Ok. I have to confess a secret. I hate award shows. Pretty soon they are going to have an award show that honors best and worst award shows. I don’t really know how people mark words, but if you know, you go ahead and mark them.

Award shows are bogus, and you know it. Just another excuse for the glitz elite to dress up and look pretty and walk carpets. And who makes the money? Stylists. Red carpet rental people. Caterers. In fact, it’s my contention, that there is some covert union of caterers, stylists, red carpet rental people, and upstart fashion designers secretly lobbying and pushing for new award shows. Always new award shows.

I don’t much understand the fascination. We reward and deify all the wrong people: singers who sing other people’s songs, actors, movie directors.

It’s no mistake that these people have more money and more resources than God. In fact I’m tired of the whole cult of stardom. There was no such thing before industrialization. I also hate it when superstars retort, “And I love you too.” Even though I’ve never met you and you mean nothing to me. Perhaps in the general sense, as an instance of their giant money-making fan base, they might, after all, love them. Just as we, the simple folk, might love getting a refund on our taxes.

What is it about the cult of stardom that is so attractive? Is it the antidote to quiet lives of desperation? Which makes us – us, the non superstars – the wax that holds the burning wick, the black infinite space sporting a few shining lights?

Yes, I know. It’s all perspective.

The covert union of caterers et al needs to create an award show for, for what, the faithful husband, the honest child, the fireman, the police officer, that woman who found $40,000 on the street and turned it into the bank, the stranger’s gentle smile which stopped a woman from her suicide plot. Of course nobody would watch that.

SS