Google 'artist themes'?!? What the #$%&?!?!

Heavens, I'm all agog at Cnet's breathless account of Google's unveiling of its new iGoogle Artist Themes, at a soirée chockablock with art-world celebrities.

Which is crap, but I figure you can't write about this kind of weirdness without using fru-fru words such as "agog," "soirée", and "chockablock."

What it comes down to is that now, you can decorate your personalized Google search page (did you even know you could have a personalized Google search page? I didn't) with graphics allegedly designed (or at least approved) by culture-celebs such as art-worlders Jeff Koons and Dale Chihuly, fashion somethingorothers Diane von Furstenberg and Oscar de la Renta, relentlessly kawaii babyographer Anne Geddes, and overrated choreographer/self-promotion genius Mark Morris.

(Once, at a modern-dance conference, I heard big-rep dance critic Mindy Aloff declare, with breathless sincerity, "I first became interested in Mark Morris because he had such beautiful hair!"... but that's a topic for another time, preferably a time when I'm packing heat.)

Okay, I shouldn't kick. The themes, generally, are at least pleasant – go ahead, be your own art critic by clicking this link and having a scroll-through. Personally, I'm partial to the insouciantly grayscale theme by New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff.

But the whole thing still seems primarily like a branding exercise: we're supposed to think Theme X is cool because Culture-Celeb Y designed it, rather than the other way around. And the choice of what kinds of celebrity "brand names" to use seems stilted; I'd have loved to see some more adventurous choices of art-and-design celebs (how about, say, a Chip Foose theme?) Google's famous corporate motto is "Don't be evil," but apparently being flippin' obvious is still okay.

And wait a sec -- Isn't the Internet supposed to be the place where "nobody knows you're a dog"? Wasn't it supposed to be the Next Great Thing that breaks down barriers, annihilates distances, brings the whole world together within touchy-feely distance, and makes it possible to celebrate the artistic genius of everyone, not just a few big-name celebrities? Yeah, I know, nobody really believes that anymore -- but Google is making so much money off the whole funky fantasy that it ought to at least act as if it believes it.

In other words, how come I can't get an iGoogle a la Marcia Joffe-Bouska? She may live in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but I'll bet she'd come up with a better theme than Oscar de la fricking Renta's...