2000: An About-Face Odyssey

-- "Corcovado" ("Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars") by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Frederick Eugene John Lees.

Steve Bornfeld is the Sun features editor.

Can we exhale now?

Did we avert the Apocalypse? Everybody in one piece?

Good. Let's talk:

IF THERE'S ONE BLOOD-CURDLING REBEL YELL I'D LIKE TO SCREAM OUT INTO THIS NEWLY-UNFOLDING MILLENNIUM WITH A THUNDEROUS, THROAT-BUSTING BOOM THAT COULD WAKE THE DEAD, SHATTER THE HEAVENS AND ECHO THROUGHOUT ETERNITY LIKE THE VOICE OF GOD, IT WOULD BE ...

Shhhhhhhhh -- quiet.

Thank you.

"... quiet thoughts and quiet dreams ..."

After the raucous, roiling '90s that finally slipped into history on Friday night, and as Y2K signals the next 1K Years, wouldn't it be lovely to mark the new millennium by turning down the noise, turning up the niceness and turning on the sincerity in a culture that has increasing wallowed in noisy, nasty emptiness?

Harsh? Perhaps, but no one would mistake our Bill Clintonized, Marilyn Mansonized, Howard Sternicized nation for Mister Rogers' Coast-to-Coast Neighborhood.

And beyond the attitude is the aggravation, often masked as advancement:

Thanks to our -- take a deep breath here -- fiber optical, digitized, satellite-savvy, Internet-accessible, downloadable, cable-ready, cell phone-saturated, road rage-prone, privacy-deprived, caller ID/call waiting/ three-way-calling, pager-connected, fax-capable, celebrity-worshipping, youth-obsessed, hype-happy, advertising-addled, open-24-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week-365-days-a-year, dot-com-crazed culture, we've become a brittle bundle of instantly-flammable raw nerves.

Strike a match and watch us explode faster than the Hindenburg entering New Jersey airspace.

What do we do about it?

As a nation? Nothing. As a country, we will continue to march in lockstep toward ever-astonishing technological feats. Progress -- an admittedly debatable term for it -- is an onrushing juggernaut that won't be denied.

(OK, so you couldn't just beam your drunken particles back home Friday night, a la "Star Trek," like you kinda-sorta thought you could by now when the sci-fi series debuted a few decades back. Someday you -- or your children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren -- will do just that, and wind up charged with BUI: Beaming Under the Influence. Some things will never change.)

But what can we do about it as individuals? Maybe something -- and enough individual somethings piled high and wide and far enough just might add up to a National Something.

Maybe it's time to temper the technological explosion of the '90s with the spiritual calm of the '00s.

"... quiet walks by quiet streams..."

As artificial and arbitrary as The Year 2000 is as a historical dividing line -- it isn't the 2000th birthday of Christianity, ethnic and religious cultures with their own calendars do not recognize it as a new millennium, time did not begin two millenniums ago and, even if you disregard all the aforementioned arguments, historical hardnoses insist that the new millennium doesn't debut until 2001 -- it's still a dandy time to re-embrace these seemingly forgotten concepts:

Leisure. Privacy. Perspective. Civility. Quiet.

Former President George Bush was only about a decade too soon when he coined a catch phrase that could become the rallying cry for this triple-zero Zeitgeist: "a kinder, gentler nation."

"... and the window that looks out on the mountains and the sea, how lovely. ..."

Remember leisure? I don't.

As we this weekend mark the most significant passage of time in our lifetimes, it is, yes, time that looms as our most cherished -- and least available -- commodity. Who's got time anymore? For anything? Computers were sold to us as time-creators -- they were going to magically free up more time for pleasurable pursuits that didn't include ... SITTING IN FRONT OF THE DAMN COMPUTER.

There are actually hobbies that don't end in dot-com, dot-net or dot-org. Cooking a delicious meal comes to mind. Or softball. Or woodworking. Or knitting. Or playing a musical instrument. Or reading -- a book, not a computer screen. Or talking face to face -- instead of AOL to Microsoft.

Or staring, on quiet nights, at quiet stars -- and not on a screen saver.

" ... This is where I wanna be, here with you so close to me ..."

Remember privacy? I don't.

Not since garden-variety junk-mail metamorphosed into junk phone calls with live marketing yentas and junk phone calls with prerecorded marketing yentas and junk e-mail with sex marketing yentas. People we wouldn't allow anywhere near our homes can now penetrate our privacy at will, virtually and telephonically.

Not to mention your credit, financial, purchasing and even personal histories splashed all over the Internet for the world's perusal and possible purloining.

Perhaps this fate is largely inescapable, but, damn it, it's your choice on whom to share yourselves and your time with -- not theirs. To this end, even small rebellions to reclaim your privacy are worthwhile. Try this classic line from "Seinfeld," courtesy of Jerry, the next time a tele-marketer interrupts just as a juicy chunk of steak dangles from your fork:

"Listen, I can't talk now, but give me your home number and I'll call you back. ... You don't want to be called at home? Well, now you know how I feel."

"... until the final flicker of life's embers. ..."

Remember perspective? I don't.

Even as we've crossed over into 2000, "truth in advertising" is a concept that advertisers try -- if often grudgingly -- to adhere to. Truth, after all, can be boiled down to technicalities. (Yes, it IS new and improved: It's got 1/100th percent more actual disinfectant along with the usual gallon of useless Mountain-Fresh scent!)

But "perspective in advertising"? Skip it. Hype is hurtling toward ever more absurd extremes, as everything from cat food to tampons to TV shows to condoms to movie stars to toilet paper is Bigger, Brighter, Stronger, Smarter, Tastier and Tougher Than Ever Before. And the more that everything is advertised as great, the less that anything actually is.

You can't slow this out-of-control advertising train -- but you can leap off the tracks. Be skeptical. Analyze. Evaluate. Scrutinize. And in that daily skirmish between consumer and advertiser for your hard-earned buck, trust your power of deduction more than their power of persuasion.

And that could apply not only to products, but people -- ceaselessly packaged as product.

The Cult of Youth -- and advertising's obsession with it to the point that those under the age of consent now dictate pop culture -- has turned us from The United States of America into The Fractured Demographic Subsets of America, and "All Men Are Created Equal" into "All Consumers Are Not Created Equal, Especially If They Remember FDR, The Kennedy Assassination Or Watergate." Graybeards (25 and older), rebel -- we live here, too.

And the Cult of Celebrity -- can you say E! and "Entertainment Tonight" and "Extra!" and Entertainment Weekly and "Access: Hollywood" and "Biography" and People? -- has some of us believing that Joey Buttafuoco and Anna Nicole Smith and Kato Kaelin actually matter.

A reminder: They don't.

"... I, who was lost and lonely, believing life was only, a bitter tragic joke, have found with you ..."

Remember civility? I don't.

And to the degree that pop culture has contributed to the lack of it (and that's a pretty hefty degree) can we please extinguish the repugnant reigns of Howard Stern and his mindless minions -- which includes every wise guy/gal DJ who thinks that cruelty and vulgarity are hip -- and bury, once and for all, raunch radio?

Sure, Stern was our national id run amok in the '80s and '90s and perhaps it was cathartic and liberating to a degree, but the grubby parade of porn stars, lesbians and exhibitionists is no longer titillating -- just tacky.

Aren't we better than this? Wasn't there once such a thing as humor without humiliation?

And wasn't there once such a thing -- before "Seinfeld" made ironic cynicism and perpetual smirking unfortunately fashionable -- when pop culture uplifted instead of undermined?

Let the critics scoff -- you go right on watching all those "mushy," cutting edge-deprived family shows racking up robust ratings such as "Providence," "Family Law" and "Once and Again." You go right on cheering such retro treats as "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." You go right on scorning such critical darlings as the crude, boorish, bleep-ridden "Action."

You go right on taking pop culture on a giant U-turn.

"... the meaning of existence, oh my love. ..."

Remember quiet? I'd sure like to.

Every now and then ...

Turn off the computer. Turn off the TV. Turn off the phone. Turn off the 2000 hype. Turn off the noise in your head.

Turn off the lights.

Turn on the Jobim.

And close your eyes:

"... Quiet nights of quiet stars, quiet chords from my guitar, floating on the silence that surrounds us. ..."

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