Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Why Can’t Americans Just Not Be Celebrities?

Well, I guess it’s because they don’t have an integrated, mature society in which others care for one another.  I often have heard Obama talk about values American cherish, I’ve heard him embrace Reagan and so on, but you just know his heart isn’t in it.  You know that Americans don’t believe it, either.  It’s the hollow chamber when the bullet’s gone and the stag has scampered away and you’re left with the grey sky and the chill echo and the dry brown reeds and your buddy’s silence around you. (Girl in the trailer, she wouldn’t know for shit.) It doesn’t take a village to raise an individual; it takes one man and an inheritance.  It takes dubya and some draft-dodgin’ tough talk.  And jogging with a gun. Trust Americans to bomb us back to the caves of pre-civilization.  I’m not sure the last time I went jogging with a gun, but I’m guessing, oh, 5 million years, give or take.

Such thoughts occur to me after watching tv and movies.  Say you like music, or movies, or anything popular in general.  Say you wonder: “what ever happened to. . . ?”  Odds are, if it was someone outside America, that person went on to have a functional, productive life.  But in America, you can’t.  Call it the _insert name of person or Scott Baio here_ syndrome.  All over the world, people go in and out of the celebrity business with _relative_ ease.  But in America, you are defined by your momentary fame, and you can never escape it.

Well, ok, let’s say I’m wrong about this.  Off the top of my head, I’m thinking about that John Tesh guy—I think he had an entertainment show, or something.  You could land a jet on his face.  I think he went on to become a singer with some success.  Ok, fine, so now I’m wrong.  Or am I right X2?

But wait—let’s stop blaming the Tesh guy; let’s not even try to get teshphobic about this.  Let’s blame it on the people, the people who really ought to be blamed.  Blamed for what?  Loving celebrity?  Well, yes, because if you turn every tesh into a celebrity, then you can’t even grow a radish to feed yourself.  You can’t adjust to reality.  The center cannot hold because there is not a center—you’re Tesh, he’s Tesh, we’re all famous and . . . .

Tesh.

That’s what the end of the world looks like: not a whimper or a bang; just a puff of ~tesh~ in the distance as leaden dreams reground in the far-off desert of the soul; a ~tesh~ of your grandmother wondering (no, really wondering, what you were thinking); a ~tesh~ a ~tesh~ as you flap that magazine back in the supermarket and the line advances.

Well, kudos to Tesh, unlike Jon Stewart (Johnny Leibowitz), for having the conviction at least to keep his own name (I’m sure it must be), instead of calling himself Rock Mayrifle or Mascotty Merican.

Motto: Celebrity is wise, for those who wish only to live and contribute for 15 mins.

What is with the half-face photo thing for people on webpages?

I really don’t get around much on the web, you may have noted, but now it seems that, everywhere I go—friends, acquaintances, total strangers—they all seem to be putting half their faces on their webphotos.

Is this cool?  Why?

--Perhaps this is like getting a tattoo—a way for deeply conformist ~individuals~ who lack unique personalities to think to themselves that they have expressed something notable about themselves.  They think they can do this by putting some ugly blotch on their bodies (usually they do dislike or are insecure about their bodies, or they wouldn’t try to cover/deface them).  Or, as is so often the case, they’re shallow (and insecure) and can’t express, or have no confidence to express themselves, through their minds as well as bodies.  Is the half-face an extension of the tattoo aesthetic?  The tattooed person says: “here’s a tattoo that externalizes something about me than I can’t communicate or can’t be bothered to and that I want you to see and remark upon.”  The half-face person says: “I’m really quite mysterious and full of remarkable qualities, but, tee-hee, I’m not going to show you all of them until you stroke my ego enough to wonder (though I can stroke it myself just by looking at half of me and thinking of you) what the rest of ME is really like.”

I’ll say this for tattooed people, though—it could be their first and only contact with ink, and in a way that can’t be lamented.  Best tattoo guy I ever knew was a guy named Tracy, or something, that I worked with.  He was a bartender with a motley string of tattoos down his left arm (he was tattoo before tattoo was cool—old school), and he had about four that were ex-girlfriends.  So he’d have “Sheila”: line through it; “Wendy”: line through it; “Debbee”: line through it; “I mean Debbie”: line through it, etc.  Just goes to show, a chick does love a man with tattoos.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to sidetrack into tattoos; I grasp that they have a long history—Nazis putting them on Jews, and so on—and I obviously don’t want to take on all the people with PhDs in tattoos.  They know their uniqueness, and they needn’t deign to express themselves by noting the likes of me.

--it is a truth universally propagated by scientists (you know, those geniuses), that humans naturally are attracted to and like and trust people with symmetrical faces.  Most people aren’t blessed like that.  Most people have halves of their faces they prefer.  So they post those, the ones they like the most or think are most attractive.

--it’s just trendy (like tattoos).  You see one person do it, and you think: “hey, that’s neat; I’ll do it, too,” but you don’t realize 40 million other people just clicked on the same thought.

--in a world when people expose so much of themselves constantly—and, indeed, in many ways _have_ to (even those who would prefer not to), you just have to show something, so half a face is at least something.

Or is it something else?  Are those tiny pictures the web has given us just so small that you can’t put a whole face in there? 

Well, at least I’ve got a face.  Blue, querulous, Alfalfan, but at least a face.

zr

The Name – What is a Zorg Report?

No-one is wondering, so I’ll not tell you.  This name (Zorg Report) got chosen a hundred years ago in a dim galaxy far away.  It actually has nothing to do with sci-fi (sorry), and it isn’t even copied from such obvious names as “The Colbert Report” or “The Rick Mercer Report.”  Believe it or not, the name actually even predates those (hence perhaps the galaxy reference).  The name is just really a kind of buried joke that involves an old friend and a so-so west-coast quarterback and a New York jazz musician.  Cut out the friend and if you can (be the FIRST to) accurately name and accurately describe the last two people in that last sentence, then post as much and I’ll buy you a cd from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca or Amazon.uk or whatever.  I’ll pay up to 20 US or Cdn or pounds or even Euros, and yes, I’ll pay the postage, too.  You pick a cd you want from somewhere up to and under 20 US/Cdn/UK/Euro and that I can pay for, and I’ll order it and send it to you postage paid.

If you would like to suggest another name for this blog, then fire away on that.

And, as we know, so many blogs fall into a state of . . . .

Nevertheless, I will hold up my end of the bargain as long as I am around.

zr