Smurf’s up
A shameful confession, plus some cannibalism
Death is in the air, so you might want to change the filter on yr A/C unit. Don’t believe me? (Don’t blame ya, not after those dodgy racing tips I gave in last week’s column, the one cryptically titled "Here Is A List Of Very Fast Horses.") Read on for evidence of impending doom & gloom.
Sorry. There I go again, compensating for severe personality defects (bad breath, too) by trying to make myself seem all important-like. There’s no gloom, nor doom, to be had, but there is a weird vibe in the wind. Call it Farmer’s Almanac folksiness, but "they" say bad things come in dozens. Errr, maybe that’s muffins. We’ll try that again: "they" say bad things come in trees. Errr, maybe that’s squirrels.
I’ll never get it right, so let it simply be said that, howev the old saw goes, it’s a weird time to be reading the obituary pages. Talk about yr double-whammies: first Ramone-comma-Joey puts the proverbial boot to the proverbial bucket, then Adams-comma-Douglas follows suit (different boot, different bucket, but dead all the same). Not to get all High Fidelity on ya, but it’s kinda freaky to see two of my Top Three Adolescent Culcheral Influences suddenly reduced to worm-food. (Let us pause for a tangential scientific theory: worms = fish-food, fish = people-food, meaning that We The People are therefore basically just a buncha people-eaters. If yer like me and you think worms, fish & all those "middlemen" are wasteful & inefficient, then I urge you to support the Soylent Green Party. Motto: "Streamline the foodchain! Huzzah!") Two outta three ain’t the worst thing that could happen, but it ain’t good, neither. I can only pray that #3 is in good health, or a safehouse. I’m rooting for ya, Papa Smurf.
So anyway, I’ve been kicking around this idea for curing cancer and... yow! Did I just come clean re: what I think I came clean re:? (My, what a cruddy sentence! Five bucks goes to the first reader to decode that unwieldy monstrosity.) Ah, sadly, ’tis true. Some people have skeletons in their closet, others have Mao’s Red Book. Me, I’ve got a neatly folded pile of Smurf Underoos. As a lad, I dearly yearned to join Papa Smurf’s collectively minded utopia, that wondrous place where it was OK to break into impromptu song, and even more OK to wear white pants & no shirt. (It’s a fashion quirk that’s stayed w/ me to this day – and let it be noted that I’ve turned quite a few of the ladies’ heads, thankyouverymuch.) Even the Smurfs’ user-friendly mothertongue, coming on strong like a more reasonable Esperanto, appealed to my budding sense of universal community. (E.g., "I smurfily smurfed the smurfin’ smurfer" – it’s pure poetry, no? Unless, of course, it was your smurfer getting smurfed, but even paradise has its problems.) Now that I think about it, this obsession really puts all those jr. high schoolyard beatings into perspective. Hell, it pretty much justifies ’em.
Anyhoo, we’re here not to discuss my embarrassing personal history (nor yours, as tempting as it may be), but to sing the praises of an old friend named television. Yessiree, TV is a v. good thing. Altho B.Springsteen’s whole 57-channels-&-nuthin’-on gripe (1992) seems downright quaint by today’s standards (only 57?!? what kinda caveman setup d’ya got, rabbit-ears wrapped in tinfoil?), it’s still as dangerously wrongheaded now as it was back in "the day." ’Scuse me, "boss," but a person can never have enuff channels, and there’s always something on. The only problem I can see w/ TV is no matter how many tiers I add to my cable package, there’s inevitably a show (or a televised execution) I don’t receive. So, in closing, never-ever badmouth TV.
Next week: will trade small, hardworking child for latest season of The Sopranos. |
