ENNUI GO AGAIN: Nov. 5’s just around the metaphorical corner, and acquaintances of mine say they can hardly wait. They’re psyched n’ primed to head out, wait patiently in line, and be the first to buy the CD Presidents of the United States of America II,which cleverly goes on sale Election Day.

As for the election itself, has any major election in my lifetime been so near and yet so not-there? I’m not talking about voter apathy or ineffectual complaints about the electoral status quo; those have always been with us. I’m talking the total slouching-through-the-motions aspect of the exercise. I’ve struggled for a metaphor for this anti-spectacle: An end-of-season football game between two going-nowhere teams? The last, fitful, sex act of a couple about to split up? The rote “excitement” of Elvis- and Marilyn-dressed waiters at some silly theme restaurant, or a cover band at a high-school prom?

Sure, in ’84 everyone recognized and dismissed Mondale for being what Dole is now–a seasoned insider who got nominated thanks to connections and fundraising prowess, but whom nobody had great fondness for as a potential Prez. But then there were other things going on (like the Booth Gardner/ John Spellman gubernatorial race). Now we’ve got uninspiring sideshows like Ellen Craswell looking all lost and confused when speaking to anyone outside her ideological clique.

I was sorta hopin’ for a final public-discourse confrontation with the Religious Right’s central tenet (how Jesus Christ Himself wants you to cede all authority and power to Big Business). Instead, Clinton and Locke did an end-run and positioned themselves as the sane choice in pro-business politicians. They’re just as receptive to the desires of big campaign contributors as the Republicans are–but without the annoying baggage of a social agenda, without dependencen on followers who just might someday get around to reading that Bible verse about not serving God and Mammon.

CATHODE CORNER #1: You’d expect MTV to go all hyped-out over Madonna’s baby. Sure enough, the day the birth was announced, the channel went to all Madonna videos, with congratulations by MTV Online users crawled across the bottom of the screen, interspersed with predictions by infomercial psychics about the kid’s future life. What at least I didn’t expect was an MTV promo ad featuring drag queens dressed up as aged versions of Madonna and Courtney Love, re-enacting a scene from the cult-film classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, complete with barbed dialogue like “Why don’t you go re-invent yourself?” Given Love’s former taste for baby-doll dressing and Madonna’s former Joan Crawford fixation, it’s a wonder nobody thought of it before.

CATHODE CORNER #2: As was predicted here, the Telecommunications “Reform” Act has led to fewer media giants controlling more outlets. The Time Warner Inc./ Turner (TWIT?) combine has put the pre-1948 Warner Bros. movies back under Warner’s library for the first time since they were sold to a TV syndicator in 1957, but it also created a content behemoth big enough to threaten Rupert Murdoch’s world-domination schemes. Murdoch’s suing to get his Fox News Channel (which stops just short of promising a right-wing spin on all stories) onto TWIT-owned cable systems in NYC, systems now running their full physical capacity of channels. Murdoch-friendly Republican there have offered to stick Fox News on a city-controlled cable channel and dump the public access shows on it now. In short, give even more to the big programmers and kill what little access non-conglomerate voices now get. Fortunately, TWIT (and Manhattan’s other cable operator, Cablevision) are refusing this “solution,” at least for now.

PAY LESS DRUGS, R.I.P.: The Pay n’ Save stores, once the flagship of the local Bean family’s retail empire, were sold to NYC speculators, who then sold them to Kmart, which merged them with the Oregon-based Pay Less, then spun off the combined chain to private investors, who merged it with California’s Thrifty Drug. Along the way the G.O. Guy, House of Values, and Gov-Mart Bazaar chains also joined the Pay Less fold. Now, these 1,007 outlets will be part of the East Coast-based Rite Aid circuit. It’s a good thing drug stores don’t have the same combination-warning labels drugs have.