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rfmcdonaldAt Indigo, books on true crime are organized alongside the fiction. I shouldn't have been too surprised that Amber Frey's new book, recounting the history of her affair with Scott Peterson, her discovery that something was terribly wrong, and her eventual decision to collaborate with the police, occupied a central position in the mystery display table. I skimmed the book during morning break, and yes, it manages to replicate the tropes of mystery fiction. Only! This! Is! Real! Doubtless we've a best-seller.
In the New Year's Day edition of The Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren had a wonderfully snarky column which begun by examining the numerous stupidities of Paris Hilton and segued into a straightforward condemnation of a culture of celebrity which made no distinction between fame and infamy. Lacie Peterson, after all, got on the cover of the year-end edition of People alongside images of the best-dressed and the brightest of the American star system. Surely, McLaren observed, that made her rest easier in the afterlife. The current media culture doesn't care how people get famous so long as they remain famous. Thomas Wolfe observed, in a recent interview, that he could have imagined a situation where an heiress would be blackmailed with a sex tape, and that he could have imagined a situation where someone talentless got a hit television show, but that he couldn't have conceived of a talentless heiress getting a hit television show thanks to her sex tape. (And don't worry, those of you guys who aren't a Kinsey 6: You can buy 1 Night in Paris at any dirty-windowed porn shop in the GTA, and likely worldwide.)
It won't be long until McLaren's prediction of the imminent celebrity of Richard Speck's sexy illegitimate granddaughter will be fulfilled, I fear.
One begins to comprehend what radical Islamic clerics mean by Western decadence.
In the New Year's Day edition of The Globe and Mail, Leah McLaren had a wonderfully snarky column which begun by examining the numerous stupidities of Paris Hilton and segued into a straightforward condemnation of a culture of celebrity which made no distinction between fame and infamy. Lacie Peterson, after all, got on the cover of the year-end edition of People alongside images of the best-dressed and the brightest of the American star system. Surely, McLaren observed, that made her rest easier in the afterlife. The current media culture doesn't care how people get famous so long as they remain famous. Thomas Wolfe observed, in a recent interview, that he could have imagined a situation where an heiress would be blackmailed with a sex tape, and that he could have imagined a situation where someone talentless got a hit television show, but that he couldn't have conceived of a talentless heiress getting a hit television show thanks to her sex tape. (And don't worry, those of you guys who aren't a Kinsey 6: You can buy 1 Night in Paris at any dirty-windowed porn shop in the GTA, and likely worldwide.)
It won't be long until McLaren's prediction of the imminent celebrity of Richard Speck's sexy illegitimate granddaughter will be fulfilled, I fear.
One begins to comprehend what radical Islamic clerics mean by Western decadence.
