celebrity

Mel Gibson is a Total Nutjob

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Holy crap. What a fucking moron.

Gibson’s theology, writes Christopher Noxon in the New York Times, “is a strain of Catholicism rooted in the dictates of a 16th-century papal council and nurtured by a splinter group of conspiracy-minded Catholics, mystics, monarchists and disaffected conservatives — including a seminary dropout and rabble-rousing theologist who also happens to be Mel Gibson’s father.”

In the 1992 El Pais interview, Gibson said that “For 1,950 years [the church] does one thing and then in the 60s, all of a sudden they turn everything inside out and begin to do strange things that go against the rules.

“Everything that had been heresy is no longer heresy, according to the [new] rules. We [Catholics] are being cheated. … The church has stopped being critical. It has relaxed. I don’t believe them, and I have no intention of following their trends. It’s the church that has abandoned me, not me who has abandoned it,” he said.

I will never see any of his movies again.

(2014 Update: And I haven’t, either.)

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schadenfreude

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It took them an entire study to realize that schadenfreude (glee at the misfortune of others) happens when people resent those who have privileges without working for or deserving them, and those privileged people suddenly fall from grace. I would have thought that was self-evident.

I have to take issue with one paragraph that’s totally wrong: “You will envy more a colleague of yours who makes a thousand dollars more a year than you will a C.E.O. who makes a million dollars more than you,” he said. “We also care about famous people. They are symbols to us.”

Ahem. That’s total bull-crap. I’d be happy for the person I know and annoyed at the C.E.O, not be envious of him. Unless of course the colleague of mine turned out to have made the $1,000 in a totally unethical or undeserved way. And the C.E.O I would probably assume made the million in a undeserved way, unless they had some really creative idea that the built their own company on. Then I’d probably admire them.

And I frankly don’t give a rat’s hiney-end about famous people. Screw ’em. They do, in the article, point out that we tend to think of celebrities as people who are a part of our lives, and I think that’s true, in some ways, with some celebrities. I think the only famous person I ever truly wanted to meet was Princess Diana, just because I think we would have gotten along well.

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Brushes With Fame

We’ve been having an e-mail discussion of brushes with fame this morning, so here’s mine:

1. I interviewed Chastity Bono for a newsletter.

2. I know Dick Wolfsie, the local news channel 8 morning guy who did a report on my “Big Things” photo gallery. Dick is friends with tons of famous people, including Al Roker.

3. I’ve been on TV at my friend Amy’s Survivor parties, also on channel 8, and Amy’s friends with the camera man and lady reporter who’s name I can’t recall. But I do have a photo with her.

4. My brother’s ex-wife is friends with Shannon Hoon’s former girlfriend, and said girlfriend did portrait photography of my nieces.

5. I have photos that will be appearing in Roadside America, a book on Haunted Indiana, and in Dick Wolfsie’s new book. Pretty cool, huh?

So I’m almost famous. Exciting, isn’t it?

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