YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION?

AIR LENNONS (or, YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? YOU SURE?)

So it seems Nike (they're a shoe company, apparently) is going to put out a line of sneakers commemorating John Lennon. They're going to be called "Peace Chucks." They'll have John's autograph on the heel, and lyrics from Imagine on the toe.

Imagine all the punks
kicking your poser teeth in,
wearing shoes of peeeace
yeeoo-hoo, ooo

The fact that Yoko Ono, godblessher (full disclosure: I still have a Christmas present she gave me a couple of years ago, a basket of undrinkably bad teas from around the world. It's an obvious regift, sure, but thanks to the fact that the tea really sucks, I'll probably hang on to it forever), decided that this was a good idea doesn't bother me. That's her job: to maximize the value of John's estate and his legacy moving forward. She has done spectacularly well at this, especially since he died, almost a quarter of a century ago now.

"John Lennon" long ago stopped being a pure artistic totem to become the real British Elvis, commodified and iconized until you can barely see his original shape under the multiple layers of hegemonic sheen. Which I can live with. Idols are there for killing and canonizing, and then you find new idols to feed into the sausage maker. Right on.

The only part of this that really bothers me is that they're going to be Chuck Taylor All-Stars. My shoes.

I knew this was going to happen when Nike bought out Converse. My sacred sneaks, which I've worn about 350 days a year every year since high school, are going to become a series of museum pieces for celebrity necrophiliacs.

I can't blame Yoko or Nike too much, I guess. Part of their job is to administer their property, which means sell the rights for a good price when one comes up. It sucks from a purity-of-art standpoint, but how much boycotting do you really want to do?

So fine, retrofit history for commerce. Sic transit gloria mundi, whatever and ever, amen. Iggy's selling Mercedeseses or whatever. That'll keep him in whatever drugs he's doing to keep himself from doing drugs.

And now some kids'll be wearing Air Lennons. Sorry, "Peace Chucks."

It sounds so dirty. But again. I can deal. I might even get a pair myself. Because you know, I'd love to be as high as John got, even if only metaphorically, and if the shoes do it, then well, you know, we all want to change the world.