Like Endless Rain into a Paper Cup

New England's State Fair, better known across the area as The Big E, capped its 100th season. I had not known that until we went up on Friday in the damp and dank of not quite raining but pretty close to it because I'm just that kind of guy.

They were handing out refrigerator magnets along with your ticket receipt. I don't recall them doing that when we went up on the 21st. And when exactly, I wonder, will they offer a matching refrigerator giveaway? 

I had hoped to see a rock and roll survivor of my youth (and his as well, come to think of it), Dave Davies, lead guitarist of The Kinks, regarded by many as the creator of The Riff (the manically distorted lead lick that was a signature of all the band's early hits), but we missed one another.  

Someone else I missed, quite frankly more planned and pleased about it than I should be, was closing night's special guest, Paris Hilton as a disc jockey. I'm not able to get my head around what that actually means so perhaps in fairness, I should withhold judgment on her and her skills and abilities, but in this instance I'm just NOT that kind of guy.   

We've created a separate race within our culture, with its insatiable demand for titillation and distraction, of people who are famous but haven't done anything. Celebrities make headlines while heroes make a difference. 

Hundreds of millions of us lead lives not so much of quiet desperation as non-dramatic competence and never get our mugs in People, Us, OK or any of the other magazines who take innuendo and elevate it to an art form. Peter Zenger, I suspect, isn't smiling so much as actually grimacing, and since he doesn't have a sex tape or a sex change he is very likely not famous so who cares, right? . 

I just typed "odd news stories" into the search window on Google and in 0.56 seconds it returned 149 million results. As for "highly regrettable," a reaction I too often have while reading almost any kind of news story, well, not so much, though this one is quite a beauty. 

We are, insist some, the Crown of Creation but for others we are only walk-ons in some variation of Trivial Pursuit who find ourselves believing in reincarnation in hopes that the next time around we'll land a speaking part. Now, that's "highly regrettable." 
-bill kenny