Up, Up, And Away... Into The Woods

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Sometimes it's real difficult to tell just what the hell is going on. News stories bleed over each other, flash across TV screens and splash front pages, replacing yesterday's catastrophe with today's signs of the Apocalypse. Lucky for you, I'm here to help. JonBenet Ramsey is still dead, somebody still killed her, and the crack (addicted) Boulder P.D. has still indicted exactly nobody for the crime. Her story keeps getting pushed back onto our collective consciousness on supermarket tabloids simply because of her parents penchant, when she was alive, of dressing her up like a New Orleans Whore to parade her baby bootie in front of thousands of strangers, representing the cross section of population who might be interested in watching six year-olds dress like popular high schoolers trying to lose their virginity before their best friends, and bounce around on stage like empty-headed playthings, setting their life goals so low in their opening decade that the patron saint of bubble-headed sex appeal, Pamela Anderson shows them the only path she knows to a particular kind of success. I was talking to a 13 year old recently who actually said that she wants to grow up to look like Pamela Lee. This news was imparted as one might relate that they wanted to "be happy", be "a success", or even "Marry Prince Charming". In other words there was no thought behind the statement, of course she wanted to look like the Baywatch Plastique Babe. That is the standard of beauty in America, at least for 13 year old girls living in Connecticut. I remind you of the Ramsey story because even though The National Enquirer does what it can to acquire and print nude autopsy photos, other abominations splash & burn the landscape of news organizations and media outlet, to push stories of murdered pre-teen beauty pageant winners out of sight (and out of mind?). For instance, if you are confused about which was the Nike sponsored event, it was Tiger Woods. Not winning the Masters, mind you. The event was Tiger Woods. Your confusion may lie in the perception that Nike's grass roots campaign of sponsoring suicide cults is indeed underway, but the program is so small that Nike had to admit that they missed The Heaven's Gate Mass Offing Sponsorship, but took the opportunity to point out that even without free shoes the well dressed castrated whack-o in San Diego under the purple shroud has the good fashion sense to wear Nike's on the last day of chocolate pudding, phenol-barbital and chilled vodka cocktail party big snooze. Word has it that Nike was backing two rival cults, one on Catalina Island and one outside Des Moines, Iowa whom Nike scouts had picked as the next potential superstars in the world of lemming-like hero worship. This error is akin to picking Shaq in a free throw shooting contest, Tom Cruise in an acting exercise, or Pamela Anderson Lee in an S.A.T. Test. And I'm sorry, but I'm sick of Tiger Woods. Already. Hey, everybody guess what? He's a golfer! He's a really good golfer! He's a great golfer! He's an idiot/savant golfer! He's a Mozart golfer! Still... he's a golfer. He took the 47 million dollars Nike threw at him and now we're supposed to wait for him to lead The Children of Israel out of Egypt, The Children of Bondage out of Slavery. The little black children, Thai children, white children, and brown children are all going to play together now on golf courses all across the landscape of this happy-happy joy-joy candyland and big bright planet of golf & love & peace & happiness because, like Moses before him, Tiger's got Nike on his side, excuse me... God on his side. Bigger than Gandhi his father promises. I got news for you Woods, there is no bigger than Gandhi. Jesus Christ ain't bigger than Gandhi. More famous than Gandhi? Sure. More style? Sure. More substance... forget about it. Do something besides win golf tournaments and lend a couple million dollars and your name, forever emblazoned with that Nike swish... I'm sorry... "Swoosh", to programs you don't even have to show up for. I hope Tiger Woods does change the world. A lot of the world needs changing. But do something. You think Michael Jordan has "Changed the world"? Here's some smelling salts. Inhale. Sniff. Breathe. Don't tell me what you're going to do. Don't tell me how important the man can be. Become important. Do you know that the Nike P.L.A.Y. Program is an ad campaign? Bottom line, that's what it is. And that's all it is. Initiated by some ad man popping another CD into the deck of his Beemer, hiding his spare tire under second rate suits and who wasn't even good enough to play ball in high school. Nike initiates exactly zero programs that I am aware of. They offer equipment & venue rental funds only after the events are set up by volunteer coaches and administrators from far outside of corporate Nike and never on their payroll. How does Nike "Participate In The Lives Of America's Youth"? It throws cash at the problem. And the swoosh, that ubiquitous swoosh. It does so, so that it can run ads with The Archangel Michael in order to leave the impression that Nike gives two shits about inner city twelve year olds who pay mind bogglingly inflated and illogical mark-ups on sneakers built so far away there is no hope of even a manufacturing job for any member of the family to help pay for the shoes preferred by the best dressed drug dealers and that everybody simply has to have. Sure, it's business. I understand it's business. So call it BUSINESS! Don't presume to come down from the mount after talking to the burning sneaker and tell me some golfer is going to make it so we all get along. I am not Tiger Woods. So I don't believe you. I'm just not dumb enough for that. So... back to Heaven's Gate which continues to do what it can to push the poor dead girl out of the ever craved spotlight. This group of people took the time to video tape their good-byes so that we could see that they embrace their fate in a sane and thoughtful way. They believed that their material, physical bodies were merely vessels, and by shedding these earthly containers they would more quickly evolve to a, I suppose, more spiritual plane of existence. Forgetting for a moment why they should be in a hurry, there are certain similarities with other more "mainstream" religions. After all, what is the "Kingdom of Heaven" to most Christians if not a more spiritual plane? So these presumably sane, spiritual seekers are found with a roll of quarters in their pockets so that when they get to where they're going (in this case, into a space ship hiding behind a comet) they were planning on using these coins to make telephone calls back to planet earth. I have to take a breath right about here. I have to screw my brain back in. What is that, a fuckin' joke? I have to believe that Mr. Applewaste, or Doe, or whatever cult leader flavor of the month name his name is, had to be pushing the credibility envelope with that one. Just to see how blind the flock had become. Keeping a straight (no pun intended) face must have proved quite a challenge to Mr. Pantywhite, when he clearly convinced his disciples that they were leaving their bodies behind to rendezvous with a starship using a comet as a cloaking device, where they would be transported sans body, but rolls of quarters intact, (presumably still on the Sprint dime-a-minute plan and forgetting Astro-nomical long distance connection and surcharges), where they would be able to drop this coin of the realm into alien manufactured pay phones so thoughtfully installed by more evolved beings with stock in AT&T. Imagine their chagrin when they discovered the pay phones only accepted drachmas, yen, and francs, and that the American Express Currency Exchange Booth Workers were striking for more paid vacation days. I'm sorry for the families of the deceased, but sometimes I wonder if mass suicide cults are just nature's way of assuring that one little corner of the gene pool stays unpolluted for the generations to come. I wonder if they wore Nikes because that swoosh looks like a comet flying through the blackness of space. Or if they just closed their eyes and believed the hype.