Who are these people

I must confess that after a little fiddling around to figure out what the heck was going on I quickly became addicted to Twitter. Of course you've heard of it already so I won't bother to describe. Earlier today on the way to work a subject popped into my head that I thought might be interesting to "tweet" about. I knew my rant would go on for awhile, but that was fine because I'd only be posting in increments of 140 characters (including spaces and with minimal regard to grammar) or less at a time. Even those with the shortest of attention spans could tolerate such miniature bursts of prose if they chose to pay me any attention at all. Below is my sequence of 46 concise comments on the state of modern day celebrity, in case you missed a few on Twitter and wish to follow my train of inane thought from start to finish. Enjoy!

* I’ve decided 2 rant a series of tweets about the current state of American celebrityhood, if not for your amusement than @ least for my own.

* Preface: Years ago I chose not to closely follow college sports. Reason – too many damn teams to keep track of.

* I can handle the # of teams in AFC/NFC – American League/National League, Eastern Conference/Western Conference.

* But there’s like a million colleges in the USA. Too many teams, too many divisions, too many players, too many bowl games to keep track of.

* I figured the players who were good enough I’d eventually see in the pros. In the meantime, ESPN highlights of college careers sufficient.

* Celebrities are now like college teams IMHO. Too many damn many of them. The requirements for admittance are ridiculously lax.

* It used to be that to acquire pop culture fame you needed to regularly appear on TV or in movies or have a few hit songs.

* Celebrities once did things worth noting and paying attention to, which is how they became celebrities in the first place.

* Nowadays it seems about as easy to be considered a celebrity as it is to get a 500 SAT score. Talk about lowering the bar.

* The celebrity bar is on the friggin’ floor. Make a YouTube video, you’re a star. Appear on a “reality show”, you’re a star.

* Be related to at least one person who actually did something to become a legit celebrity, guess what, now you’re a celebrity too.

* Being a child of Rod Stewart for example should not be enough to be called a celebrity. At most it’s a good line to help get you laid.

* Being the child of 2 whole celebs like Bruce Willis & Demi Moore should make you WAY better looking than Rumer, but not worthy of a Wikipedia page.

* How many half actual celebrity parented – half groupie parented kids must there be out there? Do they all qualify for celebrity status too?

* If an NBA All Star has a dozen kids by a dozen random women, are there now 12 new people to potentially be on the cover of People magazine?

* For a few months for some godforsaken reason I became a regular reader of Perez Hilton’s blog. Hilton became a celebrity in his own right by “writing” about and obscenely doodling on photographs of so called celebrities.

* I’m not knocking Hilton’s hustle. He no doubt worked damn hard to put that blog together. He actually accomplished something.

* In fact, ridiculous as his existence may be, Hilton was doing way more than many of the people he was either fawning over or ridiculing.

* I’ll grant Perez his fame, but why should the guy who came in 10th on America’s Gotta Dance While Eating Prawns be considered a celebrity?

* The word “celebrity” has become totally devoid of legitimate meaning. Shouldn’t a talent and an accomplishment be involved?

* Gossip columns were intended to be devoted to people who did something worthy enough for us to actually care about what else they did.

* Is the married Spencer Tracy hooking up with Katherine Hepburn or is she still involved with Howard Hughes? Now THAT’S gossip.

* Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and Howard Hughes were each monumentally famous in their own rights, even more in collaboration.

* Is a cast member from Survivor Season 17 dating a cast member from The Apprentice Season 12? Maybe, maybe not, but who sincerely cares??!!!

* Apparently plenty of people DO care about mating rites of insta-celebs, which makes the appropriate question – Why? That one has me stumped.

* These hotel heiresses & reality show participants & game show contestants & kids of the formerly famous get all mixed together in my head.

* I stopped reading Hilton blog because I had no idea what Heidi Montag's done 2 make her worth repeatedly mentioning & didn't care 2 find out.

* What I do know is that there are a whole bunch people nowadays who are famous for being famous. That’s absurd, isn’t it? Or is it just me?

* Perhaps I’m just getting old. I want to remain in the loop of contemporary culture, but not if the loop is so flimsily constructed.

* I don’t mind reading about emerging movie or pop stars doing films & music I don’t care 4 because I can at least respect that they’re making something.

* Remember the flack Anna Kournikova took for getting way more endorsements & attention than her level of success warranted?

* At least Anna played tennis, won far more matches than she lost, even a couple titles. She didn’t just hold racquet & pose for camera at 1st.

* Being a Big Brother cast member is just sitting there holding a racquet. Nothing wrong with it but can we hold off on the Walk of Fame star?

* I’ve yet to see Zac Efron in anything but I know he acts/sings while being ridiculously pretty, and I can tolerate having this knowledge.

* Before he was Zac Efron he was Rob Lowe. Keith Partridge is now Hannah Montana. Different generation same principle, I get it.

* But why should I care about Jon & Kate and their 8? I’m 1 of 5, my mom 1 of 9, my dad 1 of 13. Not a single TV show resulted from any of this.

* And even if you do make it to TV, or to the internet which accepts everybody, that alone should not be enough to be considered a celebrity.

* Doesn’t the word celebrity imply that something is worth celebrating? Why would I celebrate someone becoming known for becoming known?

* Story on the ass size of daughter of the guy who defended O.J. appears directly next to story about volcano eruption that kills 2000. WTF?

* If side by side coverage was not the norm, existence of faux celebrities would fail to register & I’d have no complaint. But it is, so I do.

* The Maytag Repair man was on TV all the time but at no point did I know a damn thing about his sex life, and I was totally cool with that.

* Or maybe I really did want to know. Maybe I am subconsciously interested in the doings of those who have done little to nothing of note.

* Nah, that can’t be right. I’m much deeper than that. After all, I tweet therefore I am of significance.

* In fact, as of this tweet I declare myself a celebrity. Come see if you can snap my photo without getting slapped upside the head, paparazzi.

     

This Super Bowl Sunday Is No Ordinary Day

The first Sunday of February 2007, aka Black History Month 2007, is fast approaching. Super Bowl XLI will be played on that day, not your average run of the mill Super Bowl, but one of historic proportions. No, I’m not saying this because Prince will be performing at half time, though I do find that to be pretty cool. The reason I’m excited about 2/4/07, even though it will be one more Super Bowl Sunday that does not feature my beloved New York Jets, is because African-American men will be patrolling both sidelines as the respective head coaches of this year’s participants – the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears.

Black men are certainly not in short supply on NFL fields of play, in fact, they constitute the vast majority of those in pads and uniforms. But when it comes to the skin tone of their bosses, there has been shockingly little rise in melanin count from the league’s earliest days when Vince Lombardi and his pack ruled supreme. One could reasonably cite racism as the cause of such a slow rate of progression. How else to explain the rationale behind Richie Kotite being hired to run more than one team over his career while a large number of qualified African-American head coach wannabes have had to wait and wait and wait for their shot?

The 2006 season began with 7 Black head coaches in a league of 32 teams. Two of them have since been fired and one team (the Pittsburgh Steelers) recently hired an African-American to be the man in charge of the troops, bringing the current total to 6. Two of those six, Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith, will face off against one another in this year’s Super Bowl. The odds of this happening were probably better than the odds of someone named Lovie ever being a professional football coach, but still, it makes for quite the story, an even bigger one than the castaways (This is not a Survivor reference, sports is my reality television) finally getting off of Gilligan’s Island.

Tony Dungy has clearly paid his dues, overcoming what would seem to be debilitating personal tragedy with the suicide of his son and fielding a football team that was finally able to get over the hump and make it to the big show. For this reason, coupled with the fact that Peyton Manning slings the rock with precision abandon and shoots some pretty funny television commercials, my rooting interest is swayed towards the Colts, especially since this season’s version of the Da Bears is no where near as entertaining as the last team they sent to the Super Bowl back in 1985 (has it really been 22 years since America experienced its love affair with William “The Refrigerator” Perry and I was pledging Delta Phi during my freshman year at NYU?). If I was a betting man, I’d gamble that years of getting so close without grabbing the cigar is enough to give Indy the advantage over Chi-town, even if the latter is my kind of town, Chicago is.

History in the making by a couple of class acts on the sidelines, the purple reign of Prince at halftime, at least one television commercial featuring the “talents” of Kevin Federline (who has somehow ended up looking like the classier half of his televised marriage to Britney “no need to put my baby in a car seat cuz I’m country” Spears), and a great offensive team going up against a great defensive one should make for quite a game. Since the NFL is famous for being a copycat league, perhaps numerous teams will go in search of a qualified black guy to be their head coach, much like many of them tried to copy the success of the west coast offense or the 3-4 defense in years past. Or will the NFL prove itself to only be a copycat league when the cat is a white feline rather than one who evokes fear simply by crossing your path? We’ll see soon enough.

My hope if not quite my prediction is that the appearance of Tony Dungy and Lovie “the millionaire’s wife” Smith will lead to social progress. If the Rooney Rule required any vindication, consider this year's Super Bowl to be it. Perhaps in the not too distant future the number of African American head coaches will reach double digits. Or maybe the impact will be even bigger than that. This historic Super Bowl may actually have enough impact to finally convince the powers that be to move the celebration of Black History to a month with more than 28-29 days.

- Roy L. Pickering Jr.

P.S. - Being that Dungy and Smith are such classy guys, some might find them a bit on the boring side. So visit the link below if you wish to see a head coach demonstrating that he epitomizes the last three letters of class.

http://nfl.aolsportsblog.com/2007/01/23/belichick-shows-his-lack-of-experience-with-being-a-gracious-los/