Snow Business
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

As she writes, Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love looks out upon a New Brunswick shoveling out of plow-shaped yard-deep snowbanks. Her car is surrounded by an impenetrable wall of the mostly undisturbed stuff, with which sturdy young men across the street struggle. This is not a battle we can win without shovels and robust brothers-in-law, so let’s study our hot chocolate options instead and leave snow removal to Mother Nature.
 
Swiss chocolate brands have it all over everyone else’s.
 
Okay, now that that’s settled, and since you’re probably too distracted by manual labor to glance at any but top news, let’s talk about an appalling story that may have escaped your notice. In Chicago, a stampede in a packed club killed 21 people. It started when club security used mace to break up a fight between two women and 1500 people ran for the mostly blocked exits and barred windows. Like the fire at the Happyland Social Club in Brooklyn set by an idiot in a jealous rage; like the stampede at a Who concert that killed 11 people, blamed on stadium seating; like the fire at the Coconut Grove, Chicago’s fresh disaster can be blamed on anyone you like. Anyone at all. But the root cause in every case is arrogance and stupidity. Not one of these tragedies had to happen. We should be very, very angry that business owners jeopardize our lives in the course of doing business but are we? It is no exaggeration to say that Enron executives knew we weren’t, and we seldom change our minds.
 
And speaking of the inexplicable, Michael Jackson is a well-known crazy person whose antics are historically well known to you. Unless you’ve lived under a rock since Ben, you know where he is, what’s doing and what he’s currently litigating in the matter of. You’re shocked by the latest revelations? Oh, please. You are not. You’re between football and baseball seasons, and the media’s lobbing you softballs. What in the world could you possibly care about what this self-hating neurotic is doing, about British tabloid stories or the Jackson family’s rebuttals? If you think about it, this is uncomfortably similar to the moment in Edward Scissorhands when the whole town turns on its golden boy. If you see yourself chasing Michael up to the castle with torches and pitchforks, pray continue. But keep in mind that you used to be the sane one, and after the chase you’re just another raving maniac.
 
Let’s get this straight. Not affecting your life: Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery. Affecting your life: businesses barring the exits and betting the farm against your well being.
 
Got it?
 

©2003 Robin Pastorio-Newman