In my previous post I took the chance of looking like a insufferable egomaniac in an effort to counteract previous posts that made me sound like a terminal loser. While I may have sounded ridiculously full of myself, there are plenty of other people in the world who exhibit quite opposite qualities, and I'm not sure they're any more attractive.

At the merry ol' call center I was talking to one of the new recruits and she mentioned she and her husband had recently moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles. I'm always mystified when I meet people who've moved here from Los Angeles and New York because through most of my life I've firmly believed the Party, the Action, the Next Big Thing was brewing in those cities, certainly not here in Sleepyville. So I asked her why in the world she would abandon the home of Show Business to work here in a call center.

"Oh, Hollywood's no big deal. After you've seen one celebrity you've seen them all."

Then a couple of days ago on the phone I ran into another lady who said she had recently moved here from Los Angeles, "born and raised in the San Fernando Valley." She said she would never go back and just loved Georgia. Why in the hell would she move here and abandon the Seat of World Wide Show Business? "Once you've seen one celebrity you've seen them all. I mean if you're a plain person who doesn't care about that stuff..."

Take note that in both exchanges the ladies' assumption was that I want to be in Hollywood to look at celebrities. I could care less about seeing Brad Pitt -- I want Brad Pitt to see ME! I want him to stop in his tracks on the sidewalk and say, "Holy shit, there he goes! I'll tell my friends I was just feet away from him!" Also take note of the phrase "plain people". Yes, there are people out there, more than a few, who are self-described plain people!

"Johnson, we'd really like to bring you aboard with our company. But first, how would you sum yourself up in one word?"

"Um...well...hmm...I uh...well...."

"Yes?"

"How about...plain?"

If nothing else, thank God I've really never thought of myself as a plain person. In high school I recall being agape when we had to turn in papers about what we wanted to be one day, and people were turning in such mundane professions. So many people seemed to have no expectations, no deeply-held belief they could one day be anything but plain. I don't recall what I wrote but I'm sure it was somewhere between Eddie Van Halen and David Letterman, something spectacular.

"Most people aren't particularly good at anything," George Carlin wisely wrote in Mind Droppings. "It's particularly interesting when you can see them from an airplane. The houses, like the people, all the same. The streets, like their lives, going nowhere. 'Not a Through Street.'" My life may not be a through-street, but I like to think the arhitecture of my "house" is apart from the norm, anyhow.

But you wouldn't care about any of this if you're a plain person.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home