I never have understood the way humans react to celebrity. It really makes no sense. Every time I go to a grocery store I see five or six different magazines devoted solely to Hollywood gossip at the checkout stand. It truly mystifies me that enough Americans could care enough about the lives of people they have never met to support such a large publishing industry.
Do people just not have lives of their own? Or are their lives really so boring and unfulfilling that they’ll pay to read what goes on in the lives of others? How could anybody who doesn’t know Brad Pitt actually care about whether or not he had a baby? Lots of people I actually know are having babies, why would I want to buy a magazine and read about people I don’t know doing it?
All America seems to want to know about Pitt is what’s going on in his love life. If I met him the only thing I would ask is “When are you going to go back to doing movies that don’t suck?” (Or if it was Angelina, I would ask when she is going to start doing movies that don’t suck.) He went from doing some seriously great films (Fight Club, Snatch, Seven, A River Runs Through It) to doing crap like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Ocean’s Eleven through Eighty-two. The only magazine he should be on the cover of is Actors Who Need To Learn How To Turn Down A Script Weekly.
One person told me that to most people Hollywood is like a giant soap opera. That might help me if I could understand why anyone would want to watch a soap opera. I guess at least with celebrities knowledge about their lives has the potential to be useful. There is a non-zero chance (as long as you don’t round to fewer than 357 decimal places) that knowing Tom Cruise’s baby’s name will one day benefit you when you happen to run into him at Starbucks. There’s absolutely no possibility that knowing what happened on General Hospital will ever do anything other than lower your IQ.
If people were merely fascinated with celebrities I could at least ignore it, but it often goes well into the realm of idol worship. A great example of that is Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy. It’s an oft-reported fact that on September 11, 2001 MacFarlane missed his flight from Boston to Los Angeles because he showed up ten minutes after his plane stopped boarding due to a hangover. He his since often joked that drinking can save your life. I don’t really like my odds on that one, but it definitely saved Fox’s Sunday night lineup.
Anyway, the part that fascinates me is that I once read an interview where he said that people often ask him what he would have done if he was on the plane. Boy do I wish I was in his position on that one. I’d give anything to have people ask me that question. I would say “Well, first my eyes would turn into slow-rotating hypnosis spirals, which is a superpower granted by the MPAA to anyone whose DVDs sell over 100,000 copies. I’d use that to lull the terrorists into a deep sleep. Then I’d have a stewardess fluff me and I’d club them to death with my massive penis. I’d follow that by landing the plane while delivering twins for the pregnant lady in 1B and drinking a bottle of whisky, all at the same time.”
I mean, seriously, who asks that question? “What would you do?” As if, because he is a celebrity, he would have done anything differently than all of the normal people on that flight. I may be the guy’s biggest fan, but I’ll tell you what he would have done. He would have soiled himself and then crashed into the World Trade Center and died in a giant ball of fire like everyone else on that plane.
So here’s a little tip for any of you who don’t already know this: celebrities aren’t demigods. They don’t have superpowers, and they sure as shit aren’t going to do anything differently in the event of a terrorist strike than any regular guys. They’re just people who are good at entertaining, and hell, some of them aren’t even good at that (yeah, I’m talking to you Ben Affleck).
And most importantly, they aren’t even really that interesting. True, they get married, get divorced, cheat on their spouses, have babies, get in fights with their friends, get addicted to drugs, and occasionally get drunk and crash their Escalade into a stranger’s house. But if you just have five friends you’ll get to see them do all of that stuff and more. I never thought I’d say this to anybody, but get a life. Put down your stupid People Magazine and go join a book club or something. Quit wasting your time discussing people you don’t know. Except, of course, for Kevin Federline, trash him all you want. He’s a douche bag.
