About this time of year, in the run-up to the holiday season, my thoughts turn to Frank Capra movies. I wonder whether that venerated director's view of humanity has ever been fully validated. Can one point to a person as compassionate as those so memorably portrayed by James Stewart? I also think about the premise of It's a Wonderful Life. What would be the ripple effects of anyone of us not ever having existed? Would I experience a quantifiable depreciation in my hedonic quotient if your mom and dad had never procreated?

Rather than directly answering that specific question, I prefer (for social reasons of politeness) to consider the effect of certain celebrities' non-existence. I'd like to think that I wouldn't miss Calista Flockhart. But I rather enjoyed her self-mockery on a recent episode of "Saturday Night Live." Would I feel a nagging tug if Lou Diamond Philips had never walked this Earth? Probably not. I certainly wouldn't have missed Bats. The only justification I can discern for Kevin Bacon is that the parlor game Six Degrees of Charlie Sheen wouldn't be half as much of a brain-teaser.

In music, while I wouldn't hesitate to scream for the births of Miles Davis, Dr. Alex Patterson, Stephen Patrick Morrissey, the Hartnoll Brothers, Kate Bush, Grace Slick, Zoltan Kodaly, and Fela Kuti, I have to think long and hard about Elizabeth Fraser, Seal, Norman Cook, and Sarah Cracknell. In the cases of Elizabeth Fraser and Seal, I have to grudgingly consent to their conceptions on the grounds that many of my friends have had very successful sexual encounters soundtracked by this pair's unique, orgasm-encouraging vocal talents.

Sarah Cracknell, though a marginal candidate for existence, would have passed the test-- just. But that was before I heard Kelly's Locker. Never the brains behind St Etienne's glossing of long since abandoned bachelor pad, girl-group, three-minute pop, she provided a convenient dolly head for Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley to proliferate their Xeroxed fanzine-esque adoration of a load of old thrift-store tat.

And for a while, I was hooked. "Avenue" and "California Duvet" still rank among my favorite Brian Wilson rip-offs. I can overlook the boys' dumping of original vocalist, Faith over Reason's Moira Lambert, when I remember fondly David Holmes' skull-crushing acid remix of "Like a Motorway." And come to think of it, I rather enjoyed Sound of Water when I last paid attention to it.

However, stripped of the Croydon lads who long for a walk-on part in a Nick Hornby novel, Cracknell comes severely unstuck. Far more dire than a One Dove-less Dot Allison, Cracknell minus Wiggs and Stanley exposes her own childish dream to be Julie Christie in Billy Liar. Except Cracknell would be filmed stumbling over her shopping bags, ending up arse-over-tit in a gray-skied shopping precinct, confused, embarrassed, and cursing the world for being so unfair to her.

In an attempt to disbuse us of this image, Instinct Records, fresh from causing no stir whatsoever with a new Marianne Faithful album, release a companion b-sides EP to the lousily selling Cracknell album, Lipslide. Which, by the way, was released a donkey's age ago in the UK and has been re-jigged for American audiences. Notice? I hardly even cared.

So I'm presented with the splatty back end of Instinct's campaign to get a little Cracknell into every home. Do I really wish to describe the pallid piano ballad that is "Judy, Don't You Worry," or the Euro-dance dreck that Cracknell calls "Taking Off for France?" Nico's Liquid Steel remix of "Anymore" adds a modicum of drum-n-bass excitement to the original but not enough to excuse the Vengaboys-for-Uptown-Soirees statement of vacuity, "Penthouse Girl, Basement Boy." How about if I skip the would-be anthemic were-it-not-so-Michael Bolton "How Far?"

Thank you for your consideration of my feelings and not pushing me to describe this purposeless release any further. Just like the characters in a Capra flick, I feel I've learnt a great moral lesson. I feel your warmth and humanity, and your concern for my well-being humbles me. I am now very glad you were born. You have improved my life substantially. There's a place for you at my Thanksgiving table. Do stay a while, friend.

-Paul Cooper