In Last Push Before Economy Collapses, The Smurfs Ring NYSE Bell

The Smurfs cartoon was dumb and not terribly interesting. Sorry, those of you who are my age, but you know it’s true.

Here’s what’s dumber: a movie about the Smurfs, starring three-dimensional Smurfs that require the most advanced computers in the history of the universe to make. I mean, the machines that added little Smurfs to scenes with Neil Patrick Harris (WHY DID YOU DO THIS, NEIL) are literally, necessarily, some of the speediest and most complex in the world.

They were used in the vain hopes that people my age would waste like $20 of their money to go see these things prancing around New York, because, you know, that’s what we’ve been waiting for.

And it premieres today, on the day when it seems more likely than ever that the entire economy is going to fall into little tiny useless pieces because conservative Republicans can’t figure out how to backpedal from their hardline destroy-the-government rhetoric. Or, worse, because they believe the rhetoric.

So the Smurfs opened the New York Stock Exchange today – some poor schlubs trying to make a buck had to put on giant costumes to look like seven-foot tall Smurfs and clap and prance around to ring a ceremonial bell in front of traders who were biting their nails because as soon as the bell rang, they had to start selling selling selling because who knows what’s going to happen with the economy.

But this turmoil doesn’t faze Smurfette – the real 3D Smurfette, not the poor actor in the NYSE Smurfette costume. Smurfette is chilling on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, showing off a $4,700 fur handbag made by Marc Jacobs, in the hopes that one of the people issuing all those sell orders will be coerced into buying one. Also: Smurfette can offer you a $685 beret that looks like a chocolate chip cookie that’s been left out in the sun for too long.

America is a great country. I love it and hope desperately that we can manage to avoid catastrophe and return to the days of milk-and-honey that I grew up with, the days in which I’d watch the Smurfs and roll my eyes and then go screw around outside until dark.

But today it just feels like there’s the Smurf America and the real America – and the Smurf America, which is supposed to be for me and my generation is really for ridiculous people who spend thousands of dollars on a purse because a glossy magazine showed it being modeled by Smurfette.

And in real America, we’re just kind of hoping that, you know, Social Security checks go out next week so people don’t die.

Never mind having money for movie tickets.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.