But this is Chico, too

The best view — bar none — of the blooming almond orchards is from the elevated part of the Midway just before you get to Durham. This is where you can behold a sea of pinkish-white extending in every direction.

I guarantee you will see this if you go out there today. It may not be a good idea to wait for the next sunny day or until the weekend gets here. If you can spare a half hour to an hour today, get on out there.

If you live in Chico, the Midway is the best route for starting your almond blossom tour. It’s a scenic country road that gets you in the right mood for sightseeing.

At the end of the elevated part of the Midway, turn right at Roble Road, then follow it to Durham-Dayton Highway. Turn right there, then turn right again at Fimple Road, which will snake its way through the orchards, ending at Hegan Lane. Turn left there, crossing Dayton Road. Be careful. There’s no stop sign on Dayton. At that point Hegan becomes into Elk Avenue. Turn left at Lone Pine Avenue, then bear right as it becomes Crouch Avenue. Follow it until it gets to Chico River Road. Turn right and head back to Chico.

If you want to see more blooming orchards, turn left instead of right at Chico River Road, turn right at River Road, right at W. Sacramento Avene, left at Meridian Road. Be careful when you cross Highway 32 as you continue to follow Meridian. Turn right at Nord Highway, then right at The Esplanade and head back to Chico.

As you take this drive, you will be amazed at how many orchards there are, at how much land there is that hasn’t been paved over. You will feel this way even if you have lived in Chico for 30 or 40 years.

I’m nostalgic about orchards, which is why I never tire of writing about them or driving through them at blossom time. I grew up among the prune orchards of the Santa Clara Valley. They started at the property line of our backyard. There wasn’t even a fence between us and them.

Our neighborhood, built right at the end of World War II, was one of the first incursions of houses into the orchards. Although we didn’t understand this back in the 1950s, the orchards in the valley were doomed. The one in back of our house came down in the early 1960s. Just about all of them were gone by the 1980s. Our family still talks about the orchards. It’s one of our stories of “the good old days.” My mother mentioned recently that she remembers driving through the valley at night and not seeing one light between Palo Alto and Los Gatos.

One of the best things about Chico is that it still has orchards next to it.

Another good thing is that people who live in this part of the state would like to save them from the bulldozer. There are a lot of us who don’t want to see the Sacramento Valley become another Santa Clara Valley.

Posted by at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The debate over whether to let Wal-Mart go ahead with its Chico expansion plans comes at a time when America seems to be stepping back a little and taking a look at its latest fling with unbridled capitalism, which has gone on for almost 30 years.

Signs of a retrenchment from laissez-faire economics include the growing support for raising the minimum wage, a stronger interest in reforming the health care system and an increasing disenchantment with Wal-Mart.

This is strong stuff coming from a country that reveres the rich and hopes to join their ranks. We’re so pleased to see Sam Walton’s heirs enjoying their God-given right to roll around in their dough that until recently all we’ve expected from Wal-Mart in return is low prices. But that’s changing. Some of us would like the biggest retailer in the world to show that it can become a better corporate citizen.

These modest calls for reform are about as close as this country is going to get to class warfare — or at least the kind that might be directed against the rich. In America, we use the poor as our scapegoat.

That’s how it is when you live in a democratic oligarchy — or is it oligarchic democracy? We consistently cast our ballots for a system that keeps the wealthy elite in power. Any movement to adress the growing gap between the rich and the poor has to contend with this fact of life.

We’re OK supporting a system that has allowed the rich — the top one-half of 1 percent of the population — to control 25 percent of the wealth and has made it possible for the upper middle class — the 20 percent of the country that falls just short of being rich — to control another 55 percent. That leaves the other 79.5 percent of Americans struggling to get by on the remaining 20 percent. What a country.

“What’s the Matter With Kansas?” a fascinating book by Thomas Frank, attempts to explain the perverse tendency of many members of this struggling 79.5 percent to vote against their own economic interests and keep the money flowing into the hands of the wealthy.

The last major referendum on free-wheeling capitalism was prompted by the Great Depression, which knocked this country off its feet. It led the programs of the New Deal and later the Great Society, which made some attempt to redistribute the nation’s wealth.

But I don’t see any economic catastrophes coming up that will shake up our beliefs. The only way we’ll ever get significant reforms is by tempering our greed and acquisitiveness and getting over our infatuation with being rich.

Even as I wrote that last sentence I was overcome by how foolish it sounded. Idealistic as I am, I can’t envision an America that isn’t based on the worship of money.

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the time City Plaza was being remodeled, I went to other cities to have a look at their central squares. I took photos so that after I returned to Chico to write about them in my E-R column “But this is Chico” I could remember what they look like.

Now that I’m a blogger, I’m free to illustrate my entries, so I’ve decided to post photos from four of the places I visited. As a new blogger, I’m curious to see how an entry with four photos looks.

First up is Union Square in San Francisco. Like City Plaza, this bit of open space in the heart of the city’s shopping district has had a massive facelift that replaced much of the greenery with hard surfaces.
Union Square was never as sylvan as elm-shaded City Plaza and it now looks even more barren. This change hasn’t diminished its popularity, but I think planners would have had to do something truly horrendous to discourage people from coming there.

San Francisco seldom has heat waves, so it doesn’t matter if Union Square doesn’t have a lot of trees.

Shade does matter in Sonoma, where temperatures can get up into the 90s during the summer.

This photo shows that Sonoma Plaza is well-protected from the sun. At eight acres, It’s one of the bigger city squares in the state. It seems more like a park than a plaza.

Sonoma’s City Hall stands at the center of the plaza, but there is plenty of room left over for playgrounds and ponds, as the photo shows.

The plaza was laid out in 1836. In 1846 Sonoma was the site of the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt. John Bidwell took part in it, penning the sentence that declared its purpose: “The undersigned hereby agree to organize for the purpose of gaining and maintaining the independence of California.”

Arcata’s plaza has fewer trees than City Plaza, but because it’s on the north coast, it almost never gets hot. It’s closer to City Plaza’s size, so the surrounding buildings underscore the sense that this is an oasis nestled in the heart of town.

I took photos of it on a weekday during the summer. It was filled with people of all ages. A bronze statue of President William McKinley, dedicated in 1906 in memory of his assassination, stands in the center of the plaza. At one time, the plaza was the only place in Arcata where bars and liquor stores could be located. This accounts for the number of those businesses that still face the plaza.

Sproul Plaza, which links the UC Berkeley campus with Telegraph Avenue, is the last of this entry’s illustrations. It’s one of the East Bay’s most intense vortexes of energy. Completed in the late 1950s, it was the site of the Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio, in 1964.

It was the opening salvo of campus revolts that took place across the country in the Sixties. It’s custom-made for demonstrations and other kinds of street theater.

For 40 years it’s been lined with rows of with tables promoting every imaginable kind of political cause, spiritual philosophy, intellectual discipline and lifestyle choice.

Posted by at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my jobs at the Enterprise-Record is to do the Food pages, which come out every Wednesday.
I covered the first of John Ash’s two duplicate cooking demonstrations at the Sierra Nevada Brewery Big Room Saturday. It was the opening event of the second annual California Nut Festival. Ash entertained the audience for almost two hours, talking almost nonstop. There wasn’t enough room on the Food page to make my story as long as I wanted it to be.

In the blogosphere, the only limitation is the reader’s attention span. I’m going to assume you’ve read the story and still have an appetite for a few more tidbits from Ash’s talk. Or maybe you will read this first and then want to have a look at the story.

Ash was asked whether farmers in this area should pursue “niche markets” for their products. This is already well under way in Butte County and Glenn counties, where almond, olive, rice and wine growers are capitalizing on consumers’ demand for gourmet foods.

He said in the long run this may be the only way small farmers will be able to survive. He said farming in Sonoma County, where he lives, has turned into a “monoculture.” Land has become so expensive that it can only support wine grapes.

But he said a few growers there have turned to specialty products. He said dairy farmers have started producing “the most extraordinary cheese” and he knows of a family that has started growing chestnuts.
He said farmers would be better off if they could get out of the habit thinking in terms of “this is the way we’ve always done it.”

I’m starting to believe there is a link between great culinary skills and a stoveside manner that gives rise to the most fascinating, rambling monologues. Most of the cooking shows on TV run only 30 minutes — minus ads — so the chefs have to stick to their topic. But after listening to Ash and Hugh Carpenter, the chef who gave last year’s cooking demonstrations at the Nut Festival, I’m beginning to think that creative, uninhibited cooking demonstrators will say almost anything.

One of Ash’s most memorable digressions stemmed from a confession about one of his nightmares about his career: “I worry that I’m going to end up being the graveyard shift cook at Denny’s in Bakersfield.”

He then advised the audience to go to a bookstore and pick up something by Raymond Carver, his favorite short story writer. Presumably, his gloomy scenario about a failed chef reminded him of Carver’s work.

Ash seemed to be unaware of Carver’s connection to Chico. The man who gained fame as a master of minimalist prose lived in Chico in the late 1950s and took his first writing classes at what was then Chico State College. Ash spoke feelingly yet fleetingly about how Carver affects him.

“In two pages, Raymond Carver can take me into another world, a world so black that it makes me feel like blowing my brains out.” Then, without missing a beat, Ash said, “If you’ve never made custard sauce, it’s absolutely the most delicious thing in the world.”

Posted by at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can sympathize with fellow blogger Lon Glazner, who joked that the “end goal” of his blog “Commission Impossible” is to “drive readers away.”

He wrote, “I have come to the conclusion that I can’t be a counter culture icon without being a popular culture pariah. It is to this end I strive aimlessly and without import. The greatest impact I can have on Chico’s policy makers is to have no lasting impact at all.”

Glazner is one of the NorCalblogs group's most popular bloggers, so I suspect he’s having an impact. But all writers worry about how effective they are at getting their message across.

His job isn’t as contradictory as he thinks. That’s because there is no counterculture. It died in 1974. I didn’t realize this until much later, but I think it happened sometime after Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army but before Richard Nixon resigned as president.

Therefore, Glazner’s only worry is his standing in the popular culture. He’ll do fine with that. Popular culture embraces all manner of pariahs, fringe-dwellers and outlaws. A few posts ago, I likened our popular culture to a big box of confections. Even if you have weird appetites, you will find something to your liking in the box.

I’m not saying Glazner is weird, but becoming a pariah wouldn’t lessen his impact. It could help him.

An officially weird event in Chico took place at the Airport Cafe a couple of weeks ago. Liz Laird, assistant entertainment editor at The Orion, wrote about it in the Chico State campus newspaper. The event featured “horror punk” bands, fire twirlers, a woman getting a “corset piercing” and a man who opted to hang 6 feet off the ground for a few minutes after being pierced in 10 places on his body with rings that were attached to a metal bar and a suspension device. “The slightly sadistic and decidedly creepy event was a suitable ending to a bizarrely entertaining evening,” Laird concluded.

This weirdness du jour sounds a little too predictable to have been bizarre. In such a setting, a hopscotch tournament featuring people dressed in kilts would have been much more surprising. But it sure was entertaining. Laird reports that “the audience went wild” during the suspension.

I bring this up because some might say this kind of event is the early 21st century version of the counterculture. But I say it is part of our something-for-everyone popular culture entertainment package. It comes from the same big box as re-enactments of Sxities counterculture, such as the Rainbow Gathering, which illustrates this blog entry.

My thoughts about the counterculture were sparked by Jaime O’Neill’s essay in a recent issue of The Chico Beat. He wrote about the first time he ever held an “alternative” newspaper in his hands, back in the mid-1960s in Berkeley. “It was an exciting moment because the paper read and felt like a truly subversive document, chock full of radical politics, anti-war news, celebratory odes to fee love, sex and rock n’ roll,” he wrote.

In his essay, O’Neill wonders about the purpose of alternative publications “in the age of George W. Bush.” He finds himself asking “What is so alternative about them?”

I felt the same way as O’Neill when I read the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Oracle 40 years ago. They were the voice of the counterculture. They were messages from a world that was still largely hidden, a world that seemed to pose a real threat to mainstream culture.

It took all of 10 years for mainstream culture to discover this world, co-opt it and kill it. That’s why alternative newspapers have lost their zest. Because the counterculture is dead, there’s nothing interesting for them to report. There’s nothing they can tell us that we don’t already know. There’s nothing out there except the pop culture in all its variations, from mainstream to so-called edgy.

But I still appreciate alternative newspapers for their reliably liberal editorial points of view. Most mainstream newspapers are just as conservative now as they were 40 years ago. The idea of the “liberal media” is a misnomer. Liberal newspapers still matter, especially at a time when liberalism can't seem to get much respect. Liberal newspapers are like voices crying out in the wilderness.

Speaking of wilderness, I would like to believe there is a counterculture out there somewhere, operating in secret, avoiding media attention, biding its time until it becomes powerful and organized enough to seriously challenge mainstream culture.

Posted by at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Most of my information about Chico’s historically and architecturally significant buildings comes from an inventory put together by the Chico Heritage Association about 25 years ago. It’s an invaluable document. I constantly refer to it. A copy of it is in the reference section of Chico Library.

But students in Chico State University’s public history program have also taken a look at the city’s past. In a class taught by history professor Mike Magliari, they are required to research a building and nominate it for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Erik Henderson did a paper on the building west of Sapp Hall, where this walk around the block resumes. It illustrates this blog entry.

John Gallardo, one of the Heritage Association’s founders, calls the building, which dates from the 1910s, a “supporting structure.” He said it’s part of a streetscape of Victorian and post-Victorian houses that’s unbroken for almost three blocks along the north side of Third Street. He said the building’s most distinguished architectural feature is its pebbled-surface front porch ceiling.

Henderson’s research showed that Anna Barney, who was Chico State’s first dean of men and women, lived in the house from 1936 to 1965. She came to the college in 1919. She taught English, started the drama and creative writing programs and served as president of the Women’s and Penwomen’s clubs. She wrote travel journals, plays, poetry and academic papers.

The university acquired the building in the early 1980s. It used it as its business and economic center and then as an office for the Northeast California Higher Education Council. It has been vacant for the last 10 years. Chico State’s latest master plan, which was adopted in 2005, makes no mention of plans for the building.

The third building on this block, now called Sierra Hall, is the home of the Staff Council, Office of Institutional Research and University Public Events. It was built in about 1920 in the prairie architectural style developed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright at the turn of the 20th century. It was built for William Dean, manager of the Diamond Match Co.

As I wrote in my last blog entry, you don’t need to walk around the rest of this block to grasp that there is nothing on it besides three buildings and a parking lot. The Chico State master plan indicates that the lot could one day become part of a four-story joint city-university parking structure stretching from Salem to Chestnut. If it were built, the block of Normal Avenue between Second and Third would be closed to traffic.

Join me again soon for another walk around the block.

Posted by at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is not the kind of block you’d want to walk all the way around — at least not for pleasure. More than half of it is a Chico State University parking lot. The only reason you might want to make the effort is to bear witness to the encroachment of the university upon what was once Chico’s finest residential neighborhood.

There was a time when the geographical line between town and gown was clear. First Street was the boundary. Over the years, the university laid claim to most of the blocks between First and Second and a couple of the blocks between Second and Third.

The block you are about to walk, bounded by Normal Avenue and Third, Chestnut and Second streets, falls entirely within the university’s domain.

For about 40 years, you could have looked up Normal Avenue and seen the main building of Chico Normal School, which eventually became Chico State. The massive structure, which had three stories, a basement and a tower, burned down in 1927. But even if it were still standing, the view from Normal would be blocked by the Performing Arts Center and Taylor Hall, which unfortunately aren’t much to look at.

The northwest corner of Normal and Third would still be recognizable to a time traveler from the 19th century. This house, which the university now calls Sapp Hall and uses for alumni and parent relations, was built in 1884 for Carnot Courtland Mason, a doctor. He lived three blocks away from another doctor, Oscar Stansbury. Both physicians had their houses built in the popular Italianate Victorian style.

The house was bought in 1891 by Maj. Timothy Barnard, a Civil War veteran and state legislator who helped spearhead the campaign to bring the Normal School to Chico. In the early 1910s, he added the classical revival portico to the front of the house, which is its most distinctive feature.

Join me next time and we’ll finish this walk around the block.

Posted by at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The intersection of Vallombrosa and Mangove avenues is a gateway to Bidwell Park and downtown. It’s where vintage and suburban Chico meet. It doesn’t deserve cheesy buildings.

The arrival of Chipotle on the northeast corner three years ago was an improvement over the non-descript mid-20th century building that had been on that site. Chipotle was built after a proposal for a Carl’s Drive-in was rejected. From an aesthetic standpoint, this has proven to be the better choice.

Several years ago, a gas station and mini-mart proposed for the northwest corner were rejected. Instead, we’re getting a two-building shopping center that will have a Starbucks and other chain and franchise stores.

It’s replacing four uninspiring looking mid-20th century buildings that were on that site. I was ecstatic when they were torn down.

The new center is following a trend I like of putting the buildings next to the street and the parking lots behind them. Most other Mangrove businesses follow the suburban style of buildings behind parking lots.

The building on the corner has a walk-through tower. The multiple angles of the nearby walls emphasize that this is the focal point of the complex.

The photo that illustrates this blog is a few weeks old, but it shows an architectural feature I like. This part of the building has pilasters. They look like columns, but only partly protrude from the wall.
Both buildings have tall windows facing the street, another nice feature.

The Garden Villa complex on Cohasset Road is the platinum standard for attractive new Chico buildings. But I want to give credit to new projects that attain a gold, silver or bronze standard. I wish the new buildings on the northwest corner of Vallombrosa and Mangrove could have been platinum, but I think they’re far better-looking than a gas station and mini-mart would have been.

The planned mix of tenants in the center is different issue and could be the subject of a future blog. But when it comes to aesthetics, this complex is a good deal.

Posted by at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The so-called South Campus neighborhood was part of Chico long before a campus appeared at the north end of it.

It’s part of the original grid of streets John Bidwell had a surveyor lay out in 1860 when he founded Chico on property he owned south of Big Chico Creek. Chico Normal School, the university’s predecessor, wasn’t built until 1887. Chico’s wealthiest residents colonized the blocks between First and Fifth streets and built showy Victorian houses. Many of the committee members who led the effort to bring a Normal School to Chico lived in this neighborhood.

Usually, the grandest houses were built on corner lots, but A.G. Eames decided to use his property at the southeast corner of Fourth and Ivy streets to build three almost identical cottages as rental units.

He owned about half of the block bounded by Ivy, Fourth, Fifth and Hazel streets. Most of it was taken up by his business, Chico Soda Works, and his home next door to his business on Fifth. He used the rest of his property for the cottages, which went up in about 1903.

At least four other sets of cottages are scattered throughout neighborhoods close to downtown Chico.
The architecture of the cottages combines Queen and Victorian and colonial revival post-Victorian styles. By the turn of the 20th century, Victorian architecture was falling out of favor.

I find it helpful whenever I’m walking in the South Campus neighborhood to either squint or take off my glasses. It’s better to see it in soft focus. Many of the properties haven’t been well cared for and the streets, gutters and yards are often littered with trash. The Eames cottages are in better shape than many of their neighbors.

To continue this walk around the block, follow Fourth and turn right on Hazel. Halfway down the block you’ll pass an ugly apartment building. This is the block’s only outright eyesore. John Gallardo, one of the founders of the Chico Heritage Association, which has championed efforts to revitalize the South Campus neighborhood, told me that Chico isn’t Colonial Williamsburg and therefore doesn’t need a strict historic preservation ordinance. But the city has to come up with a way to prevent monstrosities from being built. Apartments aren’t necessarily a bad addition, but they can’t allowed to desecrate the neighborhood. What were Chicoans thinking when they decided there was nothing wrong with letting this beautiful part of town be sullied by such badly designed projects?

At the end of the block on Hazel, turn right on Fifth and take a look at the second house from the corner. Built in about 1883, it’s one of Chico’s few examples of Gothic revival style. The decorated bargeboards across the eaves give the house its “gingerbread�? look. Like many houses in the neighborhood, it’s seen better days, but at least it’s still standing.

As you approach the businesses at the end of this stretch of Fifth you will have completed this walk around the block.

Posted by at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I started writing this walk around the block while sitting in Cafe Paolo, where this walk begins. It’s just two doors away from the northeast corner of Fifth and Ivy streets.

Cafe Paolo and the adjoining businesses sit on the site of Chico Soda Works, which A.G. Eames purchased in 1884 and moved to this location in 1895. He was one of the city’s solid citizens. He was a city trustee and president of the Chamber of Commerce.

Inside Cafe Paolo is a copy of a 1915 photo that shows the outside of the Soda Works. The palm trees that still line this section of Fifth were already about 15 feet tall. Today, they’re at least three times that height.

The photo also shows a corner of Eames’ residence, which still stands a couple of doors east of Cafe Paolo. It was built in about 1895 and remodeled in about 1910 under the direction of Julia Morgan, a Bay Area architect. The house later became a nursing home and then a sorority. It is now a fraternity. It has seen better days.

This intersection has the potential to be one of the bright spots of vintage Chico. The cluster of pedestrian-oriented businesses in a residential neighborhood has the kind of mixed-use appeal the new urbanism movement is trying to recreate in new developments.

Fifth and Ivy is at the edge of what was once Chico’s finest residential neighborhood, which stretched from Fifth to First streets. The showiest houses were usually built on corner lots. Some of those houses are still standing, but they have all been converted into rentals for Chico State University students.

About 20 years ago, Fifth and Ivy gained notoriety as the site of Chico State student riots, which were apparently about the right to become as drunk as a skunk in public.

Cafe Paolo is a good starting point for the walk. It’s definitely a neighborhood hangout. My eavesdropping confirms that it’s populated by students and people affiliated with St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, which is about a block away.

Leave the cafe, head to the corner of Fifth and Ivy and turn right. Head for the next corner, where you won’t find a magnificent corner house. Instead you will see the type of residence that foreshadowed the changes the neighborhood would experience over the next century.

Join me again next time to complete this walk around the block.

Posted by at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It wasn’t as dramatic as the movement of U.S. troops into Iraq, but last week my blog numbers took a surge. If this keeps up, I will be happy as a clam at high tide, confident that although the volume of readers may ebb and flow, it will be enough to keep me afloat. I hope those of you who just started logging in will keep checking in.

I ought to just drop the “But this is Chico, too�? title and replace it with “The Reluctant Blogger.�? My blogs about blogging get more hits than the ones about Chico. There’s no way I’m going to capture the younger readers newspapers are trying to reach in their online editions. My blog is based on the premise that everyone is attached to a community that exists in real time and occupies an actual physical space.

Community-mindedness, if it happens at all, develops later in life. I have a suspicion the day will come when people’s primary attachment will be to their virtual communities.

But a blog about an aging baby boomer who’s been dragged kicking and screaming into the brave new world of the “new media�? might attract the kind of young reader who gets a kick out of scoffing at the notions of dinosaurs. My 20-year-old son comes immediately to mind. He laughed when I told him I was going to start a blog.

“The Reluctant Blogger�? would say things like “You’re wasting your life. Turn off your computer and go read a book or take a walk.�? I would excoriate the very audience I was supposedly trying to woo. That might just work.

Outside of work, I try to spend as little time as possible on a computer. Like everyone else under the age of 70, I went through a period of being smitten. But over time, I’m finding the experience of sitting in front of a computer to be enervating and time-consuming. It’s worse than TV. It can take over your life. An hour goes by and it feels like a minute. A week goes by and it feels like an hour.

The computer has become so annoying that I’ve taken to writing some of my column and blog drafts in longhand in a notebook. I sit in coffeehouses and engage in what has, in the word processing era, become a ludicrously laborious process. In no time, my efforts yield crossouts, cramped insertions in margins and page after page of discarded sheets of paper. But I find it refreshing to use these primitive tools to practice my craft.

My son would say that it’s just another sign that I’m “old.�? But I think we are all the victims of a time when we’ve decided it’s wise to take our cues from the young.

Posted by at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Flicka Flame and Michelle Manhart, who both have connections to Chico, are having a brief fling at being pop culture celebrities.

Flame’s appearance on “Survivor�? and Manhart’s spread in Playboy magazine have left me wondering “Why do I not care about this when so many people obviously do?�?

It’s not that I’m indifferent to the allure of pop culture. I have an almost rabid interest in rock music trivia. I was an avid filmgoer in my teens and early 20s. I was as interested in the actors and performers as I was in their work. I’ve been known to be an ardent follower of TV shows, even junky ones.

One of the happy outcomes of the Sixties is that the distinction between so-called “high�? and “low�? culture broke down. It became OK to talk about abstract expressionism and graffiti, Beethoven and Captain Beefheart, “Candide�? and comic books in the same breath. Culture has become a box of many-flavored confections. It has become OK to sample everything, either as a fawning fan or a serious social critiquer.

I could critique pop culture from here to eternity, but right now I’m going to do some fawning. Which brings me to Elizabeth Taylor, perhaps the most successful pop culture celebrity of all time.
The problem with pop culture is that we are desperately seeking Elizabeths, but we are getting Parises, Beyonces, Brittneys, Angelinas and Evas — not to mention Flickas and Michelles.

The problem with being a celebrity today is that all you need is exposure. It’s been this way for a good 20 years. Consider Vanna White, who became famous in the 1980s by turning letters on “Wheel of Fortune.�? She’s still at it, more or less, although her job has become less arduous: She simply points to the letters. She’s pretty and nice and still looks good in everything she wears on the show, but what else can you say about her?

But Taylor, who will turn 75 later this month, had everything — dazzling beauty, a riveting stage presence, diamonds and furs and all the other trappings of wealth and the perfect tabloid life: eight tempestuous marriages to seven husbands, spectacularly bad health that led to dramatic brushes with death and public battles with alcohol, obesity and addiction to painkillers.

Unlike many of today’s celebrities, she could act. Her performances in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,�? “Suddenly Last Summer�? and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof�? were unforgettable. During her long movie career, which started when she was a child, she earned two Oscars for Best Actress.

Unlike many of today’s celebrities, she had heart. She always married for love. She kept at it for more than 40 years before finally giving up on the quest to find the right guy. That’s dedication. She started an AIDS charity at a time when Hollywood was shunning the disease. She adopted a child with severe disabilities and gave her the best medical care money could buy. Not one of her children has written a “Mommy Dearest�? book about her.

Taylor was an extraordinary sex symbol, but she never posed for Playboy, she insisted on having a double do a nude scene for her role in the movie “Reflections in a Golden Eye�? and, with the exception of “Cleopatra,�? she didn’t star in any films that required nothing more of her than to look gorgeous.

Compare the circumspect sexuality of Taylor to Manhart, who said she thought the Playboy spread would help her acting and modeling career. Compare the talented Taylor to the pathetic people who audition for “American Idol.�? Their goal is to be world famous for 15 seconds. Surely, they know they can’t sing. The one time I watched this show, I was embarrassed for the judges, the performers and the viewers.

We need a few razzle-dazzle Elizabeths to rescue pop culture from its precipitous slide into meretricious mediocrity.

Posted by at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)