Big Mike: Count Me Out

I hate Black Friday. Wait…, I mean, I hate black friday. I refuse to capitalize it as if:

~ it deserves some sort of heightened respect over any other day: and

~ it’s really real.

Black friday reminds me of the term wellness that viraled its way into the American vocabulary in the 80s. We had a perfectly good word to imply things having to do with proper functioning of the organs and systems of the body. We said health for hundreds of years and every-goddamned-body knew what we meant. Then, the soulless, sexless office drones of the insurance industry got us to start saying wellness, an ugly, awkward construct that adds nothing to our understanding of health.

I figure soulless, sexless office drones are behind the avalanche of black friday-isms we experienced the day before yesterday. What other kind of evil creature could have elevated some obscure industry-insider term that we now all have to embrace as if we give a holy shit about whether the Crabtree & Evelyn at Woodfield breaks even for the year.

Similarly, a concept Benny Jay raised sometime in the summer when he was writing about going to see either “A Serious Man” or some other overlooked flick that only he on this Earth had shelled out ten bucks for also makes my hair stand on end. That is, the newspapers constantly run updated Box Office Top Ten lists. I have a couple of problems with that:

~ is there anybody out there who cares whether “2012” is outpacing “The Men Who Stare at Goats” in ticket sales? and

~ if you’re life is so bizarre that you actually do care, lemme give you a hint — “2012″ has explosions, violence and death, some dopey romance sub-plots, and is based on occult-y bullshit; ergo, it’s gonna be a huge winner.

Back to black friday. I swear to you, at least a half dozen people actually asked me if I was going to get up at three in the morning to get in line for the early store openings. Apparently, a lot of stores opened early, early, early for our newest faux holiday. Radio Shack opened at 5:30am. Radio Shack! Who knew it still even existed? Kohl’s and Sears opened at four. The seventh circle of hell that is Toys R Us opened at freaking midnight.

I tell you, Americans are sick fucks.

I try my damnedest not to be a sick fuck. Yet at least six fellow citizens basically asked me if I were. Look, if I’m gonna get up at three in the morning, there’d better be naked women and pizza involved or else I’ll be awfully cranky. Imagine actually choosing to enter a Toys R Us in the middle of the night. Have you ever been in a Toys R Us at any time of the day? The place makes me want to perform a vasectomy on myself right then and there.

Somehow, though, a significant number of Americans think they’re going to get a great deal on a Zhu Zhu Pet or a Barbie Twilight (which sounds so porn-y to me that I have to assume that’s what Mattel intended) if they hoist their balloonish, sage-flatulent carcasses out of bed at three o’clock the morning after Thanksgiving. That must have been the crowd Bushy-boy was addressing when, in the days after 9/11 he counseled the nation not to reflect on the excesses of religious fundamentalism, or try to understand the underpinnings of Islam, or even to engage their Arab neighbors or coworkers in meaningful conversation, but to shop.

I didn’t spend a penny on Bla…, I mean, the day before yesterday. Look, I’m as good a capitalist as anybody but I choose not to make a fetish out of it.