Oh, the woe. To quote Mercutio and Macduff and all of the other dead heroes: O! I am slain!
Oh, the confusion. Oh, the hurt. The hurt that is felt when two people behave in a way that YOU DO NOT LIKE OR UNDERSTAND.
How DARE they?
The prose in this article, and in the headline (not to mention the RIDICULOUS fact that these vultures call themselves “pundits”), is tortured, tormented, baffled, and most of all – hurt.
Jess Cagle (editor of People) cannot understand what has HAPPENED to her universe. She speculates, she worries, she wonders … but she cannot KNOW … and so she is left to her own tormented devices, worrying to herself, “Maybe they’ll get back together.”
Oh, and the irony of Cagle wondering to herself why “this private couple” would go through all this trouble … Well, bitch, I am sure they did their best to be a “private couple”, but your entire profession hounded them into the ground from Day One.
Cagle writhes about in her “crumpled sheets” (phrase stolen from Jewel’s poetry), staring up into the empty air above her bed, saying over and over to herself, “Maybe they’ll get back together …. Maybe they’ll get back together … Maybe they’ll get back together …”
It helps her get through those long nights.
O! I am slain.
Full disclosure below:
I loved those two as a couple. If it were up to ME, they would have stayed together.
But alas, they did not call me for marital counseling or cheerleading.
Every photo I saw of them together seemed to radiate sheer enjoyment, pleasure in one another’s company. It seemed like a real connection, to me.
And, for those of you who would like my FURTHER thoughts on all of this nonsense, I will point you to an old post of mine. I wrote it at the height of Ben and J-Lo (a couple I, to put it mildly) did NOT like together … and I was beside myself. I thought if I saw another photo of the two of them together I would knock over the magazine kiosks like a Tasmanian devil.
I spent TIME thinking about Ben and J-Lo. I was PISSED at Ben and J-Lo.
But then … a thought occurred to me …
And I wrote the following post about it. Read it. It’s actually a pretty funny story. It involves me throwing a pretzel at someone’s head. Uhm … at my boyfriend’s head, to be totally clear.
Good times, good times.
He was lucky it was only a pretzel.. no axes to hand?
*ducks*
Other important news.. Germaine has walked.. and I’ve lost all interest in the show.
I don’t like to objectify celebrities because they are people with genuine feelings, but I don’t think I care any more about this than any other couple I hear of that’s suffering through a heart-breaking separation. I don’t understand how so many people that do not know these two in any capacity other than actors can care so much. In this respect, I think paparazzi are slime, but in the end, the consumer is ultimately to blame for making their profession a lucrative one. They only take the pictures because we buy them.
However, after reading an interview with Jennifer Aniston in Rolling Stone, where she talked about how she and Brad Pitt would taunt Jenna Bush while she was a young intern at the agency where they were represented because she thinks Bush is a “fucking idiot” (“Hey Jenna, you want a beer? I’ve got one in the truck!” something like that), when they ask for the public to show sensitivity to their personal crisis, my answer is that I don’t expect anyone to show them any more sensitivity than they offered to Ms. Bush. Really, teasing a teen-aged girl because of who her father is? Class act.
Well, I certainly don’t ‘care’ about this more than I do about my real friends. Whatever. I don’t ‘care’ at all. It just seemed to me they had a real connection, and tried to live out of the bright glare of the lights (as opposed to another celeb couple I know and hate … ahem Bennifer).
I know how you are with your little obsessions and interests. I don’t think it’s lame — they did look very nice together on camera and seemed to be a genuinely happy and loving couple. But people who are otherwise totally foreign to their personal life…agonizing over the reasons why they split…that’s pathetic. People break up every day. Even people who were on “Friends”.
This goes back to the whole soulmate thing and the people who were PISSED and DEVASTATED that Richard Bach, soulmate guru, got divorced. He got death threats, people sent him letters wailing: ‘WHYYYYYYY’. People thought their entire LIVES were over. They had invested all of their hopes into … er … the marriage of a stranger? Who also just happens to be a human being, with flaws and complexity, like the rest of us?
Those people are wack-jobs. They need deep therapy.
But – it’s also no secret I have a lot of sympathy with famous people and how they deal with fame. Regardless of whether or not they are in a field where they WANTED fame or not. I’m not talking about “stars” of reality TV shows, or Kato Kaelin types, or those boneheads. They deserve what they get.
I’m talking about people from MY field, theatre. I have a lot of sympathy with those people who want fame, and success, but who also want to live a private life. (Ben and J-Lo are NOT included in this. Publicity whores those two.) I would be in the exact same awkward position of trying DESPERATELY to have a private life – if I ever became famous or hit it big.
And I’m sure people would say, “you asked for it, you asked for it” if I dared to complain about the difficulties. And to some degree, they would be right. But still. I have sympathy for the difficulty of it.
Hence, my linking to the pretzel-throwing story.
It’s similar to the behavior of really hardcore sports fans–you get way too invested in somebody else’s success, and over whose success you have no control to boot.
Go Buckeyes,
Ken
Ken — two words:
“Gator fans”
But if you haven’t seen or read Big Trouble you will have no idea what I’m talking about.
heh heh heh
I mean … Bill Buckner’s name still rings throughout the decades …
Emily’s right on regarding the money: it’s all about the money all the time with the entertainment media. They’re going to produce what people want to buy.
I also have to agree with Ken, even though he roots for Ohio State, a school with an athletic program that — despite its recent unexplainable success — routinely fails to beat its archrival (38 wins, 57 losses, 6 ties).
Go Blue!
– Ben
I’m flashing back to high school now on “O! I am slain.” We were reading Aeschylus, or maybe Euripides, or even Sophocles (a few decades later, those dead Greek guys kind of all run together) when we came across that gem. We weren’t total idiots – we realized that line was as likely a result of translation as it was authorial intent – but there’s just something so hilarious about it. For months afterward any barb, insult, or rejoinder that once was met with “a hit, a most palpable hit”, now was answered with a deadpan “O! I am slain.”
It still makes me giggle a little even today.