Crystal Gayle's Tour Bus

Am I just a very strange man, or did anyone else find the "Fugitive Steals Crystal Gayle's Tour Bus" story hilarious? While I laugh for several reasons, and one is the fact that it's Crystal Gayle, the country singer from the late 70s and early 80s who refused to cut her floor-length hair, a name that I haven't heard in years, and she's in the news for having her tour bus stolen by an escapee from prison. However, I find it even more amusing in a tragic way, as CNN and many other news organizations with websites posted this as one of their lead stories. Meanwhile, we have genocide happening in Darfur, polar ice caps melting, and innocent children dying in Iraq, yet not one of these stories made the headlines. Why? Because no one wants to hear the truth. We do it best here in America, denial. If we don't see it, read it, or hear it, then it's not happening. If we do see it, read it, or hear it, then we either turn on the TV to some lame reality show, go see a mindless movie, buy a new car, have an affair with the neighbor, get a bigger set of titties, drink, take a cocktail of Xanax, Celexa and Ambien, or subscribe to an item of personal choice from a never-ending list of distractions.

Trust me when I say that I am very aware of our celebrity obsessed culture, and I am not above celebrity worship at times. Angelina Jolie comes to mind, along with Madonna and the Dixie Chicks. Yes, I love these ladies, but I also love and worship Muhummad Yunus, the Banker to the Poor, Dr. Paul Farmer, Julia Butterfly Hill, Nelson Mandela, and others who are in the trenches with the mammoth problems facing our world. And I read People Magazine. Though that's not all I read, as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and The Economist get equal time from me when I'm engaging in one of my favorite activities, the rejuvenating release of digested food. (Ever wonder why cats rush through the house after visiting the litterbox?) Sure I love a silly flick from time to time, nothing much funnier than the dinner table scene in Eddie Murphy's The Nutty Professor, though I rush to the theater to see films like Water and Brokeback Mountain, films that challenge and provoke me.

No, I'm far from perfect, but I do try to find a balance in my life, one where I am aware and informed of world events and actively trying to do my part to make change, but one where I say when I've had enough of hearing about wars, famine, global warming, etc. Yes, I looked at Britney's bald, bumpy and disfigured crotch several times. And I also looked at the online photos of the horrors and devastation of the Indonesian earthquake. I was repulsed by the visuals in both scenarios, and if I'm being honest, Britney's cooter gave me worse nightmares than the flattened villages and distended bodies of the dead Indonesian babies.

Do we care whether or not they find Crystal Gayle's tour bus? It depends on the circumstances. If the fugitive kidnapped Paris Hilton and had sex with her while her pet lemur watched, then yes. If the fugitive ran over Young Jeezy and shot P Diddy in a drive by, then yes. If the fugitive donated the bus to a group of orphans from the Christian home and the bus flipped over and killed twenty of the homeless waifs, then yes, but only until American Idol comes on at 8 p.m. The answer is no, if as the events really happened, the cops located the bus and subsequently the fugitive and there was no gun-fire and Crystal Gayle didn't lose her mane.

Dazed and desensitized, muchlike a heroin addict, we numb ourselves. To get our adrenaline rushing and to keep from feeling our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions, we constantly have to shoot up with Justin and Cameron's break-up or BMW's or Monday Night Football. We sure as hell don't want downers to ruin our highs, and a weakened and "cut" hit like the placid ending to the Crystal Gayle Tour Bus saga doesn't even phase us, and we rush out looking for a new dealer.