How we wake up in the morning can affect the rest of our day. Imagine, for instance, that instead of waking up to soothing classical strings, you rise to your radio blaring the Shins. Then Elvis starts in. What is going on?
If Paris Hilton died this afternoon, the media and the American public would be in more of a tizzy than a hive attacked by a bear. American obsession with celebrity is second only to American obsession with disaster. Marilyn, Jackie and Elvis, three people so famous they need only one name, made their fame as celebrities, but made their infamy as disasters.
Last August, the sunny, psychedelic indie-pop band the Olivia Tremor Control (OTC) played a series of sold out concerts at New York Citys infamous Bowery Ballroom. About an hour into first show on Aug. 2, a scruffy young man in an olive green baseball cap galloped onstage and sang a rabble-rousing rendition of the OTCs I Have Been Floated.
In an early scene in Gore Verbinskis "The Weather Man," a desperate-looking Nicolas Cage announces to his bathroom mirror, "Im refreshing." Cage speaks with the cloying self-confidence that distinguishes TV anchors, but as soon as he stops beaming his face seems to sag and his eyes bottom out into a nervous despair.
