Turn The Page

I'm still reading Entertainment Weekly. It is, on most days, how I spend my quiet time over a bowl of granola, catching up on all the "news" from Hollyweird. Odd, since I eschew our local newspaper in favor of a weekly, as the title suggests, account of what Time-Warner would like us to know about showbiz. I make a point of getting through each issue over the course of the week to be prepared for the next. I wouldn't want to fall behind.
This is especially true of the "Transitions" section. This is a leftover from back in the day when I used to read Time magazines "Milestones" blurb. Who is getting married? Who is retiring? Who is giving birth? Who has shuffled off this mortal coil? Who is getting sued by whom, and who is getting a really big paycheck? I was reading the sad account of the dissolution of Russell Brand and Katy Perry's fourteen month marriage. And everybody said it would last forever. As I pored over the three paragraphs, I became aware of just how big a deal Katy Perry and Russell Brand really are. Their names appear in bold type. This kind of shorthand helps the casual reader quickly assess the relative concern we should have for the affairs of the people mentioned in this column. If you get married to Steven Tyler, you should probably be a model or rehab specialist, but you should be able to get your name in big black letters. Right Erin Brady? Sometimes "normal people" get mixed up with celebrities, and they end up carrying the child of this or that superstar. If that ends up being their only claim to fame, then they won't get the bold treatment. They are cursed, or perhaps blessed, to live their lives in the relative obscurity of normal type.
In the meantime, I continue to savor my granola mornings over this little slice of Americana, and hope that whatever the future holds for Katy and Russell that they will be allowed to keep their font.