Celebrity Withdrawal, Or Not...

Last December, sort of out of nowhere, I decided to stop reading two celebrity gossip websites (People and Just Jared) I had been reading every day for a long time. I'm not sure what exactly prompted me to stop. I think I just finally (and really about time!) got bored of looking at pictures of celebrities I really didn't care about go about their daily lives. I also realized how the approximately 20 minutes (give or take) I was spending each night looking at these two websites while I ran my bath, could be much better spent doing other things. I have not, for a second, regretted my decision. I now don't stay on the internet as late anymore and instead spend more time reading my book every night; as well, I now more regularly read and look at other, much more interesting blogs like Salon and Jezebel (which conveniently regularly mention celebrities...)

So in a way I quit cold turkey, except that I still read the Entertainment section of the Huffington Post almost every day. Clearly I haven't been able to tear myself completely away from celebrity gossip, and I wonder why? The desire to click through 30 barely different photos of Jennifer Garner (or any other celebrity) walking down the street is thankfully gone (was it even ever there to begin with? I'm not sure... It must have been in a small way, but it really became more automatic in the sense that I went to Just Jared and clicked through the pictures pretty much on auto pilot). But, the desire to know more about celebrities' lives is not. Every time I watch a movie or a TV show and like one of the actors in it, I always look them up later on the Internet Movie Data Base. I like seeing their birthday, where they're from, what else they've been in, if they are married or dating anyone, if they have kids, etc. etc. I think it's just because I am inherently interested in people, and different aspects of their lives. And aspects of celebrities' lives - though often in distorted ways - are out there on the internet, just waiting for me to find them.

When I studied abroad in Santiago, my parents came to visit me at one point. I asked my mom to bring me some gossip magazines. Feeling tired from their long flight, my parents went to sleep pretty early on their first night. I, on the other hand, stayed up late, wrapped in blankets (it was May, and quite cold being almost winter there), and caught up on months of celebrity gossip. After I was done reading US Weekly, Star, and In Touch, I gave them to C. so she could catch up too. At her birthday party a few weeks later, after we'd had the cake and sung Happy Birthday, one person found the magazines and soon everyone was gathered around, discussing, exclaiming,and savouring the link to American celebrity culture which wasn't present in Santiago. Looking back now, I definitely feel I've come a long way. But I still look back fondly on that first night with the blankets and the tabloids, and how, as sad as it may seem, I did get genuine pleasure out of reading those magazines.

The prominence of celebrity culture can also be found in unlikely places. In December 2006, while on a trip to New York, I had lunch at Cafe Fuego, a Cuban restaurant in the East Village (sadly now closed) that was owned by model (and also Halle Berry's then (but now ex, which I know thanks to Huffington Post!) boyfriend Gabriel Aubry. I had read online about the restaurant and how tacked to the bathroom wall were People and US Weekly magazine covers. Naturally I went to the bathroom to investigate, and sure enough there were 3 magazine covers - recent ones too, leading me to believe they were regularly changed. I still can't decide if I think that's funny and cool, or a bit tacky. Were they trying to make fun of celebrity culture? or embrace it? Probably a little of both, which is about where I am too.

Ash Clouds and Empty Cities

My friend N. was trapped in Berlin last month during the fall out from Iceland's volcano. Her three day stay turned in to a nine day stay before she was finally able to make it back to Oxford. N. explained that the city seemed to be paused, no one was leaving, and no one was coming in. I read an article by a journalist based in London who described how the city was empty of both many of its inhabitants (the volcano erupting during school holidays, thus trapping a lot of vacationing Londoners abroad) and of tourists, who couldn't get in due to the cancelled flights. He said he'd never seen London so empty, and that he really appreciated it like that.

These thoughts of static Berlin and London bring to mind images of ski towns in summer or beach towns in winter. I can never decide if I like them or not. On the one hand, it's nice to be somewhere that is normally bustling and crowded and instead have it all to yourself. But on the other hand, something seems really off. There is this lonely, abandoned, disused feeling that permeates and sometimes makes me feel utterly alone.

I was also reminded of a somewhat related incident closer to home. Last summer all City of Toronto workers were on strike. While the largest downside was the lack of garbage pick up (public garbage cans on the streets were the most disgusting as they were literally overflowing with trash...), there were some upsides, depending on who you were and where you lived. I read an interesting article in the Toronto Star in which a woman who lived on Ward's Island (one of the Toronto islands located in Lake Ontario, just across from downtown) described how she was actually enjoying the strike. City of Toronto employees operate the ferries which ship mainland residents and tourists to and from the islands (during the strike there was still one ferry running - maybe by a private company? - to let actual residents of Ward's Island get back and forth). So no regular ferry service meant the islands were very quiet. The woman interviewed said it was really peaceful, and that the island residents were savouring having their home completely to themselves during a time of the year when that never usually happens.

I've never been in Paris in August - the month in which most Parisians supposedly leave en masse for the beaches and sun in Cannes and St Tropez, and Paris becomes overrun by tourists. But the whole concept of that month fascinates me. The underlying implication seems to be that while the Parisians want to enjoy a summer vacation by the Mediterranean, they also want to get out of Paris precisely to avoid all the tourists. It seems like a mutual (unfounded) dislike in which tourists love to say Parisians are rude, and Parisians love to hate tourists. I, for one, don't find Parisians noticeably ruder than inhabitants of any other city, and I also don't find tourists in Paris any worse than tourists in other cities. I do, though, think it would be very cool if one August there was another volcano ash problem (or something along those lines)keeping all the tourists out and letting the Parisians -who for whatever reason did not go south- the chance to have their city all to themselves.