One major helladay down, two to go and you're already feeling frazzed out by bogus seasonal cheer? Surely, the world's too freakified lately! Still can't get over those frenzied headlines about the Turkey-in-Chief temporarily giving the White House the bird, I mean, granting a full presidential pardon in the Rose Garden to "a real turkey" so the ceremonial fowl could skip dinner, serve as grand marshal in Disneyland's Thanksgiving Day parade, and "live out its life safe as can be?"
Me, too.
So, the day after Thanksgiving, "Loona the Local Goddess," not her real name, and I are tooling down Philly's East River Drive, returning from a particularly pleasurable "Black Friday" shopping excursion, meaning, she bought stuff while I watched, kind of like the novel "Being There."
Despite our putative president's philosophy Shopping is Patriotic, I prefer to watch ... other people shop. Zen shopping! Saves time, money and closet space.
Anyway, after we admire the spectacular afternoon sunlight slanting off the onrushing river, "Loona" catches me by conversational surprise, announcing, "Several copies of that awful O.J. book somehow slipped out into the marketplace and now they're bringing huge bids on eBay."
Shudder.
O.J. Simpson – yuck – heads my Instant Puke list. I can't stand reading about him, hearing his name, seeing his face. He sickens me. Why won't he just go away! Suddenly I get an idea so big a light bulb's going off right above my head: Lock that lamer O.J. in a booze-filled room with bigot-du-jour Michael Richards. You know, formerly "Kramer" on "Seinfeld." Maybe they could annihilate each other.
For good measure, why not dump Mel Gibson in there, too.
And then, if you really want to do the world a tremendous favor, toss in Sasha Baron Cohen's "Borat." There! We'd have racism, fake anti-Semitism, real anti-Semitism and anti-anti-Semitism. Mel Brooks' atrocious anthem "Springtime for Hitler," from "The Producers," could be their theme song.
"But it's satire!" I can hear the cheap-seat chorus of beery bleats.
Stuff and nonsense! Most Americans' Adidas-addled brains can't discriminate between, well, prejudice and pride, can they? When was the last time anyone EVER took a class in Critical Thinking? Bigotry seems to be our Mother-Bleeping Tongue, lurking beneath the surface in nearly everyone. I wonder if it's actually encoded in the genes.
The encomium "Love Your Neighbor," apparently has morphed into luridly belligerent reenactments of Us-versus-Them scenarios – "Life as War." What's all this recently escalating intolerance about? Nostalgic provocations to return to "the way we were"?
In "... the dark side of the '60s," writes Michael Atkinson in Philadelphia City Paper, with "the Age of Aquarius as a time of almost nonstop assassinations and flaming cities and police-clubbed citizenry," we had "... riots born from racial fury or anti-war activism [which] broke out in nearly every major city in the land. ... Those were the days: Try to imagine riots in [our] era of YouTube, iPods, pay-per-view and MoveOn.Org."
Amazing – he noticed!
Enough deep thoughts for a Friday afternoon. Soon "Loona" drops me off, and I recall other shopping expeditions. Hour after hour we'd trudge in and out of stores, shops, boutiques, outlets, emporia, their cash registers screaming a siren's song of desperate excess. Her arms would be laden with bags and packages. Bruises would form on various parts of her body. Dark circles sandbagged her eyes.
You're not holding up your end, she'd say. I'm getting ahead of you, she'd say. Why not buy something, she'd say.
Oh, I see pretty things here and there. But do I buy? No. Nothing's quite ... right. My needs are few, my possessions numerous. Instead, I promise, when I get home, I will rummage through all my drawers and closets. I will pull out something previously unworn, unused, untried. I will say, Oh, look at this nice new whatever. And, what a bargain it is, as well. It's new, all over again. I will use it, wear it, eat it, consume it, sleep on it, love it, marry it, with unparalleled ecstasy. Someday, I will master the further intricacies of Zen Shopping. But for now, this will have to do.
Meanwhile, my fond pseudonymous friend "Freddy from Fresno" reminds me: "You know what Black Friday means? Everybody thinks it's called that because of so many shoppers and so many cars on the road. Not true. That's really a stupid reason. Actually it's called Black Friday because it's the day companies go from being in the red to being in the black."
Let's.