And Now the Not News

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Miley.

By now, the whole world knows this Disney Princess has chosen to out Gaga gaga, both in dress and style. I'd add substance but I'm not sure we've got enough to qualify in either case.  Both recall Madonna, the performer who for all her flash and dance, revealed herself to have the "heart and soul of a cash register." That description is a remembered one from some scribe back in the 80's opining about the material girl who aped Marilyn Monroe. I googled but couldn't find the exact quote to give full credit. However, the point remains that all three of these women were in the business of selling music as sex and sex as music and themselves as the icon of both.  It's just that Miley only recently jumped into the sharknado.  She's doing what she can to ensure everyone forgets Hanna Montana.  She is Sandra Dee of Grease at the end of the movie, because she wants to be popular and current and she, like so many of her generation, is both bored with her life as is, and desperate to be relevant.  

Then again, this was the Music awards so is the surprise that she was so lewd or that it was her?  What gives me hope, is that apparently, the entertainment world can still be shocked.   Here you have people who thrive on creating buzz, whose whole world is get your name known, your brand known, your face known, get people to talk about you you you you you you you.  Here, a young woman has taken that challenge to heart.

This is the lesson of Hollywood, of the Vanity Business that is Stardom for Stardom's sake.

You will be forgotten if you do not make people notice you.  You lack the beauty, grace, capacity to get people to notice you, so you must be more than you.  Cue airbrush, hair weaves, botox, facelifts, radical diets, insane outfits, etc. etc. etc.  You cannot be normal if you want to be noticed.  You cannot be you if you want to be a star. You must be something other, because you as is, is not star worthy, is not enough.

This is the messsage drilled into every model, every singer, every performer's head, that whoever they are, they are inadequate want-a-bes, until they are a star, then, they are it, however that "itness" is fragile, it is not a secure orbit.  The stars become inadequate once they age, then they become hasbeens.

Come to think of it, it was the message of Hanna Montana too.  She couldn't be both the singer and herself, they had to be two different people to allow for a normal life.   However eventually, the lure of fame and desire to be affirmed in all things won out and she disclosed her identity, so that she could be just the pop star.   Now we add hard core to the formula.  Hard core being the in case of emergency, push this red button means of restarting yourself in the Hollywood world.

The message over and over again for years, "You will not be loved, you will only be used." left a scar.
We saw that scar gyrating on the stage --or read about it.

Our nature requires love.  If we cannot be loved, we will be hungry, we will seek to fill that hole with something.  Miley had everything and she was still full of need.  Perpetually we see it, child to adult celebrities do not understand need. They've never had to cope with needing. No need to list the Disney divas that have fallen before her.  They all share the same inability to cope with anything other than the unreal world of fame, and the hardness of that unreal world not satisfying. That sort of profound isolation and lack of connection, to themselves and anyone else, must be unbearable.   The pattern of these women indicates, it eventually leads to fleeing --Madonna away from the spotlight for years, or destruction a.la. Lindsay Lohan.

One could almost see the crazed thinking that went into this decision.  The something she needed must be something outside of what she had. She has everything, but she still needs, so she must need MORE, more fame, more notice.  How to get more?  This need is awful.  I need it to be fixed fast! How to get the MORE fast?

The child star became the porn poll dancer, everything real burnt away in favor of something other than the self, something of a naked mask that is caked in stage makeup and eyeliner and spandex.  It is a cartoonish almost demonic re-envisioning of the performer that she was, self loathing even as it self promoted.  It was foolish and it succeeded.  She has more.  People are talking about her, about her performance, about her transformation, about her act and actions.   All press is good press if fame is the goal.  Infamy works as well as anything.  It worked for Madonna and Lady Gaga...and sadly, for Miley too.  Today.  

But this sort of need is never fed by More of the wrong thing.  So Miley will try again, to capture that moreness that made her start down this road in the first place.  Worse for her, one day, she will try everything she can think of and that moreness will still not fill what is wrong.  Some day, someone will out Miley Miley, for the same reasons she outdid Lady Gaga, and she will wonder, when she grew old and why? And there will be a great emptiness that howls far louder in her heart than any buzz she won from the other night.  

Worst Christmas Song Ever

Christmas Shoes…

The tortured scenario is quintessentially Dickensian. (I’ve been wanting to say that phrase for years). The only way I can envision this song being made worse frightens me more than the third ghost of Christmas yet to come. It is only a matter of time before some American Idol reject, former child star suffering from anorexia and an inability to get media traction after hitting puberty, or a decrepit past glory celebrity seeks to reinvent themselves and bag a few bucks by doing a remake.

It happens to the very best of songs, why not the worst? Santa Baby never needed a remake, and as for Madonna’s version of Eartha Kitt’s classic, her voice makes me think….she was a beautiful bar fly once.

Part of the reason I get worked up is the sheer volume of music that gets plastered against my ears during this time of year. It used to be a once a year treat, you dug up Dad’s scratchy records and hoped they wouldn’t get stuck during one of the boring songs like “I Wonder as I Wander.”

We had That Christmas Feeling, that old chestnut of a record put out by K-Mart or K-tel Records. I belonged to a dance studio that performed regularly all over town during the Christmas season using its selections. I pined for the day when I would get picked to dance in a red leotard and skirt, trimmed with white fur and wearing a Santa hat. Never happened. I lost out on that Christmas Sorority and so “We Need a Little Christmas” always makes me both neurotically nervous about what I haven’t done and rekindles my feelings of envy at not getting picked to be an elf.

Now Christmas music starts on one station here on November 1st. That’s just wrong. WRONG. I’m waiting for some radio exec to decide they can make more profit by playing all Christmas songs all the time 365 days a year. I also keep vowing to stay up on Christmas Day until December 26 starts to see what the first song is that the DJ’s break loose with when they get to return to their normal format.

I’ve never done it but I do have my personal suggestions, something from Meatloaf, Rush or Bon Jovi. Sort of like a lemon sorbet to cleanse the mental pallet.

But I digress…

The Christmas Shoes song repeats on the all Carols all the time station at least once every three hours, and as such I revisit my irritation. Fortunately, there are others who share my views. I have read the bad reviews. They are entertaining in the same way reading about the next train wreck of a movie provides a bit of schadenfreude. I won’t attempt to outdo the clever bits out there that suggest the whole story was a con, that question why a kid is out buying shoes if his mama is dying and what daddy lets their kid off at Kohl’s en route to the hospital for a bit of last minute shopping?

No. This is supposed to be a clever blog; a kinder gentler blog that does not resort to cheap exploitation of the contrived and the stupid, the saccharine and the maudlin for laughs. I must wrestle with my conscience. Do I want to spend an extra few eons in purgatory for abusing my gifts by piling on what is obviously an imperfect vessel of communication created by a person who thinks Christmas is all about creating Hallmark Moments so sweet they were rejected by Chicken Soup for the Soul?

I answer my concience honestly. Well…maybe a little.

Hillary's Family Tree

*This piece was inspired by a puff article on Hillary's relatives, it is a departure from my normal home spun stuff --think of it as dark chocolate instead of your standard every day Hershey's. As Always, I hope it makes you laugh. --Sherry

Who would have thought we could learn something new about Hillary Clinton?

How is it that Hillary's genetic magnificence did not come out when she was campaigning for Bill the first two times around, or when she ran for Senate? The Hillary Camp must have been holding this card for some time now. Imagine, being able to Google HRC and get Angelina Jolie and Madonna. Her Royal Clintoness even has ties to actual royalty, with Camilla Parker Bowles finally married to Prince Charles.

These shocking new details about the history of Hillary come courtesy of Washington genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner and the Washington Post: Reliable Source. (Friday, Nov. 2, 2007, C3) Reitwiesner is a Library of Congress employee. His research also revealed Hillary's musical roots transcended genres, as she is also linked to Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette (tenth cousins once removed). The Washington Post, being the Washington Post, rushed to break the news.

Having done my own research into her genealogical lineage, there are even more startling details that Hillary doesn't want made public.

Indeed, she managed to bury her family ties to eighth cousin twice removed, Margaret Hamilton; you know, the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Hillary Camp, aware that this connection would be unpleasant as it might scare small children, commissioned a revisionary tale of this character. It can be seen on Broadway today as the Tony Award winning show: Wicked.

Harder to conceal was the relationship with her French great, great, great uncle Nap--Napoleon Bonaparte to the rest of the world. Although now largely forgotten by the mainstream media, Old Bonie was undone in his first go 'round as Emperor with his preoccupation with the Health Care Reform Act of 1812, his implementation of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy just prior to the invasion of Russia, his obsession with a vast right wing conspiracy orchestrated by religious conservatives to bring back the monarchy, and his penchant for Lithuanian interns. Oh wait...that last part was from Bill's family tree.

Even though Sandy Berger was able to secret out the records from the Library of Congress in his pants before Reitwiesner could find them, I managed to procure a copy from the recesses of a secret vault in the Clinton Presidential Library.

Forget Albus Dumbledore, the real bombshell in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series was the identity of Tom Marvlo Riddle's love child fathered in his sixth year at Hogwarts in the days before free distribution of birth control in high schools. You guessed it, Hillary can trace her true origin to none other, Lord Voldemort.

When confronted about the connection, the Dark Lord shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, you know, there's no accounting for family."

When confronted about her alleged father while autographing pictures for an adoring crowd of progressives, Clinton responded in typically cryptic Clintonian fashion, "What is a Rose Law Firm by any other name?"

To my horror when I looked down at the autograph she put on my program, instead of seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton I read,
“I AM LADY CHILLHORNNORT.”

I looked up as she walked down the receiving line. She turned and with her smile said—“You and your little blog too.”