Diamonds, Engagement Rings & Diamond Jewelry in popular culture

It takes a mind like that of Howard Stern to come up with the idea of a beauty pageant for the mistresses of Tiger Woods.  And to have the $100,000 prize come from AshleyMadison.com, which is a dating website for married people.  From this great mind comes a partnership with jeweler Steven Singer, famous for his “I Hate Steven Singer” campaigns.  Singer has designed another prize for the winner of the competition, and it’s almost (but not quite) worth the humiliation—provided that you’ve already been suitably humiliated by having your name in every newspaper, tabloid, and website as a home-wrecking bimbo.  It is a 3-carat black diamond engagement ring, with the center stone surrounded by an additional half-carat of stones, all set in platinum.  The only thing that doesn’t come with it is dignity.  Or an engagement. 

I wonder if it's fun to be completely shameless.

As of today, one of the four confirmed contestants seems to have backed out.  Las Vegas odds-makers are betting that the pageant will never even take place.  Odds are that Tiger Woods will choose to pay each of the women more than 100 grand and one diamond ring to not compete.  He can afford it.  What he cannot afford is to have us all still talking about this more than three months after mistresses started appearing like teenage boys at a Jenna Jameson book signing.  And yet here were all are, with Howard Stern stoking the flames to make sure that Tiger doesn’t live this down until Stern builds another wing for his museum of jackassery. 

And Sirius XM is allowing him to host the pageant live, on his show March 10.  As for the ring, Ashley Madison and Steven Singer put their heads together to come up with what they’re calling the ‘non-engagement ring’.  Singer released a statement that, “…the mistress never gets the ring, so we’ve created the ‘non-engagement’ ring for the winner of the beauty pageant…It’s now the official mistress ring”.  And what a thing for a young woman to brag to her friends about!  At least it’s better than the “I slept with a Masters winner and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” t-shirt.  In the press release issued by Steven Singer Jewelers, they say, “The center stone is a 3- carat total weight black diamond.  The black diamond in the center of the ‘non-engagement’ ring speaks very well for the purpose: mysterious, mystical and quite unique”. 

Mystical.  Not exactly the word one might choose to describe the parade of skanks willing to not only sleep with a married athlete because he’s famous, but also participate in a contest to determine who is the best person to cheat on your wife with.  The pageant, arranged by Stern himself, is said to include “bikini” and “talent” portions.  Talent is a relative thing, and when it’s a competition that revolves around marital infidelity, one shudders to think what Stern will ask the contestants to do.  Aside from running to the tabloids the minute the story broke, that is.  Gotta cash in the Golden Ticket while it’s still valid, ladies!

I’m with Vegas on this one.  It won’t happen.  But it’s gotten Howard Stern the attention he desperately craves.  Mission accomplished, big guy.

We all felt kind of bad for Sienna Miller in 2005, when her fiancé, actor Jude Law, cheated on her with the nanny of his three children.  The (at the time) young starlet took her broken heart—and her platinum diamond engagement ring—into a string of short-lived relationships.  It seemed that she had dodged a bullet, getting away from the philandering Brit before they made their union legal.  And then we stopped feeling sorry for her when she started dating Balthazar Getty, a married father of four.  Reports said that he was ‘estranged’ from his wife.  Maybe she started to feel distant after she saw pictures of a topless Sienna Miller crawling all over her husband on a yacht in Italy. 

"Sienna, did you the rack on...wait, never mind."

In the meantime, Jude Law kept himself busy with actress Susan Hoecke, model Lily Cole, singer Norah Jones, heiress Kimberly Stewart, and some bartender/model/actress (and former nanny!) named Samantha Burke.  To increase his ordinarily-high sleaze factor, he knocked Burke up and she gave birth to his fourth child on September 22, 2009, although she was unable to tell him by phone, as he had already disconnected that number.  He finally got around to meeting his new baby daughter in late February of this year.  No wonder the ladies love him.  He’s chock-full of care and concern for others. 

And poor, sad Sienna, in her attempts to recover from the 2005 split from her reptilian ex, dated Hayden Christensen, James Franco, Josh Hartnett, P. Diddy, and Rhys Ifans.  While she and the uncomfortably gaunt Ifans were madly in love, they had a very public, ahem, encounter while on an international flight.  Despite their undying passion for one another, Ifans started to get suspicious of his lady love and she responded by dumping him over the phone from Prague. 

Having already torn through the celebrity and celebrity-wannabe phonebooks, Miller and Law reunited last fall at the urging of Jonny Lee Miller, who used to be married to husband-thief Angelina Jolie. 

Is this getting creepy, or is it just me?

Anyway, the couple reconciled, and earlier this month, Sienna resurrected the engagement ring she got from law five years ago, although she is not, evidently, wearing it on her wedding finger.  She is also going to move back to the US while Law is working on his new movie, the ironically-named Contagion.  Sienna, it seems, doesn’t want to let her boyfriend out of her sight for even two seconds, so she’s moving in with him.  Over the holidays, she agreed to vacation with Law and his first three kinds ONLY if he left the nanny at home.  Law dutifully sent his current nanny back to England.

Not that there are trust issues or anything.

So they’re back together, and I couldn’t imagine a couple more perfectly suited for one another.

Why did so many people think that Avatar deserved to win Best Picture and Best Director at the 2010 Oscars?  Because it made boatloads of money?  Because CGI has never looked so good?  Because James Cameron’s ego needed a golden man to go next to his Golden Globe?  Just because a lot of people like something doesn’t mean it is high-quality.  Has anyone ever noticed that Jennifer Lopez can’t sing well at all?  She’s made a lot of money off of album sales, though.  And that whole Twilight saga?  Millions upon millions of dollars coming in when I couldn’t even make it to page 15 in the first book without a strong latte, several yawns, and a wish that I brought something else to read. 

At last night’s Academy Awards, despite Avatar having trounced The Hurt Locker at the Golden Globes, Kathryn Bigelow got to look back at her ex-husband and his big budgets blockbusters and laugh.  The Hurt Locker, a film about real people—none of them played by bankable “movie stars”—who defuse bombs in Iraq, took home the Best Picture Oscar, and Bigelow won for Best Director.  It was the first time ever (really, ever!) that a woman won the Best Director category.  And it was for a film that really didn’t make that much money.  It took in about $21 million compared to Avatar’s $2.5 billion. 

"Tell Jim he can check his ego over THERE."

But it was Kathryn Bigelow, dressed in a silver-gray gown and a single bracelet encrusted with diamonds, who accepted the award from Barbra Streisand (who was characteristically draped in diamonds).  And now the discussion has become all about why she ‘really’ won.  I hear some of the guys around me (all of whom clearly have some kind of a death wish) saying that she won not because she deserved the award, but because the Academy felt that they needed to give the award to either Bigelow for her two x-chromosomes or Lee Daniel for his blackness. 

Uh-huh. 

Everyone knows, after going through the recent Presidential election, that Americans are more likely to honor a black man than a white woman.  Icky girl parts turn voters of all kinds off.  Unless they’re really, really deserving of something.

The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have to exercise a bit of self-control when it comes to ticket sales.  How do you honor a movie that was computer-generated?  How do you honor a director who reveled in a plot as overused as the Lindsay Lohan Suite at the Betty Ford Clinic?  Yeah, I liked that whole storyline—the “savage natives” turning out to be kind victims of the destruction of their environment and all—when it was called Pocahontas and I read it as a child.  I even endured the same plot when it was remade as Dances with Wolves.  I’m over it now.  I get it.  Whitey is killing the planet.  Can we move on?

The Hurt Locker is relevant, real, moving, and, at times, funny.  It is a snapshot of right now, and well-framed.  Kathryn Bigelow directed actual people and made relative-nobody Jeremy Renner a star.  The “who?” of several months ago scored Jessica Simpson’s phone number at an industry party last week.   And he didn’t have to dye himself blue to do it.

James Cameron claims to be proud of his ex-wife, but we all know that when he got home and changed into his Avatar pjs and climbed between his Avatar sheets, he was crying into his Neytiri pillowcase.

Thank God for Jessica Simpson, or we would never learn anything about how difficult it is to be judged by one’s appearance.  That is, unless you exist on this planet, in which case you live with it every day.  But she’s one chesty blond who knows how hard it is to be rich, beautiful, and famous, and she wants to share her experience with us.  That poor thing, who scored an engagement ring from a pop star (Nick Lachey, while famous) at age 21, dated John Mayer while he still had credibility, and was thisclose to getting engaged to NFL star Tony Romo, is eager to delve into the true meaning of beauty.

"Can we get a burger after this?"

This whole project began after her career started to falter, she became known as the “curse” of the Dallas Cowboys, and she performed at a chili cook-off in those unflattering Mom Jeans.  At the time, she chose not to respond to the world-at-large as they commented on her obvious weight gain.  She finally appeared on Oprah on Wednesday and stated that she “didn’t want to feed into it”, using perhaps the poorest choice of words since, well, probably the thing she said five seconds earlier.  But she didn’t want to talk about that. 

She also didn’t want to talk about John Mayer’s recent remarks about her being “sexual napalm” and “crazy” in bed.  So she didn’t feed into that, either.  Until Oprah asked a question.  Then she said that she is “so disappointed in him”, and that “That’s not the John that [she] know[s]”.  She’s so embarrassed by everyone knowing that she is insatiable that she giggled and laughed while she talked about it. 

The real reason she was there was to plug her new reality show on VH1.  It was inspired by the Mom Jeans incident—which she didn’t want to talk about but was sure to mention that she only gained ten pounds and was a size 4—and became something that VH1 was proud to place among its other great programming like Rock of love: Tour Bus, Celebrity Fit Club 7, Celebrity Rehab 3, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.  Jessica took best friend CaCee Cobb and sylist/friend Ken Paves and brought them with her to Japan, Thailand, France, Brazil, Uganda, Morocco, and India to film The Price of Beauty.  When she went to Uganda, she learned that many brides were encouraged to gain as much weight as possible to be more attractive to their husbands.  While she was in Paris, she learned that fashion models are very skinny. 

And when she was in India, she learned how to sit and look like she was meditating in a full face of makeup, perfect hair, and pouty lips.  You know, just the real Indians do it. 

In case you’re curious, The Price of Beauty begins airing on March 15.  Tune in.  It should be a hoot.

The funniest moment out of the snooze-fest that is the Academy Awards show—which no one cares about once the red carpet is empty of celebrities—has been cut because of the very large, very fragile ego of a movie director.  Truthfully, we all know that awards shows are an excuse for women and gay men to get together and drink on a Sunday night.  Awards-related drinking games are played and there is ample discussion about how awful some actress’s gown is, but mostly everyone is in their own world, posting Facebook status updates, because they know that they can find out who won in five minutes on the internet Monday morning.  In an attempt to make the interminable broadcast interesting, they called the one man who was guaranteed to bring in the viewers: Sacha Baron Cohen.  I considered watching.

For some reason, producers think James Cameron might be offended.

Then—poof!—all of a sudden Cohen’s name disappears from the list of presenters.  He’s not even leaving London.  And it’s not because he suddenly became a diva and chose not to come.  It’s because the producers of the Oscars were afraid that Big Jimmy Cameron would have a meltdown over a parody of his multi-million dollar baby, Avatar.  Evidently, Cohen planned to appear onstage as a female Na’vi (that’s one of those tall blue folks from the movie) with Ben Stiller there to translate her speech.  It was to become clear that Stiller wasn’t translating properly, as Cohen’s character would get very upset.  Then Cohen would pull open his gown to reveal that his female Na’vi character was pregnant with James Cameron love child.  Then, all blue and gangly and knocked-up, ‘she’ would confront Cameron, Jerry Springer-style.

But alas, this year’s Oscars are bound to be as endless and dull as all the others.  Lacking even the patience to watch the parade of mostly-dull celebrities to see what the major ones are wearing, we can wait until Monday and tune into E! instead.  Odds are that Cohen has no plans to watch, either.  He’ll be at home with Isla Fisher and their baby, Olive, hatching a new plan to make people speculate about an upcoming wedding.  Fisher has been wearing an engagement ring for almost 6 years, and every few months there are new rumors.  Married or not, they’re having fun.

Not so for our megalomaniacal film director, who is up against his ex-wife once again in the Best Director category.  While he took the award at the Golden Globes, most people-who-speculate-about-these-thing are speculating that Kathryn Bigelow is likely to take the Academy Award for The Hurt Locker.  Tall blue aliens wrapped up in a predictable plot are a lot less likely to impress the members of the Academy.  With Cameron’s ego already on the line, he could well pitch a hissy-fit if confronted by the 6’3” in-your-face comedian, painted blue and pretending to carry his baby.  If there’s one thing Sacha Baron Cohen can do, it’s to throw himself into a character full-tilt.

So watch the Academy Awards, or don’t.  But if you do, prepare to be bored, as usual.

During this year’s Winter Olympics, figure skating got more attention than it has since the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding incident in 1994.  Lacking any real scandals, the media decided to make a really, really big deal out of an Olympic figure skater possibly being gay.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Seriously, was anyone surprised?

Yes, ladies and gentleman, Olympic skater and three-time US Champion Johnny Weir is probably not heterosexual.  And he’s not the first member of the Boy’s Club to compete.  It was positively shocking to many people when former US Champion Rudy Galindo came out in 1995.  For some reason.  I mean, really?  Is there any sport gayer than figure skating?  Yeah, of course there are a few heteros in the mix, as Elvis Stojko is very quick (and loud) to point out.  There’s also always a straight guy competing on Project Runway.  Remember that biker guy who favored tight black jeans…wait, never mind.  There are just some places that we should not be surprised to find our same-sex-loving male  friends, and figure skating ranks pretty well near the top.  It’s up there with fashion design and hairdressing. 

But this year, the question was actually posed: “Is Johnny Weir too gay for the Olympics?”  Some of us didn’t feel such a thing is possible.  Macho manly-man and adamantly heterosexual Elvis Stojko—a 37-year old single former Olympian who has never dated anyone, ever—has said that figure skating should be about “masculinity, strength, and power”.  Kinda makes you wonder why he didn’t play hockey instead.  Or not. 

But Weir is very much his own man.  The aspiring fashion designer who is responsible for most of his own costumes has said, “I love beautiful things, and if that means having a fur coat or diamonds or even if I want to wear a tiara someday, then that’s just the way it’s going to be”.  He likes to wear his lip gloss, and who of us will ever forget the night he was robbed of a medal but showed dignity and grace, wearing a crown of roses and carrying an enormous rose bouquet from his fans?  When asked about whether he was disappointed with the results of the competition, he waxed philosophical, saying, “As Lady Gaga would say, ‘I have all my role models out there’.  I may not be the most decorated person in the skating world, but judging by the audience reaction…they go on my journeys with me”. 

I dare say that he is probably the most decorated person in the skating world.  He just doesn’t have any Olympic medals.  He endured commentators laughing after saying his name; hearing competitors referred to as ‘athletes’ while he was ‘ever-flamboyant’; and even read that RDS, the Canadian ESPN, suggested that he undergo a gender test or compete against women.  The whole time, he kept his cool and, at a press conference to address the RDS comments, joked that he grew stubble to prove that he is, in fact, a man. 

The really, truly wild part about this whole story is that Johnny Weir has never once said that he is gay.  When asked, he has responded, “I don’t think it should matter”.  He’s right.  But there are one or two things that sort of give it away a little bit.  Maybe it’s the costumes, or the crown of roses, or the lip gloss, or performing in the Olympics to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”, or posing wearing platform stilettos, or the feathers and leather and fur. 

But will he ever say it out loud?  He might have to, because we might have some trouble seeing it through his p-p-p-p-poker face.

In a country that is so famous for its tiny clothes that it has a bikini wax named after it, Paris Hilton is still considered “too much”.  Hilton went to Brazil to film an ad for the new Devassa beer.  Evidently “devassa”, when translated from Portuguese with the most possible tact, means “naughty”.  So who better to call as a spokesmodel than the seldom-dressed heiress?  According to Brazil’s Secretariat for Women’s Affairs, the ad “devalues women—in particular, blond women”.   The odd part is that the black dress Hilton dons in the ad is much bigger than most of her clothes, and certainly bigger than the bikinis on women in TV ads for other beers.  But Eduardo Correia, spokesman for the private regulatory company Conar, said that, “The problem with the ad isn’t a lack of clothing, but its sensual nature.  A woman in a bikini on a beach isn’t necessarily sensual; it depends on context”. 

Why Would Anyone Object To Class Like This?

That’s Portuguese for “We want to be the only country whose airwaves are not clogged with vacant rich people who are famous for no good reason at all”.  I’ll bet they don’t even have a version of Survivor yet. 

Devassa’s “Bem Loura” (“Very Blond”) beer also uses Hilton in its advertising, and even goes so far as to have her in skimpy underwear and high heels—but that’s only an internet campaign, so Conar and the Secretariat for Women’s Affairs will have to quietly melt down over those.  If Conar decides that the ads are inappropriate, it can recommend that they be pulled from TV.  So far, in 23 years, not one of Conar’s recommendations has been ignored, so this doesn’t bode well for Devassa.  It is, however, fine for our Paris.  The check has, undoubtedly, already cleared.  Tinkerbell will always be well-supplied with diamond-studded dog collars.

In the meantime, Hilton continues to dodge rumors that she, herself, starts.  In a speech she gave at the Hearts for Hope benefit, she thanked her “future sister-in-law Casey”.  That’s boyfriend Doug Reinhardt’s sister.  Paris and Doug have been together for an unusually long time, and it has taken Reinhardt much longer to give Paris a gift to add to her collection of ostentatious, high-quality engagement rings.  By this point in most of Hilton’s relationships, they’ve already broken up.  Maybe they’re secretly engaged.  It seems unlikely, since nothing Paris Hilton ever does is kept quiet.  She was apparently feeling a bit needy at the event when she dropped the bomb that she has a ‘future sister-in-law’.  The tabloids didn’t disappoint.  They were filing stories before she even finished her high-pitched sentence. 

It isn’t unusual for American celebrities to star in ads overseas and make serious bank for their small efforts.  Hilton’s work in Rio came as no surprise.  Even legitimate, talented famous people can pick up a quick million for a day’s work.   A recent campaign had George Clooney selling espresso on billboards in Israel.  Now Paris, too, will be all over the Holy Land, advertising the Israeli Lottery.  The ad was filmed in New York, and promises that winner of the lottery will also get a shopping spree with Paris herself.  No word yet on whether that would happen in New York or Tel Aviv, although we can all make an educated guess.

Banned in Brazil but welcomed in Israel.  Who woulda thunk it?

Yes, we are.  We’re still talking about it.  Even after all of the mistresses have been counted and the Escalade has been repaired, it’s still one of the top searches on the internet.  But it’s old news, really.  It is so 2009.  It was okay for a week or so after he got caught and the names started coming out.  He apologized on his website…twice.  Then it was about Elin Woods going to an event without her engagement and wedding rings, and that was a big deal.  Then Tiger went off to no-sex camp for 45 days.

Okay, he's sorry. Now can we, as a culture, move on?

That should have been enough, no?

It wasn’t.  After he got out of his program, he was forced into apologizing again, this time including his sponsors in his speech.  The result was disastrous.  It was the least- convincing apology since John Rocker claimed to be “contrite” (a word he probably couldn’t even spell) for his racist, homophobic remarks in 2000.  Except Tiger probably really meant it, but was paraded onto a stage to again humble himself, and he didn’t look comfortable.  So he didn’t look genuine. 

He reiterated that he was deeply sorry, that he knew he let everyone and their second cousin down, and that he has “a lot to atone for”.  He praised his wife for her strength and begged the media to leave her and the kids alone. 

And as he read words that he clearly hadn’t written—but words he knew to be true—he looked and sounded as if he was going through the motions to get some of his millions of dollars in sponsorship back.  It’s too bad.  If no one had pushed him in front of that podium, he might have gone back onto the tour with some mild controversy, but everything would have gone back to normal soon enough.  Last Friday, he came off less likeable than he was before.  Not even Buddha could save him from that fiasco.

It couldn’t get worse, right?

Wrong.  In steps Howard Stern, with a $100,000 prize for the winner of a beauty pageant in which all contestants are (you guessed it) former mistresses of the golfer.  So far, four have agreed to participate.  An alleged seven have not responded.  And who is supplying the prize money?  AshleyMadison.com, a dating website for married people.  The website states that, “Life is Short, Have an Affair” as its motto.

Seriously, can we move on?  Evidently not, even if Stern relents.  Now several of the women who were with Tiger while he was married are demanding an apology, too.  No, really.  Women who knowingly and willingly slept with a famous married guy want him to say he’s sorry.  What, the movie roles not rolling in, ladies?

We get it.  A famous married athlete slept with someone not his wife. 

Now can someone tell me what the big deal is?

By now, everyone and her second cousin has heard about actor/director/writer/creator-of-hilarity Kevin Smith getting unceremoniously booted off of Southwest Airlines flight for being “too fat”.  His justified Twitter tirade about the embarrassment of getting thrown out of his seat after everyone on the plane already recognized him as “Silent Bob” was hilarious, if not a little sad.  After admitting to being “way fat”, he also pointed out that he was seated with the armrests down and his seatbelt fastened.  Apparently Southwest chose that day to exercise some extraordinarily stringent—and seldom used—policies regarding passenger heft, because I’ve been wedged between the aisle and a person who required a seatbelt extender and decided to muffin-top herself over the arm rests, rendering me unable to move in any direction for hours.  Smith Twittered jokes about being “airlifted” out of the plane under the supervision of Richard Simmons.  He made the best of a potentially-embarrassing situation.

"I'm sorry. You want to pick a fight with WHO now?"

Evidently, Southwest claims that they boarded Smith as a standby passenger before realizing that they had someone of even greater circumference but had purchased two seats to accommodate the excess flesh.  That was thoughtful for a person who requires that much room.  The logic was lost on the folks at Southwest, who offered a weak apology and an explanation that made no sense.  Claiming that the people around him reported a need to lean away from his girth, Smith pointed out that they were already leaning when he got on the plane.  One woman was ready to nap against the window, and the other was leaning towards the aisle.  Duh.  That’s the way people sit on a plane.  As far away from neighboring passengers without actually moving.  I mean, they’re strangers.  Who leans towards a stranger on a plane, unless it’s a creepy guy who’s had a few too many vodka/tonics? 

So now Kevin Smith—who has said that he is done arguing with Southwest because they make no sense—has issued them a challenge.  Continuing his contact with the airline via Twitter, he wrote, “you bring the same row of seats to the DailyShow [sic], and I’ll sit in ‘em for all to see on TV”.  He went on to say, “If I don’t fit, I’ll donate 10K to charity of your choice”.  He went on a bit more after that as well.  He’s mad.

This is a guy who dated Joey Lauren Adams, who was the indie sex goddess of the 90s.  This is the same “too fat” guy who slipped a wedding ring onto the finger of actress Jennifer Schwalbach, a 5’10” babe who has been in Playboy, in 1999 and has kept her happy since.  This is also the comic genius who created Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, not to mention the positively ingenious Dogma (among other films) and has written comic books and even a novel.  This is not the guy you want to get into a war of words with.  Southwest Airlines just poked a cobra with a stick.

If Southwest submits to Smith’s challenge, bringing the offending row of seats onto the set of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, then a most wonderful and telling event will naturally occur: Kevin Smith will have to fly to New York. 

I’m not sure who he’ll fly, but I’ve got an idea who it won’t be.

It isn’t a skit from David Letterman, or a scene from High Fidelity.  It sounds like it, and maybe it should be, but it’s not.  The Pontiff released his list of Top 10 Rock albums in Sunday’s official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, despite the Holy See’s previous censure of rock music as “the devil’s work”.  Although it is clear that “The times, they are a-changin’”, Bob Dylan didn’t make the list.  The guy who wrote “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” didn’t make the papal cut.  In the article, Giuseppe Fiorentino and Gaetano Vallini explain that Dylan was left out of the Holy Father’s CD collection because he blazed the trail for untalented singers and songwriters who have “harshly tested the ears and patience of listeners” with their sad stories.  Ouch. 

I bet Dylan’s glad to be Jewish now.

Sometimes, even He must put His hands in the air, and wave 'em like he jus' don't care.

It seems a rather odd move for the Pontifex Maximus, known more for his—you know—holiness than his taste in music, to even contemplate the differences between different popular music acts.  Surely there are things to be blessed and Dan Brown books to denounce.  On the other hand, this is a man who likes to wear giant gold crosses encrusted with diamonds and emeralds, and favors large man-rings.  An ear for modern music was sure to come.  I guess.

The albums that made the list are, to say the least, baffling.  The Beatles’ Revolver is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest rock albums of all time, but, considering that many of the songs were either a direct or indirect result of LSD experimentation, it is surprising that the Holy See would embrace it.  Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon also made the cut.  Evidently, its original title, Dark Side of the Moon: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics, remains unknown to His Holiness.  Either that, or he, too, was mourning the loss of Syd Barrett to drug-addled insanity.  Speaking of which, David Crosby made the list with If Only I Could Remember My Name, and Fleetwood Mac with Rumours. 

How Michael Jackson’s Thriller got the spiritual nod, we may never understand.  According to the article, “Some songs seem to have been written yesterday…while others still send shivers down the spine for their illuminating simplicity and musical thrust”.  On one hand, it seems that the Father Confessor wouldn’t listen to pop music.  On the other hand, Michael Jackson and Catholic priests do have several things in common.  U2’s Achtung, Baby makes sense because there is a common thread of sanctimony.

Also making the list were Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, Paul Simon’s Graceland, and Carlos Santana’s Supernatural.  Those can all get by without question.  The Pontiff has some ‘splainin’ to do about putting Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? On there.  Just having the word “glory in the title doesn’t make it Pope-worthy.

The Vatican stated that any of these albums would be perfect music for anyone marooned on a desert island.  Bob Dylan would probably disagree.  Or, most likely, laugh his unholy behind off.