What keeps Graceland in business?

When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald's for a number of years. I assure you, that job was misery incarnate. Hey hey though nothing provides motivation to move on like misery, though. And I've got some great memories. One of my favorites was the time an entire tour bus of Elvis impersonators from Canada stopped in for lunch on their way to Graceland. Most of them appeared but a comedic charicature of Elvis at best, but they were having a great time and were a fun bunch of people.
I just finished Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live, a delightfully postmodern book who's thesis asks why "the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing." Through the course of the book, he tells his story of experiences visiting various musicians' places of untimely demise. His work is peppered with interesting pop culture factoids, anecdotes, and queries. One that stuck out to me:
"the main thing I dislike about Elvis Presley is the idea of Elvis Presley, and that idea is what keeps Graceland in business. Its the religiosity of garbage culture; it validates the import of tabloid aesthetics, and it makes our society look stupid... For some reason, there is a stunning number of Americans who desperately want celebrity royalty and cultural dogma, and that's all Graceland is. Oh... and karaoke. There was also some karaoke."

Well, evidently it's not just Americans, but Canadians, too. I'm pretty sure the British are the same as well- perhaps it's Western culture as a whole.

Na na na na na na na na BAT BOY!

I remember when I was young, my grandparents used to always have several of the little tabloid newpapers like Weekly World News (self proclaimed as "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper") sitting around their house. Even though I knew their stories were fake, I loved to read them and if you think about it, it makes sense that the fantastical nature of such publications would appeal to a child.

Anyhow, I saw a picture of the legendary Batboy today and was wondering how such an image would have been generated back at the time his "story" was published. Consider how long ago that was (I looked it up, he 1st appeared in '92)- did they have Photoshop back then? I imagine they might have something somewhat more rudimentary that probably cost tons of money. Isn't it funny/scary that even in a modern day society people purchase and sometimes actually believe what was written in these types of newspapers?!?

The rich get richer and the poor get- children!*

I still haven't decided who I want to vote for yet, I wanted to wait until the Democratic candidate was decided before I paid much attention. Now that we're down to Obama and McCain, I'm ready to get down to brass tacks and check out the candidates positions on the major issues- and as much as we're all complaining about gas prices, I'm pretty sure there's more important things we as voters should be checking into.

According to Michael Scherer, Washington correspondent on the election for Time Magazine, the reputable and non-partisan Tax Policy Center has done a preliminary evaluation of the Obama and McCain tax plans. What struck me most interesting about their report was the difference in who the candidates proposed plans would benefit.

"The two candidates' plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. . . In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise."

Hmm, should the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? I'm pretty sure this has been the way things always have been between Republicans and Democrats- but it still smacks to read it in print. It's pretty clear who's going to get my support on this issue- and I'd like to think it's not just because Obama's plan would be advantageous for me. *from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Image source: New York Times

WWTWD?

She's got a slamming body, and she's a decent actress, but what's up with Scarlett Johannson's most recent career move? {an album of Tom Waits covers} I've only heard the song from the above video, called Falling Down. It's not altogether unpleasing, but it's not exactly impressive either. Okay, okay- it's mediocre at best. Doesn't she make enough money acting? Perhaps interesting, but certainly not memorable. Why do celebrities insist on messing with their good thing? Jared Leto is the only celebrity I can recall in recent memory who actually pulled it off.

Jordan Catalano is so dreamy!

This just in- while looking for a pic of Leto from the My So Called Life days, I found a recent one of he and Johannson together- according to People magazine they've been "spending a lot of time together, and kissing a lot." Perhaps he is her inspiration/to blame?

*Image source: People.com

Girls rule, boys drool

Okay, haven't posted any "frustrated with life" entries in a while so I guess it's about that time...

Most everyone knows how that biologically speaking, girls begin to mature before boys. The other day I was lamenting about how most men my age still seem immature- not in the biological sense, but in regards to how they view themselves in sight of the rest of their lives. It seems to me that every guy I date my age is just clueless as to where they are in their life and where they might want to go- hey yo, the almighty quarter-life crisis. We women experience it, too, but it seems to me that yall boys struggle with it a bit more- or maybe it's not even a struggle for you, it's just the way it is, plain and simple. Anywho, my {female} friend tells me that the gap from us beginning to mature earlier actually still hasn't closed, and that at this point of our life, sometimes it actually gets bigger! Could this be true?! Is there logic in this universe that might explain why still the only two men I feel I can trust in this life are my fathers, heavenly and earthly?

*Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

In your face! Now consider this

Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde, 1866, Musee d'Orsay*

Tanja Ostojic, L'origine du monde, 2002

Courbet's work was part of the Realist movement and questions society's moral values. What do you think Ms. Ostojic could be getting at? (It may {or may not} be helpful to know that she is Serbian, and the circle of stars is the emblem for the European Union)

Read more at the Musee d'Orsay and/or ARTMargins.

Self-Extinguishing Cigarettes

Life is Beautiful, Peter Max, 1971

poster issued by the American Cancer Society

Alright so undoubtedly I'm behind the times, but while watching a newstory about a housefire the other day, I learned that there is such thing as a self-extinguishing cigarette that puts itself if not actively puffed on. Hello- genius! Apparently falling asleep while smoking is the top cause of fire deaths in the US. But the reduced ignition propensity (RIP) cigarettes are only available in some states such as New York, where the RIP version of cigarettes are actually the only kind sold now. The Harvard School of Public Health did a study comparing physical properties of these cigarettes with normal ones and found that on average, only about 10% of them completed a full burn, compared to 99.8% of the normal ones. Also, the introduction of the new RIP cigarettes appeared to have no effect on sales over a six month period. So the question is- why aren't more states following suit with the mandated switch to the safer cigarette design? And if the industry isn't going to suffer a loss of sales, why aren't these products being made more widely available?!? And so what if sales are reduced- the tobacco industry knowingly sells a product that kills people!