I Know How to Be Famous

I used to think I wanted to be famous. Then I realized that you don't need a lot of money, cars, noteriety, and ceaseless blowjobs from skinny, anonymous blondes to be an obnoxious asshole that nobody likes.

My decided lack of fame doesn't haunt me nearly as much as it did when I was a frustrated early twentysomething and I had delusions about being a young, dapper Andy Rooney, whose rapier wit propelled the country into a new enlightened age of superior elocution and elevated thought. I mean, Andy Rooney has existed for around eight decades, and we're all still basically retarded.

But I definitely wanted to be famous when I was younger, though I didn't really know why. I suppose, more for my own benefit than for society's, in spite of what I might have said in the above paragraph. I mean, really, who does fame really benefit besides the famous? I haven't especially found my life improving since Rachel Ray got her own TV show and cloying catchphrases.

Fame, more than anything, though, seemed like an awful lot of work when I was younger. You had to move to New York City or Los Angeles, plaster the walls of your shitty apartment with photographs of yourself taken from plays or concerts, forsake every living friend and relation in favor of your own narrow, obsessive pursuit of personal glory and eat nothing but pizza slices for two years while busking your soul away in some subway alcove while nursing STDs given to you by some unwashed, 108-pound groupie with black eyeshadow and a spiderweb tattooed on her whaletail.

You know-- until you get "discovered."

For a lazy little shit like me, who expects adulation and recognition to be inserted into his bloodstream via a Ron Popeil flavor-injector enema, that seemed like rather a lot to go through for no actual promise of victory.

I straddle the tenuous divide between unabated arrogance and unmitigating self-doubt. On the one hand, I was convinced that there was absolutely no need for me to go to college-- that every talent I possessed, whether it was a knack for the written word or a remarkable penchant for embodying another skin on a stage, was perfectly honed and would in no way benefit from advanced instruction. On the other hand, I was also convinced that I would never amount to anything and that God would make my dick fall off in a gangrenous heap because He wouldn't be able to bear witnessing me procreate and bring into the world another talent-free wretch.

So, I guess I never fully believed that shooting for fame was a worthwhile pursuit. And maybe that's a good thing. I still can't articulate what I learned in college, except that 20-year-olds shouldn't be allowed to have their own radio shows, that unmarried sex with Catholic girls isn't worth it and ditto on the unlimited meal plan.

Of course, it's tempting nowadays to rethink the whole idea of being famous, since it's changed so much. People like Paris Hilton have taught us that you don't need any talent whatsoever in order to be famous, and hundreds of other slackjawed morons, unwatchable dunderheads and irrepressible himbos have followed in her wake to solidify that notion. We are no longer a society that rewards talent, we have turned into a mass of idiots that obsess over... well... I don't even know what it is exactly that we obsess over, what facet of a person's personality or ass that we can't get enough of in pop culture. But, whatever it is, it's usually several phyla removed from talent.

And I don't mean to pick on people like "The Situation," Lord knows. Take a look at the publishing industry. It used to be you had to have studied/fake orgasmed under Norman Mailer just to get a publisher to look at your manuscript. Now, people like Julie Powell and the chick who wore a brown dress every day for a year, and the guy who lived like Jesus for a year, and the family that bought nothing from China for a year, etc, etc, etc are turning into authors. All it takes is 365 days, a blog, some angst, and you're all set!

Now, this newfangled way to get famous has been tried and true tested over the course of the last couple years and it's pretty fool-proof-- and I have to admit that, for such an obsessive blogger as I, it's pretty tempting. I mean, I could eat nothing but turnips for a year and write about that. Or, I could walk around with my fly down every day for a year and blog about people's reactions-- I could even wear a hidden camera and snap pictures of their aghast faces and post them on my blog instead of actual words-- lots of bloggers just put up pictures and get away with it; why couldn't I?

I could do it. Because I know how to be famous in 2010.