At some point during my incredibly stressful and demanding day job as Hugh Jackman's body double, I usually check the att.net Website to catch up on the latest failures of our incredibly advanced and high-tech society to track down the location of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 jet. (The latest theory: Bigfoot took it.)
Anyway, the first headline that caught my eye on the att.net site was "Massive shark spotted in truck may set a record," which made me wonder briefly what the current record is for a shark in a truck. And then other questions starting popping in my head:
- Does the shark have to be driving the truck to compete for the record, or can it be a passenger?
- Do sharks in other vehicles -- say, a Mazda Miata -- count?
- Was the truck in the ocean, or was the shark tooling down Rodeo Drive?
- Do lawyers count for the purposes of the record?
Sadly, I will never know the answers to any of these questions, because another headline quickly pushed that one out of the way. In a font size you'd expect to see if aliens were invading Earth, this appeared:
Now, I have no problem admitting I'm not completely in tune with today's celebrity news. My lovely and talented wife frequently mocks me for not knowing who an actor is, or the name of the songs on the radio. (Frequently heard in our house: "Hey, honey, who sings that song that goes 'ka-chooga ka-chooga ka-chooga' and then makes a sound like a bear stuck in an industrial cheese grater?")
But I weep for our future if this is what passes for news, even celebrity news, in today's society. For one thing, I don't have any idea who "Tila Tequila" is, or why I should care that she is pregnant. To me, "Tila Tequila" sounds like somebody who should be on the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" show. ("Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull Tila Tequila out of my hat.")
Maybe Tila Tequila is the hottest new star who has been waging a well-publicized and heartrending struggle against infertility, and this breaking story is the uplifting account of how she overcame all obstacles and has finally conceived with her long-time partner, Ralph the Wonder Turtle. It's certainly possible - my ignorance of all things celebrity really is fairly extensive.
Even granting that, though, I'm baffled by the second "top weekend story": Kim Kardashian Wears Pink Jumpsuit. Look, I was a journalism major in college, and my first job for pay (however paltry it might have been) was working at a small weekly newspaper in Alabama. I understand the need to come up with a story on a tight deadline, when the editor is breathing down your neck and stopping by every 11 seconds with helpful suggestions like "Have you checked the police scanner?" and "You know if you don't submit some copy within the next four minutes I'm firing you, right?" I once wrote a story about a local high-school girls' volleyball team, and the story wasn't that they'd won a state championship, or even that they'd won a game -- it was that they were holding open tryouts. Even the high school's newspaper didn't run that story. It fulfilled the goal of every journalist, though -- the goal of getting the editor off my back for another day so I could goof off the remainder of my shift -- and so it was quality reporting in my book.
But even at my lowest, I never would have dreamed of trying to pass off as news the fact that Kim Kardashian wore a pink jumpsuit. Now, I know who Kim Kardashian is (as opposed to Tila Tequila), but for the life of me I can't figure out what the "news" in this story would be. Is it the fact that the jumpsuit is pink? Is it that Kim K. wore a jumpsuit at all? Unfortunately I will never know, because I refused to click on the link.
Which means that Kim K.'s pink jumpsuit will be a major cultural touchpoint, the kind of event people will look back on in 20 or 30 years and ask "Where were you when you heard about KK's pink jumpsuit" just like they do today about the Challenger explosion or Watergate or the moon landing.
And when they ask me about the pink jumpsuit, I will not back down. I will revel in my cultural illiteracy. I will stand tall, square my shoulders, look them straight in the eye, and say "Kachooga-kachooga-kachooga" and then make a sound like a bear stuck in an industrial cheese grater.
(c) 2014 John Puckett
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