The world feels very fragile right now. Every morning I wake up to see if our president is threatening any more dangerous despots with nuclear war. I don’t like this new abnormal. It scares me and depresses me. So I check Twitter and hooray, I see Aaron Carter is trending because he has announced he’s bisexual. This is so great, because I don’t care! I’m only vaguely aware of who Aaron Carter is, and his sexuality couldn’t matter less to me, so I read more.
Then there is a story about Anna Faris and Chris Pratt’s break up. Thank God. I’m very sad about them, though I know that divorce can actually be the best thing that can happen to a couple. Still, they have a son, and they seemed so happy. I wonder what went wrong. Some people on Twitter seem to be blaming Jennifer Lawrence. Ooh, why? Jennifer and Chris did the movie “Passengers” together, and apparently there were “rumors” and then there was a photo of Anna and Jennifer meeting at the premiere and Anna had a “pained expression” on her face while Jennifer was holding her hands in a “claw-like” shape. The movie was panned, so the karma points went to Anna.
Several minutes have gone by and I’ve not once thought of how to build a bomb shelter in my small New York City apartment. I’m thinking TMZ instead of DMZ, and the only radiation is the heat coming from an article about Usher being accused of knowingly exposing a woman named Quantasia Sharpton to herpes.
Having recently written a book about celebrity obsession, I hear a lot of people talking about the frivolousness of celebrity gossip in these seriously troubled times. But to me, when the real news is so horrendous, we need celebrity news more than ever. You read about 20 million people losing health care, or a polar ice shelf sliding into the ocean, and somehow seeing a report about the Twitter war between Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian feels cleansing.
I’ve always used stars as a distraction. People magazine has been my drug of choice since I was putting off doing my algebra homework. Reading about celebrities gives me escapes from the problems, fears and worries that are really threatening me. And I’m not the only one in my family. A few years ago, when my daughter was 10, she realized that her parents could die (spoiler alert: we didn’t). I told her she was old enough to have some input in deciding whom she wanted to live with when we were gone. She thought solemnly and declared, “O.K., I’ll live with Seth Meyers.” My mother said, “At least he’s Jewish.” (He isn’t.)
Then, breaking news (please, please don’t be Kim Jong-un firing another missile!). Oh, Glen Campbell has died. Aw, I’m sad, but he had not been well for a while, and there was that whole thing about Tanya Tucker saying he beat her up back in the ’80s. But still, I will go to YouTube and watch him sing “Wichita Lineman.” It breaks my heart because it’s a video from the late 1960s, when my worst problems involved the disappointing taste of a crayon.
Ugh, I accidentally open the tab about surviving a nuclear attack. You are supposed to use dirt to reinforce the inside of bomb shelter walls, I understand. I have one philodendron that has about a pound of dirt in its pot; that probably would not be enough to help my family avoid radiation. Dust, I have; dirt, not so much.
Oh, hold on. Apparently Charlie Sheen is “going nuts” on a vegan diet. Charlie Sheen leads me down a very deep internet rabbit hole — first to Denise Richards and then Heather Locklear (how does she look?) and then I am on to Tommy Lee and whatever happened between Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora? Much time has been pleasantly wasted on other people’s lives and now I can face the world again.
I used to make fun of my dad, who never wanted to watch a movie that was any more stressful than “Flying Down to Rio” or “The Lady Eve,” but now I understand the impulse. He had a pretty rough childhood, born in the Depression and a kid during World War II. Both of his parents worked long hours and when his mother got home, she’d pour herself a drink and turn on the radio to listen to Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons while she made dinner. Then he’d see her exhale. The world seemed a less scary place when sparkly people were having champagne cocktails at the Stork Club.
Now my kid watches me come in and pull out the cocktail shaker while looking at Gwyneth Paltrow’s Instagram story about getting gussied up for the Met Gala and oh, are Brangelina really getting back together? I don’t know, but for a moment, the world seems almost normal.
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