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"Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"
"No, sir. But I've got Prince Albert through my urethra."
Prince Albert, once the Hope Diamond of phone pranks, is also a heavy ring piercing popularized by aggressive trendsetters. How could we be so cruel to royalty?
I will admit it. I am not totally immune to trends. I had jazz shoes. I was pretty into pogs. But fortunately these trends were transient, as is their nature, and have all disappeared from my life nearly without a trace, lingering only in old photos and VH-1 videos. So how did scarification (which by its very definition is rather permanent) become so fashionable?
Have we learned nothing from the Sneetches? Finding new, unexplored angles on body modification as an effort to separate yourself from the pack has grown tedious in its shock potential. Yesterday, I passed a storefront in the East Village where trendy adolescents were paying to be ritualistically impaled on unsanitary, 16-foot wooden pikes. Worse yet, I actually saw two kids, gutted and bloodied, impaled on pikes, high-five each other.
Bored? Start a fanzine. Trying to be different? Buy a zydeco CD. Like to get off on self-inflicted pain? Rent "Kuffs". Problem is, if you can imagine doing it to yourself, chances are you've already seen it in a music video or a daytime talk show, or at my grandmother's house. Today, "exotic" and "alternative" are buzzwords for Lifesaver® flavors and sports utility vehicles, not humans.
So have we reached a frontier? "Body modification", once reserved for only the most dangerous, unbalanced criminals, has become a cottage industry as new holes are being opened every day in the name of individuality. Trying to smile approvingly at the desperately extreme, often
uninspired latter-day trends in self-decoration/mutilation is enough to turn even the Chicago 7 into rabid, pissed-off Jerry Springer studio audience members.
I, for one, am still awaiting the emergence of less self-absorbed trends like "Who Can Pick Up the Most Litter" or something else a bit more altruistic. But something tells me that I'll be waiting a while for that day to arrive. In the meantime, I will be staring forlornly out my apartment window as clove cigarette-smoking teen-agers amble by with hammer claws fashionably jammed through their frontal lobes. Sigh.
So what's worse than Prince Albert in a can? I hope you never have to find out. (Note: This link is not for the squeamish.)
Todd Levin writes a monthly column for Smug, and occasionally inhabits tremble.com.
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