Locating a Large Sieve

I've been looking since late mid afternoon yesterday and still haven't found it--an update on one of those grotesque 'where are they now?' stories that forty PLUS years ago had everyone talking.

Before Perez Hilton, TMZ, and ten tons of tattle-tale twitter titters and two bit nitwits, the American public was fascinated by Hollywood stars and starlets-truth to tell, in much the same way as we are now. There was more effort and artifice at the time--we had the benefit (I use that word loosely) of star-maker apparatus that worked to promote careers both on behalf of actors/actresses as well as the film studios for whom they toiled. The machinery was more apart of the scenery, but it was all there.

Now, in the age of cellphone cameras and the ubiquity of connectivity, anyone, anywhere at anytime, can become Billy Joel's definition of a 'star'-a ball of gas surrounded by flame. I'd offer a few examples but it's a target-rich environment, and like Lay's, it's impossible to stop at just one. Besides, you have your list and I have mine.

If you're a pop culture historian, his name, "Tex" Watson, will sound familiar as one of those knee deep in gore as a follower of Charles Manson. Manson was a malevolent maniac who heard Helter Skelter as an incantation and exhortation for every LSD-laced looner and peyote button basket case to kill as many people as they could put their hands to. Tex and his tribe were very good at answering the call.

Long before Meredith Hunter and Altamont put the exclamation point on the end of both the era and error of The Summer of Love, the Manson Family murdered on a scale and scope rarely seen up until that time in our country's history. But in a culture where yesterday is only vaguely and fuzzily recalled, forty-two years ago is a look back few of us can make (and fewer, still, who would want to).

Thirteen hasn't been a lucky number for Tex. That's the number of times his requests for parole have been denied and I'm assuming (presuming is probably the more accurate word) that we've now passed the threshold of the baker's dozen. We're all familiar with Portia's assessment and assertion, and can appreciate, at least in theory, the notion that people change.

But truth to tell, it's that fear of change and more especially the fear of the consequences that causes us to waver at the lintel before crossing the threshold. Somewhere, we can hear Merry Clayton, the menace behind the Mickster, "Ooh, see the fire is sweepin' our very street today. Burns like a red coal carpet (a) mad bull (who) lost its way." It's that lost part that frightens us the most.
-bill kenny