For as long as I can remember, yesterday, Labour Day, has always been New Year’s. The dog hot days of summer are over, and real life can begin again. It’s not just that I hate sand in my underwear and bugs in my burgers (which I do) it’s the attitude that goes with stinkin’ hot /no cloud afternoons that I object to. Honestly, can anyone take baggy shorts and dirty feet seriously? Point of fact: our society already celebrates the trivial as if it were holy writ, so when the sun is permanently set on Brainbake 5.5, it’s no wonder we collectively get media sunstroke sometime in June and stay that way for three months. Let me elaborate.
Last week, the media buzz was Justin (Jason?) Bieber lost a necklace in a bar fight. I can’t imagine who he was fighting; about the only thing in his weight class is a Care Bear. Besides, on the non-threatening boy scale of One to Justin Timberlake, he’s about as bland as they come. Even Justin– not Bieber, the other one— made a running grab for Janet Jackson’s 38-year-old boob on national TV. Something Selena Gomez (Barney’s old playmate, nudge/nudge, wink/wink) would never have put up with when she and the Bieb were an item. Predictably, nobody knows how the necklace got torn from his person, but the media certainly seems to be worried about it, even if Bieber isn’t. Remember, this is the guy who left his monkey in Germany without even a backward glance or a jacket. Unlike that woman in Toronto who styled out her primate in what looks like a GapKids winter coat before abandoning it in an Ikea parking lot. But I digress. The only thing anybody can discern from these two unrelated events is that Canadians hate monkeys. However, back on topic: I’m certain that there’s less to this Bieber incident than meets the eye.
Either way, this was passing for major news until E.L. James spilled the Twitter beans that Dakota Johnson has been cast as Anastasia Steele, the “object” of Christian Grey’s affections in Fifty Shades of Grey. The book, a WalMart rewrite of The Story of O, is about to be made into a major motion picture with a guaranteed box office that might reach into the billions — that is, until the first person actually sees this faux porn yawner and blows the whistle on the whole thing. I have no idea how bad an actress Ms. Johnson is, but I do know there’s a whole lot of difference between reading hot prose in the privacy of your own mind and seeing it publically portrayed from the waist up. Like it or not, Fifty Shades of Grey, the movie, will be about Dakota’s breasts and not much else. Otherwise, The Motion Picture Association’s film rating system will step in and tear up half the receipts Focus Features are hoping to cash in on – notably, teenage couples with a hidden agenda.
And speaking of faux porn, the media is still bubble gumming over the latest Disney chick to go wacko on national TV — Miley Cyrus. At this point, it looks like Britney Spears has been defrocked as the high priestess of … but hey, wait a minute, it’s Tuesday. Regardless of what the calendar says, summer’s over. Miley, Biebs and that whole crowd can pack their crop tops and bikini bottoms and take a hike. It’s time to haul out the scarves and gloves and start acting like we’re adults again.
WD Fyfe 