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Do celebrities have Thanksgiving?
2004-11-26 10:36 a.m.

So we got through this week without feeling like we were going to explode. Monday's 15th annual Pagan Thanksgiving Fest, which has nothing to do with Paganism and very little to do with Thanksgiving (except for the massive spread of Thanksgiving-esque food) was a blast - saw Loop elite and A-listers there as well as some good friends; it was a nice surprise that John and Lev showed up somewhere between the macaroni casserole and the cranberry bread. As always, we made some new friends and made a note to send Tony a thank-you gift. I made off with someone else's pyrex casserole dish, since before I left someone seemed to have made of with mine. No bother, they're pretty much the same - except the one I left with was most certainly not a KMart special, so I feel kind of guilty that what came home with me is of much higher quality than what left home with me. Oh well, it's wasn't my mistake anyway.

Wednesday found us at Thomas' cocktail party, eating again, with me on the phone trying to get everyone I knew to the Loop. It worked, for the most part - nearly everyone I love was there, and I had the best time I've had there probably all year. Wasn't too crowded, but was full of people I knew, and we both agreed the music couldn't have been better. People I'm "eh" about or don't know really well in the first place didn't make it, but then that's ok - I was busy enough as it was, and I called the "eh" people not far enough in advance anyway. I must say it was excellent to see Frank and fill him in on what's going on at school. (We've achieved many victories, it seems, and I'm meeting with a Dean this week, on a side note. Things are still messy though.)

And yesterday - mmm. Dinner was awesome, as was the company; we just don't see our cousins enough, methinks. I'm really grateful that not only my immediate family is loving, supportive, fun, and very very sane and mellow, but that my extended family is also.

So we're not stuffed to the hilt - I think both of us eating a bit less these days has become the default practice. This is good to know, cause if there's one thing I hate, it's that overstuffed feeling.

I was home (no work, woo hoo!) on Wednesday, and the new U2 video came on TV really early in the morning. The song is great, so I left the TV on and went to make some tea. When I came back to the TV, though, the new Lindsey Lohan (I think - if not her, than someone like that) video was on. I went to shut it off, but paused for a minute when I realized it was one of those "It's, like, sooooooo hard to be me!" songs.

Um, no.

Britney Spears had one a few months or years ago, and the video was all about how hard it is being Britney. It was equally as pathetic. In this new one, Lindsey wonders why people won't just "let her live".

Ugh. I find this not unlike basketball players attacking their fans in retaliation, and then Charles Barkley plastering himself all over the news as an "analyst", saying "If someone throws something at you, you have the right to beat their face in." Um, sure. I won't even get into how scary that statement is, but will look at the more relevant issue here. When you make ridiculous, exorbitant amounts of money for just playing a game, just being a face, or just lip-synching a song someone else wrote and sings for you every once and a while on SNL or some MTV show, then you're gonna have to understand that you sacrifice something - like your dignity. Making that much money, something's gotta give. And making that much money, you have a certain responsibility to control yourself (and not punch your smaller, weaker fans in the face, for example) or to understand
that sometimes, being a celebrity might be weally weally hard!.

I was really sick of Tom Cruise a couple of years back and his "save the poor, helpless celebrities" campaign. He was "really angry" that people "invaded his privacy" all the time, or something. He went on every news program saying that it was "really hard" to be him. I mean, can you just imagine how the poor man must struggle?

I was beside myself when someone said to him at a press conference "If your life has become so impossible to live, why don't you just quit acting and disappear? Other celebrities have and have done so successfully. Surely you'd have enough money to do so..." [gotta love the british press...]

"Um," was all he said, then he looked at his publicist and, like a trained monkey, waited to be prompted for a response.

I can't even remember what it was he said, but it doesn't matter, the point was made. When you make so much money, you have a lot of choices, yes, and you are still a person with wants and desires, yes. But if every single career comes with its "drawbacks", one must understand that some of those will be experienced by them at some point. Unless, of course, that someone feels so god-like that they think they deserve to never have a bad day at work, or to never have anything be hard for them. There is a name for such people: "celebrities".

This is why I love love LOVE Cintra Wilson's new book, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined As a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations. In it, she examines all of the above, and talks about how celebrity and fame just handicap your mental development and sense of reality. And yet, even with such handicaps, those who are famous feel above the rest of us, as if they are deserving of a better or easier life.

Sigh. Pick up the book, it's brilliant. As for Lindsey, I'm not going to worry - I'm sure she'll wind up in porn or rehab soon enough, as all of her counterparts do. At least then, we won't have to hear her "yelling" at us for "bothering" her.