I'm no stranger to the celebrity set. Why, I once stood right next to the legendary performer M.C. Hammer at an Orioles ballgame, and I once browsed for cut-price books with John Waters, although you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who's been in Baltimore for more than ten minutes who can't say that.
So, I thought it was just another cog in the Wheel Of Well-Known People when I got a friend request from Carrie Underwood, the famous singer. I thought about how much fun it was going to be, sharing vacation photos and clips of favorite country songs with "Car," as she likes me to call her.
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| My close friend |
Of course it was a fakeout, and it really made me sad, not because Carrie Underwood, from Broken Taillight, Oklahoma, didn't really want to be my boon companion in real life, but because underneath all this is some person, probably male, sitting in a tub of pudding with a laptop and a desire to bask in adulation, even if that adulation is not meant for him.
Or maybe "her," I don't know.
I do know that celebrity status in America is quite an odd thing. If you saw the news a couple weeks ago when some deluded maniac tried to drive his car through the heavily fortified gate at the home of Jennifer Aniston, you saw the conditions under which she lives: high walls on the perimeter of the property, remote controlled steel gates, armed guards on duty around the clock.
From the air, it looks a lot like a building near where I worked, but that was the Baltimore County Detention Center, and even though I'm certain that Ms Aniston's home is appointed with the finest of furnishings and objets d'art, what she has in common with the denizens of the county hoosegow is that she just can't up and go to Trader Joe's any time she takes a notion to, either.
Being famous is a prison with velvet bars, and it's quite sad that anyone would voluntarily pretend to be there.
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