I’ve got a cold so my head is totally foggy. Even though I should be writing now, I’m trolling the internet and making myself kind of sick. I watched an awful video, and not even by accident, of poor Brad Pitt trying to go to McDonald’s with his kids. And as disgusted with the whole thing that I was (I could only watch about a minute), I kept thinking to myself, “but I’m still clicking on it…”
For the last few years I’ve flirted with giving up internet gossip and find myself, embarrassed and ashamed, typing in http://socialitelife.com at work in a spare moment or two between meetings just to give myself some sort of mental health holiday. Well, no more — I know it’s all holier than thou and kind of sanctimonious, but who really cares of Brad Pitt’s taking his kids to McDonald’s? Why does it deserve some sort of hallelujah chorus from all the kids around with their cell phones and snapping pictures — how would that be to live your life everyday, in your own home, ransacked by hungry vultures all vying to do you harm in a small way. And then I click on it and justify the whole existence of the awful market, by paying the advertisers and refusing to ignore the dirty business entirely.
So that’s my number one New Year’s Revolution: Stop reading celebrity gossip. I highly doubt I’ll be able to avoid it entirely, but maybe I can get back to the ragdoll of years passed, the one who would only use the web for good. Ha! Does she even exist anymore? Trails of her lost in cyberspace where she used to track down literary journals to send poetry and stories to, who wrote for great sites, and who wanted more than anything to write books of her own?
Let’s find that girl again this year, shall we?
And here’s what got me started on the whole Brad Pitt tangent anyway. An article I wrote for work about movie tie-ins is up on the homepage of MSN today. I read about 50 pages of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even though I didn’t finish the book, I was enjoying it. I simply got swept away by something else.
Hmmm… It’s funny you wrote about this, because I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with celebrity “journalism” lately. I used to enjoy People magazine, back when there was the implicit agreement between celebrity and the magazines that they would offer up an interview, the odd photo shoot, and we, as observers, could get a brief peek into their lives.
But now, this complete inability for them to take their children out in public, to have every move watched and recorded and analyzed and mocked makes me faintly ill. I felt so embarrassed when Pitt/Jolie were here for the film fest and people were throwing themselves at the car. Yikes!
So perhaps I’ll join you in this resolution. I think perhaps I’ll stick to the odd People on vacations or during illness, but that’s it.