Social Conscience?

Dear Degrassi,

You used to diss people - HARD! Do you have any sort of social conscience?

Tree Hugger #27

Dear Tree Hugger,

Yeah, I hear ya. I'll admit I once used to take shaudenfreuder to a whole new sick and twisted level. It was watching a documentary about Corey Feldman that made me really sad. He was a sad, fucked up teenager who spent way too much time with Michael Jackson who got right and royally screwed over by his sad, fucked up parents. So what? Doesn't every one have childhood trauma they may or may not spend thousands of dollars working through in therapy? True... but very few of us have to live it out publicly at a tender age... Of course, all my sympathy for him went out the window when he insisted on airing his dirty, and frankly, rather boring laundry on The Two Coreys... Oh, and the final indignity? The straight to DVD Lost Boys: The Tribe. Any attempt to recreate or recapture the initial magic of the original 80s classic is nothing short of blasphemy... Mind you, considering Feldman's second marriage was ordained by both a rabbi and MC Hammer, I figure religion only really plays a token role in his life. Actually, on second thought, as long as The Two Coreys continues to be made, the indignity will be free flowing. Case in point - the episode where the two Coreys decide to go to marriage counselling to rebuild their friendship which is as on the rocks as any drinks two out of work actors with substance abuse issues may feel inclined to order.

So far, not so good with my whole social conscience thing... I don't know whether it's my age or my new found ability to see past the end of my own nose, but lately the way the world operates is really starting to bug me. I'm realizing more and more that my capitalist leanings have brought me nothing but grief and I long for some sort of socialist utopia... wrapped up in a nice European aesthetic... perhaps with a Danish accent - that would be nice.

This was brought home to me again last night as I sat down and watch Michael Moore's Sicko. I cried, but then again, it doesn't take very much at all to make me cry, so this isn't really that out of the ordinary. I think it's a social conscience trickling down my face as I become more and more outraged at the injustices of the world. How is it that Kris Jenner is allowed to exist, and furthermore, seemingly spawn like a pop-corn machine, replicas of herself and make a television series about it whilst people in the US are denied life saving medical care in order to keep costs down. Why is it that everything now seems to be driven by money? When was happiness displaced by money as the ultimate goal? How long will it be before we walk down identical homogenised high streets and are all pawns of Omnicorp with only Robocop to save us?

Why blog?

Dear Degrassi,

Why, after all this time, have you decided to blog?

Random 1

Why? I'll tell you why! I've got a heap of stuff to do, and I just don't want to do it. So with all that there is in the world of the interwebs to distract me from my regular life, I've decided to start blogging... Also, since I gave up my column all those years ago, there's a whole stack of ramblings about pop culture that need to be vented and I'm sick of Perez Hilton getting all the hits...

Not enough of my friends watch Eastenders and my other half just doesn't want to know, so I've got to let it all out somewhere. Where else can I tell the world how happy I am that Janine is back, albeit reinvented as Judith Bernstein... And since the actress who plays her, Charlie Brooks, has gone and released the obligatory exercise DVD in her hiatus since leaving the show she's now slimmed down... Of course, she has that whole Sophie Monk thing going on where it doesn't matter how much weight she loses, she's always going to have a fat face, so she looks like a lollipop.

Just as Neighbours at one point seemed to spawn an unusually large number of teeny-bopper fodder, Eastenders seems to prompt its ex-cast members to release fitness DVDs. Patsy Palmer, Natalie Cassidy (or Fossy Jaw as we like to call her in our house), Letitia Dean... and they were just some of the ones I could find with a cursoury google search... Perhaps it's the fact that the 'Enders producers like to keep it real and ugly up many of their stars, so it's generally a plus to be a little on the plus side for starters. Once they leave the comfort food eating confines of Albert Square and try to get work out in the real world, reality sets in and they need to follow in the likes of Ginger Spice, shedding kilos and basically going through the motions whilst a professional shows everyone how it's done... And let's not forget that they have to bitch and moan the whole way through too... It wouldn't be a real celeb DVD if they showed the slightest bit of enthusiasm!