Is It Just Me Or Do I Feel A Draft

Isn't it great that baseball has finally put to rest all those steroid rumors that have been hounding it all winter. Now, at last, we can get the crime news out of the sports pages and back into the business section where it belongs. And speaking of Worldcom, doesn't it just confirm what hundreds of millions of working people have been secretly wondering ever since the dawn of the modern megacorporation began. Namely, just what exactly does the boss really do all day?

At Worldcom, apparently, not a whole heck of a lot. Let's face it, the night janitor probably knew more about what was happening inside that company than poor old Bernie Ebbers. The guy was just an innocent dupe. It was hard work keeping track of all the millions and millions of salary and stock options he was raking in year after year- you can't expect him to spend time actually running the company or staying on top of a billion or so dollars worth of fraud can you? Let's be reasonable here.

Yeah, poor Bernie. I feel for the guy, but that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about naked opera singers. Yeah, I know, I know, you're probably sick of it. Seems every other blog you read nowdays just wants to go on and on about some naked tenor or mezzo or something like that, and it's not like I can really add anything new, but you know this is an important topic. It deserves it's place on the internet.

So what I'm thinking is that it's really hard to ignore a naked opera singer. Think about it. There you are watching an opera and the drama is intense, the music is inspired, and the singing is breathtakingly beautiful, and then all of a sudden one of the singers takes her clothes off. How are you supposed to react to something like that? Do you hoot and holler? Do you modestly avert your gaze? No, of course not. If you're truly the refined and cultured patron of the arts you think you are then the obvious thing to do is simply pretend you don't see it. But that's hard to do.

"Enjoying the opera?"

"Why yes, it's wonderful. But I was wondering, why is the soprano naked?"

"The soprano?"

"Yes, up there on the stage."

"Naked?"

"Yes, don't you see her. She doesn't have any clothes on."

"Oh, wait a minute, hold on here, I think you're right. By George she is naked isn't she."

"You mean you didn't notice."

"Me? No. You see I find the whole experience of the opera so ennobling and enriching, so elegant and refined, that I don't even notice such frivolous things. After all, what's a pretty young girl to me when there is Strauss in the air, even if she is naked? No, for a truly enlightened man such bawdiness is merely primitive and base and of no more interest than a speck on a wall."

"Oh, you are good and just and true."

"There there, my dear, there there."

Yes, I suppose that's how I should react, but I seem be made of coarser stuff. I want to be noble - really I do. It's just that when I'm watching the DVD and I see the soprano get naked those noble thoughts don't come to mind. Instead I start thinking "Wow -look at that!!", and for some reason I don't care about the music or the singing or the drama anymore - I just want the camera to shift a little to the left so I can get a better look. Call me crass, call me crude, but that's the way it is.

And that's why I think maybe it would be better for all involved if the singers just kept their clothes on. Not that I'm a prude mind you, but it makes for a less of a distraction if you're not sitting there in the audience or in front of the TV with your tongue wagging and your eyes bugging out. You kind of lose track of things when that happens.

If you don't believe me then go watch soprano Maria Ewing starring in Strauss' Salome. It's on DVD and after you've seen it tell me how much of the opera you remember after she does her Dance of the Seven Veils.

Yeah, uh-huh...liar!