Chessoid - Goes to the 2007 Oscars

In Hollywood, size, scale and keeping up with the technological Joneses over at NASA matter. Past, present and future are mined for movie miracles and there is no point in asking for a way to take politics out of Hollywood or Hollywood out of politics. You ask, like Solon, for a Hollywood climate that makes the play inside each play "fair and balanced? Dream on, little pawn. Hollywood is all about about spin and spin offs. Few can resist the inertia of its drive without getting flung to the four corners of the Universal back lot. Even Chaplin would openly admit that.

Once upon a time it might have been easier coping with big box Hollywood escapism. Limited to theaters near you, Hollywood's deus ex-machina was a little like the old vizier in chess. Both had screens they liked to hide behind. In Hollywood, with the advent of new colour film technology, the moment Glinda's bubble descended into Oz and put ruby slippers on Dorothy's feet, audiences everywhere knew they were in for a colourful and wild ride. How did this come to be? Physics!

Now it seems more than passing strange that Ancient Egyptians game players would have immediately recognized the spiral road to Oz as something very much akin to their wild and wooly game of mehen. Not only that, the spiralling cyclotron chambers used to refine modern day particle analysis does look considerably like a mehen board. Is there anything really new under the sun? Maybe not - but while we are tought to keep up with novelty it's easy to see how novety and novelties get confused in our imagination.

Through the magic of Hollywood, the possibility for sedation and sedition has gotten insanely out of hand. It's not just because there are presently so many televised drummers and trumpeters barging into our livingrooms making a such ballyhoo about Hollywood these days. Publicity has always been a major fact of life in entertainment and politics. It's a grand old game that doesn't allow for much silence these days. But even when the cinema chessboard was totally silent, knowing which movies are worth watching were which are not may have made for some difficult choices. Word of mouth? Sometimes good, sometimes not so good... So, like chess, to participate in this game, we still have to taste the hootch, touch the hem, see the sights, hear the sounds and smell the popcorn for ourselves. Nothing new about that. You can't expect other people to watch your films, cast your Hollywood ballot, or play your chess for you.

Unlike board games however, Hollywood and theatrics in general, entice us into accepting the buffet they have all laid out for us as a passive audience. Our only voluntary act is to choose to become a demograpic sliver of a captive crowd. It's all ice cream - but the different flavours and colours help us lose sight of mainstreaming forces. So, we line up as sitting ducks for whatever projectiles Hollywood choses to launch from the executive screen behind the silver screen. Indeed, this tactical ability to distribute influence from afar is very much like the "Vizier's game" - and he who sits behind the curtain of appearances has, as ever, held a number of important trump cards. Though reliable and honest he may appear to be, the possibilty that our impressions of reality are being intentionally guided and distorted through second party filtering is an eternal problem.

Only a critical view, such as the one Solon voiced to ancient Greek thespians, may be capable of holding Hollywood in check - and like Solon, those views are exceptionally rare voices crying out in a wilderness - a multi-media wasteland, to rephrase an old comment on the state of American television during the 50's and 60's. Nevertheless, checked or unchecked, like it or not, the Hollywood dream machine is as capable of devouring and distorting the past as it is proficient in supplying the public with suggestive thoughts about where the immdiate future may be heading. The questions and dangers involved in whatever facts Hollywood choses to suppress or amplify at any given moment lap at our intellect and our emotions in ways that not all persons are equipped, as Solon was, to understand and counter effectively.

Lions and Tigers and Bears
Stange to think that in some old board games, the water hazard was the most feared obstacle of pawns en route to Oz and the prospect of an illustrious promotion. How easy it is to plunge headlong in a reflective pool of illusion and how simple a matter to lose one's way in the vizier's Hollywood labyrinth. Perhaps coping with the Hopes and Dreamgirls of chess or Hollywood was never as straightforward and innocent a pastime as the ideas of "entertainment" and "recreation" have led us to assume. Certainly, the morality projected through either Holywood or Cessolis' writings about chess as an "Innocent" pastime often take a back seat to culturally entrenched biases that are not so innocent.

Serious critics are often chided for talking seriously about a supposed "virtual" world of pretend, but they are nonetheless important to us and without their voices the random infusion of seditious messaging becomes more difficult to detect, question and deflect. Mixed messages and the "massage" of public perception were rampant again this Oscar year, as Ellen Degeneres played Bob for the audience, giving "hope" to marginalized minorities even as the bubble machine that is Hollywood's entertainment industry passed for politics and history as much as politics and history passed for intoxicating entertainment.

Back and forth through the osmotic mirror we, the public, oscillate at an increasingly rapid, electronically charged rate. Meanwhile, over at the reality coat check, Oscar made more Oscar history and "feel good" PC politics won more Oscars. Now it enters into my thoughts that both Oscar and some of the messages that get tagged and checked at Oscar time are rather like the "pfander's" in gambling houses you can read about in M.C. Romero's article here at Goddesschess. Oscar, hospitable tavern owners and politics blend. They are true stakeholders in the modern game of Oscar night awards .We can love them or hate them but we can't escape them. An yet, we should never accept any of what Oscar represents at face value, much less take his background presence in the game for granted. Like the pfander's of medieval chess, he exists for a purpose that is anything but benign.

Sniffing at the profit motive, Roseanne Barr, a lady known for her sharp comedic tongue and a knack of saying what other people fear to say, considers Hollywood pfanders the true pimps of Hollywood pimp culture. Sad to say, as a woman who has gone though the Hollywood grind, she is probably right on the money about the money. As usual, it takes articulate sages, fools, outcasts and little children to show us how the Hollywood mirror prefers to look narcissistically at itself through rose-coloured shades and does everything it can to encourage that impression.

As surely as yesterday's "pfander" is today's FIDE, the corporate instincts that allowed chess wagering to move from the taverner's quarter's to Las Vegas attraction mimic the development of Hollywood's growth from music hall entertainment to the corporate big screen. Like those who currently thrive on chess, it is the job of all who enable Hollywood illusion to sell mirror images by the yard and so, on Oscar's night of nights, it's not uncommon to see kings and queens decked out in elaborate rented costumes and borrowed jewels. Of course, as every well heeled gambler knows, elegant appearances and mannerisms often cloak actual intentions from the public eye just long enough to separate the common man from his cash. To insiders who have played hardball with either game, a naked Hollywood or a naked FIDE are not exactly pretty sights to behold.

Hollywood Queens - Cheerful Pretenders, or the Real McCoy?
Hollywood thrives on illusion almost in the same way winning chess requires large doses of deception to succeed. And so, it is a simple matter to conclude that illusions produced both on and off the chess board make for plenty of confusion in the minds of all but those who are adept at constructing and delivering a convincing gambit. This year's Oscar awards created a great confusion over queens - Queen Lateefa being perhaps the closest thing to a genuine queen Oscar night presented. At least her chosen Hollywood name was not in doubt. Apparently nothing to apologize for there... apparently... This attachment to a "real" screen name seemed to give "Lateefa" secure entitlement - credibilty of a kind that may have been only slightly less strained when it came to naming this year's "gold star" Hollywood queen. I still don't know whether I should be amused or confused, but I suppose confusion is understandable considering what and who "The Queen" was all about this year and the way in which Washington has been reaching out to Great Britain and London to Washington these last few years. In any case, to Helen Mirren's credit, she did all an actor could to have us suspend judgement for a crucial hour or two. Wooden queens? Somehow they manage very well in chess, but not in Hollywood, where it takes more to capture hearts and minds than just a simple trot down a checkered aisle.

While considering differences in quality, Liz Taylor's wooden "Cleopatra" comes quickly to mind and although costumes and special effects lent enchantment to one of the great Hollywood flops of all time, perhaps the only good thing one could say about Liz and Dick's sword and sandal disaster is that it held standards low enough so that future epics of that type could trive on low audience expectations - or maybe just that slice of the world that finds starpower rather than quality more the main issue. Cleopatra needed starpower to drive the box office but one could say that Helen's performance was all the more enchanting considering she starred in a studio gambit involving a living chess Queen. So, it may be important to avoid thinking that "The Queen" did not necessitate a real life approach to number of actual scenarios requiring the greatest empathy, tact and diplomacy.

Indeed, Elizabeth II's response to "The Queen" appears guarded, as ever, although, while accepting an Oscar for her performance as a living legend, Mirren seemed to know exactly which "bells" to ring in the castle tower. Could that have been the result of sheer coincidence? I very much doubt it. In fact, Mirren's "gold star" metaphor appears to have been carefully "calibrated" towards sonorous projection of a deeply symbolic message. To Elizabeth II and any other onlooker who might have detected the meaning implied by the actresses' use of "gold star" imagery, the implication of how grace under pressure may bring out the kings and queens in all of us is not purely a pat line. Laden as it is with equal amounts treasure and inhibition, it probably took some courage for Helen Mirren to draw the gold star from her collection of bon mots. If Solon, or better still, Cleopatra, had been around to comment on what this gold star actually symbolized, they would have had no problem pointing to several well known cultural signposts of their day and age as being the very picture of either a rising Venus or, from the Egyptian perspective a rising Sothis.

Somehow "grace" is in the cards and playbills dealing out a hand of chess to all of us. I suppose all I can say on these matters is that there appears to be a Bacon number connecting chess with Hollywood and the crowned heads of state, though, at this stage in my game of connect the crowns, I seem to notice a mixed bag of possibilties. Small wonder, that - especially given all the distractions that occur on Oscar night. Even so, I could begin by mentioning how, like Elizabeth II's speaches and most of those given on Oscar night, chess games are often long and boring - or, by making a quick leap of inference that Hollywood and Oscar might as well be a mountebank's chess - that is to say a chess that gives the appearance of chess but is actually anything but. Either way, the tactical winds that blow behind the scenes of two or three very complicated kinds of games provide the scaffolding and the cloak for whatever non-games we see being played out before our very eyes. Fiction thrives on the appearance of truth and ultimately, the scaffolding of particle physics and DNA holding all the contrary bits and pieces together may be more important than the games we project - or all thee things may be just a part ofan even bigger game - something that allows us to suspect that reality is just a shared halucination after all. Where does the dream end and the "reailty begin"? Perhaps only the mountebank and the pfander know for sure.

Living Large and Small Our Stage
It's no easy task comparing wooden chessmen to a Hollywood that plays living chess with real live pawns and avatars and yet, we know that the world over, living chess, pachisi and wei qi have provided moments of entertainment for players and audiences alike. And who exactly are these people - the entertainers and the entertained - if not willing groups of pawns, coteries of avatars and the inevitable crowned heads? It seems that considerations drawn from this collection of human archtypes may be a prime question for any Hollywood drawing board and yet, I recall the enlightened French composer and chessmaster, Philidor, describing pawns as "the life of the game". But exactly who's life is it anyway?

Pawns certainly are the initial point of contact where all the good juices and wicked poisons ebb and flow along the Martian canals of Planet Hollywood's Golden Globe. Our classic pawns. Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Beppo always seem to be motivated by the prospect of participating in a grand victory, a successful promotion or a nifty deception. The bowing, scraping and kow-towing of Hollywood pawns? I am not certain if that is entertainment fit for kings, but it is all very stagey, somewhat comedic and, where we see all this and so much more tacked onto Nick Bottom's role in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the drawn down side of the pawn's Charley Chaplin routine currys favour without disturbing the decorum of any real kings or queens.

Unlike kings and their immediate confidants, unpromoted pawns are not anywhere as insulated or as insular as the inner court and its executive class, nor do they have the luxury of knowing what the king might know until the moment of promotion is struck and the pawn transforms into something more princely. The multiple ironies of Nick Bottom's character are not only comical distraction, they are also symbolic of a successfully threaded theatrical moment taking place both inside and outside the normal theatre of events - one that places "virtual" laurels upon the heads of mere commoners. Here we find more physics - or maybe mystics is a better term for all the light bending and contortions a pawn must go through to become a prince. It is alway is a secretive affair - done behind the curtain of appearances and as we inspect traditional rules of the senet pawn's flight to celebrity status, neither the journey nor the reward is spoken of except in oblique reference to such things as "gold stars" - or in other cases, "bright morning stars". Thus, if a promoted pawn should happen to glance in the mirror and see in it the parental reflection of a king or queen, they are probably not mistaken - nor would any king of quality deny that the malleable clay of pawns is not very much like their own.

Sentimentally attached to the rulers of all nations, pawn's are like the troubadors of old. If they do happen to appear solo in any engagement, a quick end can usually made of any graceless approach to the far side of the board and with them, or a quick celebrity if they do succeed in making landfall. Of course, pawn in chess are not allowed the kind of diplomatic subtlety nor the type of tragedy Octavian Augustus brought down upon Cicero's head and yet, they are subject to the "royal touch" and can be sacrificed or saluted for any number of reasons. So the message of tact, or tactlessness - as the case may be - allows us to say that chess pawns and Hollywood stars on the rise are all about traditional societal rules of engagement. And yet, as with physics, the real heart of the matter seems to lie deeper than this. In fact, even kings may be humbled by the common source of absolute power and authority.

No doubt it was not a simple pawn who invented either chess, Hollywood, or the insitution of monarchy, but rather, a promoted one, or, as some imagine, a long series of them. A curious feature of chess history shows that yesterday's unpromoted pawn bears a striking resemblance to tomorrow's bishops and viziers. This is strange because as we look more closely into the combined religious and political aspects associated with coronation rites, kings are never allowed to place the crown on their own heads. Here again, the vizer or "mantri" as Persian chess defines the monarch just as he does the pawn, coming to resemble the true power behind the throne. Viziers therefore need to retreat behind every available curtain if they do not wish to be singled out as the conspiratorial authors of issues that made theocracy, divine right and Camelot so attractive on one hand yet so unppealing to Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th Century - a conflicting state of affairs that served to draw hard science out of the grasp of those who often sought to subvert it. However, a certain about of subversion exits on both sides of the matrialist - spiritualist divide that perhaps does not need to exist - or more likely does not exest except through illusions created by mind alone. Of course it is difficult convincing any one of that as long as all levels, sides and appendages of the body politic, pawns, kings, queens, knights and viziers included, seem to get caught up in the fray.

In practical day to day affairs, despite whatever appearance of bouyancy projects confidence in games or real life, a somewhat paranoiac sixth sense sniffs its way across virtual and actual fields and cloaking becomes an important aspect of our everyday survival. Out of this very ancient dynamic, chess pawns entertain their own and their opposites' possibilties with forked tongues that may serve as security in the midst of a game where they find themsleves on the low end of the food chain. For pawns and actors alike, it's who you know today and how well that counts and with the exception of mishandled pawns and acting careers, for the most part we know who is who and what is what on the chessboard. In Hollywood, as in real life, it is virtually impossible to say who or what some actors might become wit the turn of a page. That general concept applies not only to their appearances as actors but also to the professional sense of how their careers may unfold and so, despite their varied roles and many facets, Hollywood actors are typically compelled by the desires of their handlers and have indeed been schooled to behave with great deference to their lords and masters both on and off the stage.

In Hollywood, it is quite normal for actors to envision what it might be like to act like royalty while retaining their Bacon connection to a humble past. The common touch - that, along with the "royal touch" is the secret of most successful rulers, politicians and celebrities, just as it is the possible birthright of all unpromoted pawns in chess. So, when you think about it, beginning life as an ambitious, flexible pawn reflects upon not only the nature of ensemble acting and how you play your cards in Hollywood but the viable nature of career destinies as well. Think again and it becomes possible to understand how, with so may shaded sets of circumstance pulling strings and sharpening knives from behind every pillar, Hollywood must be a Godfather's game - the don or "vizier's game" - a game filled from top to bottom with crafty gambits, outcomes and reactions. Of course, manufacture of consensus leads to agreements and disagreements that, in turn produce socializing agents that in all cases, rely heavily upon public trust for their effectiveness.

Again, suspension of Solon's critical awareness can allow inroads into human consciousness that is almost indetectable except to the game's innermost circle of puppetmasters. The effect of a carefully implanted message supported by public opinion further amplifies the need to be aware of incipient dangers posed by the mirror worlds of virtual and actual happening. On either side of this mirror, feudal obligation to authoritative dispatches leads to polarizations, bifurcations and indecisive moments of many types. Ah yes, what would chess or Hollywood be without its "wizards", it's Godfathers or it's willing Munchkin pawns? Are things so purely black and white as chess, Hollywood, mass media and many heads of state insist they are?

The play is the thing. So play it again Sam...

Achieving objective consensus in chess is what holds the game together. Arriving at consensus in Hollywood may require the same skill sets, but the difference seems to be that in chess you know exactly who is wagging what. In Hollywood, it's hard to catch site of who wags the wag and to be sure, some old Hollywood Godfathers and actors slip back and forth between the pawn's public stage, privileged audience seat, golden screen and a place behind the curtain with disturbing ease. Taking their cues from any angle, all these moves are more or less "hidden in plain sight", which is how all the best kept secrets seem to follow in the footsteps of the highest paid actors, where we find them operating though chess or on the public stage.

It was perhaps little different in Shakespeare's day. Stars are stars after all and the mesmerizing light they project on stage, off stage, or behind it has not really changed very much over the ages. Their glitter and glamour presents one good excuse for wearing sunglasses on Oscar night. But, there may be other reasons for wearing shades and motion picture sickness or even a voluntary sense of remaining blind to so much that does go on behind the scenes could have something to do with it.

Covering all the angles at once in Hollywood or professional chess is not a job for everyone and unlike Shakespearean actors and Broadway stage types who can spend years learning and playing just a few choice roles, Hollywood pawns and avatars are seen constantly moving to and fro across the casting board in Tinsel Town, changing hats, rapidly morphing into new marketing aspects of themselves and delivering new character portrayals that make them seem like liquid gold or mercury our eyes. On the great special effect screen, this has become commonplace and maybe just a little habit forming. No wonder this year, even the "I's" who played the part of the royal "we" appear almost as confused as the rest of us! Even so, they are well paid to act as though they are in command of their situation. Such is the nature of all memorable "command" performances in Hollywood movies, at the Oscars, or in chess and in either medium the crucial difference between confusing fakery and polished mimicry is always hiding around the next pillar.

And exactly which Hollywood egos truly represent the "we" part of the Hollywood picture? Reality is so plastic and elastic, how can we be sure that people who make a career out of bending it can be relied upon to say who and what they actually are, much less confirm what we, the audience, are encouraged to think they are in relation to ourselves. Since we all face the same problem of sincerity at some time or another in our lives, I suppose it is permissible to ask how much of them is really "us"?

And, by the way, who do YOU think YOU are for entertaining any notion that actors might not be what and whom they say they think they are? Confusing isn't it? Just like on the chessboard, intent is sometimes very difficult to prove. But what is worse, by asking that dreadful question I have given you the equally dreadful right to ask who I think I am, to which I might answer: Today I imagine myself a cat with nine lives, nodding, winking and saying all these things from a remote perch in a fantasy tree that only little girls who dream of becoming Hollywood queens can see. Not a very satisfactory answer to be sure - but at least it rhymes a bit and aside from being an Oreo cookie turned inside out, that's the best and only thing I can say for myself today.

"Chances are, if I should wear a funny grin..."
Yes, right now, on our stage, all I will say about theatrical transformations is that, once upon a very long time ago, there arrived a mirror in Wonderland one could call upon to calm the seas of doubt gathering around the citidels of our most precious "precious". As a result, peoples of all times and places learned how to step through this mirror in order to experience a magical world filled with cunning beasts, cunning thoughts and cunning paradoxes. That mirror still exits and for good or ill, people still set foot though it for all the same reasons, but escape may not be one of them.

Although some might think that in today's much more scientifically accomplished world our simple magic mirror may have become outmoded, tarnished and maybe a little out of hand. perhaps it always was a bit of all these things, although it did serve the pupose of reflecting reality back into the eyes of the beholder. The only way to sure way of handling this magic mirror solution? Experience, my friend, is always the best teacher and unlike a great deal of distortion coming out of Hollywood, chess is one way of gaining a foothold on mirror symetries, assymetries, tesselations, sub atomic cracks in the great divide as well as bridges between virtual and real aspects of our universe that run through almost anything and anyone we can name.

How old is the tale I tell? Only recently, I read how China's immortal Yellow Emperor somehow learned to imprison evil djinn inside a magic mirror and that this somehow led to the development of chess in China. I am also told that the great Egyptian god, Amun Ra, dreamed all his best dreams while thinking he was a cat. I like that dream very much. It was not even a very large cat - not a, MGM lion but a yellow tom, by some accounts. Idi Amin? Amun Ra? Now exactly who did that Ugandan gold general think he was fooling when he tried to imprison an entire nation inside his political mirror?

And what am I thinking? Could there be a yellow tom - a cat in my hat - trying desperately to get out? Can I trade it in for a golden ass? Is the trade fair? I mean, could they be essentially the same gold star animal? Why yes, but for a few cosmetic differences, I do believe they are and what is more, that makes Queen Alice, Nick Bottom the Golden Ass, Neo, Frodo and Luke Skywalker and many others virtually the same character. Like the writers who give them life and perhaps also gifted people like Solon or Bobby Fischer, they fall into the vizier's mirror once and are not easily fooled by appearances thereafter. That is how gold stars come to be earned in this world and as some woudl say, quite cautiously I might add, that is how they come to be recognized in this world and the next.

Behind The Media Matrix - Holloween and Oscar
But, for a fact that can't in any way be objectively proven, when it comes to Hollywood, chess, awards, politicians, royalty and changeling pawns, my inquiring wind gathers up a storm even as flags go up and down, and people stand passively in attention gathering in the whole spectacle. When that happens, I understand I may be undergoing a state of silent siege from some uncertain direction. Call it a paranormal crap detector something of the kind that waxes and wanes whenever one fool spies another coming through the "wry", or even the talking mirror most homes have plugged into regular house current. So, when I say, it takes a fool to to catch one in the act of playing others for fools, I am not just whistling Dixie Chicks. And no, it does not take a master of mirrors to spot the huge leaps of faith and suspended judgement Hollywood and mass media try to mask with little blinks, nods, smiles and innocent sounding code words. We are all born fools and actors. So, just who is fooling who, or trying to? Better still, why do some even bother?

Oscar time is a bit like Halloween with masked fools appearing over the Hollywood horizon all doing their best to trick and treat us. Granted, on Oscar's Night with literally dozens of our favourite trick or treaters knocking on our TV screen all at once, some undesirables are bound to sneak past the threshold virtually undetected. Part of the problem may be because the big screen fits so neatly into the small one. Somewhere in side both of them there's a whole lot of moving and shaking going on. Chess is being played in the Outer Limits and when they are done, they hand control of our screen back to us and prepare for the next game.

Love' em or hate 'em, on Oscar night, Hollywood bogeys stage a long distance assault upon common and uncommon sense fit for clowns, but primarily directed at "everyman". It's a barrage and a banquet too rich for the average person to deal with at a single sitting. Time, patience and our own abilty to freeze frames, hit "pause" and reflect and compare seem to be the only advantage "we, the little people" have over Hollywood and with that thought fixed firmly in mind, I'd like to take a serene moment to shish-ka-bab a few of these little hobgoblins now they have already passed though my soapbox screen. Most of the more pernicious are still hiding out in the pantry somewhere. So, perhaps we can begin skewering them after the fact, starting with Oscar himself, then moving on to Liz and Idi - who are not to be mistaken for Steve and Edie, but probably will be anyway.

What The Devil does Oscar Wear?

So, first things first... What about that head pawn? What about this Oscar fellow? Fact is, this is one strange looking dude... icon? - ummm... idol?? Maybe he is a bit of all three and none of this may not matter very much in the final analysis since, in Hollywood, he is already a little king unto his own country. Now, that in itself is very strange, because America is, after all, a democracy - or at least that's what we are told. Hollywood? Well, there are some who think of Hollywood as a kind of plutocracy and they may not be too far off the mark with this idea. Otherwise, the America we love and know is the very land where proof of our senses tells us that each and every time we step up to an electronic voting machine, democracy is happening. Some Ohio residents may argue the contrary and by any and all means, I am not entirely sure if Oscar even thinks democratically if the cashbox and the ticket wicket are what really make him tick. Either way, we are told that he is a democratically voted for award and it is very true that this year he actually did wind up in the hands of a former Democratic candidate for the presidency of these United States of America. Is that not some shade of the Tin Man receiving his heart from Oz? I wonder...

Like the Tin Man, I suppose we all should be satisfied with a clockwork heart and take it on faith that Oscar knows reality, democracy, Kansas corn, Diebold and Kubrick as well as any statue. Then again, it does seem more than passing strange that an environmental champion would drive up to the Oscars in a motorcade of SUVs and limousines. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I don't recall Dorothy dousing the Wicked Witch with a bucket of gasoline. At the very least, I suppose we could give our politicians some benefit of the doubt. After all, when one wants to make a lasting impression in politics or the movies, limousines and penguin suits are useful props. So, in the face of convincing, star studded Oscar night hoopla, it seems an excellent idea that if your are poised to accept a major award for a documentary film on global ecology, you should also be seen arriving in a phalanx of fuel guzzling white elephants. Bicycles? Somehow they just don't cut it in Hollywood or Washington for that matter..

But none of this adds up very well. Could I actually be processing a badly mixed message - or even a carefully mixed one? Both shaken and stirred, even now, almost 24 hours after my sixth sense began ringing, I must wonder if, for a fleeting instant, I did not actually became one of those flesh and blood pawns who meet the undertakers of Hollywood underground parking lot politics head on in the virtual anteroom of TV life, only to be left ticketed, talked down to, blindsided by a limo and then told - "I Need to Wake Up"?

Wake up from what? From which dream? Who's dream? And why was Melissa Etheridge pleading with herself, myself and everyone else within earshot to wake up to the moment, even though a patron of the cause, tank commander Al, will go down in Hollywood history as having cruised to the Oscars in a phalanx of gassed-up pachyderms that have would put serious envy in the eyes of old King Porus? Don't they sell bikes or skateboards in Hollywood? Don't politicians and Hollywood stars come equipped with feet, or does being an actor, singer or a politician require feet to be placed squarely in the mouth at all times? I suppose that's why Al Gore needed to drag someone out of the orchestra pit to sing his tune. Talk about insularity! Or am I merely being cynical by pointing out something of "An Inconvenient Truth" about Hollywood hoofers and a hoof in mouth disease that dares not speak its name?

Although I am hardly what one might consider "political", I do wonder if growing public desire for a pocketbook friendly breed of mechanical steed has not been conscripted into Big Al's profit making pitch for popular consensus. Environmental issues and Volkswagens are not new and global weather change seems to have been around since Noah's time. On the other hand, America's automotive industry is in recession and Big Al does have a few old Detroit connections hiding out in his garage. So, why, all of a sudden, is he making such a big fuss about selling me old and badly used issues? Could it be he wants to sell me a new car or some carbon credits instead?

By the scar tissue healing inside my much "mediated" brain, the timing and product placement of gold star platitudes would seem more important than the so called "non political" part of Gore's Oscar acceptance speech. But of course, one must remember that in corporate sales, politics, media and show business, it is what you show that counts and the pitch often has absolutely nothing to do with what salesmen call the "fine print" of a legal document.

By all Hollywood paid appearances, it does seem for all the world as though politicans and media barons jangle our nerves in response to what nation wide polls telegraph to them with regard to public perceptions, weakesses - openings in our collective defences and the like. As with the dialetical aspect of chess, the general population is constantly being solicited, their collective consciousness scoped, evaluated and manipulated in accord with how much politicians and other spokespersons assess can be risked tampering with "reality" without experiencing "blowback".

Anyone who understands how the mass media game is played knows that a good portion of it is rigged from the inside the central naos of executive headquarters. It's not about giving little people credit for actually knowing anything, or even about dialectics. Rather, it is a one way circuit that begs many questions but never answers the crucial ones about itself. Most of it amounts to how marketers hoodwink us into believing some expert with a lot of letters next to their name know all and tell all, or that the endorsement of celebrities count for anything aside from delivering a pitch. In the gathering up of moral currency, control issues and skewed chess board politics emerge once again as command performances. The only problem is, the public doesn't command what they recommend. In the bitter end, it's all about what choice of message and how often politicians, salesmen and actors choose to "show" their case. Overexposure can be deadly too.\ although it seems to have worked to Janet Jackson's benefit.

Meanwhile, the popular counterpoint behind certain subtexts hidden in games can take years to evolve and perhaps even more years for individuals to backengineer. By a similar series of analogies, checkmate in a single move is impossible, so the marketing plan behind Hollywood messages and messengers requires more than one stage, one actor and one scene before it has a chance to become embedded into mass consciousness. Considering how this orchestrates through culture, Hollywood provides but one of several theatrical sets required to alter opinion and perception.

Of course, we all know how show business begets big business and vice versa. So, if there's is one thing you can count on when blue chip issues appear on big or little screens, it's that seldom, if ever, do we get the full story about any issue at any one sitting. That is especially true for issues that need to be better known immediately. Politicians count upon a form of message overload and mental paralysis that often grips even the most experienced chess players. But but the crucial fact is, if we wait for Oz, Al, Melissa and Oscar to give us all a brain or a social conscience , we may wait forever, or, at best, we may receive a counterfeit Wal Mart consciousness. Some people call this strategy "intelligent marketing design". I call it "marketed designer intelligence" and as we shall see, the knock offs Oscar wears resemble old robes of state and a borrowed intelligence that helps land democracy into the treocratic wastebasket.

Like a king on the chess board, Oscar's inbred advantages are of no apparent value unless butressed by a protective entourage. Alone, he cannot move fast or far enough to avoid unmasking and immobilization. In Oscar's case, the play of old Egypt is indeed the very thing we need to bring him to a reckoning with himself and his audience. Oscar's mass illusion? It is very real. Such is the commercial slant to the Hollywood chessboard, which, come to think of it, is not much different from the way the global one currently operates. But it is no great Egyptian mystery how, during these "interesting" times, it seems like every actor and politician alive wants to do my thinking for me and even move the pieces on my side of the board for my own and the greater good. While I find that very noble and generous of them, it is not chess. Chess is far more democratic, independent and demanding than that. Besides, when a piece gets moved on a chessboard, the piece we see being moved is the one that actually does move. Hollywood bait and switch? That's a carney barker's shell game and with all that has come down the global pipedream during the course of our lifetimes, by now we should know what to expect from pea shufflers and chess mountebanks parading noble causes. Does the devil wear Exxon and General Motors? I suppose that on an Oscar night when everyone in town is dressed for success, it's better that than to be seen wearing no clothes at all.

American Idols
But alas, I find myself charmed and drifting far afield from the real essence of Oscar, who is, at the very least, a much perfumed American Idol. And we do like to know where our idols come from, don't we? We read the tabloids in order to find out everything about them. That is why we buy the T-shirts and drink the free drinks they offer down to the very last dregs. And oh, how we do very much like to consume the forbidden liquors of the gods, all the while possibly knowing that the oddest thing about Oscar is that he pretends to be Oscar when he could easily be acting out another role - one most people are unlikely to suspect him of playing. Somehow that and the patina of a polished gold finish work out well for him and I suppose the real question about Oscar has more to do with how people are encouraged to see him as he wants us to rather for what he really is. Indeed, we must ask ourselves how and why we come to drink, eat sleep and breathe Oscar, knowing full well that his world is all about pretending to be someone special.

He is a great pretender, our Oscar - and I think it is also important to ask what causes so many of us to suspend judgement for the sake of whatever dreams a very few distill under the big top of the Hollywoo circus. It is odd that so few people seem to understand how somewhere in the process of recreating and consuming "reality", the drink most people think is geniune has already passed though an assembly line of editorial strainers and spiggots before it gets into our glass and that adulteration of some kind or another is practically guaranteed? What kind of Mickey Finn has Oscar been serving us all these years? Dont ask, don't tell and don't look now, because there is a bridge and a toll booth up ahead with Balrogs standing guard over Hollywood's imperial exchequer.

If only these questions and issues we have about Hollywood and Oscar were Mickey Mouse. But as we already know from watching too much Disney, not even an "R" rating tempers the flow Hollywood hootch. No matter what intellectual age we pretend to, prohibition does not seem to exist in the Hollywood we tend to believe we are consuming "voluntarily". Even though editorial censorship exists in spades behind the scenes and on the political stage, in reality, the stuff that thrills and kills always seems to be out there for the asking and the taking. And sho 'nuff, adults know from their own hard experience with addiction what bad dreams may come. Yet, we down what we already know can be dangerous, sometimes carelessly, enthusiastically - conspicuously - as though it was our cultural and religious duty to do so. And bravado - since we call whatever gets us cheering entertainment as oftens as we call it "patriotism" - or the "right" way of doing things. This we do while hardly suspecting there may be residual elements of a stupefying, if not deadly nature mixed in with our movieland concoctions of ritual choice.

Hollywood moonshine? It's like the colour of money isn't it? And aren't mainstream movies just another brand of money drink? Flowing from the cistern down into the taproot of everyday life, I suppose most Hollywood promotors have already learned for themselves how to milk mass media and the public as though it was a petty cash cow. Taking cues from those bad guys in The Matrix, while trading in hallucinations, they offer the public a golden opportunity to forfeit its milk money for the sake of idle moments spent watching, then chattering idly about Hollywood, NASCAR and too many other things that really have little bearing on where the real money is actually coming from, going to or why.

Diversion? Of course that part of the reason for a Hollywood that has made an industry out of selling booze to us indians, usually with the harder stuff cleverly hidden behind items we know are harmless and strictly diversioanary. But, once the real poison settles into the social bloodtream, Hollywood corn mash deposits hard social currency we share with friends while marking time in some endless ticket waiting line packed with other pawns. How easily the stuff of dreams passes down a picket fence, jumping from one pawn, who shares it with adjacent others and so on down the rank and file! Like cheap wine, trash culture and politics have that "ripple" effect. And haven't we all played the picket fence game often and earnestly over the years - so often, in fact, that, at times, the currency seems to wear a little thin? And doesn't Hollywood know when people are becoming bored of the ringtones and long waiting lines? And doesn't it respond to flagging consumption with mass infusions of brighter, shinier baubles, bangles, blings, bills and billboards - more better booze - whatever it takes to get a good media buzz happening again and again?

For old money's sake and new money's shareholder options, Hollywood has always sensed the limits of its coming and going attractions and tries it's best to up the ante every year. They want to get us feeling just as drunk and delirious this year as we might have felt in "The Summer of '42". So I guess you could say that this year, Oscar time was looking for a Viagra boost to get our postmodern heartbeats up and running once again. And while there is nothing wrong with feeling young at heart or even acting that way, there is a healthy limit to how long we can suspend reality without doing some real damage to ourselves. So, I guess the real problem with mass media has plenty to do with how it encourages consumption habits and strange addictions on a 24/7 basis. Nor do I doubt that there are even some among us who find old hat chess as addictive as Nintendo, movies, magazines or television, although I presume the crucial difference is that chess boosts mental and moral character in ways that passive types of media do not.

Thanks for the memes...

Cultural addictions? It has been exclaimed in Hollywood - "The Girl Can't Help It!" That might be a good description of Miss America contestants, but what about Mr. Universe? Well, that's right. Blame the girl for leading everyone astray. Always the girl. But I guess it doesn't matter who really holds the purse strings, wears the pants or buys the Viagra in most households. It doesn't matter because Oscar-time binges have come to be regarded as a kind of cultural panacea and misery, like ecstasy, loves company.

Because Oscar is Halloween, Christmas, New Year's Eve and so many other memorable things rolled up into one big tail gate party, it seems hardly come by chance that we tend to yoke pleasant or even unpleasant moments with ephemeral Hollywood theme songs, scenes and sound bites, all the while choosing to believe that the people who follow Oscar around as a career are really following the days and nights of our lives with remarkable empathy and compassion. So, it is with great anticipation that we tune into the annual rebirth of the Oscar godlet, perhaps hoping for a replay of some memorable moment we might have lived at some romanic stage in our lives. That kind of giddy expectation is not always rewarded, but sure as there's a heaven above, Alfie, we do get to see actors clapping Oscar to their chests and making long acceptance speeches about how great is Oscar, Hollywood, God, America and the Academy of Motion Pictures.

Now remember, these folks - mere actors, mind you - and Oscar winners especially, all hold it within their power to become the instant psychopomps of an otherwise remote motion picture paradise. Remember too, that they are bought and sold like expensive race horses because of their ability to perform up to Hollywood expectations. A a common result, it takes only a little consent at the big league race track before any one of them can and will run away with our personal treasures - our hearts, minds, souls and maybe too much of our spirit also. Certainly they are paid ridiculously high salaries to do what they have been trained to do - which is lay hold of the collective consciousness as though it was the reins of Ben Hur's chariot and like any number of folks working at Disney, they can take all of us for a ride and influence our thinking permanently if we allow that to happen.

And what would we do without them dragging us in the direction of a topped off glass or an old fashioned Hollywood run for the roses? The Oscar racetrack? The jockeys? The breeders? The bartenders? The brands? Some call it a culture and as long as we are having a good time, gasoline stays cheap and drinks are on the house, does anyone really want to ask what aperitifs or main courses are being served, for what real purpose and by whom? Thanks for the memes, Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood - but these are toughening times and with them comes an era of critical circumspection that even the sedatives of politics and Hollywood are having difficulty quelling. Waterworld, Mad Max and Wag the Dog now figure more prominently in the public consciousness than ever before and that is not Hollywood's doing - that is reality calling.

So, please forgive me if I begin to imagine how much Oscar and Hollywood remind me of the phantom bartender in "The Shining". Forgive me, because I cannot help but think our dear Oscar does his stand up bit for a living too while accepting gratuities from influential donors tied to focusing Hollywood's trend-sniffing powers of persuasion and translating everything towards big budget binges. Oscar? Isn't that the same pfander who refuses our money in The Shining, but still finds a way to drain our sanity? I see him there sitting tightlipped on the podium, accepting all the applause, fame and fortune that go along with being an Oscar winner. Right up front on center stage he takes it all in with customary dignity, humility, grace, charm, wit - and the same type of affable integrity that suits Hollywood hotel bartenders, bootleggers and culture barons to a "T".

And a very good living it is for cultivated Oscar - the golden boy with a bright future always ahead of him. And isn't it also true that no matter in whose hands Oscar winds up on Oscar night, he knows, as do we, that he will soon experience the luxurious privilege of sitting in someone's expensive parlor cabinet somewhere over the rainbow - inside impressive Hollywood mansions nestled in expensive gated subdivisions on the manicured outskirts of magnificent cities that make owning expensive American real estate on the most expensive planet in the known universe a very expensive proposition indeed. So, there he sits, along with all the expensive chess sets, vases, and crystalwares that are almost too pretty to be touched by mortal hands, much less serve a utilitarian function.

Living a life of luxurious ease, our Oscar never fails to get the best seats in the best houses. So, no wonder some people will gamble everything for a future with Oscar, while others fawn and beg to touch him as though good luck and great fortune will somehow magically rub off on their fingertips. Oscar's uncommonly golden touch... Oscar, the greatest pawnshop curio in Hollywood... Oscar, the lucky ducky born on third base and waiting for some actor to hit him home... Oscar, the silent partner... Oscar, the pandered pfander... Oscar, the bartender standing behind the stars and bars and the golden thrones of Oscardom... Oscar, the Midas boy who sees all, says nil and still manages to affect millions... Oscar the suave, who, from his place inside expensive curio cabinets, gets to see the private comings and goings of the very rich and famous whom we adore and envy.

Now, if Oscar could only speak, just imagine how much richer the tabloids would be for all his bartender's confidences?

"Midnight and a rendez vous..."
And so, what if Oscar turned out to be better than a deaf and dumb pawn - had ears, eyes, nose and a mouth and used them? If that were the case, would he propose any kind of threat to himself or others? Well, let us not forget that to actors and politicians alike, there is no such thing as "bad" publicity. Therefore, in light of what that may mean to one and all - I give you "Oscar" as I found him on the Internet - apparently receiving some kind of award for distinguished silence in talking pictures and obviously ready, willing and able to spill the beans on Hollywood!

But WAIT a minute! That guy's not Oscar! And if it isn't, who exactly is this familiar looking imposter?

Well... some (but certainly not I) would quickly point out that this "Oscar" is a really a statuette of the Egyptian creator god Ptah. That makes him a 5000 year old hood ornament for Egypt's royal coaches and patron saint of Egypt's legendary craftspersons - those very old souls among whose mummified remains we find much evidence of Ptah, but few signatures telling us who might have actually owned or fashioned him. However, I believe that in most cases, Ptah was considered the mummy's real owner, rather than the other way around. As for how he came to own and operate the entire Egyptian studio, that is information you will have to dig up for yourself - that is - if you really do want to bring too many cultural illusions crashing down on your skull at once. Suffice to say, the Egyptians who drew and molded him probably didn't care if they were the world's first cartoonists and scriptwriters. Along with Ptah, they seem to have had other things in mind more precious and eternal than gold - but nonetheless synonymous with an Egyptian gold standard of some sort. How times have changed! Or have they? Oscar owns Hollywood, does he not?

Now I suppose the next logical question would be: "Does Ptah own Oscar?". Could envy of Ptah's creative strengths actually be the lettuce at the bottom of an Egyptian bowl that eventually made it into Hollywood's salad days? Oscar a lousy remake?! Could a rip off an Egyptian feature be how Oscar got his Vaudeville start? Probably. Old Egypt gets ripped off for more than just Oscar. And while we're at it, it may be good time to mention that some very astute historians deeply suspect that Indian, Persian and Chinese chess got their start in the very same way. Along with this observation comes several overlays of strenuous denial and most likely, an overabundance of historical obfuscation going far back in time. So, in the eyes of some, at least, this whole Oscar scandal is really small potatos by comparison, although the burial of Egyptian culture under Western potato peelings is most certainly not.

Needless to say, (as if it is ever "needless" to say anything) the art of substitutions, doubles, stand ins and carefully re-costumed actors is very old, as is the history of those who think it is better to keep "oyster" about about all of this. In some crucial instances, silence speaks louder than words. So too, a cryptic kind of "gold star" language seems to have resulted from the long held reluctance of Egyptian royalty to cast pearls before swine as well as their preference for dishing out medals and "cultured" pearls. And, as any queen, queen mother, prince, princess, actress, artists, king, actor, viceroy, politician or royal script writer knows, to say less about what these genuine pearls are or why some people consider it in their best interest and everyone else's to keep them out of sight, out of mind or at the very best, sheltered in expensive glass houses, is to avoid complicity in matters that could prove embarrassing, if not fatal, to the crown.

Some crowned princes have actually lost their heads for speaking plainly about the actual source of so much power, prohibition and cryptic code words. Be this as it may, with truthful exposure comes the peril of self-incrimination. Thus, the string of pearls that eventually connects past with present have a tendency to produce a hangman's noose, mountains of illusion to cover molehills of harmful facts, graveyards out of cities and headless corpses trying tell why all this cryptic silence is anything but golden. So, there is really nothing new under Oscar's sun. Inasmuch as concealments and deceptions have occurred in the name of Ptah and many other gods through a succession of kings, queens - but more likely their chief viziers - deception becomes a Machiavellian golden rule administered mostly by who has the gold.

As for the kings and queens who publicly cannot or will not dare to say how close to the gods they or anyone else might actually stand, or even attempt to explain why a purported need for silence surmounts our human need "to know", it's not hard to connect them with Priscillian assumptions that, since Egyptian times, have remained dangerous exceptions in need of a gag, shutting up in towers, or worse. During any day or age, preservation of artificial barriers separating inner from outer court appears at the root of many evils and despite that the democratic spirit we assume remains protectively encased in such things, the common spirit incipient in the dedications of Ptah and Oscar "listeth where it will" and is no respector of high walls or imperial justice. Only under imperial rules of law and culture do songbirds get caged and people led astray to places where they are robbed of birthrights that puts the Helen Mirrens of this world on the same footing as Elizabeths I or II. Only by order of the state and its religious co-defenders does justice stoop low enough to protect the needs and greeds of a pretentious, powerful and insecure few. Need I say more?

I suppose I have already said enough, but in cases like this, less is not more, nor are words alone adequate to undo the culture spells that bind us to disempowering sets of widespread illusions. Nor, with words alone, can we undo barriers to meta-realities even the great and powerful Ozs of Hollywood can neither truly nor truthfully explain except by analogy, metaphor and parable. The fact that those who stand behind the curtain of culture exist in awe of what carefree winds blow their balloon is something seldom spoken of in Hollywood, since the appearance of control is vital to their media contraption. Nor do we get from them any inking of how procreating wealth recreates anything of inestimable value for the common person that they also cannot control down to the last detail and farthing. No, we seldon hear of this because frank disclosure detracts from the bloodmoney game that is constantly afoot at Caesar's Palace. Avoiding attraction of public attention to both themselves and their stock and trade drives the Oz's of our planet into hilarious, if not humiliating pretzel shapes and if, after all these years, you really do need a punchline for the batos and patos that accompanies Solon's idea of a politically colourized Thespis, I can supply you with one you can build a joke around if you choose.

The punchline is that I can imagine Ptah, or something very much like what he was intended to represent, feeding everyone their lines and liquor since time immemorial and that certain people found a way to tap into his wine jug as a way of creating profit out of religious rapture. As bartender to Egyptian pharoahs and a full line up of culture gods, delivering life itself along with rapture, ecstacy and "primodial gnosis" was his chief occupation. Moreover, and despite how this may shock the orthodox masses, being the Egyptian creator god of a polytheistic culture does not automatically make him consummately evil, nor is hemlock the type of drink Ptah preferred. We leave that to the sycophants of every cultural era, for as surely as they made others drink their poison in real life, there will be a price to pay, if not the price of a clear conscience, then perhaps some other type of restitution. All is one and if we must let fall the curtain of appearances, we would have to say that like great good and great beauty, great evil dwells in the eye of the same beholder and perfection of either appears to be the just reward for knowing both at once. On the other hand chosing one path over the other in this great mirror game of chess we call life makes for either a clear or guilty conscience and unfortunately there are those who can't seem to tell the difference between the two.

First causes and secondary outcomes arrive in many shapes, sizes and disguises. So, like chessmen do in their own unassuming way, Oscar and Ptah are simply saying something about the path to perfection. This is something extremely important that is also encoded into the promtotion of chess pawns in chess and the pawns of many other games both old and new. After that, there is not much more to say except - "Honit soit, qui mal y pense." or maybe "Let the buyer beware" - for, as Frodo learned for himself, reckoning with the powerful is something that comes at a price, as all great pearls of wisdom apparently do.

So - you see how things cross over and double back through the magic mirror in Hollywood... Good - evil - evil - good - there is no telling how a strory will end. Or rather, you see, but maybe you don't see while the plot is in play. On the other hand, the climax says that one man's return to Oz or introduction to Oscar is always purchased at a premium and yet, the real source of moral justice - the actual experience - is utterly free - as free as any chess board choice we might consider making. It's really only a matter of how much time, reflection and dedication one puts into the game. Equally though, there has to be something quite imperfect about the various ways in which currency exchange and mark up on new intellectual diversions cause us to pay and pay again for the privilege of being tricked and treated to the same shams. An Oscar who is allowed to speak would tell us that old bones will do just as well as the new and that fools gold is to be expected on the road to Oz

In consideration of the high levels of imaginative craftsmanship exhibited by many ancient cultures, Ptah's v old bones do just as well as Oscar's new ones with the exception perhaps that the commerical price tag on Hollywood wares has inflated beyond the comfortable reach of the average pocketbook and cost of extravaganzas have actually driven what used to be a pleasant opportunity for social gatherings at the local theatre into the pay per view vacuum of private homes - a sign of the frenzied consumerist times it seems and the all part of the fable of cultural obsolescence Hollywood has cultivated over the years. That goes hand in hand with the idea that Hollywood pyrotechniques and distribution networks actually improve on the best that classical literature, theatres, librarys and music conservatories have to offer. Like the pfander, commercial aspects of Hollywood carney barker still banks on the P.T. Barnum maxim of a fool born every minute. On the other side of the coin, whenever Hollywood pushes the envelope of profit over that of high quality productions, we have an opportunity to get wise. As a result of past abuses, many born fools ahve already found themselves disapponted by the predatory aspects of commercial film in general - ones who might seek their entertainment elsewhere and find it, often cased in old bones, gameboards and bookbindings.

If for instance, I had to purchase a complete new set of chessmen after the end of every game, just as though they were a new DVD or a round of drinks at the bar, I might soon switch to rocks, pebbles and water. In the process, I might also discover for myself how the pleasure of chess is still commendable. Aside from the illusion of a die having already been cast to favour industries based upon overconsumption and easy diversion, the prospect of having to make do with less might prod at least some of us into trading rare sets of Staunton chessmen for stones. Not that humble materials offer any means of avoiding the status trap, but at least they do help bring us down to earth and closer to it on occasion.

As for the sparkling stones Oscar night puts in our soup, Hollywood bartenders and waiters can and will bring us an endless supply of doubles, until we get fed up with Mummy II and Mummy III and demand a glass of water or a mirror that does not distort our view of what lies both within and without. From such things we may learn to talk to each other again about who we think we really are, what we think the world insists we are, where we might be heading and how we might prepare to get to where we want to go without the noise machine of mass media trig to get a leg up on us. Who knows what we may find in old bones? Who knows if coloured pictures streaming from distant yesterdays may not come to resemble the true wrappings of all Egyptian Mummies and chess as well?

So, how comes it that our own human mass and volume can be so neatly re-manufactured and looped back to us in ways that entice us into believing we are only good as the gold we wear, when even Shakespeare knew how everything about us actually resolved into a dew? How comes it that even today, when we absolutely know how every aspect of our flimsy, filmy selves and the universe add up to no more than a collection of subatomic particles and waves we call light? Obviously, there is a very schizophrenic, make-believe detachment from some original gold-star realities going on here, there and everywhere - and yet, we are supposed to believe in Oscar's durability and originality? Ptah, I say! Believe what you want, but the real reality of make believe says "Anything Goes" in Hollywood Squares, quantum physics or chess for that matter. Hollywood sound and lights? Call it a trick of shade and substance designed to tempt coddle and cajole. Call it representative of some truth, but don't call it "truth", for as soon as a particle of truth is spoken into existence, it has already begun morphing into something slightly different - just like this essay, which is not the same piece of work I began the day after Oscar - and certainly not like the churches, politicians and moviemakers who like to freeze us into their frames of reference for many dubious reasons even as the flux they help create in our social frames of reference carries most of us down a magic carpet ride that leaves a majority gasping for personal ideas about what may or may not be enduring "truths".

Could some of the proof lie in the Oscar pudding? I don't doubt that it does, although to believe what actors say is true rather than rely more purposefully on what our lying eyes and ears may tell us is not the real name of the game. It is not chess. And frankly, if it is not our names we hear being called at Oscar time, anything of deeper value Oscar might have to say to this and future generations will escape us and we may be tempted to plunge again into endless rounds of escapism. Oh yes, you are entitled to take your precious cues and scripts wherever they become available and go through all the classic trails of learning them by heart, but it may be wise to remember that this will not be your heart speaking truth to itself or extemporizing over the dialogue you may be having with your own Oscar. So let's at least come to some agreement over how the wool gets pulled, who does the pulling and how we can become complicit in this act if we elect to savour life through vicarious pleasures rather than indulge in them directly. This we must risk on our own behalf, even if we don't fully understand all the whys and wherefores of a real life motion picture that is, in many respects, more virtual and holographically interconnective than solidly "real".

Certainly, what Oscar represents is not a chunk of gold we can bite into or hold up to a worldwide audience for all to see and be saved. And, while we're at it, let's not forget the ages old question of "who profits" from all the old patchwork some call the Emperor's clothes - this aptly named "golden fleece"? Also, let's not forget to ask why not all rewards at Oscar time are entirely monetary. Power? Who can weigh that on a banker's scale? Fame? How fleeting! Knowledge? Ah! What light through yonder window breaks? Now we may be getting somewhere! So the answer to Oscar has something to do with knowing something about something after all and 'tis a great pity that we have to wring that out of him by threatening Hollywood with a powerful Egyptian double - a great light that once shone with clalrity from the mystic east but which has since been buried under the rubble of human forgetfulness and torn apart by enchanters eager for the gold rather than its true meaning.

What ho? Ptah to Queen Mirren's Oscar! And checkmate! So let it be known that somewhere floating above all the graft, greed and envy of Oscartime, a cloud of love, peace, morality and maybe even great prospects for immortality beg to differ with politicians who see only money, political opportunity and not much else in our message based coin of the realm. Your soul or mine? Toss a coin, because what Hollywood says and does with souls is very two faced, pari-coloured and not always on the square. And that, my friends, is one of the longest running punchlines seen or heard in movies anywhere. Beyond that point, I know for a fact that takes a real "Depp" - a real German fool - to understand why this is so. That much said...

Johnnys dark and Johnnys light... I guess that's entertainment! That certainly is the entertainment industry and chess all rolled up in Cleopatra's magic red carpet. So, while we are busy entertaining all possible worlds, here are some of this year's award winners - among them, a white queen and a black knight, who, by the way, does not bear much resemblance to any "Last King of Scotland", (he still has his head, after all) but, given the chance, could probably do a nice imitation of Othello...

I believe in these new Oscar kings and queens. I believe in their personal adventures and the stories they can tell. I believe that, like Othello, Whitaker's promotion to excellence was well deserved. I also sense that, unlike Othello, there are no Iagos waiting for him in the Academy wings. He has, for once and all time, been publicly acclaimed and crowned. Too late for treachery and too late for him to turn back now! So, long live the newly promoted Oscar king! And thank you Hollywood, Oscar and that lucky star for providing people like this the opportunity to promote.

Aside from a very passionate and sincere speech, the proof of Whitaker's determination is written all over his picture and I neither saw nor sensed any sign of cue card coaching while he delivered his acceptance speech. My feline instincts tells me, not only is he a real gold star actor, he's a real gold star person too and as they sing in Hollywood - "No no - they can't take that away from me..."!

The character he played to win this role? Well, since I never met the man, I refuse to judge Idi Amin on Hollywood films alone - nor is it my place to judge anyone in my Bacon number book of addresses with whom I am not personally well acquainted. On the other hand, I reserve a cynical eye for home grown politicians who pretend to acquaint themselves with me through my vote, will kiss my babies at election time and then kiss other parts of other people's anatomy afterward. I also prefer to resist that rather loathsome part of Hollywood I see reaching out from behind the screen in some half concealed attempt to adjust the dials on my moral and intellectual compass. My only regret is that good people - skilled actors and other legtimate talents - can be manipulated into providing the kind of relief required to relax our minds into thinking that everything we see coming at us on the screen is pure gold. Mixed messages and black and white relief - that's how fool's gold and counterfeit achieves it's ugly reputation by comparison and we have to learn how to tell the real from the unreliable at every turn of the way or somehow content ourselves with the rule of Trinculos and other poor fools. Illegiimate kings, half truths, deceptions and outright lies sprout like weeds among the lilies and orchids. In that process of discriminating natural selection, games of chess are lost and won. So it goes for hearts, minds, souls and spirits as well.

Movies? Once they are made, they do not change and any man woman or child can pick and choose their reality according to what they see lined up at Blockbuster. Politics and politicians do not offer quite the same variety of free choices as entertainers. Maybe that's because their directors and sponsors offer them little leeway to pick and choose for themselves - a sour note which might explain the different lines they speak and the different types of character parts they play before and after being elected. As for Idi Amin, like many a Gold General who would be king, despite that they can became synonymous with evil incarnate, his heart and soul may have been in the right place at one time or another. Who can say? Who would dare? Why do some always dare to say too much about what is impossible to judge and not enough about what is either tenuous or questionable about the facts as they choose to represent them - much less the things that are of most immediate importance to our own critical abilities?

That is perhaps how Hollywood attempts to pander to our weaknesses and how it profits from posing absolute evil against absolute good, ignoring the murky middle ground in favour of dramatic license. However, on the global stage, things are far more complicated than Hollywood would have us believe and much more so than in chess. What pushes men and women over the edge or wards them from it does not always show up on the balance sheet or in the ballot box of consensually constructed histories and there are no chessmen that ever slip their gyros or take the plunge into madness that would send them careening off the deep end of board. Frozen Hollywood perspectives and great distances from events can give us enchanting views - but who is to say if these very same views are not also some form of attempted enchantment?

Even so, what we can gather together of Idi Amin's frame by frame history offers us a glimpse into the kind of slow boil in Stygian waters poor Jack Nicholson played out in "The Shining". These kinds of things do happen to people and while we can see some of their descent into maddess framed in movies, I recognize there is no real heroism involved in condemning those who have, for reasons we can only speculate upon, suffered profound degredation of character at some turn of events or for some other unpopular reasons, were given no other choice but to make the passing their poison to others their point of contact with political history and the Midas touch of unbridaled political power.

Now, Al Gore says that global issues offer a moral rather than a political opportunity. That may well be the case, but it is not the full reality of issues he brought forward on Oscar night. Also, it may be saying something about his brand of perfumes and poisons, or how one man's passion from the podium can stirr pawns to uncritical opinions and reflex actions. Take it or leave it, by offering only one view of our impending ecosystem reality and gaining endorsement from Oscar, the outcome is noting more than a crooked game of chess - the mountebank's game of offering what seems to be a straightforward problem and then pulling in the fish as they fall for the entire trap, hook line and sinker.

The strategy of bait and switch is a politican's favourite passtime and they get help with this from their varrious backers. So what are we fools to believe when so many things are being spun in so many conflicting directions at once, or when Hollywood lays a hand on the board and decides to spin it in a particular direction? I do not pretend to know what makes the world go round, but I do know how mental fatigue can be induced by continual shock and awe, until we stop trying to make sense of what is happening around us and just lie down and let the tanks of Tienamin roll over us.

Tanks for the rhetoric and spoon fed memes... but no tanks, Big Al. Nor do I feel inclined to go into the tank just because Hollywood lights a certain way and does this without also lighting the way to the more diverse sources of its political and social conscience. Suffice it to say, I did not like everything or everyone my TV screen delivered into my home on this most recent Oscar night. I did not appreciate the all the agenda. On the other hand, I never met an honest game of chess I didn't like.

Queen Takes Oscar!
As for The Queen... Is not caesar's wife always beyond suspicion? And therefore, is she not also the source of many deep suspicions? Ah Hollywood! - the stuff of virginity, virgin dreams...golden boys and girls - and gold stars too! Was Helen Mirren playing the part of Queen Elizabeth I or II when she made mention of her gold star? We may never know and frankly, it does not matter. What matters is that we do know what she said and can harbour a pretty good guess at why she might have said it. There is something too in the way she decided to share her accolade with all those other "brilliant, brilliant actresses" whom she edged out for this year's Oscar throne. A queen, is a queen, is a queen. So, what of it? Graciousness in the light of victory is both the most and the least the victorious can offer and people with only one genuine gold star in their collection probably care less about Oscar, Hollywood crowns or even Holyrood than what lies above and beyond in the immovable kingdom of one fatefully wandering star.

The human quest for immortality is what that star is all about, and has been for thousands of years. According to Oscar, public immortalization is just a game we play among ourselves while biding time in this nutshell dream of a body. According to Ptah, it is not a game, but a gold star reality - something the heart can count on to pull us through the mirror of life during times of crises and renew us in ways that cannot be explained by words alone. We pass from place to place, role to role and rung to rung on a ladder leading to and from the stars. No doubt the connection between this ladder, pawns and royalty holds the same view towards reincarnation and transformation as Indian chess. As for Oyster watches, pearls and pawns, or cabbages made kings and preisdents - to paraphrase Lewis Carroll...

The time has come, the tabloids say... but tabloids will write what they will write and say what they will say, while truth goes hungry and crying out in the street. I know less than nothing of Buckingham or Hollywood and I make a habit of staying as far away from Access Hollywood as I can. However, I can say that Mirren's virtual throne arrived without any background of personal want, starvation and bloodshed. Not so the chair Elizabeth I claimed at the expense of Mary, Queen of Scots, much less many of the male suitors who seem to have lost their heads over her while she, herself, was loosing her heart over them. And not so Elizabeth II, who as a child, knew only too well the odious trials of war, local poverty, power politics and senseless loss of lives. These are legacies few actors or actresses have to endure and while such individuals as Elizabeth II help sustain the aloofness of queens and kings, for good or ill, their conscience and not that of Hollywood or tabloid scavengers, will say what it has to say about them and when the time comes for a final reckoning of the balance, that moment will not be filmed.

Of course the tabloids will go on tattling what is advantageous to their publishers and paparazzi and like Hollywood, they will be judged accordingly. Since I have nothing to gain or lose in this entire equation, knowing that I have done only my best to keep this papyrus a civil one, I can say from the heart that I suspect much deeper and richer purple hovering in the background lights of rich and poor, famous and infamous alike than Hollywood can capture. Like the rooks Old England keeps in London Tower, these may represent many of the hidden things that make the circumstantial weight of crowns heavy or light, but like the poor who look up to them, they are not the playthings of the royalty who come to bear them much less the Hollywood that tries to snare them.

Winners and losers... sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Tables turn on Oscar night and next year new royalty will be elected. How odd that is! An elected royalty? Perhaps it's better not to say who is who and what is what too loudly or too often. Careers have been forfeited like crowns for calling spades spades and in Hollywood or Holyrood, that's the name of that tune.

I Need to Wake Up (Melissa Etheridge)

Have I been sleeping?
I've been so still
Afraid of crumbling
Have I been careless?
Dismissing all the distant rumblings
Take me where I am supposed to be
To comprehend the things that I can't see

I'm not sure if I personally need to wake up Melissa Etheridge, but I'll let the typo stand for now, knowing full well that when you wish upon a star in Hollywood, as elsewhere, there is no telling how it may rise or fall suddenly, much less what that hidden star of destiny might signify to some. There is one star that never fails, however, and by the trail of footprints leading all the way from Egypt to Hollywood's Walk of Fame, we know a little about who may have dreamed and worn it like a crown. They are not always born to the manner or the manor and the weight of acquisition is said to be lighter on some than others. As for the crowns of England and Egypt. these are very curious objects in their own right. The closer we get to them, all the more "Curiouser and curiouser" they become. But, as with all things black and white, female or male, up or down, virtual or virtually real, if there was ever man in need of a consort, it is poor, lonely Oscar.

So then, if I were to supply him with the girl of his dreams - one to match the incredible gift for disguise and love of fashion that blend him with the stars of destiny, given Mirren's speech, among the many I could choose, this one in particular is a kind of standout.

And it gives me great pleasure to offer the tinkling Hollywood brass a gold star statuette fit for female actors of any day and age..

The International Chessoid Tomorrow's Muse Today !