Simpler pleasures better by long shot

My friend and I were standing in line to buy a bagel sandwich when a furry, 6-foot armadillo strode by without any fanfare or introduction.

This wasn't some staging of performance art. There wasn't a camera crew recording a skit for "Trigger Happy TV." He wasn't protesting the reckless driving of truckers in the Texas panhandle.

It was just a guy in an armadillo costume, strutting his plated stuff through the Student Union.

"That's something you don't see every day," my friend, only mildly bemused, said.

"Nope."

And that was it. Nothing more. I got a club sandwich and Sun Chips and forgot all about it.

The entertainment industry has erased my sense of the surreal in its slow decline into excessive inaccessability.

Thanks to big-budget blockbusters, superfluous storylines and outrageous television programming, there's no longer a threshold for the truly absurd.

Born-again Christian vampires battle their blood-sucking brethren in the Dickensian underbelly of urban filth. Monsters of modern science fight for the right to feast on humanity. The Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

Crazy, I know.

Even segments of popular fiction and art have fallen victim to the False Idol of Excess. Spelling out murder mysteries in alphabetical order isn't clever; it's a gimmick. Smearing fecal matter on a canvas in the form of the Virgin Mary isn't beautiful; it's the start of an E. coli epidemic.

Popular entertainment has spent too much time in mother's make-up drawer, throwing on clashing tones and gaudy jewelry. All bright colors drawn on in thick excess, it's more clownish than engaging.

We have all become numb to the ridiculous.

And, more importantly, we have lost touch with simple beauty. Concrete, clean and meaningful art has only niche occupancy.

Production and sensual stimulation have kicked the building blocks of art to the backseat. We need a return to our childlike appreciation for the beauty of the real, but there's hope on the horizon.

Hollywood has seen a recent growth in comparably low-budget films that focus on human interaction rather than superhuman overaction.

"Before Sunset" is striped down to the core elements of character, setting and plot. The protagonists interact, move through the story and come together. It's one of the best films of the year.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" encapsulates the very idea of going back to move forward. The subtleties that define a life unfold a tangible, knowable character.

Music, though still dominated by the pablum on Clear Channel's broadcasts and MTV, has its minimalist heroes.

MF Doom's latest, MM..Food?, is the meat and potatoes of hip-hop genius. There's no garnish, no complexity, no bloody bling. The appeal lies in the lack of refinement, in the idea of creation at its inception.

The Pixies, one of the most influential rock bands of the 20th century, are back on tour. They're old, which obviously makes them much less cool, but their songs are still sharp and starkly naked. The success of their return tour, which focuses on their gritty hits, is proof of the power of lo-fi energy.

We have to get back to that. We have to demand more of it. The problem with most entertainment is that it's all bright lights and banging drums without a beat or center stage. These exercises in excess build gilded shells without souls.

We need to act like kids again, both in appreciation and production.

The Good Book says: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

But God's got it all wrong.

Contact Nick Parker, a senior journalism and English major, at panic@email.unc.edu.