on the tv tottering above the cash register, a portly, pompadoured man, bristling in a sharkskin suit, kisses-almost slobbers-the cheek of a cringing woman. recoiling from her shock, the lady, prim in a schoolmistress kind of suit, shoves the tv host back to his spotlighted dais. after sinking into his plush seat, the host offers the now gesticulating woman some consolation prize-dinner for two-for all the chagrin he brought her. the woman, still affecting that moue, bolts towards the host, snatches the dinner certificate and dashes back to her spot in the stadium seating studio. the voluble host looks straight into the camera and gropes for words. the noon time variety show jump cuts to a potato chip ad voice-overed in crackling street spanish.
i, like the host, must be a neat freak. i have trouble blurring the dividing lines i have drawn in my mind. the bashful could never be brash. the beautiful is never demented. after she wangles her swag, the triumphant smile of the prudish lady looks so beautiful and so skewed, almost a bit mad. i must have this little madness or else i would never think of bolting out of my air conditioned certainties and run free under the unhinged sun.
