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[excerpted from a rant I just did at Java Monkey tonight]
Here's the rub--as much as a secretly want to be famous, I want to destroy the entire celebrity system. Maybe that's why I want to be famous, so I can damage the system from the inside. But then again, I don't want to be J.Lo or Britney famous. I want to be Harlan Ellison famous or Neil Gaiman famous. Cool in that subliminal way. But movie stars and TV stars and even rock stars--knock 'em all down. Give 'em fifteen minutes and when those fifteen minutes are up--out of the pool! I think it would take a lot of the pressure off, since you'd only have a little time and then you'd be back to normal. And it'd clear some room for more people to be famous for just a little while. Hell, our attention spans are all shot to hell by television anyway, why should we have to look at the same old celebrities? Change the casts of sitcoms every few weeks so we won't get bored with them. Make it a rule that once you get a number one song, you are removed from the charts. That way we avoid songs getting played to death and beyond until we're sick to death of them. Heck, forget American Idol, let's just have a random drawing for being famous. It could be like jury duty. "Congratulations! You're famous as of November 16th. Please report to Hollywood for your photo op." Plus, if we all had a chance to be famous, we wouldn't walk around with this simmering resentment of famous people, feeling all inferior about ourselves. We could all be equally fabulous. We could trade stories. "So, how was your week?" "Oh, it was amazing! I was famous!" "Really? Cool! I was famous a few months ago. It's fun, isn't it?" That's the way celebrity should be. Andy Warhol had it spot-on. Fifteen minutes to a customer. You could get photographed, sign autographs, go to movie premiers, have a quick drug habit and then check into rehab to get over it. You could also use the rehab to detox from the whole being famous thing. We could all be aging ex-celebrities. (Ever notice that the newspapers and magazines refer to people who used to be famous as "aging" as if growing old is something only tacky people do? But that, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole other rant.)
Here's the rub--as much as a secretly want to be famous, I want to destroy the entire celebrity system. Maybe that's why I want to be famous, so I can damage the system from the inside. But then again, I don't want to be J.Lo or Britney famous. I want to be Harlan Ellison famous or Neil Gaiman famous. Cool in that subliminal way. But movie stars and TV stars and even rock stars--knock 'em all down. Give 'em fifteen minutes and when those fifteen minutes are up--out of the pool! I think it would take a lot of the pressure off, since you'd only have a little time and then you'd be back to normal. And it'd clear some room for more people to be famous for just a little while. Hell, our attention spans are all shot to hell by television anyway, why should we have to look at the same old celebrities? Change the casts of sitcoms every few weeks so we won't get bored with them. Make it a rule that once you get a number one song, you are removed from the charts. That way we avoid songs getting played to death and beyond until we're sick to death of them. Heck, forget American Idol, let's just have a random drawing for being famous. It could be like jury duty. "Congratulations! You're famous as of November 16th. Please report to Hollywood for your photo op." Plus, if we all had a chance to be famous, we wouldn't walk around with this simmering resentment of famous people, feeling all inferior about ourselves. We could all be equally fabulous. We could trade stories. "So, how was your week?" "Oh, it was amazing! I was famous!" "Really? Cool! I was famous a few months ago. It's fun, isn't it?" That's the way celebrity should be. Andy Warhol had it spot-on. Fifteen minutes to a customer. You could get photographed, sign autographs, go to movie premiers, have a quick drug habit and then check into rehab to get over it. You could also use the rehab to detox from the whole being famous thing. We could all be aging ex-celebrities. (Ever notice that the newspapers and magazines refer to people who used to be famous as "aging" as if growing old is something only tacky people do? But that, ladies and gentlemen, is a whole other rant.)
