Ridiculious Ideas

The 100 Most Ridiculous Ideas of the Century
January 2000

Hey! Why not jump on the bandwagon? Everybody, and I do mean EVERYBODY! Is making up a "100 Most (fill-in-the-blank) of the Century" list. The latest, and among the most stupid, is the NPR (National Public Radio) list of the "100 something-or-other Songs of the Century".

They have GOT to be kidding right? How do you reduce the output of all of Tin Pan Alley to a paltry 100 not to mention the music of the Cole Porters, Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstiens, Leonard Bersteins...etc., etc., etc?

Number One on my list of The 100 Most Ridiculous Ideas of the Century is making lists of 100 Best, or Worst, of Anything. Hmmm, let's see; that leaves 99 more spaces for more ridiculous choices. I'm sure we could all fill up this list with our "favorite" things; Viet Nam, Bay of Pigs, allowing Adolph H. to bluff the world at Munich, digging bomb shelters in the 50's (the "duck-and-cover" delusion)....... and then there are our personal "Yuck" lists to be made.

My own would include all the insane drinking I did in my 20's and 30's, marrying my second wife twice, just to make sure the first foul-up wasn't a fluke, disregarding my kids as a father, the incredible amounts of money I've spent on cars...I could go on.

And on.

You know where all this crazy reductionism will end up right? Time or Newsweek or People or Look or TalkPlayboyCosmo et al, will be out to pick The Most Influential Man and Woman of the Century and the Most Important Event of the Century and...in other words, we will have to boil down all the complexities and convolutions, personalities, joys and terrors of the past 100 years into one convenient lump just as we do with generations, the Lost Generation, Gen X, Baby Boomers, etc., and decades; the Beat, the Me, the....you know the rest, just so we can think we understand it all.

It's the gravestone mentality wherein all there is to know about a person, place or time is selected out to what can be conveniently fit into one or two chiseled lines or even words!

I resist this tendency to diminish all into small. Regarding the 20th Century as something that can be reduced into a pre-adolescent list making activity is at least idiocy and at most hubris.

Need to make a list to include the greatest men or women of the Century? Let's make one that is one million long at the very least. And let the input come from every nation and every territory on the planet. Not just from North America and from those who are connected to the Internet or who subscribe to Time/Life. Same goes for music, art, events, whatever the myth makers try to dream up for list making material.

As one of the human beings who has lived more than half of this passing century, I want to pass on to our progeny of the 21st, some real, deep and lasting flavor of the times. Not just the shrink wrapped M-TV version. After all, just as the centuries which have preceded our existence, we have created the foundation of all that is to come. You know as well as I that when the list makers finish, Rosa Parks will not rank up there with Lady Di or Jackie O ., Charles Kirault will not be mentioned, Anwar Sadat will be a footnote, Robert Benchley unranked, regional writer Elroy Bode unknown.

That would be the answer you know. Have every region on the planet send in a list of the most influential people, for whatever reason be it politics, art, thinking, community service, you name it; and THAT list would be the history book of the 20th Century. Until we get something of that magnitude, this passing 100 years will be a just another lost time chronicled by the usual sources who will miss the point, and the truth, entirely.

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