Flat Earth
By Lynn Rapoport
Signs
ISN'T IT FUNNY how many different signs there are that the
world is coming to an end? I was thinking about this recently as I
sat in a darkened theater and tried to channel my thoughts away from
the $9.75 I'd paid to watch Scary Movie 3. The audience sounded
like a laugh track, like dead horses being mercilessly beaten. The
aliens came and left. I thought about Chicken Little and the prognostications
of Nostradamus.
To the home-schooling Bible-beaters who post blood-curdling messages
from God in front of their churches to freak out passing motorists,
recent Supreme Court decisions regarding ass-fucking can probably
be found in the Book of Revelations. The ecologists look at tiny,
lethal policy changes, trashed legislation on clean air and water,
expiring populations of flora and fauna, and the fact that corporation-loving
Utah governor Mike Leavitt was recently entrusted with the nation's
environmental well-being as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
I see signs, too – like when people laugh at jokes that aren't
funny, and the commercial where the Polyphonic Spree's gorgeous, gloriously
uplifting "Reach for the Sun" is used to announce the harmonic
convergence of iPod and VW Bug, and when someone starts hawking R.I.P.
T-shirts less than 24 hours after Elliott Smith stabs himself in the
heart.
For me, postulating that the world is coming to an end is just my
roundabout way of saying that another piece of the sky has fallen,
which is just my passive-aggressive way of complaining about things
I wish had not been said, done, created, or even thought of. Once
you turn the end times into a metaphor for things that irritate, appall,
or freak you out so badly you want to crawl back into the womb, the
signs are everywhere.
For instance, there's the AT&T Wireless TV commercial about a woman
sitting on a bus caught in gridlock while her son plays piano at a
recital. Before realizing it was actually about the tear-inducing
capacity of cellular technology to bring loved ones closer during
life's most poignant moments, I (yes, naively) thought it was a public
service message about the importance of arts education in public schools.
I was again fooled by TV a few nights later watching crowds of people
striding along the lanes of expressways and downtown streets. It was
such a pleasant shock to see the highways flooded with foot traffic,
I felt my heart leap in my chest. A plug for mass transit? the abolishment
of single-occupancy cars? They dare you to dream, and then it turns
into a commercial for cars manufactured to be safer so you can drive
more of them.
The recent discovery of a store in the mall called As Seen on TV
was a pretty bad scene. Also depressing was the Rolling Stone
article by Vanessa Grigoriadis in which Paris Hilton's videotaped
sex games with her then-boyfriend became grounds for comparing her
to a high-end prostitute. I'm also getting sick of looking at that
Department of Homeland Security bus shelter ad in front of Mission
High School (which has remained puzzlingly free of public commentary).
But quite possibly the scariest thing I've seen this holiday season
is a catalog that came in the mail a month ago for My Twinn, a product
hailing from the My Twinn Doll Workshop in Denver. Apparently it's
more important to have a dolly that looks like you than to learn how
to spell one-syllable words correctly. Leafing through the pages of
mommies and daughters and dollies in matching purple "stretch
velvet" and jumpsuits, however, it's hard to imagine what could
be more important than burning every copy before it's too late. It
was always disturbing enough when real twins dressed the same, the
mother-daughter combo even more so. But the combination of mother,
daughter, and toy wearing the same ugly sweater, pants, and black
Mary Janes is as freakishly disconcerting as the scene in Armageddon
where Ben Affleck plays with animal crackers on Liv Tyler's belly.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Denver, phone operators are standing by, and
all across the country, little girls sit in front of their vanities
scrutinizing their features, scanning the catalog's face and hair
charts in search of a perfect match. (You have about 15 options, unless
you happen to not be white, in which case your choice is super-duper
easy.)
Religious folks can, perhaps, take comfort in the fact that others
will soon be crispy bits of charred flesh in hell. Fatalistic eco-warriors
can look forward to a time when we're all dead. Knowing My Twinn is
out there, propagating, I can't take comfort in anything other than
the knowledge that the holiday season will soon be over.
E-mail Lynn Rapoport
E-mail Lynn Rapoport
