Tuesday, June 07, 2005

What's the deal with ovaltine?

In light of the Deep Throat revelation, Paul Povse is given to wonder about some other of life’s “long-kept secrets.” He then proceeds to ponder what-were-they-thinking politicians, ill conceived foreign policy, and even more off-subject, how deep is the ocean and why is it so blasted hot out.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Deep Throat was one of pop culture’s most provocative mysteries. A big part of its mystique was that his identity was being kept from us, which made us want to know his identity even more.. It was a mystery that was wide open to speculation, yet still gave hope that it’s answer could be cleverly deduced through careful examination of clues. It was ripe for comedy, yet serious enough a subject to merit rigorous academic study.

Which brings me back to Povse’s column. The first couple of sentences led the reader to believe that he would be reflecting upon secrets similar to that of Deep Throat and who was Carly Simon singing about in “You Are So Vain.” But instead he just sort of threw together a bunch of unanswered questions, most of which fail to rise to the level of pop culture phenomena, and some of which are so banal as to not merit a second thought. I did, however, enjoy his take on why some people get overly excited when their offspring are handed their diplomas during commencement exercises. I intend to study his theory at length under the working title, Parental Histrionics: Low Expectations and the Graduating Senior.

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