the whore of gonian

By Todd Stadler · Monday, July 16, 2001 11:50pm

I read a story in the Oregonian today that made me laugh.

This is a very weird thing to have happen when reading the local "proper" paper. Sure, I expect to chuckle, guffaw even, when reading the Portland Mercury. But those guys are a bunch of goof balls!

I expect the Oregonian to do less entertaining and more pedantic news writing. After all, even their comics are fairly pedestrian.

So imagine my surprise when I read the headline "Flatley flames again as feet vanquish evil" (this link may not work for long) . Witness the wit to which I was exposed as the author attempted to make sense of the Lord of the Dance's tale:

And then he came out and played some haunting flute over the sleeping form of the Alpha Blonde, who represented goodness, or at least blondeness. She slept through, but fans basked in every glance darted straight at -- be still, O, triphammer of my heart! -- them, personally.

"Isn't it a bit much to behead someone whose only crime was to wear one of those multicolored, tentacled jester's hats? ... No. You're right. She must die."

Flatley and his leather-greatcoated legions went off to battle the bad guys in a noisy scene where push actually did come to shove. And shove came to a lot of amplified galumphing, and that ended in a percussive, high-stakes game of patty-cake. But serious patty-cake, you understand. And evil was vanquished, giving a lot of people in robes the opportunity to parade with candles.

I was so happy to read a smarmy critic's take on an event attended by 16,000 Portlanders that I actually bothered to call up the author and thank him for his article. I never do that. I don't even bother to write letters to the editor when our country is clearly going to hell in a handbasket, so why did I bother to thank someone for making me chuckle? I don't know.

But I left a sarcastic message thanking the author, noting that it's rare for us young non-married non-SUV-driving non-Starbucks-frequenting kids to find anything entertaining these days.

He called me back to thank me for my message. In fact, he seemed a bit too jubilant. He pointed out that the article was aimed at people like me. He was glad that it worked.

Then I felt dirty. It's such a fine line between being entertained and being targeted.