ENCORE DU OPIUM

Cults of personality can be wonderful things when the object of adulation is oneself. The perversions that accrue are minor taxes considering the unexpected benefits. Upgrades on airlines, choice tables at fancy bistros, access to powerful politicians and of course the unaccountable magnetism one suddenly acquires with the fairer sex and the inevitable dancers around the lodestone.

I witnessed this ugly phenomenon first hand when I ill-advisedly accompanied my good friend David Schoffman on a recent trip to Macau.

Everywhere we went we were trailed by infatuated fans, starstruck by this middle aged bald guy with a bad teeth.

We were constantly surrounded by exhilarated schoolgirls, thick-necked paparazzi, badgering journalists, lickspittling critics, tedious curators and of course, bootlicking collectors cozying way too close up the hairy anus of the revered and exalted "master."

Schoffman, of course, lapped it up like it was bread pudding.

He was there for an exhibition of his new, extremely large sinocentric paintings that were specifically designed for the recently inaugurated Macau Center for Contemporary Art (known simply as Mecca to the locals).

David's dumbed-down imagery, with its crude cartoon-like drawing of truncated torsos and wacky wicker furniture was a huge hit with the locals. To them it all seems so thoroughly American. It's almost as if a collective amnesia has deprived the Chinese of their glorious Tang past.

I guess in the end we all get what we deserve.

Macau gets some cool, contemporary caché, David gets a big fat paycheck and a bunch of free foot massages and I get to bone up on my Portuguese while doing a little bit of gambling on somebody else's dime.

But still ... what a ham!