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Thursday, 28 August 2008 |
Some Favorites from the Archives:
December 1994
PitchWeekly columnist Kiki Dakota recently found Jesus at a local coffee house. Jesus was in an expansive mood considering the season and the ongoing stream of worrisome news about the state of the world. The following is Kiki's condensed profile of Jesus (a longer and more prophetic version is expected at a later date) based on questions we all, at one time or another, wanted to ask him.
Birthday: For practical purposes, Dec. 25, 0.
Birthplace: Bethlehem.
Occupation: Teacher.
Current home: Dad's houses. He has extensive real estate holdings - and get this - he lives in all of them! Like dad, though, I can be found just about anywhere.
Marital status: Single.
Children: Several billion, and growing!
I want to teach my children: To love one another.
Working on: Saving humanity, mostly.
The last good movie I saw: Pulpit Fiction. I wept.
The books I've been reading: Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean. It's a book about the death penalty, and as a death penalty survivor, I found her account most illuminating.
Favorite pig-out food: Loaves and fishes.
Nickname: Immanuel.
Favorite childhood memory: Tossing those Philistines from the temple. Now there's a story that gets told year after year at the dinner table.
My most irrational act: That 40 days in the desert business. The whole wilderness mythos is highly overrated. I could have settled for a more comfortable symbolism, like 40 days in Branson. It's remote, uncultured, and temptation would have been a welcome reprieve from the tedium of has-been entertainers.
If I weren't the son of God, I'd be: A stand-up comic.
Most humbling experience: Crucifixion. For most of us, it happens some time in high school, through team sports or women. But for me, crucifixion went beyond mere adolescent humiliation. It was real, and became what psychologists call a "life defining experience."
Major accomplishment: Resurrection.
Three words that best describe me: Fun-loving, redeemer, forgiving.
What is your relationship with your dad like? Well, God is a tough act to follow. And we had our trying moments like most fathers and sons. But he's surprisingly patient and understanding. Now we're quite close.
What was it like growing up with a famous father? The parental expectations are enormous, as you could well imagine. But overall, it was pretty comforting, knowing I'm the son of God. I hope I give that same comfort to my kids.
Your mom made a killing in the Top 40/dance music industry in the mid-'80s. How has that influenced you? Oh, that wasn't mom at all. That was just another mom wannabe.
Any aspirations to lead a public life, yourself? The first time around I wasn't overjoyed with the publicity, but I saw it as an opportunity to do some good. I got some friends together and they formed a rough PR department for me. This lifetime, I'm accustomed to the publicity. I think it's helpful to millions, so I don't mind so much.
If I had it all to do over again, I would: Not leave so much of the documentation up to the PR guys, er, disciples. They embellish for effect too much. Sure, it's the art of the storyteller, and all those conflicting reports help create that mystique associated with the divine, but it's really not that necessary. The message is a simple one.
Do you ever get tired of people always asking you for things? I love hearing from you in prayer, but quit all this "thee-ing" and "thou-ing."
How do you want to be remembered? Through action. Love one another as if your lives depend on it. Because interestingly enough, they do.
Any words of advice? Look for the common ground. I think we have more similarities than differences, and being able to identify with your neighbors is the first step to building viable communities.
On a lighter note, it's the holidays. What do you want from Santa? I'm Jewish. We don't do Santa.
What is love? Hormonal chicanery, that's what!
It is simply our hormones deceiving our entire bodies so that we desire the detested: men.
It is our glands overrunning our better judgment in a frenzied, hysterical, and desperate last gasp at restocking the pond with our species.
And for what gain? Someday something in the universe bigger, stronger, and brighter will evolve and make us all its lunch. Sure, it could take a few hundred thousand years, but we are by no means exempt from the fate suffered by every other species. And it couldn't happen to a more deserving group, humans. Our collective genetic boredom while we're waiting for the slaughter dupes us into love. And why? Because it feels good.
Candidly, love isn't what feels so good, and it's surely not that loser to whom we are attracted doing anything to bolster our mood. It's the thing that love opens in us: willingness. That's what feels so great. Suspending all our better judgment, all our guard and knowledge, surrendering all our preconceptions we think maybe, just maybe this time he might be "it." Our eyes light up and our pulse points purr at the mention of him, because for that brief period of "falling in love," we are willing.
But if we fall in love because it feels good, and what feels good is the willingness, why not just cut out the middlemen and be willing to suspend judgment? What makes us willing to fall in love?
It's those trickster hormones again.
More likely, it's a subtle form of self-loathing. And who wouldn't suffer low self-esteem, attracted to men? Heterosexual women suffer a double curse. First, we're attracted to men, who are just plain vulgar, and then we quite sensibly loathe ourselves for our attraction to them. It's like the junkie who, with each fix, has just that little bit more contempt for his inability to do anything about the powerful drive that enslaves him, drives him to madness, and destroys him.
It's no wonder motivational speakers have all those empowerment seminars. If you liked men, you'd think less of yourself, too. Nature is cruel. Our romantic yearnings clearly have no rational root. I know of no one who sits back, relaxes, and thinks, "Hey, I've got it good. I've got a serene existence, and just look at all that money that has accumulated! I know! A boyfriend! That's just the ticket to ruin my life." We don't think like that. We just act like it.
Oh, but what sweet ruination!
Author's Note: October 2001 -- I no longer believe a word I wrote back in '94, but boy! I sure was passionate for someone so wrong!
Sex Appeal
1998
Brad Pitt has it.
Johnny Depp has it.
Senior United States District Judge Scott O. Wright has it.
Brad and Johnny have cashed in on it, too. Judge Wright hasn't relied so heavily on his looks for his success in life. Nonetheless, sex appeal -- that ambiguous quality shared by all three men -- appears around each one like an aura.
Sex appeal is most notably ambiguous, nebulous, and elusive, yet somehow very real and perceptible, despite its seeming haze. Sex appeal goes beyond the sensuous, but definitely includes the data the senses so dutifully collect for us.
The quiet boil of passion in latin and classical guitar, the ethereal perfumes of Japanese incense wafting in the air, the enveloping gush of warm bubble baths, or the sweet juices of ripe strawberries all alert the senses to that little guy in our heads murmuring "some pleasure goin' on here."
But sex appeal transcends the senses. Perhaps because the composition of sex appeal -- that which is left out of reach of the senses and preserved solely for the folly of the imagination, is what makes something sexy.
Only the young and overhormonalized prefer pink shots to the suggestion of exposure. Blatant displays may be functional, but they're not the stuff of steamy seduction. The discreet hint of revelation has boatloads more sex appeal than the obvious.
Sex appeal works most effectively with a certain amount of shutting down of the senses, actually. When a mist settles over the night from sleepiness, when loosened up or just relaxed enough to relent the guard on duty in my brain, I'm at my most susceptible to sexy men and things. The boy who keeps me out late, talking until two in the morning, or at dawn, who nudges me awake but leaves me in the fuzz of morning, is the man I'll think has the most sex appeal. This isn't to suggest that Brad, Johnny, or Scott have ever nudged me awake; at least not in person, that is.
As indeterminate as sex appeal is, some people and things just have it. Tropical paradises have sex appeal; frigid, barren northern Canada doesn't. Candlelit dinners with real linen tablecloths have sex appeal; hospital cafeterias don't. Yoga has sex appeal; hair shirts don't. Hair shirts are just plain weird. Conceptually, the whole notion of pennance that doesn't make any tangible attempt at rectifying the misdeed is weird, though. And unsexy.
Lots of people and stuff lack sex appeal:
As for defining sexiness, let's just say I'll know it when I see it.
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