doesn't that look like fun?here's my column from 12.1, re: black friday. i will never understand this day. i hate shopping so much, even normal, everyday shopping that i won't even go to the grocery store at 5:00, when everyone is getting off work. my ex knows i would rather eat lead paint and chase it with roofing nails rather than go to home depot on a sunday afternoon, and you'd have to sedate me to get me in a walmart pretty much anytime during the day.
i would absolutely freak out and go into a claustrophobia- and stupidity-induced coma if i were in one of the above pictured scenes. but anyway...
thanks to everyone who came and saw noises off--we had a great time doing such a silly show, and i will miss it--eventually. right now i'm still in recovery, although i've already started reading the next play i'm doing, 'the harvey project,' at openstage etc. will write more about that later.
also thanks to everyone who took the time to read my first theatre review in the denver post, on white christmas.
anyway. column from sat. happy shopping, everyone!
--kjb
CARPE DIEM 12-1-07
The political primary cycle has long been known in certain circles as “the silly season,” and with good reason. We get endless recycling of stories about Barak Obama’s alleged drug use and what that might mean if he were elected. We get stories about Hillary Clinton’s “waitress-gate,” when she was alleged to have not left a tip for an Iowa waitress. And now there’s theories about the meaning of Mitt Romney’s underwear—a set of words that should never, ever have been strung together except in the Romney bedroom, and maybe not even there.
“Silly” hardly seems a strong enough word to cover this endless filling of empty space in print and on 24-hour news cycles.
What, then shall we call this most odd time of year, the period that has expanded to encompass the time between Halloween and December 26, a period when many Americans seem to go completely bat-shit insane?
I think we should call it “the schizophrenic season,” since all the tenets that Christmas is supposed to stand for go out the window entirely. For instance:
Black Friday: ‘Tis the season to witness grown men and women in malls bashing each other to the ground like chubby hockey players who happen to be wielding credit cards instead of sticks in order to get…a television? A vacuum cleaner? A game system?
Really?
We’re not talking about people struggling to survive, not fighting for food, or shelter, or to spare their offspring from the path of a speeding train, mind you. We’re talking about saving $50 on an X-Box 360 in order to spare poor Johnny and Susie from…boredom. For a little while anyway.
Welcome to the spirit of “giving.” But of course, when you think about it, this shopping madness isn’t about the giving. It isn’t about the people for whom the presents are being bought—it’s about the bargains the shoppers perceive themselves getting, and their sense of victory in feeling that they have pulled one over on the stores. It’s about buying something for someone else—or yourself—and getting the cheapest possible price. At least until December 26 when all the prices drop anyway.
So, at the heart of it, Black Friday, the kick-off to the so-called “season of giving” is actually about greed on the part of shoppers, and it’s about greed on the part of the stores, which, (shh! don’t tell anyone!) make money anyway.
But back to our collective schizophrenia.
The War on Christmas: This lovely little hateful canard gets thrown into the mix earlier and earlier every year too. This year Fort Collins had the dubious honor of having Bill O’Reilly, in his blinkered and stubbornly uncomprehending way accuse the mayor of killing Christmas by suggesting that holiday lights and decorations that aren’t blatantly Christian might be nice for people of different faiths.
So, let’s get this straight: every year, around the time when supposed Christians celebrate the supposed birth of The Prince of Peace, we get these vicious little trolls coming out of the woodwork screeching about how someone, somewhere is trying to kill Christmas because the lights on College Avenue are white instead of green and red? Or because the clerk in Target said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?”
And we are meant to believe that poor, downtrodden Christians—a group which, according to a 2002 Pew poll, are a tiny minority making up 82 percent of Americans—are under siege. We’re told that there’s a chance that the big bad atheists or non-denominational non-believers—or God forbid, Jews and Muslims—might be involved in an insidious plot to wipe Christmas from the face of the earth.
Why must a time of year when we are purportedly celebrating love, peace, hope and renewal be so tarred with hatred, vitriol, anger and greed?
And if it’s going to be that way, we should just call it what it is: The Schizophrenic Season.
Words of wisdom spoken to reporters by the waitress who supposedly got stiffed by the Clinton staff (but who actually got a portion of a $100 tip on a $157 check):
“You people are really nuts.”
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