An Incredibly Farfetched Comparisons

If you thought my previous blog eulogizing Winona Ryder's missing 18 minutes was too trivial, you have not had a chance to read this.  Yes, I specialize in farfetched comparisons and parodies of parodies.  Ever since high school when I compared Portnoy's Complaint and Pride and Prejudice (or some similarly unrelated literary treasure), I enjoy going just a bit too far.

To my point:  Why do we disparage Lindsay Lohan and ridicule her excesses?  She dresses poorly and drinks a lot.  Her misbehavior is minute especially compared to the most venerated celebrity of all time:  John Lennon.  Is his incredible consumption of drugs OK with us because he was a Beatle?  Because he lived in and helped define the sixties?  Because it apparently helped make much of the music possible (just try singing I am The Walrus without feeling a little weird)?  All I know is Lindsay Lohan has probably not consumed in her lifetime the drugs Lennon would ingest in the average week.  Of course, her celebrity has far outrun her creative contribution so her drug taking might be the only thing left to note.  But, all of our drug judgments drop away before the hallowed image of John Lennon.  He even did heroin.  If someone had put him in house arrest he might even be alive today.

Rocks Crush Scissors

Rocks Crush Scissors

Goldfish once appeared from the merest of whims
brightly glistening in clear springs.
Minnows now burrow into riverbanks
barely seen in the billowing mud.
Have the goldfish died, fried and swallowed whole on a white rice mattress?
Or, are they alive, paralyzed by pesticides and Scotts 1-4 runoff?
Stronger measures may be needed.
Dynamite defeats a subtly cast line just as
Rocks crush scissors.

Paper Weight

Paper weighs on me.  Once I am two-thirds done reading a newspaper article, all I think about is recycling the damned thing.  I cannot let paper accumulate.  I have seen the dark side.  My father saved every scrap of paper, every issue of every magazine and newspaper.  Once I moved to college, all the unrecycled mass found its way into my former bedroom. Combine this deep psychological pressure with my own environmental guilt and the result is commandment #11:  Thou shalt recycle.  When I read an email that is important but I might soon forget, I feel trapped by the choice: to print or not to print.  It shouldn't bother me so much.  After all, I use 100% recycled paper.

I buy the newspaper.  If I cared so deeply, I would read online.  It's free, after all.   I would not be buried under the sheer weight of a sheet of paper.

Robbing Ryder

The peak of Winona Ryder's career has been robbed from her.  And us. Through some fault of her own, admittedly.  The careful reader might want to review back to my blog about the pain of stardom, but, since this is my first blog. . .  You get the idea.  While all the incredible mess-ups recorded through the years by countless stars might help me to better accept my own station in life (obscurity), it does not make the valley that has been Ms. Ryder's recent career any more acceptable.  To me.  While I watch Ironman for the third time, I realize there is nothing I can do but wait.  After all, in this age of Laura Linney and Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon and Helen Mirren, Winona Ryder's peak might still lie ahead.