THE SOUND OF ONE MIND BOGGLING

Over on the comments board a discussion has been triggered by Jett (when you’re a Jett, you’re a Jett all the way) over the worship of Elvis Presley as a viable religious alternative, and arsydd is perfectly correct. I did start toying with the idea in fictional form in the novel The Armageddon Crazy back in 1989, and by around 1998, as the Millennium approached, I had pretty much decided the Elvis faith might well be the coming thing, and wrote accordingly in Mojo and elsewhere. My basic thesis was that Elvis Presley had unknowingly tapped into primal human response; that he was something a modern fertility god. Moreover, his story was another version of the prehistoric fable of the sacrifice of the boy king that has been reflected down the years in The Fisher King, the New Testament, the Arthurian legends. A healthy non-judgemental, pillhead change from Islam or the old Judeo-Christian ethical bullying, I though, and even contemplated a gig in my old age as a Shaman of El (with enough of a stipend to keep me in a gold suits and a holy Cadillac.)

Then a number of things happened that made me less optimistic. The 21st century arrived and much of the pre-Millennium metaphysical – Elvis, chupacabra, aliens, Satan cults, mothmen, etc, – appeared, if not actually to melt away, at least to become chimeral and transparent in the grim light of the new world order. Also, what looked like the first real nucleus of Elvis worship underwent what I could only define as a schism between the life-affirming, young-Elvis, rock & rollers, who celebrate on January 8th, and the grim, and probably Republican women who stage The Death Day in the August humidity of Memphis.

This is not to say that Elvis has gone, but he’s certainly in danger of being swamped in the present wave of mindless trivia, as the metaphysical lifeforce is syphoned of by sneaker manufacturers for their TV commercials.

But trivialization emerges as today’s theme. I have a diatribe on the subject in this week’s LA CityBeat that argues the TV show Entertainment Tonight is the embodiment of epidemic stupidity and dumbed-down distraction.

BOYS ARE STUPID

I have a good friend who frequently ends her emails with the line “BOYS ARE STUPID”, after she’s been castigating me for my lack of attention to detail and my use of mendacity when I’m losing an argument. (But we all know how the Doc loves a sound castigation.) I guess it was inevitable that the phrase should wind up on a T-shirt, and so it did, going just a little further to “BOYS ARE STUPID – THROW ROCKS AT THEM.” I smiled until I discovered it was also inevitable some fool should attempt to make the joke an issue. The fool in this case was a talk-radio idiot called Glenn Sacks who broadcasts here in LA, and has actually managed to get three chain stores to pull the shirts from the racks, because they “encourage violence.” It’s been my observation that little girls have thrown rocks a little boys – and vice versa – since the monkey met the monolith, and I don’t think a t-shirt is going to make that much difference. Are we of the Doc40 crew the only ones who have lives?

COMMENTS

Did I say lives? Another matter under discussion is the comments board. Some girl, Lord Marmite, and davinian all opt for the conventional form of a separate comment under each post, while others like the anarchy of the current formless comment heap that seems to taking on a life of it’s own as a diverse and decidedly weird miniblog. Me, I kinda lean to the anarchic, and, since the tech seems to be resisting the former, it may well stay as it is for a while, maybe until it collapses under its own weight. In this matter, however, majority will probably rule, so let’s hear from you.

WHALE BLOWS UP REAL GOOD

Proving that, despite our protests, we are not exempt from the seduction of trivia, I can’t resist the following wire service tale from Taiwan. The decomposing remains of a 66-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street in the southern city of Tainan, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours. The 56-foot dead whale had been on a truck headed for an autopsy at a university earlier this week, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode The whale had died after it was beached on the southwestern coast of the island. (On the other hand, maybe an exploding whale isn’t that trivial.)

CRYPTIQUE – Moby no dick.

WHAT THE FUCK? – For a few hours on Thursday afternoon, the Google ad at the top of the blog was for Bush’s reelection campaign.