katrina debacle, the AIDS pandemic, obscene oil company profits, Hollywood divorces and pregnancies, illegal wiretaps, or even the fact that Joey is still on the air.

The fact is this. The Administration has gotten all the spin they can get from 9/11 and Bush squandered his self-proclaimed "political collateral", so it's time to blame --once again-- the media. The even sadder fact is that they are, in fact, the media--self-contained in their own version of the universe. Make no mistake about it--these guys are masters of manipulation.

She was right about one thing, though. You can blame it on the media.

She just bet on the wrong horse--the one that refers to any whisper of dissent as "culture wars."

In the future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Andy Warhol

Poor George Orwell--all his bleak, monochromatic visions of a future epitomized by a jackboot stamping you in the face forever were made even more horrible by the real 1984--beginning with Apple's legendary Superbowl commercial wherein at least the proles won, thanks in no small part to the introduction of the Macintosh for the masses. That fooled us momentarily, but then came the onslaught of big hair, which begat glam hair bands, which begat spandex as de rigeur apparel for every mall rat in America, which begat, as a counterstrike, alligator polo shirts, which begat Urkel, which begat Tiffany, the first mall pop superstar, which fulfilled Andy Warhol's prophecy.

The future turned out to be not Winston Smith, but Madonna.

Okay--we did get newspeak and black helicopters, but the world, at least superficially, turned out to be not Orwellian, but Warholian. And Warhol's vision was every bit as grim as Orwell's. Warhol saw a future where fame was manufactured, and consequently meant nothing, as evidenced by his Marilyn Monroe series.

All of which brings me to American Idol...

At its core, Idol is a singing competition--not exactly an earth-shattering concept--in fact, it's been a mainstay of entertainment from Day One, albeit usually relegated to second or third tier syndication. But Idol is light years removed from Star Search. American Idol is a paean to flash and glitz disguised as an earnest search to find America's next sensation.

Make that America's next fifteen minute diversion.

What makes it the phenomenon it has become is that it preys on our baser instincts, such as, say...rubbernecking as we whiz by the scene of a horrible automobile accident and the subconscious superiority we feel that we weren't part of the carnage. The instinct to survive is a powerful one, made even more palatable if we don't have to get actively involved. Of course, Ryan Seacrest will scold us if we con't vote for our favorite contestant, to remind us that it's our fault that the voted-off contestant is fated to return to a life of drudgery in heartland honky tonks when he or she was soooo close to becoming the embodiment of all that is good and just in the world.

Truth be told, they were just too mediocre to take the time to call or spend the dime to text our support. Besides, I couldn't live with myself if I had been responsible for nipping Bob Dylan's career in the bud because he was "a little pitchy", as Randy Jackson would say. Not that I would need to feel guilty-- Paula Abdul would absolve me of any guilt by reassuring Bob and me that he made every performance his own. None of that would matter, though, because Simon Cowell would reassure me that the reason he lost was because he just didn't have what it takes to be an American Idol so it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

And therein lies the fallacy of American Idol.

You simply cannot manufacture art--it's just not a democratic process. Any artist has to heed his inner voice, not put his soul to a popular vote. Sure, most of the contestants can actually sing, but so can millions of other people. That does not in and of itself make one a pop star. In the end, there has to be that voice that speaks to all people--Sinatra had it. So did Johnny Cash, as does Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen-- and more recently, Bono and Leela James. The list goes on...

But what separates the artists from the American Idols is not that they can sing, but that they believe in themselves enough to not need validation from the great unwashed before they pay their dues and ultimately force themselves into our collective soul.

Fess up, folks---the real reason we love American Idol is the same reason we love The Sopranos---

We just have to know who gets offed this week.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, has an agenda.

The more insidious it is, the more rigorously it is denied.

Ray's Rules

Don't believe the above is true? Congratulations! You just proved my point.

We'll discuss this topic further very soon. Right now, I have other, more pressing business on my plate.

Just kidding...

Whether it's using an impending childbirth to promote your upcoming movie or just plotting your way through the day, we all have agendas. True, they're apt to change in a heartbeat-- check any given episode of 24 or the weekly audience votes for American Idol contestants--but the agendas are always lurking.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the spin cycle world commonly known as the Bush Administration.

A bit of backspacing is in order here, and for that we must turn to the administration of George the First and his initial declarations of the need to be "politically correct." The first time I heard the term, I thought, this makes no sense, sort of like "alternative music"--alternative to what?

But in the down the rabbit hole logic of the Bush Wannabe Dynasty, it makes perfect sense. If language is watered down enough, all issues are rendered impotent. Blind people are suddenly visually impaired, cripples are physically challenged, people in ghettos are economically disadvantaged.

In short, dilute reality to the point that it means nothing and we can get away with anything.

Pontius Pilate would have been proud.

Fast forward to now.

The younger George doesn't have the finesse his father did. He may even have an Oedipal complex. He's determined to outshine his father (not that difficult a task) but he's failing miserably. He surrounds himself with incompetence and insists he's making the right move regardless of the miserable results. The war in Iraq, the Katrina aftermath, soaring energy costs, on and on, ad nauseum.

What does this have to do with pop culture?

Anybody but me remember Kentucky Fried Movie?

There is a skit in it in which a very pre -Law and Order Richard Belzer plays a kick-ass president. What has always stood out in my memory is his line:

"I'm the fuckin' President and I make the fuckin' rules."

George toned it down a bit and said, in his usual nonsensical way:

"Im the decider and I decide what's best."

Charming, ain't it?

One on tiptoe cannot stand.
One astride cannot walk.
--Lao Tzu
Tao Teh Ching

Let's get this bus rolling, shall we?

These are interesting times--no, these are most interesting times, rife with smoke and mirrors and snake oil on a planetary level, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's the season of illusion, friends, and it looks to be around for a long while to come. It's Orwell meets Disney and we just love every second of it.

I do, anyway.

I was born in the earlier years of the last half of the twentieth century, a time when television was only three networks and maybe five or six channels, all recording in fuzzy black and white only, reflecting an Eisenhower world-view of good versus evil. My own ethos was shaped by that box. I was born into a universe unlike any previous generation had seen, where Bugs Bunny and Peter Gunn and Zorro would shape my sense of right and wrong as much, if not more, as Socrates influenced the ancient Greek juvies.

Couple TV with two teenage aunts enamored of rock and roll, not to mention a grandmother notorious for her fashion sensibilities (at least in East Texas), and the die for me was pretty much cast from the outset.

But I digress.

Pop culture in all its facets, be it comic books or movies or TV or fashion trends of soundbite politics or any of the niches in between, has always been the driving force in my life. The idea that something designed to be utterly disposable has such an inexorable hold on our lives fascinates me to no end. It speaks volumes about how we view ourselves as a society. More, it defines us. World leaders use movie lines to sell their agendas, rock stars are global ambassadors, supermodels are self-contained fundraisers, sports figures are dark celebrities and everybody else is getting their fifteen minutes any way they can, from Survival to American Idol.

Me? I just observe it all and record it.

In point of fact, I've been recording it for a while now. My first nationally published work was a letter to the long defunct Doctor Strange comics, for which I won Marvel's coveted no-prize. I was sixteen and I was hooked on seeing my name in print. By 1981, I I was publishing my own magazine, Pulse: Tomorrow's Trends Today, the first magazine to be dedicated to pop culture. After its demise, I freelanced for a number of publications, and eventually whored myself into the world of advertising, where I really learned how transitory our culture is. As sidenotes, I've worked as an actor, musician, working painter, photographer, and a whole bunch of other things I'd rather not talk about here.

And believe me, folks--it's all pop culture.

And we're going to wallow in it here, dissect it and put it back together, and see if it looks any different once we see what it says about us. We're going to examine it in all its myriad forms- from music to literature, from literature to fashion, from politics to cartoons--in short, anything and everything goes. And hopefully, we'll realize in so observing that our world is not a melting pot nearly so much as it is a tossed salad of flavors that shouldn't work together but somehow make a tasty dish nonetheless.

Stick around. I think you'll enjoy it...

5 April 2006

Do not be alarmed. This is only a test. I repeat: this is only a test...