Celine Mean Fighting Machine
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

Ever walk through a store, carefully choosing your purchases, and hear music that causes you genuine physical pain? It can happen anywhere. Somewhere on Route 35 there's a hobby shop where one can find model ship parts small enough to merit microscopic examination while A-Ha's Take On Me plays on the radio and middle aged bikers say things like, "Dude, this is my five hundredth Panzer unit." Startling. Interesting. One wonders what kind of woman waits at home to Endust around that nice round number of miniature German war machines, but at least the hubby's not assembling pipe bombs.
 
Maybe. Rockets were in the next aisle.
 
More unnerving might be standing at the ladies' scarf counter at Nordstrom, choosing exotic reading glasses. This set up, if one has never worn glasses and now suddenly could sorta kinda possibly enjoy the benefits of magnification, scares a gal senseless. This is not one of the most rational moments in a glamorous career. It is at this instant that suddenly the piano music sounds familiar. Wait, that's ... it can't be. It is. The tuxedoed gentleman at the grand piano on the ground floor at Nordstrom is genteelly playing the howling guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven.
 
Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love planted her face on the squeaky clean glass counter and laughed until the clean was less squeaky, while the saleswoman considered calling paramedics.
 
Perhaps a week ago, the - pardon moi! - tail end of a car commercial caught Your 100% Cashmere's attention. Celine Dion again, drat. What's she singing? But then it was gone, and did not reappear until last weekend, when, there it was. Celine was singing Cyndi Lauper's I Drove All Night. For a moment, it was easier to think: 'This is a hallucination, my brain has short-circuited, and will now deliver my worst nightmares one at a time, starting with this horror. Green Jell-O and empire waistlines must follow.' When lime gelatin and breath-constricting garments were not inexplicably applied to Your Wool Blend's person, she faced facts. She had to ask the question, and hear the answer. Yes, Celine had recorded the song. This revelation inspired a four-Excedrin headache.
 
It is no secret that Celine turns Your Angora's delicate stomach, but this is too much. Unless someone backed an armored car up to Cyndi's house and dumped the contents through a window, what could possibly compensate for this indignity? Cyndi Lauper is an original, a wise and wacky, opera-singing misfit from Queens. There's nothing new about corporate cover girl Celine Dion, and this cover song is an insult to those of us who never traded in our Docs for Espadrilles. It's painful to watch one's heroes' accomplishments ground into so much Lite Music mush. Sadly, as the music business consumes itself, we should expect more of the same.
 

©2003 Robin Pastorio-Newman