Who ordered the scrambled brains?

Breakfast was the usual today, consisting of coffee and a banana. That’s my segue into the fact that I’m bananas about Madonna. But I wasn’t always.

I was like you once, loving reader. Alone, frightened, suffering from cotton-mouth and IBS. And controlled by the fear that around every corner lurked a strange being that would take over my soul. Satan? No, conformity. “Might I succumb to the dark side? Could my body, nay, my mind one day be co-opted by the forces of commercialism? NO. I must never let that happen. Madonna, I sweareth to thy hatred.”

Eventually I saw the light and all was well. But let’s make a short story long. As fate would have it’s way with me one groggy-eyed, post-SNL Saturday night in the summer of ‘05, I found myself watching Desperately Seeking Susan, and being simultaneously delighted and horrified. Actually I’m being rhetorical, the experience was strictly delightful, aurally and visually. You see, I grew up in a puritan household, pure of the sin of subjugation and appeasement of corporate marketing. It was a warm, loving place, where zombie-like consumerism was rewarded with ten lashings. Of a two-by-four. I don’t think I’d ever heard a complete Madonna song in my life, until that groggy-eyed, post-SNL Saturday night, and it was like, uh… “when your heart beats, next to mine.”

It was a physical attraction, a chemical reaction. Certain neuropsychiatric conditions set the stage for a catalysis, namely my feminst perspective, my increasing productivity, and my budding rejection of indie-elitism. Her carefree yet calculating charisma. The boppity-bop-bop of her tunes. The growth transitions of her life (nasal-to-gutteral timbre, heathen-turned-Kaballah-lady, baby-fat-turned-110%-lean-muscle-mass). I related on each level. In that moment, I saw the optimistic vision and worldview she that possessed and that I shared. I was awed by the stubborn, single-minded, unwielding, tenacious (maybe if I keep listing off synonyms I’ll find one strong enough to convey this thought) Zeus-like (found it) focus and self-faith she possessed, or that possessed her, and that needed nurturing in my life. I recognized, and admired, the visceral impact she had on the contemporary American psyche; who else has so handily managed to kick American capitalism in the nards and at the same time to tie it on a leash to be her love-slave? And coincidentally, in so doing she manifested all the skill and guile of an abusive patriarch, from dubya to Tyson. Indeed, who else so widely forced conscious recognition of the validity of female sexuality, undeniably advancing the feminist cause? Unlike so many academics who espoused strict gender equality, she proudly wore hers (albeit scantily) as a symbol of her core identity. Therefore, Madonna = liberal role model, QED.

At that pivotal time in my life, I unwittingly had been desparately seeking Madonna. Would’ve thunk?

So there you have it. Madonna shouldn’t be loathed, she should be worshipped. And since today I see her majesty Madge, in the flesh, at the Great Western Forum in the great western city of Inglewood, I devote today to Madonna evanglism. Which, among other things, means that not even at stop lights shall the volume of my car stereo be turned lower than 50.

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