Jay Leno's Falafel Cravings and a Little Hermeneutics

I ducked into a cheap Greek restaurant on Ventura Boulevard for a quick gyro today, regretting only that I had recently removed all reading material from my car. So, I had to rely on imagination while eating alone, something I’m never happy about. Sadly, just as my imagination was failing, Jay Leno (or someone in a damned good Halloween costume) and a friend came in wearing motorcycle gear and sat down across from me. Thankfully this is LA, or more precisely Encino, so no one made a fool of themselves and fed his amour-propre, but of course, not having anything to read, I just had to sit there blandly looking at Jay Leno wolf down falafel when I really would much rather have had a copy of Terry Eagleton's Ideology of the Aesthetic. Hell, the Ikea Catalog would have been sufficient, under the circumstances. Not that I have anything against Jay Leno, just the cult of celebrity. In fact, judging by how he treated the restaurant staff (and that, in my estimation, is a pretty good indicator of character) he’s a stand-up fellow, but I can never get out of my mind what Bill Hicks said about him being a fevered ego and total sell-out. Nonetheless, whether it’s that Angelenos are too hip or too self-absorbed, I was delighted that even the women at the next table over, one of whom was holding a digital camera and showing pictures of “the new house” to the other, didn’t see fit to take advantage of the obvious opportunity. Actually, I ended up walking into the bathroom just as Jay walked out and I now know for certain that his shit isn’t any less malodorous than mine.

A friend of mine at campus read one of the entries here and told me “by God, you’re a Snob and a Socialist.” Well, it’s probably true and frankly I don’t see that these are contradictory. Contempt for the bourgeoisie? Check. Class insecurity? Check. Loathing of gaudy excess? Check. Support public funding of the arts and education, and, aw hell, just about everything else that’s high-brow? Check. Religion and/or television is the opiate of the masses? Check. And not really interested in a true worker’s revolution? Well, as the old joke goes: “The workers are revolting!” “Why yes, they are.” Look you might not find this all a compelling basis for a political and aesthetic ethos, but I’m not looking for converts. Go shove another Krispy Kreme in your pie-hole and leave me to ponder the good life.

Or the bad life. I will be going to Washington D.C. Friday after the election and if George Bush has won by a suspiciously slim margin, I’m hoping for chaos in the streets. A Kerry victory will only bring me relief, and though I earnestly like him and don’t think of him as the lesser of two evils, it will not bring me joy. To paraphrase Jeremiah, my heart is already sick at what I see as the breaking of my people. Maybe I am a Socialist, but is only because I fear there is no balm in Gilead.

And I thought we were supposed to be guarding the balms.