The other day, I went down to the corner store with my mother for scratch off tickets and cigarettes. We were clearly having a perfect day. The song "Open Arms" was on the radio. I began singing because I love to sing badly in the car. I sing loudly and with emotion. I sing like I am someone who can actually sing. I carry a tune like a man with no arms carries a box. But when i am in the car, I sing like I don't know this. So I opened my mouth when Journey got to the chorus, and loudly as possible, with all the motion as if I was an actual member of Journey and I was singing for my life and my well-being I said:
"OH, well, I come to youuuuu with broken arms. Hoping you'll see what your love means to meee, broken arms. "What did you just say?!?," my mother freaks out, half laughing.
I go back into my cheesy 80s rock star mode, until I come to the "broken" part and realize I was singing with wrong lyrics.

The thing to keep in mind is that I wasn't trying to be funny. I was singing like it was an amazing song and all the love I had for the world was coming out of my mouth. I thought, for those few seconds in time that the actual lyrics were "broken arms".

I was listening to George Carlin on NPR the other day while driving. I always find it suspicious that NPR and Air America tend to get fuzzy and lose signal in areas that I would describe as a bit more conservative than the vast majority of the state. As soon as I hit Route 1 in Edison, the signal becomes horrendous and I turn on Rush or Sean Hannity and get upset and indignant and pissed off. These shows come in loud and clear in these areas where people live in small ranch homes with no sidewalks and proudly hang their American flags which coordinate well with the flag stickers on their SUVs, they have slowness about them that reminds me of electronic toys that mimic whatever the child just said to them, they believe that their salvation will come through a vote for Bush. But these areas the talk shows I like to listen to, the ones that are manufactured by the "liberal media" seem to be a bit fuzzy. Take that and shove up your ass, Hannity.

So back to George Carlin. He was talking about why he's kept to a touring schedule rather than raking in the dough with commercial movies and television because he wants to maintain control over what he can say and not have to worry about "selling biscuits." He was complaining about how much of media is forced down our throats like we should care about everything that appears on 20/20 or live coverage of memorials of people grieving for their dead relatives that some how we should all own because we are told this is very sad, and horrible, watching these sad sad people. He then said that he cannot take any more of the "emotional kitsch" that the media is really full of.

When I listen to the radio and turn from my “liberal media” to the “fair and balanced” conservative talk shows, there is something I notice. The differences in emotional kitsch. I’m sure most people can figure it out right away. How they say that Kerry is a “flip flopper” who is not strong and will lead to the down fall of civilization as we know it. The other half seems a bit more interesting in explaining facts and exploring issues, allowing people to call in who, !gasp!, disagree. Maybe it’s just the stuff I listen to but that’s my fair and balanced analysis.

The truth is the only place I want to see emotional kitsch is coming out of my mouth while I am signing. I want it to make me laugh and singing so loud I deserve some type of ticket for violating some sort of decency law. I do not want to be told what is and is not sad, happy or what emotions people on Survivor are having because they are forced to live without meat on a show that they volunteered for. But there is really no way to avoid all off it. Everything is full of these faux emotions that are supposed to register in us. Are we so void of drama and gut-wrenching emotion that we turn to the media to provide us with some like Mid-Western wives filling their kitchens with roosters? Or are we so full of it that we can’t tolerate those things that are not as kitschy as Hello Kitty dolls?

I don’t know. But having a kitschy way to describe it thanks to George Carlin makes it all the more easy to indulge in the emotional kitsch and still keep it all in perspective.
Friday, October 22, 2004

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