A TALE OF TWO CONCEITS

The fabled cities of Jerusalem and Hollywood share few things in common. One, though, is the way they get to set the tone and taste for vast numbers of people. Also, the way they get to change those tones and tastes whenever they wish...

Jerusalem is a fountainhead for three great world religions. However, in the case of Christianity, a funny thing happened on the way the 21st C. Once regarded as an extraordinary even revolutionary faith, today many see it is old and worn out. That thing you do on Sundays if you're not playing golf. That thing that has lots of pomposity and piety on display. That thing that the young find anything but extraordinary and revolutionary.

What happened here?. The flames of zealotry that helped martyrs go bravely to their death have sputtered into the embers of habit. The staggering notion that the God of the Cosmos once walked among us has become so familiar it has a ho-hum feel to it.

How is it that Jerusalem today has become little more than a military fortress housing opposing ideologies and competing antiquity hunters?

Meanwhile, Hollywood -- the confectionery world capitol of beautiful people -- has decided that beauty must be rationed by gender. In the case of the beautiful actors it manufactures, the cameras can keep rolling well after ages 40, 50 even 60. In some shadowy ways, Hollywood has decreed that age with men is actually character. Jack Nicholson can grow puffy, Harrison Ford thick, Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks craggy-faced; but they still get the sexy closeups. And the audiences still get titillated.

Now quick change lens, and consider the beautiful actresses. Here beauty is much stingier. It is defined much more precisely. Complexion, hair, eyes, cheekbones, and especially weight need to meet the unwritten codes that hide inside every screening room in town. Here, puffy, thick and craggy are not character; simply old age. And nothing is quite so discard-able in Hollywood as aging sex kittens (see Lana Turner, Bridgette Bardot, and Goldy Hawn for details).

A tale of two cities and two conceits. And no challengers in sight. Somehow, we must like our world just the way it is...