FROM SAD TO WORSE


i should have watched more tv this weekend.

Most weekends, this would be the most depressing thing I'd read -- not just because it includes the phrase dysfunctional "Leave it to Beaver" chimera and does not intend a joke, but because, despite being intellectually inert and graceless and devoid of any discernible or defensible point, it somehow occupies prime real estate on page one of the PG's Forum section. But this weekend, when I clearly should have been reading less and watching tv more, that little trifle barely makes the bottom three.

Friday night, noticing that one of this week's iTunes Music Store featured new releases was a Busta Rhymes single titled I Love Bitch, and with my morbid curiosity clearly overriding my better judgment, I went looking for the lyrics. I found them here. And immediately wished I hadn't.

For almost twenty-four hours, I was certain that Busta's ode to his shorty ass would be the most depressing thing I would read this weekend. But then, just before I went to bed last night, I read this. And realized, much to my deepening dismay, that Janet Reitman's dispatch from the bacchanalian bowels of Duke University's sex-soaked campus was not only more depressing but -- and I would not have thought this possible -- even more degrading to the health and dignity of women. If only because, in that story, the women seemed as ready and willing as Busta to degrade themselves.

Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe I'm just too critical. Or maybe, just maybe, this stuff really is as dire and depressing as I think.

Because I love beer and sex and music. I love being a writer and a parent and a professor. And Lord knows I love reading. But for one gray and raining weekend, those three sad, sordid pieces made me want to renounce the whole lot of those loves. And then crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and not come out until the writing and the singing and the living are a whole lot better.

Posted: Sun - June 4, 2006 at 01:58 PM          

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