People lie about their age all the time, sure, but did you see the next bit of garbage passing as news? While Ryan Reynolds was voted MOST BEAUTFUL MAN OF 2011 his ex-wife (if a three-month marriage counts), Scarlett Johansen, is dating Sean Penn (and fighting rumors of her “baby bump.” REALLY, people? Do I have to actually repeat that?!). And what’s gross about that is it’s another 50-year-old man famously dating a 26-year-old woman. (MaDonna & Demi Moore are exceptions to this, the oldest trick in Hollywood.)
I have a whole satchel full of guilty pleasures but celebrity gossip only ever makes me feel like the dog of mine who eats the other dogs' poop. Plus, there is no revelation in saying that entertainment is not news but when it becomes noteworthy then our culture is poisoned, but I guess for me, I’ve done such a brilliant job staying out of those trash bins that when I do dumpster dive, I get truly sick to my stomach, surprised to (re)discover that the attention span is getting shorter and shorter while our minds are overstuffed with refuse. –Now, I am not knocking the following shows; I am merely naming them as examples on how OUT OF IT I remain: both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars (who, like on the Hollywood Squares game show when we were kids—okay, when I was a kid!—are all has-beens and also-rans, B-actors from shows we’ve never heard of. Like Rex Reed? Who the hell WAS that guy and what did he ever do that I would care about, but he was the original Simon Cowell (sp?), by the way, the snide bastard who got paid to be nasty to publicize the show) are megahits in Television Land and they have been for seven or eight years, but I have never seen a single episode of either. Not once. The same holds true for the other mega-reality-hit: Survivor (a show of will and skill that I believe is even older than the other two). In any event, I don’t watch because I had my fill of those talent shows also, yes, when I was a kid--and, of course, I am getting older, aging right on schedule as planned--from Chuck Barris’ The Gong Show. (It takes an era that is so derivative to appreciate creative genius; the guy was loony-tunes but he was original as hell. Go, Chuck!)
As for all the talentless hacks clogging up the drains, those who are merely famous for being famous like Paris Hilton, Kevin Federline, Lindsay Lohan, and whoever-the-begezis this Snooki person is this is as much of a mention as I can muster, and I’d plow all you lemmings into a massive burial plot if it were left up to me. Go away, already—and I do mean that, literally. (Did I saw that out loud?) Problem is we are so used to their pollution that we no longer smell them like mainstream nose fatigue.
And, finally, you poor Reality TV Families, you Bruce Jenner and the Kardashian clan, and you even more pathetic (because you had actually once amounted to something until you stooped and fell into Vanity Central), Ozzy Osbourne and kin, I am no traditionalist but thank you for epitomizing the excess, waste, and superficialities that arise when you have too much money and/or notoriety and no character or spiritual substance that might have grounded and “saved” you, and I quote Evanescence on this, from becoming the “nothings” that you are.