Tears of Joy

As I write this, my eyes are misting. But they are tears of utter, total, complete joy…of an elation I seldom have experienced in my own humdrum, boring, meaningless life. I have just learned that Toby McGuire, of Spider Man fame, is getting married!! I cannot imagine anything that may have a more powerful impact on the lives of millions of people around the world. (Can you imagine the joy in Darfur? The jubilation in the streets of Bagdad?) I’m positive I’ll be going to the wedding, of course. I’m sure the invitation is in the mailman’s pouch even as I type. I mean, Toby is such an important part of my life. Maybe he’ll ask me to be his best man!

And I desperately needed this ray of sunshine in my life after the indescribably agonies I have been going through over Lindsay’s and Brittany’s trials and tribulations. That these saintly young role models are continually harassed and hassled just for being fun-loving is unconscionable. And that some people actually dare to suggest they be treated like everyone else! Are they mad? Brittany and Lindsay and all those other wonderful people famous for being famous are not like everyone else. They are STARS whose luminous brilliance lights the dark, hopeless night in which the rest of us are doomed forever to reside.

And the rumors of possible unhappiness in Brad and Angelina’s relationship have kept me awake nights, sobbing into my pillow, or shaking my fists at the uncaring and cruel fates.

These people are my LIFE! How could I possibly exist without knowing that Jude Law threw a punch at some photographer? I’m sure the photographer deserved it for thinking he had a right to take a photograph of Jude on a public street. These paparazzi are totally out of hand and should be soundly thrashed. (But then I realize that without them taking pictures of Prince Harry slipping on a banana peel, I would not be able to feel as close to Harry as I do.)

Oh, dear Lord, what is there in human nature that makes what happens in the lives of total strangers—people whom we have never met, will never meet, and who have absolutely no direct effect whatever on our own lives—so pathetically important to us? Why do we spend millions of dollars which could be far better spent on other things buying glossy magazines filled with the intellectual and emotional equivalent of lo-cal bat guano?

Why do we buy tennis shoes simply because a sports figure shills them? The fact that 99.9 percent of product advertising features pretty people speaks for how pathetically insecure the rest of us are. Think, people! THINK!Envy is a natural emotion, but we have taken it to astoundingly incomprehensible lengths. I suspect one reason why we blindly follow every movement of the rich and “famous” beautiful people is that we truly believe, way deep down, that they are somehow superior to us. We are—thee and me excepted, of course—becoming a nation of pigs eagerly gobbling up whatever garbage those who are obviously superior to us choose to slop into our troughs. And we should be grateful, for by doing so they have all but eliminated the bothersome necessity to actually think for ourselves and make our own decisions.

But in defense of all the beautiful, rich, and famous Tobys and Lindsays and Brittanys and their agents and publicists and personal hairdressers and fitness trainers out there, I must say that if anyone so insecure about their own value as a human being as to need vicarious validation from the lives of others, they deserve a place at the trough.

Well, I seem to be very good at asking questions, but very poor at providing answers. What do YOU think I should think? I’ll be sure to ask Toby at his wedding.

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