Tarnished Tinsel

Celebrity status might arguably be called America's favorite religion.  The amount of energy, money, time and trouble invested in the adoration of celebrities surpasses almost any public display of religion in America.  Secularist and humanists may vince at the shenanigans of religious fanatics, but the sort of hoopla that accompanies the cult of celebrity makes even Pentecostals look like Stoics.  Americans scream at their celebrities, imitate them, stalk them, read about them, adorn themselves with their image, canonize their every saying and generally make entertainers and athletes every bit the equals of the gods of Olympus.

Oddly, Americans also like their celebrities to crash, burn and self-destruct and otherwise go through as much hell as possible. How many of our pop diva's are depressed and disillusioned.  What we've seen this year is a large number of our diva's spiral into mental illness and hospitalization.  As I have listened and read, it appears to me that somewhere in the buzz is the interesting truth that most diva's are certified workaholic's, control freaks with extraordinary talent.  But they have discovered that the Emerald City is, alas, an illusion.

Yes, folks, Oz is just a lot of curtains, lighting crews and special effects.  It's a city of press releases and "Making of..." specials.  After the multi-million dollar contracts and the obligatory film roles, it's all a sham.  That's right folks.  Tinseltown is, uh tinsel and hopefully the word is out of the box.

One of my more intelligent friends once uttered the truism that "Sanity is whoever has the keys," or to state the converse, "Crazy is what the people with the keys say it is."  Increasingly, the keepers of the cultural illusion of celebrity have attempted to say that the ridiculous images of celebrity superiority sent across the world are reality and you are crazy.

Is it possible that it's actually a relatively healthy urge that keeps us watching the endless versions of "Behind the Music" that rehearse the decline of celebrities to the level of savages before finding salvation in rehab.  Are we secretly telling ourselves "hey, I'm actually doing better than those famous guys!  I've sorof got it together in comparison to those who are in hoc to the IRS or are addicting themselves into heroin rehab. As painful as it is to admit, I think the public fascination with the self-demolition of celebrities may serve a good purpose: we see the truth that money, power, fame movies and headlines don't rescue you from being a miserable idiot.

These celebrities are discovering that life is not money, fame and talent.  Many have gone public with the "rehab" treatment and present to us the public how they have been to hell and back.   And guess what?  They have now figured out how life really is.

There are a lot of people like that, and most of them aren't celebrities.  They are the guy who fixes your car, the lady who serves you at the local store, the elderly woman next door, the young man installing your kitchen cabinets.  Unknown to you, they have made it through all kinds of hell that will never be on television.  They will never write a song about it. They simply discovered life is a gift, an incredibly resilient gift.  It bounces back, and often gets a lot better.  

The music biz, the celebrity cult, the illusion of diva-hood and all the rest of it is a lie telling all of us we need applause, attention and money to be really happy.  Fact is, a good hot tea with pie does it for me.  And hundreds of things that cost a lot less than that.  Happiness is what ever you decide it is.  And it can be very simple indeed.

Those of us who know something of true happiness need to remind the screaming tattoo-covered cultist that misery loves company, and happiness does just find alone.  All the props we've placed in our attempt at artificial living are useless and the media the great deceiver of our souls is empty when it comes to real life and its meaning.  Celebrities beware; life is more than the exploitation of your talent. While us the public need to be screaming that the "Emperor has no cloths".

Salt Water and Paris Hilton

When I started writing this blog I decided to title it, "And the Difference Is" this was a spin off from the music, movie and social awards specials that have been afflicted upon us in the media domain we live in.  As we wait breathlessly to find out who "The Winner Is...".  This blog is a parity of that phrase.  On a side bar to the title, I also chose that name because I'm different.  I'm a sixty-two year old male, happily married to my one and only wife, three wonderful daughters, who have made me very proud, not only with their selection of outstanding son-in-laws, but two Grandchildren as well ( Samuel and Sophia).  I'm not sure if that qualifies me as "different". My other options for "different" are being a survivor of the sixties and its music and cultural craziness, plus I'm a survivor of the Vietnam War and all the after birth of those two generational experiences.  My profile: I do not have a ponytail, nor do I wear an earring and have absolutely no tattoos.   I have my follies and unfortunately they are the most interesting part of me (a good cigar is worth the dangers involved, just ask Winston Churchill).  All of us are as God made us and often times a good deal less.  But, none the less, we all like to be different. 

Difference can be the rejection of a social down stream of character twisting and value degrading that pushes the likes of Paris Hilton and other social divas into role models for our society and its young people.  They have become the new voices of reason and preach the gospel of success and uselessness at the expense of morality, good judgement and most importantly, our consumer dollars.  The characterless lives of people who only have arrived because of the media's need for poster size empty headed, glamorized shells that will influence the spending habits and promote the endless greed for the latest needs of the young and restless of our visual, technical generation.  The bottom line has always been the bottom line, the money.  Why do we BUY into it?  The myth of raising our standard of living has produced in us a lower standard of life.  Our society has become  like salt water, good to swim in, but hard to swallow.  We've exchanged the brotherhood of life for the neighborhood and most of us do not know our neighbors.  How society has evolved has caused us to lose the charm of intimacy, the ability to be interested in the trifles of another's life.  The drowning of human rights has drowned out the need for human obligations.

I feel like a pharmacist who is writing prescription but does not ultimately know if they have worked until someone comes back for the refill.  Diagnosis and medication are the easy part of any cure, taking the medicine as directed is the difficult part.  "And The Difference Is...", hopefully, you and me.  

More mashed potatoes for my people....

As the name of this blog indicates, I have different thoughts than normal about events and customs that take place in our culture. This Christmas season I have a gold mine of events that stir the human aspects of this critical nature. I've evolved into a person who is seriously wronged at the social injustices in our western  self-absorbed society of do gooders. What wounds me most deeply is the thin layer of charitable veneer that covers our self-righteous acts of benevolence - the bleeding hearts that take  up the cause of the down trodden seasonally. It's in vogue to do acts of compassion in the middle of December. While the rest of the year the gnarly surface of exposed particle board is the closest we get to charity. Who is this mid- month benevolence for in the end anyway? So we can share at our church and ladies group that we did this act of kindness and show our one-day polished veneer to our friends and co-workers?

Acts of compassion, charitable giving (both financial and labor) should be a life style rather than an event. We sell tickets to an event, but life-style is hard disciplined work and usually costs you more than you expected. The cost is your time, talent and your treasure. Our social network is event based rather than character working itself out through us. We need a cause, an event however short or spectacular it might be. The event is bigger than the real need, and we go home unchanged except for our ego that has just been given a steroid injection and for a few days we retain the swelling of self righteousness.

This coming Saturday I'm cooking at the mission for three hundred people, plus I get to give the Christmas message (ten minutes worth) That is the maximum attention span of a drug addict or prostitute. I hope the dinner lasts longer than the message. This time of year all the one-day helpers show up and get interviewed by the media. Strange how that works. All the guilt is removed with a one day act of volunteering down at the homeless place.

Am I sarcastic? No, not me. Even the management gets all dressed up with the goofy Christmas ties and clean shirts and ridiculous smiles that indicate we are grateful that you showed up today to help. This sort of stuff boils my blood and brings out the worst in me. I will wear my mint flavored shoes on Saturday, as I will in all probability insert them into my mouth. This hyper good deed aspect of Christmas should be criminal.  Why is it that one day out of the year we get benevolent and all teary eyed over the plight of the poor and homeless in our cities? This is the time of year when the media likes to talk about the poor and in doing so everyone else gets involved and a few might do something to help for that ONE day. My conclusion is that most of these people like talking about the poor and homeless, but never actually spend time talking to the poor and homeless.

It is also the time of year that all the charities tell everyone how broke they are. When in reality they are not (I know this for a fact). But this is when the monkey is greased and the organ grinder cranks the handle of charitable greed. I think at Christmas I would make a good Buddhist.

Hopefully we are the difference

I've titled my blog , "The  Difference Is". For what reason? Simply put, I'm different. Not in a mean or hurtful way, but hopefully in a progressive, creative, reframing way. So much of what we do, see and model ourselves after tends to come from the 'herd mentality'. Most of us have little time to rethink much of what we accept as normal behavior or a proper response to what life throws our way. We get stuck in the miry clay of the status quo and creative thoughts get lost in the battle to keep from sinking in the routine of just living to stay alive.

Four years ago, I was afflicted with a cancer that was determined to take my life. Thankfully, with  God's help and the wisdom and research of our fine Cancer Agency here in Vancouver, I survived. What I survived into is what this blog will attempt to express. I am a work in progress, which is an understatement. At times, I feel like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat that isn't there. But at the same time, my knowledge has piled up into a stack of facts translated into a small mound of wisdom. Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed. I'm reminded of an inscription found on the Berlin Wall during its collapse. It said, "Never since the time of Copernicus have so many been so wrong so often with so little humility."

May the walls of the status quo and ignorance come down and never shall the King's men rebuild them.

Dif.fer-ence (noun)

• A point or way which people or things are not the same: the difference between men and women
• The state or condition of being dissimilar or unlike: their difference from one another

As Winston Churchill said, "Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge."