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July 14, 2007
Parting is Such Tweet Sorrow
Alt title: Grief is for the Birds
Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss's parrot has died. Fliess's reaction? She's opened a laundromat called 'Dirty Laundry' in Nevada, plus she's planning on building a legal brothel for women (i.e FOR women) called Heidi's Stud Farm. "I had to force myself to do something," Fliess said. "Nothing in my 41 years - nothing - ever affected me like this."
An odd overreaction, some might think. I had a parrot once, a cockatiel called Scruffy Whinge, or Mr Whinge if we were being formal. I loved that little squawker, how he followed me from room to room, whinging endlessly and smashing into cupboards. I was always thought it unnatural to get bird's wings clipped, but then again, I guess there aren't many cupboards in the wild either. And sure, I was upset when he died, and angry with the cupboards, but never once was I tempted to use it as an excuse to open a bordello. 'Polly want a crack whore?'
It seems to me that such a reaction is not a 'normal' way of dealing with the grief caused by losing a beloved parrot. This is a 'celebrity' way of dealing with it. Unlike the rest of us (and I count myself as one of you, for now), celebrities are seemingly entitled to be overly grandiose and mad with their reactions. They jump on the backs of trendy causes as if their OWN lives depended on it, demand strange things in hotel rooms, join bizarre religious cults, find god after spending a couple nights in jail, marry their 'soul mates' only to divorce them six months later (divorce is like the new 'breaking up with your boyfriend') ... it's all so very childish and self-indulgent, and it cheapens real emotion. We all have these childish fancies, but do we act on them? Well no, we can't – we don't have the money.
My dream, for example, is to own a house large enough to build a mirror maze in the basement. Not only will there be a mirror maze, it will come with laser gun toys that you can bounce off the mirrors to hit your opponents and score points. The construction of such a thing would certainly have gotten my mind off the passing of Mr Whinge, but unfortunately I lacked the resources. If I had owned the resources, I might have done it, and I might even have immemorially named one of the robots Mr Whinge. Sure. I would have. Hmmm.
I guess my distaste for the insane whims of celebs comes not from any actual righteousness, but more from jealousy. Having been found out as a hypocrite, I'd storm off to my trailer ... if I had one. Sigh.
*Originally published on www.rovedaily.com*
Posted by Sam Bowring at July 14, 2007 05:14 PM