The past couple of months have introduced a number of adventures in my life. One of them being marriage. (Thank you in advance for the well-wishes!) Another being television. (I accept your condolences in advance). I’ve avoided both like bad fish for a long time, but for vastly different reasons. Rather than getting all up close and personal though, I’d rather talk about tv.

I’d often found tv a bit too transparent (ie: dumbed-down in order to appeal to a wider range of people, or just plainly dumb). Most who enjoy television have told me that I “shouldn’t take it so seriously because it’s meant to be a form of escapism”. After years of blasting the medium without really giving it a chance to redeem itself, I decided that maybe I was being a bit too hard on it.

Besides, how could 50,000,000 Elvis fans be wrong?

I’m pleased to report that there are a few gems on the tube. “Mad Men” is a personal favorite at our place. You don’t know whether to fawn over the excellent writing or the incredible attention to detail in making this show feel like it’s truly been dropped out of the 1960s. I just really dig this show and can’t say enough nice things about it. Nuff said. But then shows like “Californication” had to come along and spoil the fun. On the surface, it seems like a goofy, fun little romp that promises to entertain you for 25 minutes. Instead, it crams every cliche and newly invented piece of hipster lingo in your face until you cry ‘uncle’.

But “Entourage“, for example, is a stupid show about stupid people, but at least it’s fun. (Despite his abrasive personality, who among us - male or female - wouldn’t want to be Ari Gold for a day? I rest my case.) And, despite its shamelessly sexist content (thank gawd!), it manages to do the impossible by drawing in a huge number of female viewers. It does so by not sucking up to female viewers. It’s a show for guys that women happen to watch.

Another show that I thought had potential but got lame pretty quickly is “Eli Stone”. My biggest problem with it - other than crap writing and annoying characters - is how it unabashedly wears its politics on its sleeve and everywhere else. I get it - you despise Bush and Co. But isn’t this supposed to be a form of escapism? And doesn’t escapism include escapism from politics?

See, the difference between a show like, say, “All in the Family” - a true classic - and “Californication” is not only in its delivery but in its intent. “AitF” reflected the times in a smart, direct way. One can watch its re-runs today, some 30-plus years later, and say “Wow. That was a crazy time! I can’t believe the things they used to say on tv!” Of course it looks dated today. Just as shows from the early 1990s look dated today. (”Fresh Prince” anyone?) Thirty years from now, they won’t be saying that about “Californication”. Instead, they may say something like “Wow. That was a crazy time! I can’t believe how stupid people were back then!”

Sadly they won’t be refering to the characters.

Listen, I get that television shows always have and perhaps always will try to include product placement and/or politics in its content. But the thing that bugs me is when I’m aware of these facts. If you’re going to invite me and others to ‘escape’ into your show, wouldn’t it also be swell if you didn’t remind me about what it is I’m escaping from? Hell, even David Duchovny validates my point, recently confessing to sex-addiction - just like his sex-addicted alter ego “Hank” in “Californication”! And just in time for Season 2!

WOW. Art really DOES imitate life sometimes. The cliche is complete.

“Now let’s hug it out bitch!”

Okay. Two things:

1) I’m drinking right now with my partner and we’re reminiscing about the 80s.

2) “Ball of Confusion” is playing now.

This post may or may not make sense, but I’ll do my best. To the point, the present sucks.

I don’t mean this in the sense of “Man, I wish that there were more ‘Classic Synth Pop/80s Rock’ stations!” God forbid. (I ain’t THAT drunk!) No, I mean that I wonder what this current generation of kiddies will be reminiscing about when they’re my age?

Will they have an original equivalent of “Gone Daddy Gone”? or will they have a cover of it, along the lines of Gnarls Barkley’s version? Will they have an equivalent of ”The Matrix”? or will they have a parody of it along the lines of “Starsky and Hutch”?

Or more importantly, will it even matter?

I’m not necessarily asking because I care, but rather because I have a perverted sense of curiosity about the future.

My opinion? They’ll have robots by that point that’ll know how to make a proper ‘China White’ shot - far better than I could ever.

And that’s good enough for me!

It looks like the powers-that-be in Langley BC have officially lost their minds. And it’s over a single incident.

A couple of 15 year old boys sent lewd messages to a 12 year old girl on Facebook. They also sent pics of their wee-wees to her. She was delighted. All was well, until her idiot mother caught her innocent daughter online in the middle of the night. She was on - you guessed it - Facebook.

So mom loses it, does a bit of sleuthing (you go mom!), and discovers that the original exchange had taken place on school property during school hours! Well, what’s a mom to do, but call the school, demand that they remove access to the site for ALL schools in the district, and annoy the RCMP in to pursuing the matter with the boys’ parents.

This is reminiscent of another mother who caught her 11 year daughter sending and receiving lewd messages, this time via MSN instant messaging. The other party was an 18 year old baseball prospect for a US team. You know the drill: daughter played the ’tearful victim’ card, and mom flipped. (I’d ask where ’dad’ is in all of this, but that’s just wrong.)

The young man was jailed for “sexual coercion of a minor”, until it was discovered that the girl had told him she was 14. The conviction was over-turned on appeal, he went on to play ball in the US (something he wouldn’t have been able to do had he gotten a prison record), and the girl’s mother is probably looking for someone else to blame for why her daughter is on crack today.

I’m only half joking.

Back in the day, these situations would’ve been resolved in a really simple way: kick the kid’s ass. Not physically, but via serious groundings, loss of priviledges, that sort of thing. Then go to the parents of the boys in question and kick their asses. Again, not physically. (Actually, I think I would.) The point IS that there’s no need to make this into more than something that can be resolved between the parties involved.

But this is an era of zero accountability. And no one wants to get their hands dirty. Parents are taking their children out for Hallowe’en in their double-wide strollers (don’t want to give the angels an inferiority complex!), or just as soon as ’little precious’ can walk - even though they’ll have NO recollection of having gone.

These parents either spend more time on social-networking sites than their children, or are completely computer illiterate. The latter of the two couldn’t be bothered to actually check on little Jemma’s and Jayson’s online activities. This is the golden age for pervs, when luring a child from a chat room into reality is as easy as.. blaming somebody else for the crappy job at parenting that you’re doing.

No, there was no internet when I was growing up. But there were still threats and (most of) our parents equipped us as best they could without treating us like God incarnate. I have a newsflash, folks: your children, your special little clones are about as ’special’ and ’unique’ as everybody else’s children.

Think about that… although I already know that you’d rather not. And it’s for this reason and many others that I doubt I’ll ever have children. I care about them too much to bring my own into this world of moronic parents and future narcissists.

Even though I’ve visited this subject before, it keeps rearing its ugly head in one way or another. What else can I do but share?

There are some days when I miss the simplicity of the music world past. Before technology came and ‘changed’ everything forever. I’m not referring to the days before video officially killed the radio star. After all, video was initially meant to paint a picture to go along with the sound.

Yes, it is tragic that many artists who weren’t the best-looking failed to impress the first ‘Mtv Generation’. (Christopher Cross, anyone?) But that’s why community college exists: to offer hope to those who want a second chance in life.

Back in the flawed but brilliant 80s, most of what we knew about our favorite artists came from either teen magazines, music video programs, or word of mouth (ie: rumors). Today, it’s completely different.

Bands have their own websites/forums from where they can talk about anything and everything. These subjects have ranged from their favorite electoral candidate to their favorite cologne.

On the surface, it sounds like a great thing. But then there are those moments when you feel like it’s become more about the artist than the art. Sometimes I don’t care to know about your family or what you had for breakfast. I want to hear about your ART.

That’s the beauty of having more than one web page - one for your art and another for your mundanity.

PLEASE, just shut up and sing!

Even the Dixie Chicks got the point… eventually.

Barack Obama is NOT a Black man. Nor will he be the first Black president. He is biracial. His mother is white. His father Black.

Tiger Woods is NOT a Black man. Nor is he the greatest Black golfer in the history of the game. His mother is Thai. His father biracially Black and white.

Halle Berry is NOT a Black woman. Nor is she the first Black woman to win an Oscar for ‘Best Actress’. Her mother is white. Her father Black.

Mariah Carey is NOT a Black woman. She is insane.

There are numerous examples of other multi-ethnic folks out there who tend to take on their minority ethnicity as the sum whole of their being, either voluntarily or not. We are, as a society, divisive by nature. We like to put anyone or anything that is even remotely different into their own special little box. We say that we’re doing so as a way of ‘celebrating our differences’.

Really?

I used the examples of Obama, Woods, and Berry to demonstrate the validity of my next point. Shortly after the good ol’ slave days, a friendly term was created to handle any pesky confusion that may arise between Blacks and whites. It was called “the one drop rule”. It suggested that even a single drop of ‘negro’ blood in one’s veins renders them Black.

Actually, the logic applies to all non-white races, but is mostly applied to Blacks. A biracially Chinese and white person is more likely to be called “part Asian”, for example. A biracially Black and white person is usually simply ‘Black’, or refered to as the lovely ‘mulatto‘ - derived from spanish, meaning ‘young mule’. It originates from Spanish slave traders who considered biracial slaves useless. Good times.

When a presidential candidate’s ethnicity takes more precedence over the current two term president’s C Student grades, AWOL status, cocaine abusing days, and failed business ventures, it goes to show just how screwed up the world really is.

I look forward to the day when Barack and Woods are simply men, and Berry and Carey are simply women. Need we really say more?

(I really think that Carey IS insane though.)

… And fails miserably.
Yes, Lindsay has nice breasts. And to be honest, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for freckles.

My problem is with the photographer’s choice of shots to mimic. This dude shot Marilyn in the nude. THE NUDE. One would guess that he had a pretty good idea of what her curves looked like. Seeing how, erm, ‘different’ Lohan’s body is from MM’s, why would he choose to mimic this pic?

Or this one?

Or even this one?

Marilyn’s body was the epitome of what a woman’s body should look like. Curvy. Natural. Among most of today’s young Hollywood, having large breasts - at any price - is enough. This photo shoot proves it.

When the rest of your body resembles that of a nine year old Chinese boy from the waist down, maybe Marilyn is not the ‘icon’ you should be trying to channel. On the other hand, ’straight up, straight down’ seems to be what the general North American public seem to want today.

Well, except for blacks and hispanics, of course! (We will worship curves until the end of time.)

Hell, maybe I’m part of the problem by saying what I AM saying about LL’s body. I make no apologies for wanting women to accept who they are though. It’s the anorexic ‘role models’ I pass judgement on. (Shame on you!)

Most women don’t - nor should they - have Marilyn’s 36D breasts. But neither should they be starving themselves to resemble a certain hotel heiress’s body either. Marilyn probably had more than 30% body fat, but she’s considered the ultimate in beauty among most women.

How bizarre, in an era of weight loss gimics and obsessive dieting.

What a difference a couple of generations make, hm?

You ever get one of those chain letter emails that tugs at your heart?

They usually involve a dying or seriously ill child, but close with some kind of odd request, like “If you want to make this child smile, forward this to as many people as possible…”.

Next thing you know, you’re actually doing it. You feel that if you DON’T, you don’t really deserve to live.

All of these hoaxes point to the same, lonely losers who originated them.

But don’t take MY word for it. There are a number of websites devoted to debunking these kinds of emails. The two best are:

http://www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/

http://www.snopes.com

Should you receive such an email, do yourself a favor before forwarding it on to someone else: go to those sites and type in a related search query, or copy and paste a couple of sentences from the email in question, put it in quotations, and do a Google search.

(Copy and paste different lines, though. Not only one. Sometimes the message gets slightly skewed as it travels from person to person.)

I hope this made some sense. I’m really bloody tired…

A woman I was recently chatting with mentioned how her friend makes SO much money as a dancer. Naturally, I asked her which club her friend worked at, to which she snapped “She’s not a STRIPPER, I said she’s a DANCER!”

Great. I’m guilty of committing the same sin so many others do: referring to ’strippers’ as ‘dancers’.

Once upon a time, strippers were commonly called ‘exotic dancers’.

Somewhere along the way, someone - possibly strippers themselves - decided to refer to them simply as ‘dancers’, removing the word ‘exotic’ from the description. And ‘real’ dancers everywhere were furious.

I realise that a girl’s gotta eat and all, but for God’s sake learn the difference between what you ARE and what you DO. You are a STRIPPER who happens to DANCE. This does not a dancer make.

A dancer is usually someone who has invested a fair amount of time perfecting their craft, getting to know the limitations of their bodies, etc.

A stripper is usually someone who has invested a fair amount of time perfecting the fine art of balancing herself on a pole, gyrating, and dancing badly to music by Vanity 6 or Whitesnake.

I’m not saying that there aren’t any GOOD strippers out there. But just stop calling yourselves ‘dancers’. To me, it would be like a dude who goes around calling himself a doctor just because he works for ‘Rug Doctor’…

There was an art piece that I’d seen a couple of years back or so. It was a collection of images of dead celebrities, all youngish. Che Guevara was in one. So were Marilyn and James Dean. Of course, Elvis was tossed into the mix as well. If memory serves me correctly, the title of it was “I’m Dead, But At Least I Kept My Good Looks”.

It was meant as a commentary on the cult of celebrity and how huge a part it plays in our every day lives. Even during times of war, famine, you name it. While these folks have long left us, their celebrity lives on and will continue to throughout time. We need them, after all. They remind us of what we could become if we really put our minds to it.

Of course, we would do it all so much differently. We would ‘keep it real’, making sure that our friends would still be our friends. Yeah, we may go to the occasional party/awards show/premiere, but we’d be far more careful about who we’re seen with. And as for the paparazzi, are you kidding me? We’d NEVER let things get that crazy! Yes, we’d still be the normal, everyday people we’ve always been.

With that, we pick up the celebrity gossip rags and proceed to gawk at so-and-so’s HUGE ass, such-and-such’s AWFUL dress/haircut, and what’s-her-name’s bizarre antics following the latest child visitation ruling against her. “If I had that kind of cash, I’d have my own island to retreat to. George Cloony did it! So did Johnny Depp! Why can’t they?!”

For some reason, we choose to forget that these people were probably also “normal, everyday people” at one time. Life just happened to hit them at 300 km/second. A life they may not have been ready for. Some people have better coping skills than others.

You cried over a parking ticket you got.

They cried over not being able to step out of the house without being followed by 25 photographers. Every hour. Every day.

“They can always quit if they don’t like it! Tons of people would DIE to be in their place!” Maybe. And perhaps that’s why some choose to ‘quit’ the easy way.

Take one talented young man, for example, who don’t vie for the limelight. He didn’t make regular appearances at awards shows, nor was he tabloid fodder. From all accounts, he did his best to keep his young family life as private as possible. It looks like his death was accidental, but I still feel for his daughter, about whom he had this to say in his final interview:

“I feel good about dying because I feel alive through her.”

RIP Heath Ledger.