Not One Of Us

One of the things that I have always taken solace in is the way certain celebrities have the ability to appear in our world as "just plain folks." The suggestion that Bruce Springsteen drives his kids to school just like any hard-working New Jersey dad helps me make sense of the world. Knowing that the guys from DEVO met in art school and used their collective nerdiness to become one-hit wonders gives me hope for my own collective nerdiness. It is my absurd wish to relate to those in the public eye that keeps me renewing my subscription to Entertainment Weekly.
Then there's the other side of the coin: Katy Perry and Russell Brand were married in a traditional ceremony last Saturday. In India. On a tiger preserve. With horses and sitars and elephants. I remember when I was planning my wedding with my soon-to-be-wife, and for a few minutes, we considered a Disney wedding. Then we realized that we were shopping in a realm that was at least a decimal place higher than we were likely to cough up. So we looked into getting a horse on which she could make her entrance. We finally settled on a Dodge convertible. We skipped the tigers and elephants, too.
Then there's the marriages that have lasted and lasted, like Mick and Keith. They've stayed together for fifty years. For his part, Mister Richards insists that he has been able to maintain his calm in the eye of the hurricane we call fame the old fashioned way: heroin. There were sitars, but there was no word on whether the Brand/Perry reception included any pharmaceuticals.