Celebrity Rubbernecking

A Revolt Against the Hipster Regime

For a few years now, I’ve been observing this odd phenomenon quietly occurring in Hollywood. It’s happening right under the public’s nose, but no one seems to be questioning it. I, however, just can’t seem to wrap my head around how Joseph Gordon-Levitt managed to discreetly sidle his way to the celebrity cool kids’ table. By all rights, he should have faded into child star obscurity sometime after Third Rock from the Sun was cancelled. Instead, someone decided to cast the kid from Angels in the Outfield in a solid supporting role in the biggest movie of 2010 and allowed him to become this weird hybrid of mainstream-hipster celebrity gold.

JGL is a decent actor and certainly less irritating than some of the other stars stumbling around Hollywood these days, but I never really understood his appeal. I know hipster girls who, immediately following the release of 500 Days of Summer, began to harbor desperate crushes on him as though he was the second coming of some band I’ve never heard of. I thought all I’d ever really see when I looked at him was the mildly uncool kid who can’t go out with Alex Mack unless Heath Ledger goes out with her sister first.

That perspective drastically changed today when I caught this video:

Now, upon first glance, this display could easily fall under the category of pretentious hipster. I almost summarily dismissed it as such until I read the description a little more closely. There, I noticed that this performance was “Part of ‘HitRECord At The Movies With Joseph Gordon-Levitt.’” Of course, I had to figure what in the hell that was. By the awesome power of Google, I quickly discovered hitRECord, the remarkable brain child of JGL himself. The site is an online artists community with apparently only one rule: anything you upload is free for someone else to remix. The ultimate goal behind this lack of ownership is collaboration between creative minds that, without the magic of the interweb, may never have met. Judging by the content of the site, this experiment has created some pretty impressive results. The best part about the whole project, though, is that these people are actually producing art. This is what makes the whole thing distinctly non-hipster. Think about it. Hipsters are mainly known for dressing like hobos, clapping at odd intervals while they dance, and talking a lot of pompous shit without being able to back it up. The reason they’re despised by contributing members of every society is because they don’t contribute anything of value to any society. Still, this is apparently what happens when you give a hipster some motivation — you actually get something pretty cool.

 

When Childhood Heroes Go Pervy

If you’re not from Philadelphia, you might not be aware that, in 1993, Lenny Dykstra was kind of a big deal. The Phillies came within an ass-hair of winning the World Series and Lenny Dykstra was their center fielder, carrying a robust .305 batting average. In a city that had grown all too used to never god damned winning anything, Dykstra and the rest of the team were demi-gods.

If you didn’t know about any of that, you certainly haven’t paid any attention to his unceremonious fall from grace. Over the last two years, Nails has gone from filing bankruptcy and living out of his car to being arrested for 25 separate charges of federal bankruptcy crime.  Just recently, Dykstra, already in custody in LA for the aforementioned federal charges, was also charged with indecent exposure.

It appears Good Ol’ Lenny was placing ads on Craigslist for an assistant or a housekeeper. When an applicant would arrive at his home to interview for the position, Lenny would inform them that the duties of the position also included giving him a massage. Then he’d drop trou and, presumably, stare expectantly at his potential employees until they either gave him the massage or ran screaming from the home. Dykstra pulled his little prank with at least 6 different women.

When Darren Daulton went po-tee-weet crazy and came unstuck in time a couple of years ago, I never stopped being a fan. I may have cracked a couple of Billy Pilgrim jokes, but I was always a fan. Now Dutch is on some meds that seem to be working wonders and cracks his own mental health jokes. If Lenny Dykstra had just drawn the line at ripping off private jet companies and their sickeningly wealthy patrons, I would have remained a loyal fan of his, as well. I’m not sure, though, if I can cross the line of sexually based crimes just to say I’m a true fan. The thought makes the Law and Order gavel noise ring eerily in the back of my mind.

 

Why You Should Cut Your Grandchildren Out Of Your Will

Clark Gable was an icon of the silver screen. Clark Gable III is a complete and total ass hat. The grandson of the Famous Clark Gable, CB3 claims to be an aspiring actor, but doesn’t even possess an IMDb page that I can locate. The only notable things he’s done thus far include getting stabbed at a party in 2009 and suing the guy who stabbed him in 2011.

Just recently, CB3 was arrested for shining a laser pointer at an LAPD helicopter that was hovering over an event. Unfortunately, I don’t know the specific statute this violates, but I’m guessing it’s related to the idea of snipers and/or blinding the pilots and subsequently crashing the helicopter into a fiery ball of death on the ground below. Gable claims he was driving around Hollywood with friends, pointing out the sights with the laser pointer and that hitting the helicopter was a sheer accident. I claim that, even at night, you could just use your finger to point out the famous buildings and other landmarks you think tourists would want to see. I don’t know that you need the specificity of a laser pointer. Maybe he was trying to point out that special brick in the wall of Grauman’s Chinese Theater where his grandfather took a drunken piss one night in 1936. – KS