Friday, December 03, 2004

 
Re Dorothy Parker("Christmas Specials")& Tom Wolfe-10,000 Readers remember "If all the girls who
attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
I read a review this morning in a waiting-room copy of *Newsweek* of "I Am Charlotte Simmons." David Gates alledged that Wolfe was himself a head-butting alpha male(quoting from a hazy memory without a paid registration to the mag)and that the very edifice of the novel tottered because the novelist failed to realize that Britney Spears was a skank and a joke to anyone over age thirteen. -guess that showed the greater *coolness* of the reviewer.
And I suppose it should be acknowledged that Jon Stewart has shown great skill, if not in coming off as cool, in not appearing ruffled or even angry in his ostensibly polite and actually quite funny, interviews with Tom Wolfe and Jonah Goldberg.(his monologues are another matter, of course)
And still waiting for Andrew Sullivan to pen "Sod and Man at Yale," and "I am Richard Simmons."
And for Chris Rock to write the no doubt, very cool, "I am Good Charlotte(Or at least a mediocre 'Green Day')"
Regarding "Christmas Specials"-I may have somewhere in the basement a tape of The National Lampoon Radio Hour's Christmas episode. -some red staters blast Santa & sleigh out the sky with shotguns.....a heavily accented commercial for a carpet company noting that Chanuka celebrates the miracle of lamps with only a small amount of oil burning for eight days -("Eight days! What a *bargain*!-just like the ones you' ll find at....").....A Rod Sterling-type voice describes the Nativity: "Man or God? Or just another one of the countless aliens who visit the earth each and every day...in The Twilight Zone..."....An impoverished family is able to afford only a tiny, scraggly Christmas tree:..."And it was the very best tree....that they ever ate."-I suppose that they washed it down, nettles, fiber and all, with some cheap vodka.