Borat & KISS Come to Town

I went to New York to find out about Borat. Not really, but find out I did, unless you count the vague notion I had of him previously, based on reading something or other at sometime or other. My nephew and I happened to see David Letterman’s broadcast on October 30, and Sacha Baron Cohen in character happened to be a guest, talking up his movie.

He was funny. The movie clip was funny. I understand that those who would impose a never-offend/kindergarten-class standard on humor, and even Kazakhstani officials, have taken umbrage at his antics. Lighten up, I say, especially to the Kazakhstanis. We here in the USA are often misrepresented in the movies, very often in the ones we make ourselves, and we live with it.

Borat succeeded in making me aware of Borat and the movie, which was the purpose of him being on TV. But I’m not an impulsive teenager, so I didn’t rush out to see the movie on opening weekend, and odds are that I’ll consider seeing it in the theater but not actually do so – or not at full price if I do. Instead, I'll rent the DVD someday, where I get around to it. This is why many movies aren’t made for grownups.

Borat also had a “float” in the Greenwich Village Halloween parade. I know because I went with my nephew Dees and fellow Alexander band member Cyrus to see the parade from a spot on Sixth Ave. near 14th St. Good spectacle, once it got under way: mostly marchers in a wide array of costumes, but also bands and decorated vehicles, and best of all, enormous puppets on tall rods, carried along the parade route by a number of puppeteers each. My favorites were the dancing-skeleton puppets and the big pumpkins, lit somehow from the inside. A more comprehensive description of the parade is here, more than a single onlooker could possibly see – its photo selection is a “best of” selection of the many thousands of costumes on view over the years, I think.

A handful of Borats were riding in a Borat-themed truck; for all I know, Sacha Baron Cohen was among them. Elsewhere – and a lot of people in the audience were in costume – we saw a couple of other Borats. The truck, at least, counted as an advertisement, and there were other ad-vehicles in the parade as well. Most conspicuous was the KISS float. As it passed, I wondered whether actual KISS band members were involved, or if it were merely some kind of tribute. How would you know just looking at them? I looked it up later, and sure enough, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were riding on the vehicle, in town promoting a new box set. According to the AP, they were “grand marshals” of the parade. That might be fitting, but it didn’t seem like the kind of parade that needed that concept.

KISS is still around? I was never a fan, but of course I knew about them in their ’70s heyday. I would have thought by now that the forces of the KISS Army would have been defeated by the forces of Time, which defeats everyone eventually. But not yet, I guess. At least they have the advantage of not visibly aging in place, unlike, say, the Rolling Stones.

There wasn’t as much political content in the parade as I thought there would be, coming as it did a week before the election. But there was a large George W. Bush head on a pole, with a spool of paper coming out of his mouth that said, LIES HATE FEAR. Later, a fellow dressed like a peach but wearing a Bush mask came by, holding a sign that said, “I’m Peach Bush.” Must have seemed clever when he thought of it. More bizarrely still, a man carried a sign (his costume was forgettable, and I have forgotten it) that berated Madonna as a “cultural imperialist” for her recent foray in transnational adoption. The mind boggles. He might also be worried that the KISS Army is about to invade Africa, too.