Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? (4 page)

“Disaster movies will never be the same again” was one verdict, in the
Guardian,
on
United 93.
Oh, good. So they didn’t die in vain. If nothing else, at least we can point to 9/11 as having revived a moribund movie genre. Unfortunately, Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña didn’t resurrect the cop buddy movie with Oliver Stone’s
World Trade Center,
in which two men bravely fight an evil even worse than Gary Busey in
Lethal Weapon.
Hopefully, other moribund movie genres will also get a twenty-first-century calamity boost. Personally, we can’t wait for the first weird weather sex comedy. Or the first post-Guantanamo caper flick.

The acclaim for
United 93
was deafening. Apparently, it was “unifying, and uplifting, at a time when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly.” Which is, surely, kind of weird. Everything’s fucking up! With our governments’ efforts to rectify matters only seeming to derectify matters further! But look, here’s some proper brave stuff. It’s uplifting. More than the nightly news, certainly. We’re sick of that stuff.

Of course, artists are beholden to reflect the world around them, and if that involves getting off—in a simplistic way—on the drama of it all, then at least it’s not standard-issue Hollywood escapism of rappers in fast cars. Or maybe, in fact, this is the new escapism: seeking respite from the fruitless gloom by getting kicks from bloody, handheld, vérité docudramas on the more horrific flashpoints of the age. “There’s so much to see right now. What do you prefer? There’s the Twin Towers film or the New Orleans film. Then there’s
Fast and Furious: Nightmare in Najaf.
Oh, and
The Taliban Terminator,
about the British sniper in Helmand Province. It’s apparently a bit like
Phone Booth
—only they haven’t got a functioning telecommunications network.”

CARBON OFFSETS

Planting trees: What can possibly be wrong with that? Well, nothing usually. Except if those trees become fig leaves. Fig leaves to help cover up an enviro-hellstorm. Which they won’t be able to do. Because fig leaves are small, and enviro-hellstorms are big. The wonder of carbon offsets shows that there really is no problem you can’t solve by throwing more money at it, even if that problem is born from having money. Honestly, it’s like a little miracle.

So Coldplay can feel okay about the CO
₂
emissions of their super-success enormo-gigs by funding the planting of ten thousand mango trees in India. In this way, a recent interview can proudly report the band flying “by private jet to Palm Springs . . . The band can now afford to fly wherever possible.” (Of course, pretty soon there might not be any palms or any springs when they fly to Palm Springs—but that won’t be their fault!)

In such ways, even an utterly atomized populace can change the world. Any problems? Well, only that it’s largely bullshit. The science is disputed, but what is clear is that you cannot even accurately account for the amount of carbon that will be “offset” by planting trees. Trees do temporarily trap some carbon but, unfortunately, they also breathe some of it out again—it’s just kind of what they do. (We know this is disturbing, but trees are alive—not like in
Lord of the Rings,
but still . . .) And when the trees are felled, at least some of the carbon will be released back into the atmosphere. So landscape historian Oliver Rackham has compared the practical effect of carbon-offset tree planting to drinking more water to keep down rising sea levels. Even Friends of the Earth, who fucking love trees, say it’s “not a solution.”

In culinary terms, it’s like living on a diet of Big Macs and thinking that’s all right because you’ve also got the slice of tomato, lettuce, and pickle in there. The message is simple: The planet cannot survive on a diet of burgers.

CELEBRITIES TAKING CELEBRITY REALITY TV SHOWS FAR TOO SERIOUSLY

During the filming of
Armed & Famous
—the CBS reality show where celebrities patrolled the mean streets of Munice, Indiana—former
CHiPs
star Erik Estrada said of the experience, “I didn’t want to fail so it scared the life out of me.”

Don’t get so caught up in it, dude. Put it into context: Ponch. A voice on
SeaLab 2021.
Infomercials selling land in Florida. That is
you.

CELEBRITY FRAGRANCES

Have rubbish names. There’s Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker; David Beckham’s Instinct; True Star Gold by Beyoncé; Britney Spears’s Fantasy and Britney Spears’s Curious. Britney Spears “personifies daring . . . Curious by Britney Spears represents the young woman that pushes boundaries and revels in adventure.”

Yes, Britney Spears is indeed fairly curious, although not in the sense that she might suddenly, say, get really into botany. She’s curious in a different way. And she’s getting curiouser and curiouser.

True Star Gold sounds like one of those obscure gas stations you only ever see in the countryside—like the ones in the industrial part of Burbank with a logo that is almost exactly, although not quite, the same as Exxon’s, if Exxon had produced its logo on a Commodore 64.

Sean John’s scent is Unforgivable. By which we don’t mean it’s unforgivable, although it probably is. It’s actually called Unforgivable. Apparently, he personally chose the “combination of breathtaking, addictive and slightly dangerous essences.” What are “slightly dangerous essences”? Arsenic that’s been very heavily diluted? Is Sean John slowly trying to poison the world literally as well as metaphorically now?

Also, why does he always look so miserable? Is he actually miserable?

CELEBRITY MAGAZINES

“She’s too
fat
!” “Wait, she’s too
skinny
!” “Or is she so utterly
fantastic
it’s not true?” “No, she’s a
skank
! With sweat stains!”

For fuck’s sake, at least make up your minds.

CELEBRITY PRODUCT LINES

In 2004, spotting a gap in the market for credit cards aimed at impressionable teenagers, pop sensation Usher launched his own, sort of like saying, “Hey kids, if you enjoyed my hit album
Confessions,
you’ll love a life in debt.”

Or if you have a grand to waste, you could get a table designed by Daft Punk covered in different-colored light squares that respond to noise and light up—like a Studio 54–style dance floor. The only point of this is to say rude words to it and see which squares light up.

The queen of celebrity product lines, however, is Suzanne Somers. How committed is she to endorsing stuff? She is so committed that she regularly appears on Home Shopping Network! She is so committed that her short-lived one-woman show on Broadway—no joke—included an infomercial for the ThighMaster! She is so committed that she has stopped being an actual celebrity! True story!

On her Web site, the 1970s’ most famous ditzy blonde (not an easy title to win!) sells her own lines of beauty products, fitness products, weight-loss products, books, tapes, jewelry, and apparel. Somers promises she has “carefully selected and tested each item.” One can only hope she’s currently wearing a lab coat in her R&D department trying out the Suzanne Somers Home Enema Kit.

“CHANGE YOURSELF TODAY!” CULTURE

Understand this: There is something deeply adrift within your personality. Be prepared to chuck it away and start again.

The urge to start afresh seems particularly strong in the New Year. A few hours after the bells have chimed, anyone remaining unaware that they are polluted dipshits will soon be disabused of this by shelves crammed with books offering to Change Your Life in Seven Days. Or possibly Make You Thinner. Or Turn You Inside Out, if That’s Your Thing.

Newspaper headlines urge you to “Change Your Life for the New Year: Be Happier, Be Healthier, Be Richer. The Experts Tell You How in Our Special Guide.” Why are these writers so obsessed with cleansing their souls and starting fresh? What did they do over Christmas to mire themselves so thoroughly? Did they find themselves shouting racial epithets in the middle of an orgy?

In March 2006, the self-helpish magazine
Psychologies
included a special section called “Get Ready to Change.” It had the headline “Are You Ready to CHANGE?” Plus bullet points: “Your life map: what needs to change?” “ ‘How I got a new life’ ” and “Test: how will you handle change?” A subliminal message arguably emerges here. And it’s not: Stay exactly the same as you already are.

A change, it’s often said, is as good as a rest. We prefer a rest, ourselves, but there you go. The self is a tricky concept that has been the subject of anguished debate since time immemorial. Maybe the autonomous individual has a burning core of consciousness from which all else exudes. Maybe this is a myth to enforce positive feelings about ourselves and engender the illusion that we can determine our own way in the world. Perhaps we are merely the sum of our socioeconomic relations with other human beings. Or simply the totality of all the words we ever speak and think. Alternatively, we could just be a set of genetically pre-programmed desires designed to propagate the species, a trillion mindless robots dancing . . .

Whatever, it’s clearly a tangled affair. So thank the Lord we have Dr. Phil to sort it out.

CHE GUEVARA MERCHANDISE

Let’s not be negative about this: Che Guevara did help put in power a Stalinoid dictatorship that locks up gays and trade unionists—but, you know, fair’s fair, he did also have a cool beard. And Cuba can’t be proper Stalinism, like in Eastern Europe, because it’s really sunny there, whereas Eastern Europe is cold. Brr.

Che is everyone’s favorite facial-hair-motorbike-stood-for-some-stuff-but-I-don’t-know-what-it-was-and-don’t-really-give-one-check-out-the-beard-man revolutionary. Awesome. The sort of revolutionary you can safely put on T-shirts, clocks, and candles—yes, Che Guevara candles are available from a firm called Rex International. They also do candles with Elvis on them. Same difference. Che’s real name was Ernest, which is perhaps not so cool, but who cares when you factor in the whole motorbike thing?

Or maybe the kids really are into vague, trigger-happy yet hippie-ish developing-world guerrilla vanguard revolutionism tinged with Stalinism? Either way, buoyed up by Rex’s success, other companies are trying to float similar products, including a chain of North Korean restaurants full of images of Kim Il Sung (provisionally called Yo! Rice), and a range of sportswear called simply Gulag.

Rex is responsible for Che coasters and the Official Che Guevara calendar. How the red blazes do you get an
official
Che Guevara calendar? Presumably, there is a Guevara estate somewhere sanctioning all this crap? In fact, we’ve gotten hold of a tape of the chat between Che’s relatives and a Rex representative where the historic coasters decision was made:

AUNTIE FLO GUEVARA:
It’s what he would have wanted.

UNCLE DAVE GUEVARA:
Yes, yes. He was always drinking fluids from glasses and mugs, but not all in one go. He needed something to rest the glass or mug on, so as not to mark the surface of the table.

AUNTIE FLO GUEVARA:
He was very considerate like that.

UNCLE DAVE GUEVARA:
Yes, he was a considerate boy: he always left his machine gun in the hall.

AUNTIE FLO GUEVARA:
Yes. And his motorbike.

UNCLE DAVE GUEVARA:
Yes, the motorbike also.

AUNTIE FLO GUEVARA:
How much money were you going to give us again?

UNCLE DAVE GUEVARA:
Yes, we need to pay our gardener in the Maldives. We haven’t lived in Cuba for years—it’s shit. They lock up gays, you know.

AUNTIE FLO GUEVARA:
Yes, and glasses and mugs—they just put them on the table. Just right on the table. They don’t even care if it makes a mark!

UNCLE DAVE GUEVARA:
They’re animals. Cigar?

DICK CHENEY

Sometimes, one may have doubts about whether it’s right to demonize one man as the figurehead for all gas-guzzling, planet-raping, profiteering bastardry. We might momentarily wonder whether such a complex individual can really be so baldly drawn as the pure, living embodiment of bug-eyed Republican evil. Then, for a relaxing day off, he gets buzzed and shoots another man in the face.

Dick Cheney hunts pensioners—releasing them into the Texas scrubland, then letting off 260 pellets of leaden injury right in their faces. Still, at least it gets him into the outdoors—his previous exercise having been confined to climbing greasy poles and counting his money.

Cheney has often been called the architect of the Iraq War (however, an architect would have made a plan—so let’s just say it was “his fault”). Even people supposedly on his side (Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Colin Powell) have openly wondered whether his propensity to ignore UN conventions makes him a war criminal. His enemies, however,
really
don’t like him.

After the shooting, Cheney took awhile to take responsibility for pumping buckshot into hapless Harry Whittington. It was a full fourteen hours before the cops were called. Earlier, the local sheriff—alerted to the incident by the call made to the ambulance service—had been turned away from the estate by security guards who “knew of no incident.” According to our sources, the full fourteen hours were taken up with an in-depth debate on how to play the issue. Cheney argued that if he could get Whittington classified as an “unlawful enemy combatant” then he could not only shoot him in the face but also torture him. “Let’s waterboard the fucker,” Mr. Cheney is reported as saying. He then suggested the excuse “An Arab did it.” Ultimately, his final gambit that he should “privatize responsibility” having fallen on deaf ears, he was persuaded to go on TV and claim to be “a bit sorry.”

Even then, he managed to turn his admission that he shot an old man in the face—“I’m the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry”—into a piece of singsong circumlocution in the style of “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”