Celebrity Rubbernecking
The American public has an unhealthy obsession with the mundane minutiae of the lives of celebrities. There are magazines, websites, and even whole television networks dedicated to reporting to you, the average media-consuming nobody, the latest on Lindsay Lohan acting like a strung out crack-whore or Charlie Sheen’s most recent psychotic break from what the rest of us accept as reality. Hell, Perez Hilton made himself a celebrity in his own right solely based on his ability to shit-talk other celebrities and use MS Paint. And yet, I just can’t seem to find the appeal. Celebrities are human beings like any other. Their lives are actually very similar to yours or mine. They … breathe oxygen… and eat … and poop … Fuck, who am I kidding. I’m just as sickeningly fixated as the rest of the country, mainly because I’m not entirely convinced any celebrities eat or poop and I know they must breathe better air than mine. Their lives are different than ours — charmed and enchanted. This fairy-tale existence lets them get away with things the rest of us never could.
The same names tend to pop up every week (sometimes every day) in the news — Lindsay Lohan discussed her sobriety with an interviewer while drinking a glass of wine earlier this week and the Roast of Charlie Sheen has the potential to be a bigger scandal than Watergate, The Trail of Tears, and The Bay of Pigs combined. Because of these drunken attention mongers, other celebrity train wrecks just don’t seem to get the coverage they deserve.
Tone Loc
In case you don’t remember Tone Loc, he gave us such 90s rap gems as, “Wild Thing†and “Funk Cold Medina.†He was also the vocal talent behind the children’s cartoon classic, “C-Bear and Jamal†and the straight man to Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura. Late last month, Tone Loc was arrested for allegedly beating the ever-loving snot out of the mother of his child. The “fading star takes career frustrations out on spouse†isn’t a new scenario in Hollywood. In fact, it’s usually the first step to reviving one’s career. What was surprising, however, was what the police discovered during their investigations of Loc — an unregistered Colt AR-15 Sporter. I’m fairly firearm-ignorant, so I had to do a little googling to figure out why this was such a big deal. Turns out, it’s a big deal because it’s a fucking military-grade assault rifle that looks similar to the picture below.
You don’t use this to protect your home from intruders, you use it to protect your territory from insurgents.
Tone Loc plead not guilty to both the assault charges and possession of an unregistered and incredibly fucking deadly weapon. There is no word yet on whether the prosecution intends to pursue charges against him for apparently plotting to lay siege to the rest of Brentwood.
Kate Hudson and Michael Bellamy
These two seemed like an innocuous couple from the start. Kate Hudson has a thing for talented and respectable rock stars and Michael Bellamy has, after almost 2 decades with Muse, finally reached that status (debates still rage in scholarly circles over whether Kate boned him because he was talented and respectable or if boning Kate made everyone assume he was talented and respectable). Recently, the two welcomed a new little bundle of joy to their celebrity dynasty, a baby boy. It wasn’t until this week, however, that they released the baby’s name — Bingham Hawn Bellamy, or Bing for short. Now, the couple claims that they chose the name because Bingham is Bellamy’s mother’s maiden name and Bing Russell was Kurt Russell’s father (note: Kurt Russell is only the guy shacking up with Kate Hudson’s mom for the last few decades and not her father). While that’s all very well-intentioned and sentimental for the grandparents and the great-grand-guy-shacking-up-with-the-grandmom, it’s evident that no one bothered to consider this poor kid. His name is going to be Bing Bellamy. That’s sounds like the name of a guy who wears wide ties with wide lapels and talks into an unnecessarily skinny microphone on a local and poorly produced game show. Suppose little Bing grows up and decides he wants a career path outside of Mommy and Daddy’s footsteps. Suppose little Bing wants to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer. Well, with a name like Bing Bellamy, he’s either going to be performing medically questionable plastic surgeries or he’s going to be making sure you get paid what’s owed to you on your fraudulent workman’s compensation claim. So, Welcome to the World, Bing Bellamy. Your parents already hate you and hope your life is as difficult and painful as possible.
Brooke Mueller
Okay, I know that listing Charlie Sheen’s second ex-wife as an under the radar train wreck is something of an inaccuracy. However, I just couldn’t bring myself to let this one slide. First of all, I never heard of Brooke Mueller until she started acrimoniously battling Charlie Sheen for custody of their twins. There’s a good reason for that, too. It’s namely because she really didn’t do anything before she married Charlie Sheen. And she didn’t do much while they were married, either. It wasn’t until after they were divorced that Brooke started doing anything of note. Why, just this week, she was spotted holding a bottle of Gatorade and what appears to be a crack pipe.
According to Brooke, the whole situation is just being blown out of proportion. She wasn’t doing anything wrong in the least and she’s a perfectly competent mother. There was no crack in that repugnant little tin toker, after all. It was only weed, for which she has a perfectly legal prescription due to anxiety. What Brooke clearly doesn’t realize is that the photo above is proof that she’s not just your average law-abiding pot smoker. Look carefully. Contained within her hands are all the necessary ingredients for building a make-shift bong — a plastic bottle, tin foil, and a lighter. Frankly, any self-respecting pot smoker is going to go to the trouble of assembling said plastic-bottle-bong if for no other reason than to prove they aren’t just some degenerate junky. After all, any pothead worth his smoke is going to make sure you know just how smart, creative, and functional he is. From just what I see in the picture above, none of those words should be used to describe Brooke Mueller. EVER.