I think this "being a writer" thing is starting to sink in because lately i've been thinking a lot about what it means to be human. Also, i've been mulling over what it means to be famous. And then, naturally, the overlap: what it means to be human and famous, or human then famous, or, in the rare case, famous then human.
And it is hard in this internet-infused, video-phone enabled, 24-hr news chatcycle, to remember that famous people are human beings. Especially in a world where Lindsey Lohan exists. But at the end of what each of these these movie stars and athletes and rock gods call a day, they all must close their eyes in a dark room, and let their demons wash over them.
What if i'm a fraud? What if i blow out my knee tomorrow? Do i have AIDS?
but those are specialized demons. Famous demons for famous sleepers. These are the devils of humanity's creation, and I'm talking about the more basic. human. fears.
I will die. All of this money is meaningless when i am gone. What is the cost of being away from the one's i love? Why do people like me when i don't like myself? "Does anyone love me? Can I ever really love someone forever? Am I lovable? Do they just like me for my money, fame, power, humor, connections, free drinks, car, ___________?
___________
The last case i mentioned in my introduction -- going from famous to human -- is particularly intriguing to me because of the parameters that must be met for it to occur. Not everyone can fall from fame. Far from it. In fact, once you reach a certain level of fame, a series of events is seamlessly put in motion to encourage and publicize your tragic fall from grace and eventual bottoming out. And then your gradual but heartwarming comeback via celebrity rehab show to formal dance competition. Which is to say that America loves tearing down its idols almost as much as it loves voting for them by phone.
So once you are a, say, a Britney or a Lindsey or dare i ask for any flavor Kardashian, you can't ever be human again. You, unlike our banking industry, are not too big to fail, but rather the perfect-sized big enough to fail spectacularly. Because, as we have learned, even in jail, Paris, Lindsey, and even Martha Stewart are still more famous person that human being. We feel no tragedy in their loss (ok, maybe martha got some white people on her side). They deserve it. At are weakest moments, Paris Hilton pouting her way into a jailhouse is even funny. If the idea of you being locked behind bars is funny to any large group of people, you can be fairly certain that you will never again be human -- unless maybe when you are old and living in Montana and have become completely unmarketable. Even ironically. Even to hipsters.
So that means to go from famous to human, you must be only modestly famous. Famous enough to get consistent adulation, but maybe not famous enough that everyone knows you on sight.
Writers are the perfect example. How many of your favorite authors would you recognize if they were strolling the opposite direction in the mall? The way i figure it, a writer of any renowned is only one homicide away from being human again for the rest of their lives. And they will spend that personhood in a jail similar to famous-person jail except that no one cares and you never get out.
Which brings us naturally to the second requirement of going from famous to human; you have to do something pretty f'd up. I mean, we can forgive a ton of stuff as a society. And if you're one of those really famous people, we'll forgive (or at least forget) almost anything (see Ray Lewis and murder).
So, if you find yourself a mid-range celebrity having sex with an underaged prostitute being recorded on HD video, you better hope that DVD sells mad copies, cause your only screwing yourself (regardless of how vigorously the videotape may despite that truth).
Sadly, such an occurrence (falling from fame to humanhood, not the underaged prostitute stuff) happened recently in the National Football League. On Friday, Joshua Price-Brent was the starting nose tackle for the Dallas Cowboys, preparing for his game today against the Bengals in Cincinnati. On Saturday, Price-Brent went out on the town with his current practice squad teammate and former college teammate at the University of Illinois, Jerry Brown Jr.
On Sunday morning, this morning, Joshua Price-Brent was in jail accused of asecond-degree felony: intoxicated manslaughter. Saturday night, while speeding above the posted 45 mph, Price-Brent hit the curb on the side of the road, flipping the car and killing his passenger and friend Brown Jr. When police arrived on the scene, Price-Brent was pulling his friend from the car which was catching on fire.
This weekend Price-Brent went from famous to human. He is a pro-athlete turned man who will most likely go to jail for killing one of his best friends.
And it was this case that brought me to this existential place about "being human" in the first place. This is not a blog about the wrongness of drunk driving. I think that goes without saying. But if you can get past the drunk driving part of this, and just think about this man Justin, it is a more complicated story. Justin grew up in California, played college in Illinois, and was drafted by the Cowboys after being declared academically ineligible his senior year. While in college, he was convicted of drunk driving (in 2009) and sentenced to 2 months in jail, 2 years probation, and 200 hours of community service. Which he served.
I am not even making a Pro-Justin argument here. What I have been attempting to do, is put myself, my humanity, into the imagined experience of Justin over the past 3 days. From pro athlete on the shoulders of the world, to the murder of a college friend in less than12 hrours. In his first public statement he said, "I will live with this horrific and tragic loss every day for the rest of my life." In reading the full statement, the emphasis is put squarely on the loss of a great person and friend in Brown Jr. He speaks to Brown's family, friends, teammates. He is only full of apology and remorse. I am not insinuating my personal support for Price-Brent when i tell you that, as a psychologist, I was thoroughly convinced of his misery and the infinite sadness he feels in having negligently killed his good friend.
Once again, this is a story with no right and wrong. Piling blame on Price-Brent feels cruel in the face of his taking both complete responsibility for what happened, and also, the totality of the responsibility of taking another human life. And yet, it is also difficult to feel wholeheartedly empathetic for the man, especially in the face of his previous drunk driving conviction.
And somewhere between involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide, we find the simple truth of our humanity. Because, thankfully, I am not the judge or jury of Josh Price-Brent for his crimes against his friend, or the greater public at large. I am just a white jew 2000 miles away feeling for a man who will, inevitably, go to bed tonight. And when he closes his eye, his demons, like mine and yours, will come a calling.
And Josh Price-Brent will no longer have famous demons. I can't even be sure that he will have same fears and questions that we all ask as humans. Price-Brent will be haunted by his past, the size and shape of which give me chills to speculate upon. And it is my humanity, in that instant, that reaches out reflexively. Because i saw what happened to Willy Lopez (and Willy Lomen for that matter), and I haven't been convinced since then that the reality of living with searing shame is any less terrifying.
A nurse in London ended her life from the shame of being pranked by Australian Radio DJ's pretending to be the Royals checking on Princess Kate.
And when Justin closes his eyes, he will invariably be haunted by the visage of his college friend, teammate, and self proclaimed "little brother". And he will feel the pain of his incapacity to go back in time to Friday, when he was famous and Jerry was alive. And in that moment of human anguish where he realizes that he is both the problem and the inability to fix that problem, my entire heart goes out to him. For that pain, you need the salve of the world, and the only people we reserve that kind of compassion for, are famous.
The Humanity of Fame and Murdering
Sunday, December 9, 2012 | 1 Comment(s)
Friday, December 7, 2012 | 0 Comment(s)
Just for jollies i'm reposting an old blog that i'm guessing most of you reading now didn't read then . . . so . . . yah. Because i can't get creative juice from my stone brain at the moment, i will harken back to a juicier time.
Enjoy.
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I like green peppers. That is not the interesting fact. You should have known that because that is not interesting. I say that i like green peppers because I have a fairly extensive "no fly zone" when it comes to vegetables, (I'm looking at you eggplant. asparagus. brussel sprouts.) that the green pepper is nowhere near.
*tangent. Whenever I tell someone that I don't like eggpant, their first reaction is one of pity. I don't know why, but I see it, and it's there. After that split second when the part of their brains that mediate "appropriate behavior" kick in, their tune changes in a more Hare-Krishna direction. By which I mean--conversion. "oh, I make it so it tastes just like a chicken cutlet." But here are the problemS that I have with that.
1) If I want to eat something that tastes "just like a chicken cutlet," why don't I just eat a chicken cutlet.
In my mind, they respond, "oh, but eggplant is so much better for you."
2) In almost all cases, this is true. the EXCEPTION of course being when you bread and deep fry the shit out of either of them. At that point, I don't really think the health benefit margins are too thick.
3) It is an insult to food to think that the preferred preparation of a food would be to try and mask its taste to taste like something else. Now I realize that this totally imaginary conversation I'm having is about chicken/eggplant cutlets, so getting all philosophical about the place of food is a bit of a reach, if not just completely nit-picky. But you're forgetting something.
I'm having an imaginary conversation with myself. So I can BE reach-y and nit-picky. that said, I respect eggplant enough to realize that people enjoy it. And I am ok not being one of those people. Let's just leave it at that.
end tangent*
This was a blog about an interesting fact about me if you recall. ADD is amazing.
Anyways. When I cut open a green pepper, and you get that weird white almost foamy stuff that connects the inner pepper walls to the seedy core. That white stuff. Freaks. Me. Out. I think it's gross and otherworldly. It's a totally green food, why is there white in there. And the consistency is totally inconsistent with the rest of the vegetable. The pepper iscrisp and firm. The alien white crap is limp and fungus-y, and is the vegetive equivalent of the limp "dead fish" handshake. Fuck that freaky white shit. (seen here on the viewer's right side)
On a separate note, I respect garlic for having an outer skin that knows its place. You squeeze (great word--Q & Z, both 10 points) a garlic clove hard enough and that skin will slip right off. It realizes that its function is to act as a barrier up to the point that the garlics innards are being accessed, at which point, its job is over and the quicker it gets out of the way the better. Good on' yah garlic skin.
Not onions. Onion skin will cling and grasp at itself like saran-wrap on, well, saran-wrap. it can be an awful bother. Fuck you onion skin.
*tangent. Whenever I tell someone that I don't like eggpant, their first reaction is one of pity. I don't know why, but I see it, and it's there. After that split second when the part of their brains that mediate "appropriate behavior" kick in, their tune changes in a more Hare-Krishna direction. By which I mean--conversion. "oh, I make it so it tastes just like a chicken cutlet." But here are the problemS that I have with that.
1) If I want to eat something that tastes "just like a chicken cutlet," why don't I just eat a chicken cutlet.
In my mind, they respond, "oh, but eggplant is so much better for you."
2) In almost all cases, this is true. the EXCEPTION of course being when you bread and deep fry the shit out of either of them. At that point, I don't really think the health benefit margins are too thick.
3) It is an insult to food to think that the preferred preparation of a food would be to try and mask its taste to taste like something else. Now I realize that this totally imaginary conversation I'm having is about chicken/eggplant cutlets, so getting all philosophical about the place of food is a bit of a reach, if not just completely nit-picky. But you're forgetting something.
I'm having an imaginary conversation with myself. So I can BE reach-y and nit-picky. that said, I respect eggplant enough to realize that people enjoy it. And I am ok not being one of those people. Let's just leave it at that.
end tangent*
This was a blog about an interesting fact about me if you recall. ADD is amazing.
Anyways. When I cut open a green pepper, and you get that weird white almost foamy stuff that connects the inner pepper walls to the seedy core. That white stuff. Freaks. Me. Out. I think it's gross and otherworldly. It's a totally green food, why is there white in there. And the consistency is totally inconsistent with the rest of the vegetable. The pepper iscrisp and firm. The alien white crap is limp and fungus-y, and is the vegetive equivalent of the limp "dead fish" handshake. Fuck that freaky white shit. (seen here on the viewer's right side)
On a separate note, I respect garlic for having an outer skin that knows its place. You squeeze (great word--Q & Z, both 10 points) a garlic clove hard enough and that skin will slip right off. It realizes that its function is to act as a barrier up to the point that the garlics innards are being accessed, at which point, its job is over and the quicker it gets out of the way the better. Good on' yah garlic skin.
Not onions. Onion skin will cling and grasp at itself like saran-wrap on, well, saran-wrap. it can be an awful bother. Fuck you onion skin.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 | 0 Comment(s)
How the hell is the Washington D.C. football team still called the "Redskins"!?! Every time i watch football I think this same question. I mean sure, the NHL (when it exists) has the Chicago Blackhawks and a smiliar logo. But at least the Blackhawks are a tribe of Native Americans -- not a slur we used to dehumanize them. And, of course, baseball has the Cleveland Indians (with their highly offensive "Indian" cartoon face (essentially the Native Ameican version of those Uncle Tom blackface figurines) and the Braves (while their "Indian chant" may be offensive, using the word for a warrior and the tomahawk as a symbol were fairly smart choices-ish). But somehow the Redskins seem to put themselves atop the gross gross gross gross grossness meter for dumb decision making.
I mean, think of new expansion teams in the same vain.
The Brooklyn Kikes -- I mean, why keep the "Nets" logo. It's so bland and unappealing. How cool will the basketball players look with peyus twirling down the side of their uniforms and a special "secular" outfit for Saturday games.
The Vancouver Yellowskins -- in an attempt to increase Asian turnout at hocky games, the Canucks decide to revamp their traditional uni's for something a bit more derogatory and defamatory. While the sushi in the stands works out great (until they start throwing it on the ice), fans are caught off guard by the conical rice worker hat logo around the helmets and ExtenZe advertisements everywhere.
And of course
The NFL's new San Francisco Queers -- Rainbow uni's abound as the none too subtle helmet designs were passed around. I mean, a criss-crossed star with a missile heading toward it? Keeping it classy. The other teams always seem tentative to hit the Queers, even the pre-game stretching has taken a turn toward the awkward. It's hard to innocently stretch out your teammate when the unicorns on your spandex pants line up juuuuuuust right when you do so.
If you think these are super offensive and ridiculous, again, I present to you the football team playing in OUR NATIONS CAPITAL: The Washington fucking Redskins. Perhaps we just need a few doses of our own medicine.
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| this kinda says it all |
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| What about Rednecks instead of Redskins? |
Monday, December 3, 2012 | 0 Comment(s)
It has been a long week.
It has been a week when the list of things I have to do, or I want to get done, or that need doing, seems to always have one more item I forgot to add, and unfortunately there are no lines left on the "to do"notepad in my head. And somehow this transforms the world into a panicked place. A place where bills will never cease to pile up, errands will always need running to the store, and friends always could use just a little more of my time. In this panicked world, I am a rubberized figurine being drawn and quartered by the four horsemen of responsibilities. Always with a bit more stretch in my limbs, when i am pulled to my max, my original form is subtly but substantially changed. At some point in the process, I can no longer snap back to normal. Psyches, unfortunately, are less like a measuring- tape's extensions and retractions, and more like gummy worm's extension and bisection.
And this feeling of having my ability to deal with adversary depleted Plinkos around in my chest, unsettled by the dissonance caused by the mesh of offsetting emotional pegs and the constant unending draw of gravity. Downwards. Ever downwards.
And in a life full of cognitive dissonance and juxtaposed feelings, here is the current battle. On the one hand i am so insanely thankful for my life and the ability to lead it freely that I somewhat regularly have episodes of deep fear involving the contemplation of my own demise (see blog title). And yet, in appreciating this miraculous and metaphor-laden existence, I also seem strangely attuned to the idea that life is an incredbly difficult, painful, and oftentimes cruel series of events. We lose those we love. We find ourselves motivated towards all the things we don't have. We are bombarded by an "advanced" society that spends a majority of it's social capital convincing the public that there is something wrong with them. That they either lack something (perfect skin, money, attractiveness, intelligence, cool clothes, a big enough tv, credit, Facebook friends, twitter followers, a significant other, etc.), or they have entirely too much of it (pimples, body fat, vices, fun, cholesterol, dirt, work, free time). We are born perfect only to be wholeheartedly convinced otherwise for the rest of our lives.
How do you appreciate this gift of life when it can hurt so much, so often? Must we constantly be walking the tightrope between gratitude and defensiveness?
I haven't figured out the answers to these questions. At least not in any way that seems like a comprehensive solution. I know appreciating and making time to spend with your favorite humans and animals is part of it. It points you in the correct direction. Loved ones keep you facing towards your principles and help prevent you from drifting sideways towards the mirages of quick money, easy fame, and false-friends.
But even after you have reoriented yourself post-spin, you still have to pin the tail on the donkey. And often, as i stride forward blindfolded with a confidence that is best described as completely faith based, what i feel in my hands is not a tail, but rather the size and shape of another donkey head. And i know that I am supposed to pin the second head to the first donkey's rear end in order to win the game. However, there is no closure in completing the final image of a donkey replete with two heads. It instead leaves you searching for the missing ass's ass.
And this metaphor once again eats away at me because there are days when I feel just like the two-headed donkey, where every way is forwards and backwards simultaneously. And other days, I just feel a donkey's ass.