Thank God They’re Gone!

not famousA couple of weeks ago, E! cancelled I Am Cait — and not a minute too soon.  Quite frankly, Caitlyn Jenner’s 15 minutes were up last year when she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Cait is going to go quietly, but, with any luck at all, she’ll just dissolve back into the Kardashian Universe and we’ll never hear from her again.

Here are a few other celebs who’ve recently got the memo “Hey! You’re Not Famous Anymore.”  And don’t worry if you don’t know who these people are — as “media whores” go, they obviously weren’t that good.

Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy or whatever he’s calling himself this week — Back in the day, this guy actually had a music career, but he got outrun by younger, faster and better.  Ever since then, he’s been trying (unsuccessfully) to reinvent himself and has changed his name so many times even Google doesn’t know who he is.

The crowd from Jersey Shore — Will we ever forget Snooki and her friends? (I’m guessin’ yes.)  Honestly, calling yourself JWoww or The Situation in 2016 is just sad.

Nick Carter — Very few people knew who this guy was even when he actually was somebody.

Charlie Sheen — The poster boy for WTF.  “Hey, Chuck! Nobody cares anymore!”

Shia LaBeouf — Charlie Sheen’s evil little brother.  Every since LaBeouf showcased his acting talents in Transformers, he’s made a new career out of being a jackass.  It isn’t working.

Tyga — One of the ickier members of the Kardashian Universe.  His claim to fame was “dating” a very underage Kylie Jenner — with, I might add, Caitlyn and the rest of the crew’s tacit approval.  These days, he’s living off his rep and making headlines for getting robbed.

Jonathan Cheban — Another Kardashian hanger-on people generally referred to as “Who?”

And finally, the grandmother of them all:

Paris Hilton — The gal who invented Nouveau Skank.  Paris started falling off the media radar when she dumped BFF Nicole Ritchie and people discovered just how boring she was as a solo act.  These days, she’s a DJ and was seen recently, in Vegas, pumping out fake orgasms for the Thunder From Down Under crowd.

Fame, thy name is transient — thank God.

 

5 Reasons Why I Love Autumn

autumnI’ve already said I hate summer, so chances are good I’m on Satan’s shortlist of souls he’d like to meet and greet — permanently.  Hating summer is like seeing an ugly baby and then actually saying it : everybody kinda agrees with you, but nobody’s on your side.  However, as the man said, “If you’re going to Hell anyway, you might as well just keep driving.”  So summer might not actually suck — all the time — but here are 5 reasons why I prefer autumn.

Autumn is active — When summer is over, you can actually do things again — like walking down the street or standing waiting for a bus — without feeling like a tributary of the Amazon is flowing down the back of your shirt and into your underwear.

Autumn is cozy — There is nothing better than a fuzzy sweater on a chilly evening.  And is there anybody in this world who doesn’t like fat, warm socks?  These are two of life’s priceless little pleasures that release tons of endorphins.  Unfortunately, they’re not available to us when the temperature is 36 degrees in the shade — and there ain’t no shade.  It is my considered opinion that the lack of fuzzy sweaters and fat socks is why people in desert countries are so grouchy all the time.

Autumn moves — Summer doesn’t move.  It just lies on you like a Hot Fudge Quilt.  Autumn, on the other hand, lives on the breeze.  You can taste it in the early morning, fresh as that first cup of coffee.  It plays in the trees like Peter Pan having a giggle.  It swirls and twirls tiny tornados of leaves at your feet, teases your hair like a casual lover and sends you to bed with an extra blanket tucked up to your chin.

Autumn is made of soup — There is only so much cremated cow a man can stand.  Autumn is the time for great cauldrons of things that sound and bubble and fill up the house with steam and smell and plenty; served in great bowls with bread or in a thick mug, balanced just right between you and your book.

And finally:

Autumn is serious — When the temperature starts to drop in the Northern Hemisphere, we all have this weird cultural memory that “Winter is Coming” and it’s going to try to kill us.  We don’t lay in stocks of food and firewood anymore, but we do subconsciously put away the toys of summer and assemble our tools.  That’s why God made “Back to School” sales.

It might still be three weeks until Autumn is “officially” here, but Mother Nature and I always start early — right after Labour Day.  And I can see it from here.

Avoidance Behaviour

behaviourTo everybody but me, my life right now looks like lazy.  However, in actual fact, I’m quite busy — engaging in that age-old tradition — Avoidance Behaviour.  As any practicing procrastinator will tell you, Avoidance Behaviour is an essential part of getting anything done.  It’s all the dickin’ around you do between the time you decide on a task and the night before the deadline.  However, Avoidance Behaviour is not simply wasting time there are three very important standards which govern the practice.

1 — Avoidance Behaviour must not be connected in any way to the task at hand.  For example, if your task is building a garden shed, you should first clean out the refrigerator, or organize the silverware, or in extreme cases, pull everything out from underneath the kitchen sink, see what’s been hiding there, sort it and then put it all back for another time when you have more time to deal with it.

2 — The best Avoidance Behaviour is useless stuff that nobody in their right mind would ever think of doing.  Alphabetizing all those CDs you’ve got left over from the 80s is an incredible piece of Avoidance Behaviour.  Colour coding your closet is another one or searching Social Media for that bitch from high school (what’s-her-name?) who ran the Yearbook and put the dorky picture of you picking your nose under “Student Activities.”  (Wait a minute — I’ve done that.)  Anyway, to further clarify, here are some excellent examples of Avoidance Behaviour:

Watching old Brendan Fraser movies.
Surfing YouTube for that 70s song that goes “Da, da, da, da, dum, dee, dum, dum, something, something, dee, dee, dum.”
Making a list of all the members of the Legion of Super Heroes– with their corresponding powers — just in case you might need it someday.
Driving across town for that particular pastrami sandwich you remember from university.  (This works especially well if, once you get there, you discover the deli closed 12 years ago and is now a Yoga Centre.)

And finally:

3 — Avoidance Behaviour is time sensitive.  To get the most benefit out of Avoidance Behaviour, it should begin immediately after you’ve got a rough idea of what you going to do, continue (off and on) throughout the rest of the process, and end in a frenzy the day before the deadline, preferably in the late afternoon.  This produces the maximum amount of panic which, in turn, releases the optimal amount of adrenaline, Norepinephine and Cortisol — all needed to complete any task in the nick of time.

So for all those people who think I will never get my book of short stories published — think again.  The only problem I have is that, when you’re doing nothing, you kinda never really know when you’re done.