When Will It Be My 15 Minutes?

Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. That future has come and gone into the recylcing bin. I would now like to make an amendment to this famous quote:

Everyone under thirty will be famous for 22 hours.

I think that when Andy commented about fame, he was predicting that modern media and the news would come together and create a kind of celebrity that would last for as long an average person’s attention span or masturbatory session. However, Andy couldn’t have predicted how Reality TV would change the nature of fame; casting only people under 30 and run for a season spanning 22 episodes.

Used to be that people became famous gradually. First at a local level then hitting the big time on Star Search. Now, all you have to do is get drunk and unruly on your own stoop and you can be on Cops. Or if you’re more adventurous and have a penchant for semi-homoerotic stunts involving testicle torture* and you could be on an emptyVee show like Viva La Bam.

I don’t know if I could handle this kind of sudden fame. I was born in a reticent age where people didn’t air their dirty laundry or sell them on eBay—a more innocent time where child stars end up on crack, in porn or both, because they made it too fast, too quick.

These days, parents train their children to be ready for the money shot, the kind of defining moment that can catapult you into fame or infamy, doesn’t matter which, as long as you can merchandise it. And success is measured on whether you’ve had a Bobblehead made in your image.

But I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to be famous or a blonde hotel heiress. You can tell because I’ve whored myself out to Blogsnob and Blogarama. Does that make me shallow? No matter, I’d rather be shallow—I'm easier to amuse that way. Being deep just requires too much therapy.

Cindy from Michigan State University invited me for an interview for an article she’s writing about the blogging phenomena. I don’t know if she is going to mention me at all in the final draft. But maybe I will be front and center. Maybe this will be the start of my fifteen minutes, one I can parlay into a 6 episode arc on Scrubs.

Bring it on. I am ready for my close-up.

Read the interview (warning: it’s long) in the sidebar. Use the arrows to navigate.

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* Nutball. Check this out.