more dispiriting news from tv land

I was watching a movie called 8MM last night. A murder mystery set in the netherworld of porno and snuff flicks, which I suppose really exists in some form close to the dark & sleazy ambience of this film. And since I can only take so much depravity -- narcissism, onanism, blood, cum -- I couldn’t see it through to the end. So I don’t know if or when the buggering stopped, or what happened to the earnest family man detective played by Nicholas Cage.

But it made me wonder, again, how deep the rot in this beloved country of ours goes. Are we Sodom yet? Are we Caligula’s Rome?

Maybe the Islamofascists are right. Maybe America is just the symptom of a strain of vacuous self-indulgence that lies hidden in the Western cultural gene, and really, for the good of the planet, must be weeded out.

With the scary masks and the long knives.

Just like in the movie.

hot sun, cold beer

I was watching a TV show on hi-def last night – I think it’s called Art Mann Presents. And what the show consisted of was Art Mann, who looked to be a Thirty-Something, wandering around a California beach with a mike and a camera, talking to Twenty-Somethings in bikinis. Now, I like to look at 20 year olds in bikinis as much as the next guy: it’s why I tuned in in the first place. But there was something troubling about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

It wasn’t just the fact that the guys and gals were pouring beer down their throats as fast as they could. Nothing wrong with kids having fun. And it wasn’t the tattoos and the piercings most of them had. Nothing wrong with tattoos, or even the clit stud a chunky blonde cutely flashed.

So why did I feel so… dispirited?

I think it was this: I had the sense that none of these strong, healthy, vital, and energetic children in adult bodies had any idea what the human race has been through to make their carefree beer-swilling possible. It was as if the world has always been this way -- blue sky and sun, nubile bodies and beer delivered to your doorstep -- and always will be this way.

But it hasn’t. And it won’t.