Yoo-Hoo, Everyone--Let’s Give More in ’94

In my predictions published a year ago, for 1993, you might recall that I expected Led Zeppelin’s equipment would tour the United States, the Orange County Performing Arts Center would install liposuction facilities in the orchestra seats, and the biggest act in the world by this time would be a group of lip-syncing Japanese kittens called Cuddle Factory.

Oh, yeah, I also said that Yoo-Hoo chocolate-flavored drink would make a huge comeback.

Emboldened by the uncanny accuracy of these predictions, I am prepared to gaze into 1994.

Hold on a moment as I gaze, will you?

Right now, I am squinting resolutely. It’s what I envision to be a flinty Clint Eastwood-like squint, though others have said it just looks like I’m in a glazed doughnut stupor. In either event, I am mightily concerned about this future that I am squinting resolutely into.

To cut to the quick, I predict that we’re all going to hell in a Hyundai. I further predict that Yoo-Hoo chocolate-flavored drink will be the only beverage there.

How can our culture go further downhill, you might ask, considering that the Billboard Top 10 recently included albums with songs by both suspected murderer Snoop Doggy Dogg and convicted murderer Charles Manson, not to mention Michael Bolton?

I, for one, if I am to be murdered, would prefer that it not be by any person with a name like Snoop Doggy Dogg. It really adds insult to injury, I think, like you’ve been snuffed out by a cartoon or a hand puppet. Who would want to be standing at the gate of eternity filling out forms, and when it comes to the “cause of death” part you have to write “Lambchop” or “Snoop Doggy Dogg”?

I’d prefer not to be murdered by Michael Bolton either, unless it was a choice between that or him singing.

As all the figures show, murder currently is the chief cause of violent death in our country. I predict that’s going to continue, even if Congress does compel Hollywood to tone down movie and TV violence. Do they really think that making Stallone go back to romantic comedies won’t only heighten the rage and despair felt on our streets?

If I might wax serious for a few moments (i.e.: it’s been sidesplitting so far, right?), I think the trend of blaming Hollywood for our country’s woes is just more of the same denial and scapegoating that has emanated from Washington for years. Meanwhile, there are deep, root problems tearing this country apart.

Along with the homelessness, crime, corporate connivance and other things we just take as a given now, there seems to be a palpable fear that has set in.

For example, we’re facing perhaps the greatest national opportunity of the century--that of converting our war-toy industries to ones that actually might do us some good--and we’re terrified at the prospect.

On a less general note, I scarcely know anyone who hasn’t recently lost his job or who isn’t letting himself be run ragged for fear of losing it. I know caring, wonderful people who are losing it--in a spiritual health sense--who come home from their jobs in tears or who literally have broken down at their work stations.

I know people with small businesses that have gone under, and others who had to look for nearly a year to find new work they hated, and for far less money.

While individuals are suffering, corporate profits are picking up. I have one friend who for a decade has poured his best efforts into an O.C.-based corporation whose heads now have gone the expedient route: They called in consultants who, for a $600,000 fee, advised them to gut the staff, killing the company but making it look miraculously profitable in the short term, so it can be sold off.

There’s a lot of that thinking around. You could call it evil if you like, but I think it falls under the larger heading of fear . Often, people with the urge to run things are people who are afraid of the unpredictable “let’s see what happens next” course that free-flowing life takes. They have no room for dreams because dreams spring from wonder.

You can either fear these people--easy, because our immediate fates often are tied up in their actions--or recognize that they need help and that it’s our job to try to tickle them into consciousness. We all need a lot of that tickling in our lives to stay open to the wonder and surprise of it all.

That’s what the arts and the communications media are good for, or should be, anyway. I’m encouraged that amid all the exploding heads and Geraldos there have been some frisky, heartfelt films and TV programs recently. I’m even more encouraged by the music being made these days. There’s some great, adventurous stuff out there that speaks as directly to the soul as anything in the ‘60s did.

I’m less encouraged, however, by the scant exposure that music is getting. Radio, in this market especially, is like a big knot in a hose, letting only the most treacly stuff through. Again, it’s fear: These stations are run by guys petrified of ever trusting their own ears and emotions, so instead they choose to play the most innocuous replications of what they’re already playing, which, like a photocopy of a photocopy, gets less “real” with every cycle. And we could use some real stuff right now.

We often treat music and the other arts as trivial accessories to our lives--they’re certainly the first thing chopped from school budgets--but it just may be the stuff that saves us.

Whether we make this life what it could be or not doesn’t depend on governments, institutions or the Gross National Product. It’s much more a matter of whether we’re each going to let fear or, pardon the mush, love be the dominant emotion on this planet.

If you don’t believe the greatest changes can be attitudinal ones, look at the Depression. On any day during its long tenure, there was no less desire to work, no fewer raw materials at hand, no less need, no genuine change whatever from the time before the Plunge. However, due to some abstract numbers on ticker tape, fear idled the nation.

The advantage of hard times is that they can compel you to realize that if you’re going to go through the considerable trouble of being alive, you’d damn well better make that life worth it. To me, that’s having more friends around, more community, more laughs, more honest tears, more warmth and more truth, so we can save our lies to tell better stories with. I’d rather not live in fear of what I or my neighbor might be driven to do for a dollar.

I’m starting to warm up to those “commit random acts of kindness” bumper stickers. Though he’s not someone you’d typify as a “nice guy,” I sure admire sardonic comedian/magician Penn Jillette’s act of anonymously ordering Jell-O for a truck driver he once saw sitting alone in a diner.

My prediction for this year is that any prediction will be pretty dire without us all sharing more Jell-O, or whatever else it is that wiggles for you. Share lunch counters. Share jokes. Be more. Take less, except for chances. Catch your boss off-guard by working for free. Render onto Caesar, with extra anchovies.

And if we do wind up in hell, I’ll gladly share my Yoo-Hoo chocolate-flavored beverage with you.