Category: Entertainment

The Rich Are Different

wedding-cakeCall me a hopeless romantic, but there’s something seriously icky about Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall getting married last week.  I’m not one to deny anybody happiness, and if it makes you happy to throw a big party and invite Bob Geldof — knock yourself out.  (Murdoch? Geldof? There’s some irony there!)  My problem is they called it a wedding.  WTF?

People get married for all kinds of reasons, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out even one for these two.  Murdoch is the king of the sleazier suburbs of the media world, and Hall was an A-list celeb whose best-before-date expired when Mick tossed her ass.  Murdoch recently weaselled his way out of jail time (it helps to have a roomful of lawyers and 12 billion dollars) and Hall appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, the supermodel equivalent of doing Depends™ commercials.  What could these two possibly have in common?  Well, I guess that depends.

Geriatric sex aside (which is so kinky even I don’t want to contemplate it) both of these folks have enough money to find far more supple bed partners — and in the past, they haven’t exactly been shy about doing just that.  Besides, Murdoch is rich enough to buy Viagra™ — all of it, including the patent — and rebrand it Halls Sugar-Free Warm-ups™ if he so desires.  So it ain’t lust, folks.

Nor is it money.  Rupert might be rich, but Jerry’s no slouch herself. When you’re worth north of 15 million, it’s not like you’re looking around for lunch money.  Besides, I would think Rupert and his kids had a couple of pre-nups up their sleeve before anybody walked down the aisle — and if they didn’t, that roomful of lawyers I mentioned earlier probably did.  So, the most recent Mrs Murdoch might be a gold-digger, but she’s not using a very big shovel.

Personally, I think Rupert and Jerry just wanted to throw an in-your-face party to show the world exactly how don’t-give-a-shit rich they are.  However, in our Post-Kardashian universe, one more glitzy party isn’t really news now, is it?  So, Rupert, (remember, this guy owned News Of The World) found a headline to hang it on: “I Thee Wed.”  Honestly, if they really are in love and want to live happily ever after, why don’t they just buy Wales and go live there?

Karma’s a Bitch

karma1I believe in Karma.  I believe good things happen to good people and bad people fry in Hell.  I believe everyone gets what they deserve (sometimes that scares me) and even though it rains on the just and the unjust alike, the just usually get an umbrella.  This isn’t merely rose-coloured Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky optimism; it’s real.  I’ve proven it hundreds of times over a lifetime of experience.  Let me tell you a story:

When I was seven, I liked Brenda What’s-her-name and I thought she liked me.  She didn’t.  She liked my lunch (my oatmeal chocolate cookies, actually.)  Somehow (memory fails me) I eventually realized this and, broken hearted, quit sharing my bounty with the woman of my dreams.  This would have been just another love lesson learned except Brenda turned out to be a vindictive bitch, even at seven.  She found herself another boyfriend who was one year older, 5 kilos heavier and skilled in the art of punching people out.  In the messy divorce, Brenda and her bloodthirsty boyfriend demanded custody of my cookies, and after a couple of nasty altercations, I came around to their point of view on the benefits of sharing.  Again, a love lesson learned. However, I was not prepared to go cookie-less for the rest of my life.  So, rather than getting my ass kicked every day and losing my cookies anyway, or just meekly handing over them without a fight, I devised a cunning plan.  For the rest of the year, every morning on the way to school, I stopped at a park bench in front of City Hall, sat down, rain or shine, and ate my cookies.  One little boy finding his own way in an unfair world.  It wasn’t too long before my personal Bonnie and Clyde figured out they weren’t getting any more cookies, and after a month or so, I began to appreciate the intrinsic value of solitude.  Time on, we all went our separate ways: I moved to the West Coast and I assumed Brenda and the boyfriend (I think his name was Genghis or Attila) both died, face-down in a ditch somewhere.

Fast forward some 30 plus years.

I was at a house party back in my hometown, and an old friend introduced me to a woman,
“You remember Brenda?” he said.
In actual fact, I didn’t.  However, Brenda turned out to be an intelligent, witty high school teacher who was married to one of the funniest Agro-engineers I’ve ever run across.  She clearly remembered me, and we were all having such a good time that I figured I’d just fake it and we ended up spending most of the evening together.  At some point, handsome husband disappeared and Brenda turned to me and, with a hint of remorse in her voice, said, “Does your mom still make those oatmeal chocolate cookies?”  Ding dong!  All the lights went on, and even though I hadn’t thought about Brenda in over 25 years, suddenly there she was: the same little girl who’d strong-armed me out of my cookies, and she looked genuinely sorry.
“Yeah,” I said, “She does.”
“You know, I’ve never ever tasted cookies as good as those ones.  I wish I could learn to bake something that good.” And I could hear she meant it as some sort of a backwards-reaching apology.
I should have said something, but I didn’t.  I just looked at her, directly into her, into her soul. And she let me — and over in the corner where we all keep our various bags of guilt, she had one with my name on it.  I could see it in her eyes, and for a nanosecond, we both knew it.  I could have fixed it for her. I should have fixed it for her.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I said, “No, people like you aren’t capable of things like that.”
Then, I stood up and went outside for a cigarette.  When I got back, Brenda and handsome husband were gone.

And what’s the moral of the story?  Brenda may still be dragging around a bag of guilt with my name on it.  Too bad — she deserves it.  The problem is the sins of a child are different from the sins of an adult and ever since that house party, I’ve been carrying around a bag that says “Brenda.”  One of these days, Karma’s going to catch up with me.

Super Bowl, The Jacksons and Man Boobs

superbowlSunday is Super Bowl Sunday — the game that’s more than a game.  I love the Super Bowl.  I assemble all the “that-stuff-will-kill-you” faux food I can find, chill the sugary beverages, realign my ass groove on the sofa and settle in to watch what usually turns out to be just an average game — because every year the Super Bowl is never as good as the month of playoffs that precede it.  Oh, well!  The Super Bowl is still the biggest sporting event in the world.  Sure, piles more people watch World Cup and the Tour de France or even some cricket championship in India, but that doesn’t matter.  The Super Bowl is Numero Uno, the Big Kahuna*.  The one everybody talks about.  But it wasn’t always that way.  It took a lot of refining to turn an ordinary winner-take-all championship game (which wasn’t even taped the first time) into a worldwide phenomenon where over half the people watching don’t even understand the rules.

The history of the Super Bowl can be divided into four distinct eras.

Squeaky Clean Disney — In the beginning, the Super Bowl wasn’t actually all that super.  It was a championship game but no big deal beyond its domestic fan base – boys to men.  There was lots of advertising, but mainly for the regular man stuff like cars and razorblades and aftershave.  The halftime show was based on the college bowl game model — Disney kids and marching bands.  Every once in a while, a recognizable name got thrown in there, but most fans took the halftime opportunity to go to the bathroom or the fridge for more beer.  That was it, and it stayed that way until 1993 when Michael Jackson showed up.

Michael Jackson and Friends — The news that Michael Jackson would perform at Super Bowl XXVII shot the expected TV ratings through the stratosphere.  Suddenly, everybody wanted their advertising front and centre, and they weren’t about to waste that placement on some lame old commercial.  Unique Super Bowl ads had been around for a while, but Michael turned them into an art form.  And he didn’t disappoint: Super Bowl XXVII was one of the most watched events in television history.

For the next ten years, the Super Bowl halftime show read like a Who’s Who from Billboard — Tony Bennett, Britney Spears, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins etc. etc.  Even U2 did a solo concert!  The domestic TV audience began reaching for 100 million, and worldwide it went off the charts.  Ads became bolder, flashier and funnier as modern Mad Men went after this audience.  In 2003, The Dixie Chicks sang the National Anthem, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers knocked the snot out of the Raiders 48-21, and Shania Twain and Sting entertained everybody in sight.  Market share and ad revenues were the largest in history.  All was well with the world — or so it seemed.

Janet Jackson and “Man Boobs” — In 2004, Super Bowl XXXVIII threatened to be a complete snooze.  New England was clearly a better team than Carolina.  And the halftime show featured Janet Jackson, the aging sister of a spooky superstar, and Justin Timberlake, the lead singer of the non-threatening boy band ‘N Sync.  However, as Gomer Pyle used to say; “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”  Not only did the game turn into one of the best in history, but Janet and Justin put on a bit of a show themselves.  Does the term “wardrobe malfunction” mean anything to you?  Janet and Justin’s halftime presentation of Janet’s 38-year-old breast shocked a lot of people and scared the crap out of the NFL, CBS and the American federal government.  Family entertainment had been assaulted; those two crazy kids had put billions of ad dollars in jeopardy.  OOPS!  The boys down at Super Bowl Central needed to fix things without going back to boring old “squeaky clean Disney,” but which contemporary entertainer could they trust?  Hip Hop?  Rappers?  Not a chance!  They came up with a brilliant solution – man boobs!  They got male entertainers so old they wouldn’t dare take their clothes off!

For the next six years, Super Bowl fans were subjected to some of the greatest names in Geriatric Rock.  The list is impressive: from Paul McCartney (who was born two years before D Day) to The Who (where half the original band was already dead.)  Even Prince, the youngest of the crowd, was pushing fifty so hard he could see the pension plan from there.  Combine that with Springsteen, The Stones and Tom Petty, and it looked like the nursing homes of Cleveland were having a 2-for-1 sale. But here’s the deal.  It worked!  The audience grew.  It’s amazing how nostalgia and half-naked Go Daddy ads can prop up a mediocre sporting event.  Then Madonna came along.

Safe Sex —  Madonna may have been everybody’s bad girl at some point, but in 2012, chances were good she’d at least keep her clothes on.  After all, she was old enough to be Tom Brady’s m-m-m — older sister.  Unfortunately, nobody vouched for M.I.A., Madonna’s on-stage buddy, who gave over a billion people the finger during, “Give Me All Your Luvin’.”  This time, the NFL went through the roof and sued M.I.A. for something in the neighbourhood of 16 million dollars.  Ouch!

These days, the Super Bowl halftime show might show a lot of skin and have a few suggestive gestures, but with the NFL lawyers standing guard, it pretty much sticks to the safe sex of Bruno Mars and Katy Perry dancing with awkward sharks.  Even Beyonce kept it clean enough to get invited back.  And this is the way it’s going to be for the foreseeable future.

*Just to show you what a big deal the Super Bowl is, notice I didn’t mention “football” once!