Sh*t I Don't Understand: The Royal Wedding

I've spewed about this general subject before, but since all the buildup and enthusiasm over the Royal Wedding has brought the whole ordeal to an uncharted level of annoyingness, it now warrants its own post. I'll be honest - at first, the news of Prince William's engagement did turn my head. After all, it's not an insignificant event by any stretch of the imagination, so let's make it clear that I'm not trying to downgrade the overall weight that the wedding carries. The British Monarchy is an interesting lesson in history, tradition, the whole bit. Weddings like this happen about as often as a solar eclipse. Throw in the fact that Prince William is the son of the late Princess Diana and was a teen tabloid heartthrob himself in the '90s, and you can see why the hype machine is ratcheted up enough to blow the entire town's electricity.

But, that being said, come on. The level of coverage is just insane. Not only does a Google search for "Royal Wedding" produce 56.5 million results, but (possibly more importantly), it's also the first thing that pops up on the automatic search aid after typing just the first two letters. Not only that, but when you type in the "y," three of the first five suggestions are Royal Wedding-related. I think apologies are owed to Roy Halladay, Roy Rogers, Roy Orbison, and Roy Oswalt for the sudden decrease in Google popularity.

You know what's worse than the level of coverage itself? The fact that enough people are actually eating this garbage up! I've even heard of people that are taking the day off from work to immerse themselves in all things Royal Wedding. Unless you're from the UK, why is this so important? Just give me one good reason for an American to donate such an inordinate proportion of their time to following this wedding. Allow me to remind those Royal Wedding fans out there, that this is the union of two people who (brace yourselves for this) you do not know, you will never meet, do not care about you, have zero impact on your life, have basically zero political power, and, most importantly, are not even meaningful figures in your own country!

Maybe this is just one of those things that separates women and men as species (yes, I said species). Women don't get why men obsess over sports, and men don't get why women obsess over things like this. And despite the title of this post, I can see, to a certain extent, why a lot of women may be all about the Royal Wedding. Like I said earlier, Prince William was on the cover of every teen magazine back in the days that the current 18-34 demographic was growing up. He's grown up handsome (no homo), educated, and with a legitimate term of military service under his belt. And now that he's getting married with the utmost pomp and circumstance, nearly a generation of American women suddenly feels like they're in 7th grade again. And, in turn, since this is the wedding of a person they once held up so high in their thoughts and on their walls, they want everything to be perfect. They don't want their former dream guy getting married to just anyone, hence the gross obsession, if not unfair scrutiny, over Kate Middleton's dress, hair, shoes, etc. etc. etc.

In that respect, I guess I can relate. Part of the reason I love playing sports and going to games is to unleash the 12-year-old inside of me. Getting off the subway at 161st St and River Ave. in the Bronx gives me chills and goosebumps even in 90-degree heat. When I'm there watching Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano, the only thing adult about my world is the beverage in my hand. I think that can be equated somewhat to the Royal Wedding obsession. Apologies in advance for making a big generalization, but you can't tell me that a good deal of women don't have some sort of dream about being the centerpiece of a huge wedding like that and having all those eyes on them as they walk down the aisle. It's probably the same feeling I get when I think about stepping into the left-handed batter's box at Yankee Stadium.

But (and I'd be doing this blog a disservice if there weren't a "but"), the line must be drawn somewhere. I can't completely give Royal Wedding nuts a pass by comparing it to sports fandom. Because sports actually grip us. Sports are something we follow day-in and day-out. Sports are unscripted. Sports are there for us, season after season, generation after generation. The Royal Wedding? There's no question of winning or losing, no outcome hanging in the balance. She walks down the aisle (and hopefully doesn't trip), they stand at the altar, exchange vows and rings, say "I do," kiss, and then it's time for a reception that is sure to sway the value of the GBP one way or the other. And then it's over. Sure, you'll have the honeymoon pictures on every tabloid and God (or Bog) save us from the media arms race when the first baby is born. But any way you slice it, you're back to your mundane life after Friday evening.

The idea for outside distractions from the grind of life is to create memories to draw back on when the days never seem like they're going to end. That's why people shoot the shit about the 50-foot eagle putt they sank, the three-run triple they hit to win a game in their softball league, or the college football road trip they took. But I'd really like to meet the person who says "you know, those three weeks I spent glued the TV poring over the Royal Wedding were such a rewarding experience, I'm so glad I did that." On second thought, no I wouldn't.

Sh*t I Don't Understand: Celebrity Gossip

Tonight, at 7:30, on The Insider, we discuss the brand of sneakers Kate Gosselin wears to the gym, don't miss it! And later, at 11:30 on TMZ, it's Lindsay Lohan getting drunk and pissing herself in a limo, followed by Clint Howard getting into a cab at LAX! It's guaranteed to be the sixty most mind-stimulating minutes of your day!

Why, people, why? Why is celebrity gossip such a big business? You can't go through the checkout aisle in the food store or surf TV channels for 3 minutes without being slapped in the face by celebrity magazines and celebrity TV shows, every one of them making a pitch at the lowest part of our minds. Oh, look, shocking news, Sandra Bullock's tatted-up biker husband who has a pornstar ex-wife was cheating on her! Oh man, I really had hope for those two, it was such a storybook romance.

When did we become such a voyeuristic society obsessed with other peoples' business? 40 years ago, were people crooning for photos of a doped-up Jim Morrison, or did they care who Jack Nicholson was dating? And it's one thing for a bunch of chatterbox wives down at the country club to be spread rumors about who in the neighborhood has a kid that eats glue. It's another thing to immerse yourself in the goings-on of people that you don't know, haven't ever met, and most likely will never meet.

Case in point: magazines paying millions of dollars for the right to be the first to publish pictures of a newborn celebrity baby. Who the hell cares? Babies all look alike, for one, and they also hardly look anything like what they will eventually grow up to be. For all you know that could be someone else's baby on the cover of OK!. You can't tell the difference, and you're never going to meet or know that kid anyway, so what on earth is the obsession?

Western culture loves to put its rich and famous in a fishbowl. They're living a life that most of us will never even sniff, but that doesn't mean we can't observe, observe, observe. I think the obsession is that we like to scrutinize every waking second of these important people's lives, hoping upon hope that an unfortunate moment gets caught on camera or, if we're really lucky, someone gets arrested, hooked on drugs or booze, involved in some sort of cheating scandal, or all of the above. Ever notice the proportion of negative news to positive news when it comes to celebrities? Some doctor could cure AIDS, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, and the common cold all in the same week and if People had the interview with the guy, they'd stick it on page 26 because pages 2-25 would already be dedicated to what Elin Woods had for lunch last week and how that possibly indicates the imminent divorce of her and Tiger.

Apparently what really makes common people feel good about themselves is the ability to poke fun at celebrities for being human. Let me ask you this - how do you think any of us would look if we had cameras in our face 20 hours a day? That's what cracks me up when I see people gasping and chuckling whenever US Weekly or one of those other esteemed journalistic outlets runs a "Stars Without Makeup" issue. Yeah, I'm sure the average US Weekly reader looks better than Rihanna when they roll out of bed, so they must have all the right to point and laugh.

Hell, I'll admit that I'm not above using celebrities as an occasional punchline, but there's a fine line to draw between lighthearted mockery and full-out obsession. Value these people as entertainers and (hopefully) conveyors of otherwordly talent. Admire their accomplishments and applaud if they do things the right way, but leave it at that. I guarantee there are many important things in your own life that could use the additional attention.

It's the New Coke

For all those who took a flier on "sex addiction" as the next big Celebrity Cop-Out Affliction at handsome 12-1 odds, please report to the cashier with your bet ticket in hand to receive your winnings. At one point it was booze, later it was drugs of varying intensities, and in between you'd see dashes of gambling and the occasional kleptomania (how you doing over there, Winona Ryder?). Now it appears that sex addiction has taken its turn as the en-vogue thing for famous people to hide behind when they make bad decisions.

First, David Duchovny goes into rehab for sex addiction after portraying, of all things, a man unable to resist the deep urges on the show Californication. Then Tiger Woods' wife gives him a worse beating than Rocky in the first Clubber Lang fight, and he is spotted months later at a sex rehab clinic in BrettFavretown, Mississippi. Now it's on to our boy Steve Phillips, the much-maligned (or much-celebrated, depending on who you root for) ex-GM of the New York Mets, who this past fall was ushered out the door at ESPN after his affair with the creature above became public. and just recently gave an interview with Matt Lauer to tell his sex-addict tale.

So the Average Nobody can cheat on their spouse (note that I didn't say 'wife,' because not all you ladies out there are made of Teflon either) and they're labeled a dirtbag, a scoundrel, a selfish and devious animal. But if you're rich and famous and you cheat on your significant other, now you can just play the sex addiction card and it's just supposed to be okay? Let's get one thing straight. You can't claim "addiction" and all of a sudden be absolved. You're not born addicted. It's not hereditary. If you become an alcoholic, or you smoke until your lungs turn black, it's an addiction that you walked yourself into by not being able to say "that's enough." You get a charge out of getting away with something, and you do it again and again chasing that first high until you're out of control.

But that's just the way it goes. Money, fame, and power don't make problems go away, but they can deflect a substantial amount of attention away from the problem; and when that isn't enough, they can be used to forge your way into an exclusive and expensive rehab facility that will certainly make a sympathetic case out of you in due time. To offer an analogy, in the Uno game of life, the rich and famous have a lot more Draw-Four Wilds than any of us do.

On second thought, I may have to make an exception with Steve Phillips. You'd really have to be a sex addict to sleep with a mud-wallowing wildebeest like that.