With The Wedding just days away, my long-awaited email from the iTunes store seems a little, well, Late To Need, frankly. On offer, Wedding-themed downloads: 78 podcasts; 68 apps (46 iPhone and 22 iPad); 44 albums; and a 7-part TV series covering The Love Story, The Dress, The Dinner, The Day, The Wedding Party, The Future, and (regrettably, perhaps) a Tale of Two Princesses (which other one is, perhaps, best left implied since the most obvious choice most decidedly did not live happily ever after). In case I should care to read about the Young Couple, there is a helpful link to iBooks.
Well, thanks awfully, there’s a good chap, but where were you three months ago? How the bloody hell am I supposed to assimilate all this content in just 3 days?
But as I wade through the choices, I find that they are, shall we say, a Little Off.
There are the frivolous offerings that seem a tad disrespectful: Wedding Trivia (an oxymoron if ever there was one!); a Royal Wedding Countdown with cartoon (cartoon!!) characters; an electronic set of William and Kate paper dolls, ready for dressing in all sorts of outlandish outfits; and what seem to be the multi-media equivalent of tabloid magazines.
There are the educational offerings that seem a tad tangential (some might say, opportunistic): walking tours of London and important locations in 200 years of British Royal history (I mean, does anyone actually know any Royal history?); and other notable Royal weddings in the last 150 years (I mean, have there been any besides you-know-who?).
There are musical offerings ranging from Mendelssohn to Cockney to something sort of traditional Scottish to something sort of head-bangish, but some seem a tad off-key for such a solemn event: an album of ‘booty shaker beat’ music and two albums by the (surely self-named) Queen of V****a (one ‘Explicit’ and one apparently just G-spot-rated).
Yet the very things I need for my planned observances seem not, in fact, to be available.
Where is the Knock Up the Colonies iPhone app, to wake me in the middle of the night to watch The Wedding, real-time?
Where is the Kooking with Kate TV series that walks me through the creation of a 5-course Wedding Feast that will, nonetheless, leave me looking as if I, too, never ate?
Where is the 4-part podcast course in jewelry making that will equip me to duplicate The Ring, using laboratory-grown crystals and cubic zirconia?
And — above all — where is the Don’t Stress the Dress iPad app that will synchronize my choice of attire — especially The Hat, for heaven’s sake don’t forget The Hat — with the choices of my Facebook friends and any friends-of-friends at these GPS coordinates, to save us from the ignominy of being caught in the Same Outfit on the Big Day?
Through no fault of my own, I have come to rely on electronic media to interact with the world and I have come to accept that reality shows, social networks and celebrities are the world. And now, just when I need those media most — for what must surely be The Wedding of my lifetime, if not the entire millennium — they come in a day late and a Euro short.
This is Completely Unacceptable. I am not just Outraged. I am Not Amused.
Great column on outrage. Or perhaps boredom and over-exposure. Here’s what I expect will be the opening paragraph of my own column on Sunday: “The Royal wedding took place on Friday. On Monday, the Canadian federal election will also be over. I’m sick of both of them. ”
Jim T
I do find that I like all the leaders in inverse proportion to how much I see them. What’s that about absence making the heart growing fonder?
Great post, Isabel! YES — “Where [the HELL!] is the Knock Up the Colonies iPhone app, to wake me in the middle of the night to watch The Wedding, real-time?”
I really want to NOT want to watch it. John says he wants to watch it — if we wake up naturally (at 4 AM…). But, still, the event is like a road accident: You can’t not look.
It’s not the fact of their suitability (which seems from here genuine and sweet,
if dull) & their wedding, now that she’s pregnant…which must thrill the Queen in a strangely conflicted way… but the crapfest surrounding it as you so perfectly recorded above. (Did you see their portraits in cheese in a Pizza from Papa Johns — quite good, actually.)
I read just 10 minutes ago in Vanity Fair that the parents of the bride will be buying The Dress (@ “six figures”) but the rest of the cost ($30 million) will be borne by His folks. But on the next page I read this:
“The couple’s honeymoon [like the pre-parties], which is still being scheduled, is also expected to be a low-key affair, in keeping with the couple’s wishes for austerity….”
But the kitsch — there’s where the real money is being lost. Like the crap surrounding the Olympics, mountains of the unsold flotsam (with the half-life of uranium) will clog warehouses forever until it arrives at Antiques Roadshow.
Ex-pat Brit Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish) says every time he says the words William and Kate he throws up a little in his mouth.
If only all this energy could be harnassed for good.
As an editor, I thought you might enjoy editing this… (what I wrote to a Brit blogger):
Are you ready for the “big” day?
Americans are. See:
“Knit Your Own Royal Wedding,†by Fiona Goble
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/04/royal-wedding-kate-wills-kitsch.html#ixzz1Ka2TwPPn
In Canada, my Brit partner says we will be getting up to watch the wedding, if we wake up. After all, he says, it’s Tradition. We went to watch Diana & Prince Charles do it at a friend’s house. Then we had cake.
I believe John requires some remedial lessons in placement of prepositional phrases or whatever those thingammies are…
I wrote that. I did re-read it and thought it hilarious enough to stand.
And you were right.
Yes! Like… What do I feed my three daughters at 6AM that fits the bill? What do I feed the kids at Latvian school on Friday night (it’s my turn for snack) that works on the eve of?
Maybe we should set up a Windsor Wiki for these crucial questions.