High life
Fellow feeling
Taki
New York Might comes early in winter, and the
bejewelled city looked in a festive mood as millions of lights glittered atop sky-scrapers and in thousands of windows. Christmas carols could be heard everywhere, especially in front of large department stores on Lexington and Fifth Avenues. There were Salvation Army Santa Clauses ringing bells, choir boys singing 'Jingle Bells', and amateur musicians pass- ing the hat around while blowing the wind- instrument version of 'Silent Night'. The holiday spirit could be felt everywhere, even the muggers seemed to be touched by it, the crime rate tapered off a bit. It will pick up again as soon as people get some money in their pockets — probably around the mid- dle of January.
At times it felt as if half the American population had come to the Big Apple in order to shop at Bloomingdale's and Macey's. I used to know Alfred Bloom- ingdale (who has since passed on to that great department store in the sky) and although he had no direct connection with the store, his family did and he gave a gold credit card to the mother of my children. I decided to put it to use (although she has the credit I pay the bills), thus making my first pre-Christmas holiday mistake. Never had I seen anything like it, at times it made all those horrors of Greenham Common look almost human by comparison. The women shoppers — because there were very few men at Bloomie's, 3 o'clock in the afternoon — sounded, and acted, like pre- Cumbrian hyenas. They pushed and shoved and scratched to get close to the counters, and one of them even tackled a salesman in order to get his attention. Through it all the muzak played 'Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer' and other such Christmas holiday tunes.
Christmas in New York City is not for the poor. It carries special surcharges and tax- es, and monetary thanks are a must for every cop, fireman, doorman, barber, delivery boy, porter, manager and even one's supplier of exotic smokes and substances, not to mention the zillions of waiters, barmen, hat-check girls, pimps and hangers-on any decent and well-living per- son runs into in everyday life.
Needless to say, even one's children re- quired presents during the Christmas holidays, and although I tried to convince them that the meek and poor shall inherit the earth, both of mine show a great and surprising lack of ambition to inherit it, or anything else, the way they are spending money. Very soon 1 am afraid I shall be like Winston Smith, desperately nostalgic for the good old days when I could afford a lemon. But not to worry. There are still a few days left until Big Brother knocks on my door.
In the meantime, the party merry-go- round goes on unabated; it's pretty damned hard, in fact, to know what's what, who's who and why anyone is giving a party these days. One thing is for sure, however, everyone is. I guess the economic upturn has everyone feeling like Rockefeller, or, I should say, like Khashoggi. People are flaunting it in this town right now. Which makes some of us nouveau pauvres feel like honest men among money lenders.
Speaking of money lenders, Christmas is the time of year that Hollywood types show their real stripes, `tis the season to make millions' is their motto, the time when the major studios unveil their most prestigious and award-worthy blockbusters. Did I say prestigious? Most of the pictures released during Christmas have been produced strictly for profit, and much of the com- mercial fare makes a mockery of the Christmas spirit with its exploitation of violence and cruelty. The latest Hollywood contribution to brotherly love and human understanding is a film called Scarface, about a cocaine dealer who makes it big in Miatni. Al Pacino, the dago dwarf who portrays the pusher, goes over the top, on this one, apparently there is so much gore, blood and mayhem on screen that half the people usually walk out (the other half, however, remain, and there already have been two stabbings in theatres placing Scar- face). There is even a scene where two pushers saw another pusher to pieces while he's still alive. That's Hollywood for you I say, inhabited and lorded over by people that make the guards of the gulag appear as sensitive souls by comparison.
Although everyone claims to desire peace and brotherly love during Christmas, the spirit of Jesus is drowned out and rendered meaningless by the constant exploitation of the holiday by the philistines. Hollywood is the worst, but there are others — like televi- sion and even the press. This is also the time of year that every columnist urges us to take stock of our fortunes. Well, I have; 1983 was not a bad year, except I would have preferred it to be 1973. If I'm around I wonder what I'll be saying in 1993? Pro- bably 'A happy New Year to you all', just as long as you don't go to Hollywood.
Previous page
