1996 was a bad year for me. You know how you look back on the last year of a long,
failed relationship, and, in hindsight, the entire year just should've been lopped off like a gangrenous toe? Well, that's what 1996 was for me. It was the skid marks *after* the lumberjack disrobes. I mean, how much could one woman take? But on December 26, 1996, a date that shall live in infamy, my attention was momentarily diverted from the domestic nightmare which had entombed me. Little JonBenet. Her death was tragic, but seeing as how I am an American and all, I used it as a delectable opiate to avoid my life for hours on end. Who did it? Was it Mom, Dad, or Burke? Did the pageants point to a darker inner life, and if so, were all baby-pageant people pervy? Why was the note written from a pad in the home? Why was the glass inconsistent with a break-in? And what about the magic number, $118,000? I have gone back to suckle on this scandalous milkshake at every opportunity, reading the books, watching the specials, engaging in long, drunken discussions with my friend Erika. If my enthusiastic spectatorship was tasteless and ultimately disrespectful, I apologize. To...whomever. I needed it at the time. But now that it's 10 years later, and we have this
Ed Grimley nutjob emerging from his $170.00/month Thai sex hotel to tell every camera in sight that he did it, that he loved her, and that he had sex with her, I can't really stomach it. I hope that I am a better person, but maybe it's just that my own bummer avoidance abilities are diminshed. It's called "growing up" and "needing anti-depressants" and "experiencing life as though you were a lobster headed towards that final swim on the stove." And as a direct result, I don't get as much satisfaction from the garish parade on TV. Don't get me wrong, I am still in the Lower Ninth Ward - there is no higher ground in this scenario. When I read Andrea Peyser's unbelievably caustic column in the New York Post,
"Doomed By Ma and Pa's Sick Ambition," I knew I didn't have the heart to follow the story anymore. And fortunately, I don't have to. There is a way, way, way better story beginning to surface, one that we can all agree preys neither upon 6-year-old girls, nor upon Jews via a post-Moonshadows muttering Mad Max. We have
THE HYBRID MUTANT. The Hybrid Mutant is a win-win. It's a real life monster. Plus, he's already dead, so you aren't gonna hurt his feelings. The next time your life is making you think seriously about sprinting toward that rainbow bridge in the sky, just give the Hybrid Mutant a try. He has blue lips. Nobody knows what he is. And he is REAL!!!
