Celebrity Containment

Last night, during a melatonin induced slumber, I dreamt of a US media outlet operating under a no-celeb news policy. An early morning check of my email inbox revealed that my dream has a small chance of coming true. According to Mediabistro.com, the AP will no longer run stories on Paris Hilton unless they are in someway connected to actual salient news- in short, no Paris. I followed the link to the parent article and was delighted to find that this was true. Finally after having to endure her foolish antics for what seems like eons the informed news reader can enjoy publications that are Paris-free. One can only hope that this trend will catch on and other outlets will relegate celebrity photos, gossip and reportage to the celebrity rags, tabloids and back pages where they belong.

I try to avoid frivolous news items but in a society in which image is rapidly replacing substance it is hard to keep news of Britney, Paris and Anna out of my head. On the subway I overhear discussions, based on news reports, about the tragic plights of starlets, singer/video porn stars and socialites. Web portals blast you with star stories as you try to log on. TV news always manages to sneak in a celeb quickie. News stand covers are littered with their manufactured images and the images of those lesser beings who strive to emulate them in their notoriety. I find it upsetting that I have to even consider their existences in spite of the fact that I go out of my way to avoid knowledge of them.

My upset turns to the underpinnings of paranoia as I try to imagine those who benefit from this sad situation. Certainly, the magazine industry and journalists (there should be another name for celeb reporters as “journalist” has too much of an air of respectability) fare well. The writers save time on editing, fact checking, gathering real sources because there is no need for any of that with the tripe they produce. The magazines have and endless supply of fodder. Celebs, being human, are always doing something and everything they do is interesting even getting a coffee, doubly so if it will convince us to buy that same coffee. For the larger entertainment industry it is all free publicity, even bad PR is good PR. Of course some of it is just indulgence of morbid public curiosity, which says much about or society. But how much exposure do we need? How much real news are we missing out on while we read daily reports of Anna’s decomposing body or Britney’s shaved head?

I can’t help but think there is some evil intent behind it all. I am not good at cooking up conspiracy theories and I can’t think of any one group evil enough to pin it on. I’ll just do what I always do- blame in on Cheney, a man villainous enough to shoulder the blame for all that is soulless and wrong.

Anyway, in my dream I saw myself at a local magazine store standing in front of an expansive rack of periodicals. There was not a celebrity in sight. The publications were full of news and the people around me were engrossed in intelligent discourse about what they had read and what they were going to do about it. Publishers, politicians, pundits, PR flack, admen and the like were fretting around the periphery fearing for their livelihoods and then I lost my digital camera, the one that I got for Xmas two years ago. Yeah, its non sequitor. It was a dream.

Pancake Day

Ahh, it is Ash Wednesday again. This year I am prepared because I happened to notice it on my calendar. So, I won’t have that awkward encounter when I see someone with a disconcerting black smudge on their forehead (Yes, yes we see… you are both faithful and pious. Thank you). When I was a child living in rural Maryland we celebrated the Lenten season religiously- we kicked it off with Pancake Day.

While our New Orleans counterparts were getting lining up for a night a debauchery with a parade of themed floats, monstrous puppets, drag queens and showgirls, the denizens of Coleman’s Corner were lined up in the living room of my great aunt waiting for her to ladle some pancake batter into various containers. Apparently when she was younger, and her batter less popular, she used to actually fry up pancakes for anyone who came by. They would hang out in her kitchen, summer kitchen and dining room and literally chat and chew. While the Big Easy was drinking itself into a stupor with the aid of college students, carnival tourists and other undesirables I was eating combinations of pancakes, butter, molasses, homemade jellies and syrup. As a precursor to Lent we all gorged ourselves to prepare for the next 40 “lean” days.

I loved Pancake Day because I loved pancakes and was still too young to make a decent flapjack on my own. My mother was no Julia Childs. I had a very faint idea that our Pancake Day celebration was linked to Lent, the forty days when Christians are supposed to forgo serious temptations but usually just end up swearing off consumables like, alcohol, soda, chocolate, meat and cigarettes. I never gave up anything but was always on guard to see if anyone else had let their Lenten promise lapse. Always the cynic.

The summer I turned 13, after years of pestering my mother, we finally moved to a larger town. After that, there was no more pancake day for me. My new school was Catholic and religious holiday not involving their Virgin was some how a solemn occasion. Class was constantly interrupted by the praise of the lamentations of one saint or another, one tragedy or another, or one sacrifice of another. These events were always accompanied by gruesome imagery of torture and narrated by an angry butch nun telling us that we would probably all go to hell anyway. I sat in the Ash Wednesday assembly watching each of my Catholic classmates wince as Father Bad Acne branded each of them with a grimy thumbprint. I wondered if back in Coleman’s Corner pancake batter was still being served and I thought about how I could convince my mom to take me the Denny’s that evening for pancakes for dinner.

Second Life's a Charm

I pride myself on having few addictions. I started in smoking in Catholic school grade and smoked for non-religiously ten years switching brands according to fashion and marketing. I began with the obscure, Yves St Laurent ultra lights, and progressed to a more predictable pack-a-day habit of Newports in various permutations. I smoked only when I had extra money and in social situations. I rarely smoked alone and frequently put out half smoked “chokes” if I lost the feeling. When I moved to Europe I started rolling my own and sampled shag cut tobaccos from all over the globe. I puffed on the odd Cuban, but only because it was considered contraband back home. When I returned from abroad and found that the price of cigarettes had skyrocketed from $2 to $7 a pack, I promptly went cold turkey out of a strong fiduciary responsibility to my future self. I haven’t smoke reliably since the millennium. My affair with smoking is the closest thing I think I might have had to an addiction and it was easily snuffed out.

Addictions take dedication and follow through, two qualities I struggle to foster even within activities that enrich my life. I wish I could get hooked on exercise or writing daily or even taking vitamins. Nothing becomes automatic for me not matter how many times I do it. I can never follow a schedule for long or develop habits or even fall into a rut. Sameness bores, I lose focus and lapse into inactivity as a result have survived many fads untouched by their accompanying mania. My disdain for fads was always accompanied by a smug sense that perhaps I was above the fad, too unique, too much of an individual to jump on the bandwagons. I fancied myself a truly free thinker, not one of the masses but not above the masses either just slightly to the left of the masses probably drinking a coffee and reading a news paper about the masses. I certainly never thought I would be reading an article about a mass I was about to get into.

I made it through childhood and adolescence without getting into video games. My first computer came in the early eighties replete with a big 10 inch monitor and a tape recorder to play programs, which then came on cassette tapes. A year or two later I upgraded to an Apple with a bigger monitor, disk drive and truly floppy disks. I was then presented with my first video game. While my neighbors delighted themselves with Pole Position I was working on blue and white grid paper mapping out the terrain in a “choose-your-own-adventure” words only computer role play. Hours of fun. After a month or so I swore of tech amusement and went back to reading, at least the classics had an illustration every chapter or so.

Arcades were not my thing which was good because my town’s only arcade was in the Laundromat a car ride away. Any kid who wanted to play Space Aliens had to consent to accompany their mother to the laundromat and risked having to do actual laundry in order to get a few lousy quarters. I didn’t mind doing the laundry but I didn’t like putting money into a machine just to see the words - Player 1 is over- after 10 seconds. I could not imagine skipping school with scammed or stolen money to shove it into noisy electric boxes. Even after technology had improved video gaming held no attraction for me. I never wanted to know what it felt like to be behind the wheel of a fast car or space ship. I didn’t care about trouncing and finishing my opponent in mortal combat or saving the planet from Teutonic alien mutants. Surprisingly, I was not even interested in the civilization games that allow you to play a god. All of these games lacked the one thing that I might have been looking for, anonymous human interaction.

Enter Second Life. A few weeks before the holiday I caught a piece in the Wall Street Journal about Second Life, a virtual reality universe that businesses with international offices have been using to have meetings. Second Life, or SL, is not only for corporate use it is also a social site for the masses. SL members create a customized avatar and use it to interact with other avatars and to navigate the incredible computer animated landscape. It is hard to explain. Check out Second Life for yourself.

Caution: SL it is addictive, especially for the underemployed, agoraphobics and those who wish they had a wilder side.

My Big Fat Black Comedy

Now I think we all agree that there is nothing funnier that a parody of a black woman especially if she is overweight, over 21, darker than a café au lait and has the audacity to have self confidence and exhibit sexuality in modern America. I am chuckling just thinking about Eddie Murphy’ new film “Norbit”. The onslaught of subway advertising has left the signature image of the film- a large black woman in a negligee happily squashing the movies anti-hero - etched in my brain. Finally, the public can see how we, black women, are literally keeping “our” men down. I am going to go way out on a creative limb and guess what this film is about and I hope your God that I am wrong. The woman on the poster has probably locked Norbit into a relationship that he is afraid to get out of. She keeps his balls in a jar in the kitchen next to a jar of used frying grease and recipes for fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and biscuits. Without his man orbs he is not free to pursue the many light skinned flaxen haired or even (a progressive liberal gasp) a white woman who surround him. Meanwhile we are subjected to full body shots of the fat wench who is his keeper. Hilarity abounds when fun is poked at an easy target from a voiceless and inconsequential demographic. It’s even better when the poker is from the supposed companion demographic. I love Hollywood and the way that only the crème de la crème of black culture gets its due. I also love how it strips me of my entertainment idols.

In fifth grade I did a report on Eddie Murphy. In 1985 it was not easy to find information on him in my local small town library but I managed to pull enough together to hand write a decent report. I was inspired by his then brief life story and was blown away by his talent as a performer on SNL. I begged my mom to take me to see Beverly Hills cop even though it was rated R for violence. I loved it. I used the signature theme music in my first and last ever gymnastics routine for gym class. Eddie was totally awesome! I imagined that if I became a comedian I would definitely try to transition from joking around on stage to starring in black white buddy cop pics with electronic soundtracks. It was so clear- The Beverly Hills Cop franchise, the 48 Hours franchise. Go Eddie, go! Delirious, Raw, both which seemed good at the time. Then I guess Disney bought him. Oh well, another cautionary tale.

The images of black women in film are depressing and often mean spirited. In many cases we have even been replaced by other women of color. Okay, fine, perhaps in the case of video “hoes”, this is better. Maybe not. But maybe there is something I can do, I will make my own revenge comedy. I know that this ribald comedy would never get produced even though it demeans everyone for a few cheap laughs and cleaves to and reinforces caustic stereotypes because the woman is the victor. Read on…

Premise

A black woman of means is being constantly courted by brothers of little means. Apparently she thinks that because it is 2007 and she is attractive, bright and ambitious she thinks she can be happy and date whomever she likes. The main brother, her man, is of little means and is a heinous stereotype of a black man- hyper-conceited, swaggering, on the DL, sees conspiracies against the black man everywhere, wears tight athletic clothing, has children he doesn’t take care of and is antifeminist (I will base him on my father). He holds her back in every way possible and embarrasses her daily with his lack of social graces. He is played by the lead black female in drag as no self respecting man would ever debase himself or his ilk in this way. It will also add the hilarity of the piece and save money. This man is desperate to keep this woman but he just can’t measure up and his tactics are both embarrassing and lame. In the end she deals him a scathing verbal blow decimating his character and in the end marries her non-black coworker and lives happily ever after. He on the other hand ends up with nothing, but we don’t care because he is the villain after all.

No? Not funny? Why not? Maybe the happily ever after part is too unbelievable. What if I add a scene where they do the “dozens” and someone whips off the main female’s weave? Still no? What if we make the main character the man and the villain the woman? Now that’s gold. I have an idea who can star in it.