Come on, haven't we evolved to the point in this culture where when a man
carrying a purse doesn't mean you're gay? Can't it mean you're eccentric?
Well, I guess it could, if eccentricity weren't so prevalent nowadays. I'm
beginning to think the norm is now Norm Bates. The real freak is a guy who
puts on a tie, goes off to work, does his job, comes home, eats dinner,
turns on the TV, and falls asleep in the same bed as his wife. Now that's
weird!

At one time in this country's cozy, homogenous, Richie Cunningham past,
eccentricity was exclusive domain of the outcast, the disaffected, and the
disenfranchised. Back then; breaking free of the tight behavioral
constraints imposed by society was significantly brave, if not a desperate
act.

The problem now is that the bar of abnormality is being ratcheted higher and
higher. Oddness has become the coin of the realm. Now everybody wants to be
the weird kid, in a calculated attempt to appear talented, deep, different,
or, at least fuckable.

Carnival freak shows are going out of business because they can't top the
demented pageantry at the local Greyhound bus terminal. I mean, why part
with your hard-earned cash to see a hermaphroditic dwarf pound nails through
his skull when you can just watch a guy in a Hefty bag and hip waders
purchase a ticket to Parma, Ohio, with a tube sock full of pennies and a
half eaten Ruben sandwich.

Let's face it, computer technology now gives us unlimited access to the
bizarre, Ten-year-olds can type, "elephantitis" into their internet search
engine and download medical pictures of men with enormous scrotal sacks and
turn them into greeting cards that read: YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF BALLS HAVING
ANOTHER BIRTHDAY.

Now for the most part I like Rock and Roll eccentrics. Ever since my early
years, even the stuff before I was born. 60's rock music has been fueled by
a potent dose of antiestablishment energy. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and
Bob Dylan built a nonconformist stage upon which they gave birth to the
eccentricity-as-art movement that Marilyn Manson makes a mint pilfering
today.

And don't get me wrong, I like Marilyn Manson. Hell I liked him way back
when he was Alice Cooper. But Marilyn Manson is not a true eccentric
because, you just know, the second his concert is over, he neatly drapes his
genetically neutered unitard on a hanger for pressing and talks to his
broker while he rubs Jergens lotion into the spots where the straps have
chafed his heels. Hey, true eccentrics can't turn it off. To own the world's
largest collection of Buffalo Head nickels and glue every one of them on
your 73' AMC Pacer requires true purity of vision.

In the past, people were so much easier to shock. I mean, in the fifties
when Milton Berle dressed up on TV in drag, folks watching him would laugh
themselves sick. Nowadays, we've become much more open-minded.

Folks, I say we're doing ourselves a great disservice. I think we need the
ability to be shocked back in our lives. Not so much, of course, that I'll
no longer be allowed to say the word, "Fuck" more frequently than Joe Pesci
when his hand is caught in a car door, but enough so that the truly bizarre
can once again get their due. Let eccentricity have it's day in the sun, and
trust me, it'll show up wearing an umbrella hat, carrying a Ziploc bag full
of cat shit, and an unstrung tennis racket, and every Reader's Digest "Humor
in Uniform" ever published stuffed into a Quick Draw McGraw lunch box. And I
do mean Quick Draw, and not his evil doppelganger, El Ka-bong.

Listen the main reason for the death of eccentricity is that we have
identified and therefore demystified many behaviors that were heretofore
huddled under the awning of charming idiosyncrasy. Turns out, the reclusive
hermit is an agoraphobic; the screaming misanthrope has Tourette's syndrome;
and the jovial hayseed who doesn't know what to do.uh.well, he's just the
President of the United States.