There Is No God

Did I just see a Pepsi commercial starring Jimmy "That Moron from SNL" Fallon and Parker "My Precious, Precious Parker" Posey?

I did.

This is precisely the reason why I advocated putting my precious, precious Parker in suspended animation and jettisoning her off of the planet Earth back in 1998. What Jor-El did for love of his son, I wished to do for love of art. Decades later, people are still praising Lennon and Hendrix and Joplin precisely because they died with so much unrecognized potential, the songs unsung. Would they still be so revered if the world had witnessed a slow and clumsy decline into obsolescence? Imagine — just for one second — the mercy, the purity, of pruning the greatest artists of our time before they have a chance to go all Elvis Hawaiian Comeback Special on us.

Michael Jackson, just after releasing Thriller, floating forever through the depths of space. Paul Reiser, just after the series finale to Mad About You. I'm not saying Paul Reiser is a great artist, I just want anything that might undo the horror that was Bye Bye Love. We could launch a five-man capsule containing the members of Aerosmith circa 1991. This is just the right time for them to put out Pump and collect the resulting MTV music award the following year. Though it would rob the world of Get a Grip, it would do the same for Honking on Bobo.

It's far too late to prevent this travesty without time travel and a privatized space program. Oh, if only people had listened to me eight years ago. You've Got Mail. Josie and the Pussycats. This damned Pepsi commercial. Gone, each and every one of them.

And you'd all be thanking me for preserving for eternity the body of work of my precious, precious Parker, with the likes of Party Girl, Dazed and Confused, and The House of Yes.