005. Celebrity sightings

Meeting celebrities is always so odd and uncomfortable. You're seeing these people you feel like you know but they don't know you and it's just weird, how awful is that feeling? Only me? It's these people you wish you were friends with, but they don't really care (as much as anyone says I love my fans it's a different meaning than when fans say I love [blank]) and the relationship between the two is just so juxtaposed it makes me uncomfortable. It's such a unusual dynamic, one I don't think evolution (yes, I believe in evolution) has caught up with, and I don't know how it would. We've out-paced what the natural environment is meant to achieve. On one hand, there's a person who believes they know this other person, but they don't. They watch a character, read rumors, and watch interviews, tricking themselves into knowing someone they probably don't. It's so bizarre and unnatural. (I am very much guilty of this habit from time to time.)

This probably says more about my socially awkward nature than my feelings about fan/celebrity interactions. What do I say? How do I say it? Should I ask for a picture? Autograph? Avoid eye contact? How often do you have to hear "I love [your show, your music, you, etc.] before it gets tiring? Wouldn't you just want some time to be a normal human being without having to talk about your job all the time to strangers and not be able to buy some groceries? I think I would rather have a nice conversation than a photo, but why would a stranger want to stop their life for a few minutes to speak to me about nothing because we haven't established any connections yet? It's all a very convoluted experiment, so I would probably just try to take a sneak picture, feel rude, and later regret not saying anything. That's not very gracious of me, but it's more natural than making eye contact and trying to be a normal conversationalist for me.

Celebrities, if you see this, please come up to me instead of me having to come up to you. It's like asking someone on a date, you don't want to be rejected or thought poorly of. Really, I just want a job that gives me an excuse to go up to them. I would make the awful kind of celebrity that would want to stay private and get ungraciously annoyed and rude at cameras and camera phones being in my face all the time.

Still, being recognized, just a few times, is on my bucket list. I have no control over this particular item, but it's there all the same. I never wanted to be famous (only rich), but now I feel like part of being famous is just having people want to be your friend or admire you in some fashion (I know that's not all, or even most, of it, but it's part) and it would be nice to have someone want to be your friend or to be admired.

Check out: "Fame connects Joan of Arc to Britney Spears" (NPR)

Edit: I find text-only posts to be slightly boring, but I don't want to post any pictures of me.

004. Love Letter to America

{photo from GOOD}

My politics may be progressive, but I love my often-flawed country. I think we too often cave to fear of the different, but that it's human nature, and as a country of immigrants, it's, unfortunately, easier to fall into traps of division. The inequality gap may be growing at an alarming rate, women may not make equal pay for equal work, homosexuals may not be able to serve honestly in our military or have marriage rights in most of the country, the poor may be unrepresented, the wealthy may own our elections, but my father was born into a poor farming family in Vietnam and my mom's family lost their store after the end of the war. Now I'm a graduate from a liberal arts college with ripe opportunities if I went searching. I can spend someone's month's salary on one coffee at an overpriced chain shop that has taken over the globe if I wanted. I can shout into the netherworld because of some magical electromagnetic something-or-other about whatever I wanted. I could say I hated this country and not fear repercussions (mostly).

I'm not disillusioned about our imperfections, but I love my country none-the-less.

Happy birthday, home and native land of mine.