Spending your childhood years being filled with consumerism and celebrity, like most I am one of the brainwashed masses revealing in the concept of “celebrity” and lifestyle. Today’s generation is no longer satisfied with the career of an individual but the personal life; so obsessed we are that hundreds of millions are made every year off their every movement, dietary gimmick, publicity stunt love affairs and in all honest even there bowl moments (yes, apparently celebrities are not as inhumanly perfect as we would believe).
For years I aspired to entering the manufactured bubble, where selection is only for the most aesthetically pleasing and charming; in effect those born with a silver spoon firmly implanted amongst their perfect teeth!
However, I have become one of the liberated and dissolution members of youth as the celebrity bubble was monumentally popped by one of its own privileged occupants, leaving my life void of meaning and dreams… yeah right!
Whilst holidaying in California, USA , we decided to rent a car and travel the whole length of the weird and wonderfully plastic state. Mecca for the glamorous and epicenter of the famous; we inevitably gave into temptation and bought us as little piece of Hollywood in the form of a housing map on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Whilst travelling down the many winding streets of well kept hedgerows and vast goliath walls fronted by double gates and notso much a house to be seen anywhere, we were involved in an “incident”.
My mother, who struggles with road competency, whilst driving on the “right” side of the road, was consulting the map to find the house of a certain Mr. George Clooney (the housewives favorite) when her female talent of multitasking failed her as she ‘clipped’, i.e. forced a jogger to mount the bonnet of the car. After the car and pedestrian both came to a standstill, my mother being my mother, went onto bombard this gentleman with a catalogue incoherent nervous ramblings. Only to discover that of all of the male population the man my mother hit was no one other than the comedian and actor, Steve Martin. This invariably caused my mother to enter a certain trance of confusion, to which her nearby psychotic stare at this man represented that of a diabetic entering a hyperglycemic coma.
Expecting a saintly white light to appear behind him, as his celebrity status surely required, before entering into a charming exchange of witty banter with my mother which left her feeling reassured that he had come to no harm, you can my surprise when the following happened. Martin vigorously began to bang on the front of the car before branding us with the shamefully desperately and degrading label of being, “A bunch of fucking tourists!”
And there it was…in one fail swoop… my innocence and bubble burst! In all honesty, yes, we were a bunch of bleeping “tourists” and yes I wouldn’t have been too impressed either if someone had nearly mowed me down, but that is the point. Celebrities aren’t supposed to be like me, they are supposed to be this super human embodiment of the ideal, to which I can stare in glossy magazines and on television screens and admire.
So there we have it your emulated vision of this martyr unfortunately can never live up to the reality of cold light of day, so my advice if you are unable to accept the alienating truth that is celebrities are mere mortals just about as extraordinary as you or I, don’t ever ever meet your hero!
