carnival geeking still alive in the new millennium
This is a day and age when you can get rich by being famous and you can get famous for nearly anything. You can claim your 15 minutes with stunts as far fetched as claiming you sent your son up aloft in a tin foil home made balloon launched from your back yard while the video camera was conveniently rolling. Or you could do a sex tape and follow it up with a suspicious 72 day marriage. You might even opt for something less extreme, like getting artificially inseminated with 8 embryos - if only Kim Kardashian had thought of that one! Any of these weirdo antics can make you a media sensation. Then your only problem is how to cash in on the notoriety that comes from your zany stunt.
Cashing in ain't child's play. In fact it's a lot harder than dreaming up the kooky publicity stunt. For one thing the public might catch on that their leg is being pulled. They take that badly because for one thing no one likes being made a fool of, and for another the genuine 'humane interest' factor found in bizarre stories and milked by supermarket tabloids for years gets lost. It's the same feeling as finding out all those people who were hit in the groin on America's Funnest Home Video had set t it up before hand. So when a publicity seeker's cover gets blow it can be bad news, and make fame hard to cash in on.
That's what happened to Nadya Suleman. You'll recall that she was the chick who was pregnant with 8 fetuses. She also had a passing resemblance to Angelina Jolie. So people got fascinated. That is until they found out that she'd had plastic surgery, and further more had been artificially inseminated with the embryonic 8 in a plan to make millions off of public curiosity. Jon & Kate Gosselin were making it big at the time with their small scale population explosion, so there was money to be made. However some friends of hers say that scheme went back to her high school days. So the public turned on her and the most she got for her trouble was the nick name "Octomom". That and the trouble of raising her brood of 14 - many with various health and developmental problems.Octomom may not have had celebrity deal backed up around the block but she still had 14 mouths to feed. She seems not to have been qualified for much except plastic surgery and poorly thought out scams (so should should've been natural in the fame game!). So that has left her on the Z List of celebs. That's the anything for a buck set in other words. They're the one like Principle Belding from Saved By The Bell who now appear at parties for a fee (I heart hat you can actually hire Belding to do you party). Some others, like Screech, wind up in adult films. Many can be seen signing autographs at public appearances in malls. That's how the late Gary Coleman made his coin in his final days. Basically they're the bottom feeder celebrities who are too low even for rehab. Octomom has even found a way to bring that to a new low.
Nadya - we'll use her real name and not her celebrity slave name - has had her troubles recently. She's missed a few payments on her Orange County home. So that has driven her to weird extremes. Necessity is the mother of invention, and you know what Nads comes up with when she's desperate. In this case she's decided to become a professional pillow fighter. Radaronline is reporting that Nadya has joined a Pillow Fight Tour. Nads will get paid 1500 a match and has already booked 2 fights. The first is gonna be on Feb 16. So you still have time to catch that. It'll be something to fill the void left by the Superbowl. It's for a worthy cause. Nadya will be swinging the stuffing to raise awareness for abused women. So you know you can feel good about gawking the geeking!
Wanting to be famous is something most people can relate to, even though it's not normal. Most people fear losing their minds form time to time too. When there's a ton of money to be made then you can't blame some people - impressionable types perhaps - for trying to get in on the game for fun and profit. However here's a friendly word of Wondertrash advice - don't do anything sleazy like porno tapes or getting knocked up with multiple doses from the fertility specialist. That's just sleazy, like wearing your underwear on the outside to get attention. Try doing something genuinely interesting, like trying out for the role you always wanted to play and then documenting your heroic quest. That's what actress, singer, and self described groove goddess Tracie Dinwiddie decided to do when she decided that she wanted to be Wonder Woman!
Wonderful, Tracie - and good luck!
