The case for fame

This Monday update, for once, has nothing to do with my weekend. My weekend can basically be summed up as: lots of eating delicious food with good friends. I can't help but love the summer BBQ season. But anyway, enough about what this post isn't about (despite setting myself up for that digression), and onto what it is about: the quest for fame. I finished reading The Narcissism Epidemic a few weeks back which posits that the quest for fame and fortune and the need for self promotion via social networks (and, er, on say, personal blogs) is what is creating our generation of entitlement. I agree with a lot of what the book says, but honestly that's not what this post is about either. Bear with me.

I don't have a real desire to be famous. The cons seem too great (people actually care what your feet look like, you're statistically more likely to have stalkers, and people other than your family and arresting officer want to make fun of your mug shot, to name a few). However, I've recently been compiling a list of things famous people get to do that would almost make the cons worth it. Well, really it's more that I wanted to post these links and had to figure out a tangential connection, but hey, maybe it will encourage me to actually finish my no-doubt-fame-inducing young adult fantasy novel!

 1) You get to meet Koko the gorilla. This is apparently an experience reserved for "celebrities and dignitaries." Such as Robin Williams.

 2) You can go to Antarctica for free. Well specifically if you're a famous artist or writer, but I'm sure they'd let Justin Bieber do it if he asked. Also, I admit this particular entry on the list might be specific to my own interests and ideas of what is considered a fun perk. And there's sort of a time limit on this one. At the rate it's melting, I should probably become famous in the next 30 years just to be on the safe side.

 3) You get to meet other, cooler famous people without actively stalking them. As a note, this is perhaps my favorite tumblr. It always seems like every photo could have an interesting story attached.

Case in point: what are Jack Nicholson and Groucho Marx possibly talking about?

4) People give you free food a lot.

5) You can host a fundraiser for President Obama that President Obama will actually show up to. If I got to meet the president, I might throw a fundraiser for him too. But, and this is probably another quirk of not being famous, most of my friends are similiarly shallow pocketed, so I don't think my fund raiser would be that successful. I prefer to use what little fund raising clout to raise money for my attempts at 5Ks.

Okay, that's all I've got. I don't think any of these really make up for having to worry every time you go out in sweat pants, but it would be really cool to meet Koko.