Closing the Gap

This is what blogging is all about. I just saw on someone else's blog a cell phone video of a woman at the local market smashing thousands of dollars worth of booze. When I read the caption in my head and waited for the video to load I pictured it in my head but it was nothing like he real image of a later middle aged blond woman who seemed slightly haggard sweeping a shelf's worth of bottles of wine at a time onto the floor of the grocery store aisle. Repeat, walk a few feet calmly. Sweep, crash, repeat. Sweep, crash, repeat. Sweep, crash, repeat. And so on all the way down the aisle. She didn't seem crazy, quite. And all the time a small crowd is gathering in the frame between the scene down the aisle, complete with absolute lakes of wine on the floor, and the camera. And then the old lady watching the scenes pulls out *her* cellphone and starts filming, too! And I was like: omg, even the old lady has a freaking cellphone with a video camera. AND SHE KNOWS HOW TO USE IT! Neither one of my grandma's can do that! And I think: Dang! Everybody does that now! It's like we're reporting our own news!!! It's kind of hilarious and kind of crazy and kind of freaking AWESOME! Almost anything worth knowing about is bound to be on the internet, along with a bjillion other things. And we're seeing more and more of our "news" this way without the gloss of commercialization. Imagine what this is doing for humanity after years and years of the distance of fame? In some ways fame boils down to having a face that will be recognized by many people.
I was getting my lunch today and at the register there were two men ahead of me. One of them was an employee and the other a visitor. The employee recognized the visitor and acknowledged him fairly casually (I can't remember exactly because I wasn't paying attention at first) and the other guy said something like, "Here I am trying to hide behind my sunglasses..." And after a minute I caught on that this guy must be famous and here he is out trying to just be a normal guy, dressed so casually that he looks nice but absolutely nothing stands out. No labels, nothing. And yes, I'm in Los Angeles where a LOT of people are wearing flashy labels and just as many dream of being so famous they would be recognizable.
But the world has gotten smaller and there are a lot more faces in it. It's unlikely anyone could ever even achieve that romanticized level of stardom again where fame is absolutely worshiped. And at the same all our behavior is free game to the world. We can just as easily be recognized for an injury as for a victory. It's like the first talkie where the screen goddess turns out to have a sqwauky voice and bad grammar.