May 22, 2004
Coasts of Sun and Light
Well, where did we leave off? Ah yes, your intrepid documenters were holed up in a north German country house, midway between Berlin and the border with Poland. The nearest town, Bad Saarow boasted very few teens, being largely a retirement and resort community. But the hot mineral springs! Now there was cause for boasting. Before I give you the impression that the A.S. crew were living the high life often associated with the film industry, let me add that those halcyon waters were savoured but once in the two weeks otherwise spent feverishly editing the material shot to date in the trip. From the front window of our country retreat we watched deer forage in the snowy forest floor. On our walks into town for provisions we commiserated with the ducks, geese and swans huddled in the last bit of open water on one shore of an otherwise frozen-over lake. Our neighbors down the nearest lane had a litter of adorable Daschund pups that fell over themselves with joy each time we passed by en route to the organic farm for fresh whole milk and cheeses. Did I mention feverishly editing the material shot to date?
Before leaving Berlin, A.S. spoke with ex-Canuck, Kathy Johnson who works in Public Television there. We also did a little light research, logging serious hours watching our favourite, Charlotte on VIVA TV’s music programs.
Three and a half months under the leaden skies of Northern Europe! Enough, or rather, BASTA! On this impulse, we hastily scheduled a new stop for the A.S. tour and flew off on New Year’s Eve for sunny Andalusia. The gods blessed us with our first tanning-strength sun since the trip’s beginnings in Tel Aviv, at the opposite end of the Mediterranean. For two solid weeks, the off-season skies stayed clear, and from Estepona to Tarifa and back, we basked in a winter warmth that was balm to our souls. We also got to know teens who slacked on the beaches, and others industrious enough to save up airfares and bring entire families over from economically ravaged Argentina. The hard-working and family-oriented, Carolina ran an Englishman’s bar for him! Seven days a week she promoted the place, tended bar, ordered and received stock.
Our traveling is for now behind us. We marked the end of our production phase (in industry terms: completion of principle photography) by confirming the beginnings of a grand new adventure. On Spain’s Costa del Sol, just where it gives onto the Costa de la Luz, within sight of Africa and with balmy winter winds buffeting us, producer and director were informed of our next, and no doubt greatest co-production ever. Wait for it… the Adolescent Sublime Project is pregnant!
Many new plans were pondered on those sunny winter beaches, in between interviews with local youths and some with the large Argentinian teen expat community. And the planning and pondering continue four months later, here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, latest home to the Adolescent Sublime Project. And you guessed it, this amazing news is also our amazing excuse for this present update having been so long coming.
N.B. ...Nika and I would like to thank all those who graciously made their guest beds and couches available to us as we pursued our project. Especially, but not limited to: Anya and Amir, in Tel Aviv, Simon and Sue at The Carrot in London, Lina in Moscow, Ilya and Lilya in Berlin, and our kindred spirit, Kristi in Estepona. The thank-you's could run for pages but food and shelter are the fundamentals. For the rest, we'll have to wait for the credits to run at the end of the Adolescent Sublime.
Capitalism, an Encore
Will the workers of tomorrow pay for your retirement?
Continuing on the subject of “Capitalism”, our economy here in the west is fueled by people: spending, making, buying and creating. With “off-shoring” and “out-sourcing” rapidly entering the realm of mainstream concerns, there is a distinct sense that substantial structural changes are underway in the societies of the developed world. In Europe, Israel, and Russia unemployment rates among young people hover steadily around 10-12%. Is it lack of paying jobs or lack of opportunities? What available jobs capture the imagination and talents of “Indigo Children”, this generation astrologically predestined to feats of creative strength
The modern mega-cities import workers for low-paying jobs from developing countries. Since the Palestinian uprising, Romanians and Koreans have become the builders of Israel and an exodus from the Balkans feeds the construction needs of Western Europe. The low-wage semi-legal workers overburden social systems of their host countries, brewing inevitable conflicts and resentment. But “native” youngsters are not exactly rushing to compete with the determined newcomers for the 'golden opportunity' of paving roads, for example. A recent Jobs section of Canadian daily, The National Post attempted to steer first time job seekers exactly in this direction: construction workers and hair-stylists are expected to be in high demand through 2012.
Has this generation of I-POD Web-Surfers has developed skills and perspectives, mental landscapes if you like, which have subsequently rendered it unsuitable for the types of occupations on offer? Based on what we heard in some of our interviews, the answer lies in not having a single 'job', not aspiring to a profession, or becoming a specialist. Shifting grounds in the marketplace call for adaptable skill-sets. Young people respond by focusing on building a portfolio of skills acquired through pursuing interests that appeal to them. We saw them kite-surfing in Tarifa on the Costa del Sol, and organizing pan-European graffiti fests from San Francisco. Contemporary youth have a strong awareness of time's essential value. Corporate types can suggest all the entry-level jobs they like, these young graduates really work for themselves. They patch together personal projects and temporary jobs. They receive no benefits or guarantees for the future beyond the lasting relationships developed while working together.
Fair is fair, I suppose: it's a low commitment relationship on both sides. I haven’t asked if these youths pay taxes on their small sources of income but I have a sneaking suspicion.
May 20, 2004
Pearls in the North
Riga
Where is it? My friends that don't read the Financial Times were genuinely challenged to place me anywhere on the map when I telephoned from Riga. Riga, Latvia, has become a fabulous city since the country gained independence. “The New Prague” in the eyes of some, and “the Pearl of the North” as Saxons of old referred to it. I am finding that many young American bankers have joined mature European artists and crisply smiling Nordic executives in remaking the city. But into what? Pearl of the North, or Baltic Banana Republic? Grim rows of Soviet era apartment buildings still house the majority of Riga’s working folk. On the pearl side, the Stockholm Business School acquired, and restored to ornate, blue-cream perfection, a bunch of Art Nouveau buildings in the city centre. It turns out that Riga has the biggest collection of early 20th century architecture, including famous buildings by Eisenstein.
Riga home to half of the 2.5 million population of Latvia. Rejoicing in an enduring cultural revival, Latvia is also zooming towards EU membership. But many issues remain unresolved as I gathered from a lengthy beer chat with my fellow train travelers on the way back to Moscow. Being Latvian means speaking Latvian but for many Russian pensioners living in the city, it is a near impossible feat. Almost all valuable industrial assets of the nation were acquired by Swedes, Norwegians and Finns in the first years of Perestroyka. Riga is experiencing a real estate boom, with foreigners snapping up fancy downtown properties, and banks giving 100% financing on shopping malls. Latvia boasts probably the most expensive cell phone service, ($.40-$.60/minute) ridiculously expensive clothing, ($60 t-shirts are not uncommon) and a conspicuously white population. A midweek visit to a night club featuring hip-hop and electronica beats, devolved to a discussion with an inebriated young Latvian, adamant that “Latvia is for Latvians, we don’t want any negroes or Jews here”. In a country experiencing newfound independence, whose history consists in equal measures of German and Russian conquest, even patches of xenophobia represent an ugly reminder that all is not yet well in the European psyche.
Danes may be the perfect Europeans: open and congenial citizenry with a liberal royal family. Perfect strangers walked us to the places we needed to go. After filling up at the gas station, you can pay your Krones to a truly attentive cashier. Money could be changed anywhere, busy waiters took time to find for us the exact address of the Danska Design Center. And where else but in Denmark, will you find a place the like of Christiania? An old hippy commune situated directly opposite the main seat of the country's government, it has evolved into a quiet and unpretentious artists' ghetto. Anyone can come in, smoke a little cannabis resin, drink some coffee or beer, maybe play a game of dominoes or write in their life's journal. (No hard drugs, no hard liquor.) We walked through it twice. Teens played backgammon after school, middle-aged business people read newspapers in peace, granola girls sold good-for-you food, a prim mother and daughter wandered innocently through the streets.
Alex Chub, composer of the very funky grooves featured in our trailer, has lived here since business became ruthless in the New Russian version of his native Siberia. Today, he and his Danish girlfriend offer to take us to the Danska Design Center. Danes are very big on hyper-functional design. But visiting the Design Center left me cold and wondering about our material culture. Danish design is about crafting sleek, functional and perfectly unpleasant objects for today's corporate environs. And beyond, exhibits include bright alloy artificial legs, penis-shaped necklaces, plenty of Bang and Oluffsen and not one but two models of folding bicycle suitable for cross-continental travel. It made me shiver, especially looking at the photo collage of fashion models scarified with corporate logos. Bubbling computer screens and the comforting hum of electricity all around made me feel lonely. The Danish language is a combination of French, German, English and Dutch. The more luxurious Italians and Spaniards, apparently never made it to historical Denmark. Many older apartments here have no showers, but every street has its bicycle lane, even the very old ones. Bicycle design has really reached its ultimate expression here. Weightless, sturdy and elegantly shaped beasts crowd many a museum and storefront display.
Hamburg
Copenhagen to Hamburg is a 160 km/per hour breeze on the no-limits autobahn, my filmmaker, friend and husband at the wheel. The longer I stay outside of the “obligations-and-structure” of the working world, the more appreciative I become of small things in life. A hot cup of coffee after a long walk in the rain; an unhurried excursion through an artist’s studio with explanations of what he likes and dislikes about his own work; flipping through my address book, matching names of friends to the stack of postcards I've collected over the last two months: London, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, Copenhagen....
Hamburg has involved daily dancing in various reggae clubs, domain of decidedly hit-and-miss white male DJs in their mid-20s. Nascent styles emerge from the mixture of perfectly boring German pop with the choppy rhythms of ragga, ska and calypso.
I-levity Roots Commandment
Higher not Lower
Irie Community
Positive over Negative
Forward never Back
Rastafari
Referring to the dance hall's DJ's, Lisa, a young Russian-born German Ragga-queen, confided in me, "These boys don’t know how to carry a person on a music wave, peaking and dropping into the uphta-uphta-uphta comfort of a fine Ragga rhythm." Some of the Africans and Carribeans we meet in these clubs relate that they are allowed to stay here, through easily attainable political asylum, because Germans realize that fresh blood in the old country can do more good than harm.
May 15, 2004
East Meets West Twice
Givatayim
A bright white hillside district of Tel Aviv. With nary a sand-bagged machine gun turret to be seen, it is difficult to imagine one' s self near the centre of one of the world's most tireless conflicts. In twenty years much has changed in Israel, but at a glance, new housing aside, Givatayim reflects little of it. On the street and in the shops, however, one change becomes evident. In a single generation, Israel has unlearned the English language. Having lived in Montreal for ten years, I am sensitive to the pride associated with resisting the monolith of la langue anglaise. I at first attribute the scarcity of English phonemes in the air here with this same project of cultural resuscitation. As our two weeks pass in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I meet only a handful of citizens proficient in English. From this handful though, I learn my theory is flawed. The demise of the tourist industry is more commonly cited as cause for the country's verging unilingualism.
From conversation on the sunny porch of a house where West meets East Jerusalem, Nika and I learn of related regressions in the business community here. Just as tourists have been staying away in droves, the world of business has grown shy of trading in shekels. Worse still, claims our host, a contractor in the construction industry, one can little hope to grow a business beyond a certain modest size here. As Israel has grown insulated from the wider world, so it's government has grown more dependent upon its domestic tax base. U.S. hand-outs, notwithstanding, the Knesset is asking more and more of the average Israeli to sustain high standards of social services and a costly array of army and security forces. Even here, looking straight into predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, it is uncanny how little strife is evident. Our hosts in Tel Aviv did their level best to discourage our visiting Jerusalem at all. "Stay here where it is safe. Jerusalem is not safe. Here there is no killing." It's easy to interpret these sentiments, as well as much of what passes for "common practice and common knowledge" here, as living in outright denial. What a dichotomy: watch Israel on television from the West, all you see is settlements, Gaza and the West Bank; visit Israel without an agenda, all you see is Tel Aviv and J-City, for the mostpart, happy, shiny places.
On the other hand, my sister-in-law is marrying into a family of Iraqi Jews, longtime citizens of Givatayim. These Sephardic people have trodden the same sands as their Arab neighbors from times biblical and before. They are full aware of their place in the world, cheek and jowl for better and worse, with Arab nations recognized and otherwise.
Moscow
Like London, Moscow, is swollen with the ranks of its newly arrived. It is a place to take chances, to strike it rich, or lose it all. Everywhere are large casinos ornamented with pompous body-guards and opulent flashing neon facades. There are slot machines in every café and bar, bingo machines in the gas stations. “Try your luck today”, seems to be the motto for this metropolis of 13 million. In reality, the wealth and opportunities have already been more or less divided up between various economic interests and ethnic groups. It is a tightly run ship under the command of interwoven government/business/criminal interests. Russia of the 90’s had a thin patina of fairness, of democratic process and a seemingly impartial legal system. That is all gone now. Everything in the country is about making money, no time for civility here. The head of HR at a large logistics company, briefs a fresh-faced MBA applicant: “If you want to run in this business, you have to be prepared to do ANYTHING. No questions asked.”
The people I met seem to fall into two categories: the non-participants (whether due to inability or moral disgust) and those who've decided to go along. The division is strikingly similar to Soviet society of the 70s and 80s: party and industry functionaries got all the material goodies but didn’t have the luxury of sleeping well at night. Artists and intellectuals had nothing but freedom of expression (in the privacy of their own cramped kitchens and a small circle of friends.) Workers drank, and continue to drink, themselves into stupor and oblivion. In 2004 the pace has changed but the dynamics remain the same.
A lark for the powerful, moneyed types: Taking the subway, having sent two out of three bodyguards home. Still feeling couped up? Go on a two-day binge to Jamaica by private jet (status symbol for this crowd in 2004.) Grand, new sky-scrapers in Moscow, with adjoining winter garden and walking bridge over the Moskva-river, referred to as “ Stroyki Kommunizma”, financed by pseudo-voluntary but unavoidable “contributions” to the mayor’s fund. Intellectuals disseminate their ideas aided by the Internet. The working class now have 54 brands of vodka to test their stamina, as well as dozens of magical herbal potions (“traditional medicine” is BIG) to support their collapsing health. AIDS and drug abuse are rampant, especially in the provinces. In a private conversation, an officer of the Health Ministry explained that the population of 20-25 year-olds is ravaged, all but disappeared due to hard drugs, alcoholism, violence and STDs.
We met young people from both sides of the participant/non-participant divide. The most impressive group was practicing Lubki. The word is derived from “lubo”, meaning love. The main premise: Live life in “lubo”, i.e. love of the world. Love it and the world will love you back. The philosophy descends from the pre-Christian (and pre-Mongolian) Slavic tradition of Skomoroch, practiced by magicians, craftsmen and warriors alike. Around the country there are several “circles” led by individuals entrusted with duties of passing on these ancient ways and wisdom. 16-year olds who have been through this 'shamanic' training come across as composed, doggedly optimistic and brimming with self-confidence. I asked one teen, an aspiring economist and graduate of the Lubki training, "How does this “love-centric” attitude play out in the rough reality of Russia's jungle capitalism? (referred to in the tradition as, “zverki” or mentality of animal survival.) The training prepares one for urban as well as wilderness survival. Mastering martial arts and possessing a Coyote-style whimsical sense of perspective, Anna has better 'equipment' than the merely brawny and cunning. Her stance is stable and confident, she can see beyond immediate circumstances. Pushed into a tight corner, she looks far and wide. The big picture provides her with solutions that make direct confrontation obsolete.
Gettin the Hell Outta Dodge
Oh Canada, Eh?
I often hear from Canadians attempts to create or express their identity. They seem constantly to struggle with it, often measuring up (or down) to Americans. Bizarrely, for an outsider, there is plenty of Canadian identity. It hit me right at the border, in the organic focus of the nation's flag. Next was the relaxed, coherent and cheerful young waitresses in the first bar we stopped for a snack. Her banter verged upon a slightly kinky attitude compared with tired platitudes we'd been served across America. Expressing Canadian identity in words is admittedly, tough. European sensibilities diffused in North American vastness? A cocktail of British quirkiness and Gallic flamboyance? It comes across vividly in the confident stride of multi-cultured Torontonians engaged at every level of the city's business. Unlike the melting pot of big business USA, where there's always a hint of condescending sympathy for those who can’t quite pull off a crisp WASP accent. Condescension that provokes a pushier, reactionary style among minorities.
Neighboring countries always help shape the identity of a nation through shared history and their daily trade interaction. The French and Germans are not concerned about melting into each other. Language and a few hundred years of tormented and well-recorded history leave no doubts as to who is who. Not so with Canadians when it comes to America. The way cultural industries are infiltrated in Canada goes beyond the influence of friendly commerce. Where it involves education or health care, in Canada it gets personal. However, complain as some do, it is in Canadian actions their identity asserts itself best. Just as effective parenting occurs primarily through example and not loud prohibitions, Canada can, and routinely does, make its point sans rhetoric: witness their little army's efforts to clear up the mess left in Afghanistan following their neighbors' proclamations of victory. Of course, there are plenty of less self-effacing Canadians, just skim away the surface from the 'American' celebrity gene pool!
London In and Out, Shadow of the Empire
Clearly, I can claim only superficial impressions from our two three-day stays, two weeks in Israel separating them. But these impressions are fresh as the brisk autumn wind was on the Thames. Back in 1990, I had loved living in London. In spite of the recession, it was a full-on party town for the curvy blond snob of a Muscovite I was back then. I had no money but plenty of haughty attitude, a survival instinct completely unburdened by “English propriety ”, and a limitless appetite for new experiences. In sum, I went places. My little black book boasted Krishna-ites alongside slick Abbey Life executives, a 250 lb black bouncer of a fashionable night club and an E-popping art historian.
London in Fall 2004 tastes and looks very different. It took me about 40 minutes of walking around the Camberwell Common before I found fish and chips. Disposable plastic plates, kebabs on the menu, and not a sheet of old newspaper in the place; this was no "Chippy". A peculiar blend of international comfort food has evolved in the big cities of Europe: in Germany it would be the 'Imbiss'. Warm dough, cheese, grease and spicy meat, seemingly randomly referred to as pizza, hamburger, shnitzel or doner.
Taking a double-decker through London is like touring the old British Empire. All the languages faces and fashions of the Commonwealth converge in London. Attitudes from all latitudes have also made the migration. It took maybe 5 minutes (and 10 Pounds Sterling) for a crisply dressed clerk at Enji's Electronics to “unlock” my cell phone so that it would accept any SIM card.
A young Muslim man couldn’t contain his sadness and disgust, while taking in the Jake and Dinos Chapman exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery: “ Why do they want to see children this way!?” he asked me. Dozens of cheerful girl-boy mannequins explored eachother's cute toddler’s togs, their sweetly inexpressive faces all sporting an adult's penis in place of a nose. The long queue in one post office remained eerily aloof while an elderly Jamaican man raged impotently at the prim clerk behind the plexi-glass. Older Brits we met abroad later in our trip, and there were many, universally complained about the reverse imperialism of modern day England: “They get apartments, food, and social services just for coming to England and having their babies!”
Our hostess, Sue, illustrated the other side of what London is become. Broad Scots dialect coming from a cute Oriental girl is a little disconcerting at first. Heiress to a dry-cleaning shop in Glasgow, Sue has decamped for London town. Cheerfully, she evades her Mom’s nightly long-distance attempts to set her up with another nice man from Hong Kong. In the morning she dons an electric yellow rain coat over crisp Calvin Klein power-suit, mounts up and cycles off to her job as analyst for a venture capital firm.
May 07, 2004
A.S. Tour Beginnings Revisited
Farewell Left Coast
Lee and I started our journey, with only a filmic destination in mind.
The end of day 1 found us soaking up the sunset while soaking in a natural hot spring. Spencer Hot Springs in Nevada, three small pools in the desert. How must the frontiersmen, miners and the like, have felt coming upon this little oasis at the end of a dust choked day in the saddle? How revered might this site have been by the local 1st Peoples?
Elated by the big sky sunset dynamo, the perfectly smooth and utterly empty road, and by the thought of adventures lying ahead, we rolled along I-50 at a steady 85 miles per hour, straight into a classic speed trap near Eureka. We had just gone through a playful calculation of how long would it take us to get to Montreal if we drive 24 hours a day on this perfect, unobstructed highway: 68 hours.
The State Trooper, on duty guarding this mile-long stretch of the highway, mysteriously temporarily limited to 45 miles per hour, learning from us that we are on a one way journey to Canada, politely offered us a range of perfectly inconvenient ways to exercise our judicial right to appeal. He then suggested the very convenient postal payment of an aggregate penalty, county assessment, local and county tax. Add it up, and just send your check to the address provided on the envelope. Reconciled to making our donation to the local community, we moved on to Ely and a casino hotel for the night.
ALIEN INVASION at GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO
Our next twist of fate, came as we crossed the state line Utah into Colorado. Our intrepid Mazda 626 carried a 75,000 mile extended care power-train warranty from Ford. At precisely 76,020 miles Ms. Mazda dropped her transmission. After the usual paranoid stressing over ways a mechanic, knowing you are not exactly return customer material, might take a shortcut or two in his job. And after reconciling ourselves with the 2500$ US, our "mishap" would cost us, we settled into a pine cabin cum oven in an RV park. The Best Western in the booming metropolis of Grand Junction, Colorado cost a cool C-note a night, and we were likely to be here upwards of a week.
I am waiting for a local headline, “Wandering Californians Sighted”. Nobody walks here. I repeat, nobody. People transport themselves in monstrous trucks, sometimes merely large SUVs, the Escalade and Navigator type. You are more likely to see a Peterbilt towing an RV, in turn towing a Jeep, than you are to spot a bicycle here. I received an inordinate amount of attention walking 'home' from drug store to the RV park: Big Rigs stopped in the middle of the road just to let me cross, big blond women waved at me through their SUVs' tinted windows, an excitable group of youngsters shouted incomprehensible comments, passing by in their cherry red convertible. I looked forward to taking public transit the next day. The Best Western's cute teen receptionist giggled, explaining that “Yes, there is a bus, but it don't go into town, it goes out to the mall."
The Supersize Junction
Arid and empty Middle America
eats the tires off my Japanese car.
United in blue denim and
Insatiable appetite,
Heroic hunters of 2 for 1 deals,
Brave and Free, put the pedal to metal.
The mall's vivid urban landscape,
poured and prefab-ed in sweaty China
Marks civilization in the dust of God’s country.
SUPERFICIAL INSIGHTS, and the DEPTH of MIDDLE AMERICA
A brief ray of hope that we'd be set after 3 days has dissipated; it'll be another 3 at least. After the initial bout of despair we settled into a booth in the diner on the outskirts of our local mall: cheerful scrubbed young burger-flippers, perfect air-conditioned nostalgia, and a rigorous diet of sugar and saturated fats.
I am re-entering the long forgotten though newly familiar mode of being a female and a foreigner. It is clear that people here prefer to communicate with Lee rather than me. Thank God he can speak a convincing American form of English, (my own hybrid European accent seems to pain them.) We enjoy a superficial, polite interaction with people here since (a), our novelty is of limited interest to the average Grand Junctionite, and (b), we are leaving before long anyway. Even upon arrival, sat broken-down desolate by the side of the road, the several people who stopped, inquired from their air-conditioned SUV's, ascertained our distress, wished us a "Nice day" and "Good luck" and went swiftly on about their business. Was it fear we may pull out a gun? Or were they suddenly affected by the poetic justice in us Golden Staters' misfortune? Did the initial impulse to assist just get trumped by a closer viewing our “strangeness”? Certainly there couldn't be such a scarcity of Samaritans in this overtly Christian land.
The local library receives only one paper, the local Sentinel. International perspective can be gleaned from the plentiful USA Today boxes, or from the equally ubiquitous Good News, Magazine of Understanding. The lead article in July-August's Good News explained that military actions in the Middle East were prophesied in the Bible: Brits and Americans are actually the 10th, lost tribe of Israel, destined to reclaim the Holy Land.
“Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion”, reads the sticker on the bumper of the fat monster truck. The Yellow Pages of Greater Grand Junction include seven yellow pages of Christian churches; part of another page is devoted to various Schools and school-like entities; and one-fifth of a column on another page lists Retail Book-dealers (including Adult Video Exchanges).
We were criss-crossing yet another maze of mall parking lots at dusk. A teen was out on cigarette break from his deep-frying duties at KFC. Asked for directions, he replied with this enigmatic warning: "Got no car? Watch out for tweekers.” Squads of very young mothers load up their mini-vans and pick-up trucks with many young children and many big bags of Jack-in-the-Box and MacDonald's. Could these be tweekers?
The Walmart Faithful
Clad in Walmart gear, fed on Walmart goods,
extolling the spirit of super cost-saving...
"Voloptuous people, welcome to Walmart! "
They Walmart all the day
and then Walmart half the night
for cash enough to ensure they'll be back
waltzing through those blessed aisles.
Blessed be the WallMartyrs.
Will they inherit the Earth?
Or win a brief week outside those hallowed Walls?