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POP GOES THE CULTURE
BY PETER KURTH (published
06.25.03)
Well, here’s some good
news for a change. It seems that someone in India
— I don’t know who; India’s
a big country — has decided not to allow a multiplex cinema and a
giant shopping mall to be built next door to the Taj Mahal.
I wish I could tell you more
about this story, but I can’t. The information scrolled by very
quickly on my television screen the other day — you know, like a
little ticker-tape — while the network anchors reported “real”
news about those “real” people we “really” care
about. Adam Sandler, for instance, who’s just “tied the
knot” with his long-time girlfriend Jackie Titone in a “secret
ceremony” in Los Angeles.
Sandler’s wedding was a secret for about 20 seconds before the happy
couple started posing for pictures and canoodling for fans.
In the meantime, Queen
Latifah has had a boob job, cutting her bosom from a capacious DD to a less
majestic C-cup. Martha Stewart’s trial for securities fraud is set to
start on January 12. And at the Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
movie premiere, “the crowd went wild” when Hollywood has-been Demi Moore
turned up not only with her “hunky, teen-throb,”
25-year-old boyfriend Ashton Kutcher in tow, but also with ex-hubby Bruce
Willis and their three little daughters, the cutely named Rumer, Scout and
Tallulah Belle Willis. They all looked so happy I wanted to squeak! Nothing
like a ménage à six to get
Demi’s career back on track!
Unfortunately, I can’t
remember if Demi’s romance with Ashton is a
“May-December” or a “February-June.” But these two
are “really in love,” even though Ashton was recently seen
smooching with his former girlfriend, Brittany Something-or-other, and even
though Demi’s skin now looks like it’s been stretched three
times over a bongo drum and whacked to the beat of “Babalu!”
You just keep your eyes on
Harry Potter, whose most recent book of magical adventures sold five
million copies on its first day of release and is giving Hillary Clinton a
run for her money. What with Harry and the Hogwarts gang, maybe
“Crossfire” host Tucker Carlson won’t have to eat his
shoes after all, which is what he said he’d do if Hillary’s
book, Living History, managed to
sell a million copies.
Times are tough, you see, and
people just don’t have the money to toss at a former first lady who
basically admits that she fucked up national health care and got really,
really mad when she learned that her husband was getting blow jobs in the
Oval Office. I mean, there are so many other
things to think about than Hillary Clinton.
Prince William, for instance,
who confessed on his 21st birthday that, yes, he does indeed look forward
to becoming king of England.
It’s not just something he wants, says the hunky, teen-throb prince
— also known as “the pin-up prince,” whose smashing good
looks “once even caught the eye of U.S. pop queen Britney
Spears,” according to American wire reports. No, being a king is
William’s actual fate, what he was born for, his duty to the nation.
Please understand that
William can’t express himself very openly or very often on this
subject, because kingship, in his case, requires the deaths of both his
father, Prince Charles, and his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.
And no hunky teen-throb wants that on his conscience. As it was, William
was worried last week about what the Queen would wear to his “Out of
Africa”-themed birthday party at Windsor
Castle. (This is what they used
to call a fancy-dress ball.)
“I thought it would be
quite fun to see the family out of black tie,” William told
reporters, with that special candor for which he is quickly becoming known.
“My grandmother may be slightly apprehensive, but I’m sure
she’ll look very amazing in whatever she chooses.” William
himself was set to wear “only a loincloth,” which might get
Demi thinking twice about Ashton. (People
readers can think twice about both, since Ashton and William are currently
neck-and-neck for that magazine’s “Who’s Hottest?”
poll.)
In the end it didn’t
matter what Her Majesty wore, because no sooner had she donned her grass
skirt and stuck a bone through her nose than Aaron Barschak, a
self-described “comedy terrorist,” climbed over the walls of
Windsor Castle, talked his way past the guards and police, and planted a
kiss on William’s cheek.
Which of
William’s cheeks it was — on the face or the posterior —
wasn’t clear at press time. Security was otherwise tight at
the royal affair. Mr. Barschak wasn’t
stopped by guards until “a waiter challenged him as he tried to
procure a bottle of champagne. Only then did police realize he might be a
security risk.” Now, according to a spokesman for Scotland Yard,
“Everyone in every position all the way through counter-terrorism
knows that their heads are on the block.”
Well, I wouldn’t go that far! As Dubya’s
backstairs henchman, Paul Wolfowitz, remarked last week about those missing
weapons of mass destruction: “All it proves is that intelligence is
an art and not a science.” May
the two or three people who now own the news always remember the
distinction.
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