- Lord Byron
I am not famous.
Truer words have perhaps never been penned.
There was a time in my life when I would have liked a modicum of fame. Not Bennifer fame. Not Brangelina fame. Not Jon and Kate fame (Jate? Kon?). But enough fame that people, though they might not know my name or my face, once it was explained who I was, would exclaim: “Wow! He's famous!”. I didn’t practice my autograph as an adolescent, as Cher did (yes I did), but I have delivered many an Oscar™or Tony™ speech into a hairbrush-microphone in front of a bathroom mirror. I am still really really good at feigning surprise. (Omigod! I so don’t deserve this! To my fellow nominees, you’re ALL stars! Especially you, Keanu!) At this point in my life, I am remarkably comfortable in my current anonymity.
On ships, however, I have a fairly high profile position. Passengers see me night after night; either in the main show lounge or playing with a combo in a nightclub. It is impossible to have lunch in the Lido without someone coming up to me and say “Aren’t you the Music Director? You’re really great! I don’t want to interrupt your meal…” and then proceed to spend the next 25 minutes telling you about how they used to play clarinet in high school, or how their granddaughter is taking cello lessons, or how their gout is acting up because of the rich food on the ship and they really didn’t want to come to Alaska but their wife had her heart sent on it and they have a better time on Carnival and they remember how it used to be on this line before they started cutting all the benefits to return passengers and they intend to make a complaint to the CEO. I politely nod, and try to eat with my mouth open and slurp my soup loudly. Sometimes, I'll meet a middle-aged cougar insisting that that their husband will be in the casino until 3 am, and he doesn’t really satisfy her needs anyway (wrong tree…). I often try to avoid these public situations, mostly because they tend to feed my latent misanthropy. Passengers will occasionally buy me drinks, or write me a thank you note. I actually met a really great group of people last cruise, including a Quebecoise living in New Zealand, and a tall, handsome and young Kiwi skier who will be moving to Montreal to study at Concordia. They had a table full of champagne, and no one to help them drink. I was only to glad to oblige.
This summer, to escape the slavery of cruise ship life that HAL had become, I sublet a tiny little wee apartment in what can only be described as crackhouse/student housing in Montréal, mostly to get a taste again for the pleasures land life could offer. Though I am a admitted TV junkie, I decided not to get cable because the installation fees were too high. So, I was destined to watch one of 3 local English channels. And frankly, I'll watch anything. Even TMZ. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the newsertainment show, count yourselves lucky. Basically, the show is a room full of ‘reporters’ who sit around a newsroom and, with what must pass as witty repartee to the hoi polloi, discuss the video their camerapeople have shot of the famous and the wannabes. One show this summer featured an exposé of Marlon Wayans (whom they followed around for several hours while he was shopping at an outdoor market) and Courtney Love, who spent 45 minutes emptying her bottomless pit of a purse, showing its contents for the television public (Look! Lipstick. Look! A tampon. Look! A syringe [no joke. She had a syringe. It was for her “allergies”. Allegra, Sudafed, heroin, it’s all the same.]). They ambushed Blythe Danner at an airport and asked her if Apple and Moses (Gwyneth Paltorw's kids) were family names. Who. The. Fuck. Cares? Well, apparently I do, because I would watch every night at midnight, flipping back and forth between Canada Council funded documentaries on CBC. Why would anyone want to be famous in this day and age of ubiquitous and instantaneous media? You risk being followed around by obnoxious leeches, attempting to get a scoop. And not just if you’re a famous train wreck like Amy Winehouse or Lindsay Lohan. I mean, Marlon Wayans? Is he still alive?
You are famous to us :)
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