THE HILTON REALITY

While I was sitesurfing I read somewhere on a drop of netspray that the Hilton family was going to be on Larry King Live one of these nights, discussing "what it's really like being a Hilton." Now there's something to fill your life-time with.

I remember back in the 60's reading Andy Warhol's tiny desperate classified ad in the Village Voice for anyone wanting the Factory's paid endorsement for any kind of anything - whatever it is, we'll endorse it for a fee - and thinking that the Factory had reached its nadir; the sophisticated art world would toss them out on their ears now; the general public's taste is improving!

How wrong I was; I had no idea then, in that upward-yearning idealism of youth, as to the extent of the public's appetite for bottom feeding. Andy later capsulized it all in his "15 minutes of fame" quip - which at the time was almost paradoxical, but soon described more "celebs" than you could shake a remote at; then came reality tv. (When I met Andy in Tokyo in the 70s and asked him right off if he'd been getting enough sleep, he was visibly taken aback at someone actually saying something personally genuine to him.)

The tube is no longer the merely distractive mirror it used to be; it's now beginning to replace big chunks of actual lifetime with mental styrofoam peanuts.

They'll never find me here, though, as long as the oak leaves are in session.