Category: Culture

Suddenly, Every Day Is Special!

calendar 15

Yesterday was Pi Day, a celebration of the number 3.14159 etc., etc., etc.  Numbers don’t usually get a day, but mathematics is not what you’d call a labour-intensive profession and Math Nerds have a lot of time on their hands.  Today is the Ides of March, an ancient Roman something-or-other festival that nobody would care about if Brutus and his buddies hadn’t taken the opportunity to turn their pal Julius Caesar into a pin cushion.  And Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day, a day when everybody tries to drink themselves green because a pack of 19th century New York Irishmen got homesick.  Folks, I think we’re getting a little over- scheduled.

Back in the day, primitive humans observed a couple of annual events to break up the monotony of trying to stave off starvation.  They celebrated Spring because they’d lived through the winter.  “OMG! We made it!”  And they celebrated the autumn harvest because there was food on the table.  “Yay!  Let’s eat!”  Aside from that, there wasn’t all that much for primeval humans to get excited about.

Enter organized religion.  When you have nameable gods, it makes sense to pause from time to time and thank them for life, liberty and the pursuit of getting enough to eat.  “Oh, Lord!  You’ve been awful good to me this year.  Thanks for letting me kill that mastodon.  Here, I made you a necklace out of his bones.  Any chance of getting another one before winter sets in?  Amen.”

From there, it was an easy step to commemorating tribal events — things like the death of a great leader, a particularly successful hunt or a military victory.  “Hey, Benny!  Remember last winter when we kicked the crap out of the Neanderthals?  We should set aside a special day to have a howl and a dance and tell our kids that story.”

The calendar wasn’t all that crowded, and these were important occasions.  They were seasonal or religious events or days of national pride, and for hundreds of years, our society used these times to celebrate our common beliefs and aspirations.  We even added a few new ones, like Thanksgiving and Labour Day, and allowed a couple of “not-so-serious” days to come along for the ride – notably, Hallowe’en and Valentine’s Day.

Welcome to the 20th century.  We loaded up the year with enough “special days” to give every date on the calendar five or six notations.  It all started with Mother’s Day in 1908 because, of course, everybody loves their mother.  She deserves a special day.  But, what about dad?  We couldn’t leave that poor bugger out in the cold.  He needed a day.  And from there it was just open season – Grandparents’ Day, Groundhog Day, Farmers’ Day, Secretaries’ Day, Road Construction Day, Robbie Burns Day, Bloomsday (June 16th) Star Wars Day (May the 4th) and on and on and on.  Suddenly, every day was special.

So, today, if you don’t want to celebrate the 2,062nd anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar, you have some choices — and BTW, these are all official days.  First of all, it’s International Day against Police Brutality (kinda self-explanatory.)  Next, it’s World Consumer Rights Day (Good luck with that one!)  But, it’s also World Day of Muslim Culture (which, depending on where you live, could tie in with item #1) World Speech Day and Eva Longoria’s birthday (she’s 44.)

Personally, though, I’m going with World Contact Day.  That’s right:  This is the day that the International Flying Saucer Bureau wants you to go outside and try your best to contact extra-terrestrials — telepathically.  Don’t knock it!  It beats the hell out of World Malaria Day.

 

International Women’s Day (2019)

Parker Hellman

Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker

In the same week as International Women’s Day, a BBC headline read “Kylie Jenner becomes world’s youngest billionaire.”  Wow! What are the chances?  And the Beeb, notorious for tagging everyone as a member of some social/political group, didn’t even mention she was a woman.  Now, that, girls and boys, is gender equality.

Actually, I not the least bit shocked to discover that Kylie Jenner is rich enough to buy a small country in Africa and turn it into a tanning salon for herself and her friends.  After all, she’s been on the social media circuit since Paris Hilton was hot, and that was a number of years ago.  (Ms. Hilton’s “leaked” sex tape was 2001.)  Anyway, with more media coverage that an Ebola outbreak, it was almost impossible for Kylie not to get stinkin’ rich.  And I, for one, say, “Good on ya!”  I’ve never been opposed to people using their bodies to make a living; after all, professional athletes do it every day.  Nor am I against self-promotion, although I am wary of such people.  What I do wonder, however, especially on a day like today, is what history’s serious women would think about the antics of contemporary females like Kylie Jenner — self-proclaimed feminists who whore their privacy for trending fame and ungodly gain.  What, for example, would Lillian Hellman have to say, or Martha Gellhorn or the tongue that launched a thousand quips, Dorothy Parker?

For those of you who don’t live on this planet, Kylie Jenner is the latest member of the Kardashian celebrity factory to cash in – big time! – on P.T. Barnum’s maxim “There’s a sucker born every minute”– and Lillian, Martha and Dorothy are her cultural great-grandmothers (from the 1930s) who cut the path for her to do it.

Oddly enough, on International Women’s Day, the last thing this world needs is yet another lesson in feminism.  In fact, there is a significant portion of the population who think people like me (old, heterosexual white men) should just shut up and lay low for 24 hours.  They may have a point; after all, I am a self-confessed relic of a different age.  However, I think we need to stop the gender train for a moment, let everyone take three deep ones and get some historical perspective.

Way back in the day, the women who first strolled through the Men Only door in the media arts were just as young, just as wild and just as controversial as any trending personality we have today.  Make no mistake: Hellman, Parker, Gellhorn and the rest drank and partied to excess.  They smoked Virginia tobacco and Mexican marijuana.  They listened to cool jazz and Cab Calloway’s hot jive.  They had sex with who they wanted; when they wanted.  They married, divorced and frequently took lovers.  They broke rules.  They danced in the streets.  They were young and they acted like it.  However, they were also serious women.  They had something to say and they said it.  Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) dealt with lesbianism before most of America even knew it existed.  Meanwhile, the outspoken Parker was eventually blacklisted for her sharp and uncompromising political views.  At the same time, women like Martha Gellhorn and Margaret Bourke-White were making their bones as legitimate foreign correspondents.  Gelllhorn covered the Spanish Civil War for Collier’s and Bourke-White went to the Soviet Union for Fortune Magazine.  (She was the first Western journalist allowed in, by the way.)  Others, like photojournalist Dorothea Lange, were picturing the Great Depression and painters like Frida Kahlo were painting it.  When these women spoke, people stopped and listened.

Today, a lot of people are going to stop and listen to Kylie Jenner.  They’re going to watch her on TV and follow her on social media.  At twenty-two, her claim to fame is … uh … I don’t know what it is!  However, she and her cohorts are smart business people.  They know what sells, and they’ve packaged themselves as the product.  This is not a sin.

However, on International Women’s Day, I wonder what the women from the 30s would make of what female role models have become.

Still Funny After All These Years

old-man

The last time I looked, I was 35.  So, for all intents and purposes, that’s where I remain.  My outward appearance tells a different story (grey hair, weathered eyes and various bits that sag) but inside my head, I’m the same age as James Bond.  This isn’t a problem, really (James never had it so good!) but trying to reconcile 2019 with where I’m livin’ (somewhere in the early 90s) is getting more and more difficult.  Let’s face it, folks!  The 21st century has taken a serious turn down Silly Street and, these days, it’s all I can do to keep a straight face.  Let me demonstrate:

All the cops look like kids.  I don’t remember when we started giving children guns and badges, but it’s quite disconcerting to be stopped on the highway by somebody who looks like they just stepped out of Paw Patrol.

New Year’s Eve isn’t all that fascinating anymore.  Once an annual debauch worthy of the Marquis de Sade and Henry VIII, New Year’s Eve has become Amateur Hour – one brief moment when button-down people unbutton, drink an adult beverage and try and sneak in a kiss at midnight.  (Good luck with that one, BTW.)  This is a party?  I’m laughin’!

Most of the music sounds like noise.  I have questions!  What is classic hip-hop?  How is that different from regular hip-hop?  Why hasn’t anyone noticed that Taylor Swift only sings one song?  Are we absolutely certain Cardi B and Nicki Minaj aren’t the same person?  And how the hell did Ed Sheeran become a love song heartthrob?

Everything is expensive.  Hey, dentists!  You’re filling a tooth, not renovating the Great Wall of China.

Self-help doesn’t mean what it used to.  First I had to pump my own gas, then I had to bring my own bags, now I have to checkout my own groceries.  This thing isn’t going to end until hospitals are offering self-inflicted, video-assisted gallbladder operations – on YouTube!

Fashion is less than fashionable.  Karl Lagerfeld is dead, and when I look at some of the crap strutting down the Paris runways, I’m not feeling all that well myself.

What happened to junk food?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Going to McDonald’s for a salad is like going to a hooker for a hug.”

And finally:

Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with women.  Not all that new, but this recent trick of taking old movies, changing the main characters from male to female and calling it feminism is so totally condescending even Harvey Weinstein is saying, “WTF?”