My First Official Celebrity Sighting

Last Thursday, I experienced my first official celebrity sighting, where here official means the first celebrity I've seen since I moved here. I know I said that I am not into celebrity culture, but we all live with our contradictions, don't we? Besides, celebrity sightings are very LA, and therefore they fit well with this blog. The celebrity in question: Michael Rappaport. He was getting into his big stupid SUV, I was sitting on a bench. He was talking on his cell phone, I was talking on my cell phone. Because I was talking to my mom, who wouldn't have a clue who Michael Rappaport is, I didn't mention it.
In case you are like my mother and don't know who Michael Rappaport is, feast your eyes on this still shot from Bamboozled.

The nice thing about Michael Rappaport is that he looks exactly like what you expect him to look like; many celebrities are shorter or fatter or less handsome in person, which leaves people let down by reality. Not Michael Rappaport. He's as gangly and dorky in person as he is on screen.

Seeing a celebrity got me thinking more about celebrity culture, about why we like to see them, and why we like to see them doing glitzy celebrity things and also doing everyday activities. According to Baudrillard, celebrities are the "heroes of consumption" whose extravagant lifestyles becomes a sign of the affluence of the society at large, defying penury and signifying abundance. They are the "great wastrels (even if the imperative is often that they be shown, by contrast, in their daily 'simplicity', doing their shopping, etc.)...it is always the excessiveness of their lives, the potential for outrageous expenditure that is exalted." (The Consumer Society, pp. 45-6). Thus our sighting them reassures us that we, too, have all that we need; that we, too, may achieve extreme wealth; that we, too, live in a society that provides for all. And when we see them in the quotidian, it suggests that the distance between us and them is not so great.

While Michael Rappaport is my first official celebrity sighting, I have seen other celebrities in my travels to California. Reflecting on this list of "wastrals," I created a sort of non-hierarchical taxonomy of celebrities I've seen:

• Rappaport is of the category celebrities in whom I am generally interested - he does a lot of really good work, usually performing in movies that strive to be more than a mindless diversion from life. He also takes interesting risks as a performer and plays roles that have social relevance, as in Bamboozled.
• Celebrities with the "that guy" quality. These are those people who have been around forever, who you see and say, "Hey, look, it's that guy!" Sometimes you don't even know their name, you just recognize them, as when I saw Elliot Gould eating lunch at the hotel I stayed at in Santa Monica. In many ways, the "that guy" represents the Hollywood workhorse, who has been around, steadily doing his or her job for a long long time.
• Celebrities who are important to someone else and meaningless to you. Case in point, The Pussycat Dolls. Before I worked on the Best Buy commercial with them, I didn't even know who they were. I don't much care for their music. Most of all, the marketing of this group (did you know that they are literally to become dolls now?) makes my consumer culture meets feminist critical sense go haywire. That being said, I have to admit I now have a soft spot for PCD, only because working on their commercial (and EA Sports) for Best Buy is what brought me to LA last fall and helped make possible my romantic reunion with my boyfriend. To their credit, I also have to say that The Dolls have an incredible work ethic. They put in two really long days of shooting and interviews, and they never complained and they never halfwayed their performances. They are very personable and professional.
• Celebrities who are of HUGE importance to me and seemingly nobody else. I don't even know if these guys qualify as celebrities or some sort of specialty niche personality, but they are huge in my book. And in the case of El Vez, The Mexican Elvis, I mean this literally - he is Chapter Three of my dissertation. These are photos from his 2004 El Vez 4 Prez tour.
  I voted for Kerry. I should have voted for El Vez.
  
  Also hugely important to me: George Hincapie, my all-time favorite cyclist from the USA. These shots are from Stage 6 of the Tour of California. His jersey is green because he was leading the points (sprinters) category after having taken two stage victories.
  
  
  Georgie on the Podium.
  
  
  
  Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC in the red Swiss ITT Championship kit.
  
  
  
  Georgie after the stage finish. He looks amazingly cool on a bike.
  
  
• Celebrities who are of HUGE importance to me and everybody else.
  
  
  
  
  Lance Armstrong.
  
  Need
  I say more?