The effect of Celebrity Schadenfreude on having a life …

A long time ago someone pointed out the amount of times ‘I’ and ‘me’ appeared in something I had written. In the nicest possible way, they proceeded to inform me the world was NOT all about me – and that I should probably get over myself. Well, charming. What, I pondered, could possibly be more important than moi? What could be more delicious than wallowing in my own perceived ills or doing some self-indulgent navel gazing?  In those days, not a lot. But now, for our edification and wonderment, we have Advanced Celebrity Schadenfreude 101.

It is now possible to gaze at the navels of others and watch them self-destruct. The media licks its lips in glee as the Britneys, Lindsays and Parises (Parisi? Parasites?) hurl themselves, sans knickers, from cars and vomit into other people’s designer handbags.  They also, with gay abandon, hurl themselves in and out of other people’s beds and in and out of rehab centres. The trash magazines have a field day. If it’s a slow news week for celebrity misadventure, they make something up. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so appallingly sad.

For a start, I have no idea who is buying this stuff. It’s not even good fiction. I can’t believe there are people out there going ‘tut tut’ because some actress had a baby last week and is actually still … dare we say it … FAT. Or that a flabby woman in Dubbo, attired in grubby pink towelling trackie dacks, has the gall to shake her head because a soapie starlet dared to shop for Rice Bubbles at her local Food-o-rama with bed-hair and no bra. And wearing thongs. What is with the grannies knitting booties for celebrity offspring, when surely they’re aware it will all be donated to charity? Why are we caring what these vacuous nobodies (that would be the celebrities, not the grannies) get up to? Do we not have lives of our own? Maybe we like to be reminded we’re all human, and therefore equally flawed. If a rock star trashes an hotel room and urinates in the elevator on his way out to ravish a pack of 14-year-old groupies … well, surely that’s not so different to Uncle Bazza staggering down his weed-choked driveway with his sneakers covered in regurgitated kabab and his willy hanging out after a night on the turps? All the same under the skin, right?

Why do we want to see where these people are living, what they’re driving, where they’re going for holidays? It matters not a hoot. But somehow, the great unwashed delight in the spectator sport of Other People’s Lives. For some reason, the wealthier and more successful someone becomes, the more they are hated and reviled. The more the public wants to see them fall. A long way, if possible – into a prison cell or straitjacket, even better. Why are we not happy for someone who’s ‘made it’? Why do we not clap our hands and shout ‘Goodo!’ as the rich get richer and we can’t be arsed moving ourselves into better lives and circumstances?

Even seeing the covers of trash mags screaming out from the rack next to the checkout counter makes me wonder whether the authors of such garbage can sleep at nights. How can paps with telephoto lenses feel pleased with themselves as they cling to the sides of buildings in order to grab blurred images of sports stars chowing down on greedyburgers and knocking back alcoholic beverages in the privacy of their own apartments? There seems to be a whole industry out there, hell-bent on poking its snoz into the personal lives of others and taking a swipe at them. Even current affairs presenters foam at the mouth with delight as yet another public figure cheats on its spouse or shoplifts a Mars Bar.

Imagine for a moment how it would feel to be similarly targeted – unable to leave the house for fear of appearing on next week’s cover of ‘Sucked In’ with grubby toenails and a nipple poking out? Surely, if you’re a performer, the general public only has the right to criticise your performance if they’ve actually paid for tickets to see it? Would it be worth giving up rights to having a life?

But hark! There’s a rustle in the hedgerow once again, and it looks like I’m confined to the house for the day. Looks like the world IS all about me after all – and everybody else wants a piece of it …

.oOo.

Everyone’s a pigeon underneath …

There’s this fabulous bird called the Victoria Crested Pigeon. It doesn’t look like a pigeon at all – it looks like a showgirl. Next time you go to Taronga Park, check it out. It makes you wonder whether other birds, lesser in sequins and swansdown, look at it and weep – and stress out about their beaks being too big.             There’s far too much effort wasted worrying about whether we scrub up okay. Too much time spent slathering ourselves with potions and lotions and sleeping with our thighs encased in Glad Wrap. If human beings didn’t have eyes, who’d give a hoot? You could be as ugly as sin and nobody would ever know. You’d have to get by on being nice and saying pleasant and interesting things in well-modulated tones.             If the human race were struck blind tomorrow, it would serve the beautiful people right. They’d be just like the other half of the population and have to rely on their personality. Personality is something developed by the rest of us as soon as we discover at playgroup we aren’t blessed with the right amount of sequins. It manifests in different ways.             There’s the short weedy kid in every high school classroom who becomes the Warm-Up Guy. He hasn’t any muscles for the girls to notice, so he spends his time keeping the class fired up for the teacher. He’s an avid watcher of Fast Forward and Full Frontal and can recite whole scripts of The Simpsons. He can do the elephant trick, with his pockets turned out and his fly undone. The teacher, however, doesn’t appreciate the Warm-Up Guy. The teacher calls him a smart-arse. He will probably end up becoming a politician.             Then there’s the spotty, lumpy girl even the Warm-Up Guy wouldn’t look at twice. If she can’t be beautiful, she’s going to be cool. She gathers up the rest of the spotty, lumpy girls and they smoke behind the bike sheds with their bra straps hanging out. Their vocabularies are peppered with interesting suggestions of a base nature – this is to ensure they’re noticed. It’s sad nobody ever takes them up on the suggestions – but that’s the law of the jungle.             Then there’s big, loudmouthed Madge, stalwart of the CWA. She has a bosom with appliquéd butterflies and the presence of a sergeant-major. Everybody always does exactly as Madge suggests. Because they’re frightened. They tell her she bakes the best scones, even if they’re crap. Though sycophantic to her face, behind her back they plot treason – but it didn’t work with Hitler, either. Even though Madge was never beautiful, she does have a husband. She found him cowering beneath a pew at a church fellowship when she was seventeen – and he’s done as he’s told ever since.             People like this make life interesting. The CWA would never function if it were made up of two dozen Elle MacPhersons, spending their time drinking celery juice and comparing scrunchies. A classroom would be boring without a Warm-Up Guy and his obsession with flatulence – and let’s face it, if there weren’t any spotty horrors behind the bike shed, impressionable young girls wouldn’t have a benchmark for class.             It is possible, at an early stage, to keep an eye on your offspring so you can prepare them for their destiny. If your son doesn’t have much going for him in the Harrison Ford department, cultivate his humour. There is every possibility Spike Milligan and Billy Connolly started out as ugly kids in third period maths. If your daughter’s acne problem is insurmountable and she has a penchant for hanging around behind shelter sheds with a packet of Winfield Blue, you can be sure there’s a support group somewhere. These days, there always is. Somewhere, there will be an appropriate do-gooder who can feed her with imagined ills she’d never have had the intelligence to think of herself, pat her on the back and send her out into the world full of paranoia and blame for everyone else but herself.             And if you are one of those lucky ones to notice early on you have a bossy, opinionated little girl … make sure you teach her how to bake decent scones.   .oOo.

 

Putrid in prime time …

Don’t think I watch it, because I don’t. Ever. It just happened to be right there in front of my eyes one evening because someone had walked off and left the gogglebox turned on. I couldn’t believe it anyway. Who could? The World’s Funniest Something-Or-Other. A mind-boggling sortie into the life of the common-or-garden suburban family – though in this case it happened to contain both common AND garden.             What appeared to be going down was this: some people – who were obviously not the brightest chickens in the henhouse – had taken their video camera outside while they were having a barbeque. Just on the offchance, as you do. And they’d filmed these rooooolly exciting things like a fat kid falling through the middle of a rotting trampoline mat, the family cat igniting as it walked past the birthday cake and Uncle Dumbarse being whacked across the back of the neck by Auntie Doofus – who was on the other end of a cricket bat at the time. Hilarious? Not. The only funny thing involved (peculiar, not ha ha), was how these people had actually had the bright idea (you can hear the ‘ping’ of the little lightbulb coming on above the head), of sending this appalling crap to a TV station – which, even more amazingly, had nothing better to do than air it!             You can imagine this family sitting around the box on the evening in question, sated with barbeque fare but tucking into beer and Cheezels anyway, laughing their wobbly bits off as they replayed their merry antics – again and again and again. Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk! Then Auntie Doofus would say (insert light bulb special effect here): ‘Hey – we oughta send it in to ‘Straylya’s Funniest Home Oxymoron … we moyt WIN!’             And win they certainly did! They won another camcorder, which is pretty terrific, as there’s now no holding them back. They’ll be able to re-record the fat kid (which, due to its own padding, miraculously survived its death-defying plummet through the dilapidated canvas); this time hurtling from a minibike into the guinea pig hutch. They’ll record the remains of the guinea pigs. They’ll record Part 2 of the Dumbarse’n’Doofus Show. In which he kills her.             While the show was in progress, a voice-over man gave a running commentary. Just in case the audience couldn’t get a handle on what was going down. It was both witty and enlightening: ‘… and here comes Auntie Doofus … WHACK! He’s down for the count!’ There followed much canned mirth. ‘Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!’ The studio audience had obviously been fed a cocktail of amphetamines in red cordial in order to cope with this frivolity. They just couldn’t get enough of it. A blonde hostessy creature came on in between events and made a few witty and enlightening observations re Auntie Doofus in a voice akin to a not-very-eloquent parrot. ‘What a woman, eh? She could bat for ‘Straylya! Hyuk, hyuk!’             Give us a break. Please. Does this rate? Do TV executives actually think it’s amusing to encourage the terminally brain-dead to set fire to their pets and hurl their obese offspring head first into garden furniture, just on the offchance they might acquire a camcorder? Or do these people really take video recorders to family barbeques? If so – why? Will anybody want to look back in 20 years at Uncle Dumbarse sucking blissfully on the fat of a greasy chop with half a dozen empty beer bottles lined up beside him and his right testicle escaping from the leghole of his vile old Stubbies? Will they look back fondly at the grubby teatowels flapping behind him on the Hills Hoist and marvel at how the bindies had really gotten a hold of the lawn that year? Memories, eh? Not to mention the chance of spin-off shows – up to date, more pertinent to the times – such as ‘Australia’s Funniest Bungled Home Invasion Attempts’,  or ‘World’s Most Side-Splittingly Hilarious Bag Snatches’, or even ‘Candid Office Dunny’, where lavatories in high rises are bugged and the whole country gets to check out your butt and see who doesn’t wash their hands afterwards.             Isn’t it great how technology has boosted our intelligence to levels never before imagined? How it’s given us insights into life we didn’t used to have? We’ve come such a long way since Shakespeare, baby!             If the Bard were alive today he’d probably be firing up the barbie … .oOo.

 

In which Madison’s microwave can’t fix itself …

 

Oh, what a wonderful phenomenon is the Gifted and Talented Child!             In this fabulous and enlightened age, which gives us ‘quality time’, ‘bonding’ and ‘four-wheel-driving for suburbia’, the country is seething with workshops to foster the extraordinary abilities of the GTC. But what are the ‘other children’, pray tell? Chopped liver? How terrifying to imagine sitting in on one of these workshops – a fly on the wall wouldn’t have a chance. It’d drop dead from noxious air. What happens, at these encounters? Do the GTCs perform? Do the parents brag? Does it all end up with a bit of biffo? One would hope so – if not, there doesn’t seem much point.             And how, indeed, does one become aware one has a GTC? Does a parent decide for itself when the infant ejects dummy from mouth in order to perform excerpts from Wagnerian opera for their edification? Does the child itself inform the parent, in between explaining Newton’s Law and whipping up a quick nuclear reactor? And what does the talent need to consist of? In categorising GTCs, does this similarly brand everyone else as Non-Gifted and Anti-Talented? It must – given everything has to have an opposite.             For here is the conundrum. Surely everyone is talented, in some way or another. I refuse to believe otherwise. God didn’t put us here just for decoration – why would He? He had nice things like flowers and animals. How do you know your child isn’t capable of becoming a world champion caber tosser, if he has never been given the opportunity to fling a log? People who haven’t benefited from formal education can’t possibly know the heights they may have attained if only they hadn’t been brought up in the middle of Woop Woop and had to tend the hogs.             It’s all very well being impressed by the child who can string a few words together at an early age and add up a couple of numbers. Brill – prod him ever onward towards university! But what about Rocco, who ripped apart Dad’s camera, Uncle James’s solar-powered watch and annihilated the neighbour’s automated musical gnome fountain? Is he Gifted and Talented? You’d better believe it! Rocco, who is 10 years old and can’t spell his own name, is entirely capable of assembling space shuttles and re-inventing the wheel. But what happens to him? He gets called a destructive little bastard and sent to his room without any TimTams.             And what damage is being done to the GTC, told he is one from an early age? In all probability he is wishing Mater and Pater would get a life. Preferably one of their own. His seven-day schedule of tutoring, music lessons and GT workshops is running him into the ground. Interestingly, lots of GTCs do not have brothers or sisters. The parents realised perfection only strikes once. They wanted to devote all their quality time and bonding to the one glorious basket. This is a blessing for the rest of us, indeed. If anyone ever says to you; ‘Of course, my Madison has been identified as a Gifted and Talented Child …’, the only proper response is to run like hell. The world is full of grown-up Madisons. And the sad truth is, they still need someone to fix their cars, build their homes, repair their washing machines. Bring forth into glory all those TimTam-deprived Roccos, who understood the principle of the internal combustion engine when they were six – though nobody gave a hoot. They’ll be getting a phone call from Madison any time now, because her microwave has thrown the towel in. Rocco knows exactly how to replace the magnetron – even though he signs an X on the receipt.             Surely, some workshops are called for. Members of the community should donate their unwanted cameras, watches and radios to the Zero-Gifted and Nix-Talented to foster their incredible ability in pulling apart and putting together again.             And don’t look so smug, Madison – what good’s perfect punctuation when your car breaks down on a deserted road in the middle of the night? Go on – dig that mobile phone out of your Gucci bag … Rocco’s on call 24/7, and you’d better have some TimTams in your glovebox!   .oOo.