Fake Opera, Fake Movies...Real Good Times

So listening to NPR this morning and this evening, there have been a number of fake stories. One of the best is the I-Bod, a machine that regulates the heartbeat, and other metabolic body functions. In one "interesting" depiction, Scott Simon engages in I-Bod intercourse with Mr. Gupta in accounting.

On the way back from an academic trivia tournament, I was listening to an amazingly well done, and quite funny story. Called "One Man's Sad Goal...Make Opera Positive!" Hamilton Banks, a rich Cape-Cod new homeowner, bought an Opera Company and changed its name to the Positive Opera Company, inspired by the late, great, Norman Vincent Peale, author of the Platonic Form of Self-Help Books, "The Power of Positive Thinking." In his new envisioning of the great Classical Operas, for example, in Don Giovanni (Mozart) after the statue of his father the Commandatore comes alive, and asks him to repent for his adulterous, womanizing ways, Don Giovanni becomes a born again Christian. In the Positive La Boheme (Puccini), Mimi is cured of Tuberculosis. And in Tristan and Isolde (Wagner) Tristan's injury is merely a flesh wound (it isn't even infected) and he is returned to his love, and instead of the moving Liebestod there is the melodically pleasant and totally unWagnerian the Love of Life Song.

I wish I knew how to quit you...