My Encounter With A MySpace Celebrity

I'm at work, and my employers appear to be going bankrupt, so I'm trying to spend more of my workday on creative writing, and less on actual work. Here's today's result:

The MySpace Celebrity

As a New Yorker, it goes without saying I bump into celebrities from time to time. Also, my day job is located in DUMBO, Brooklyn which has become the new haven for "on-location" shooting. When I first got the job there, I thought it was cool there were movie or TV trailers and crews coming through every few weeks. As it becomes more and more frequent, I'm finding it more and more irritating stepping through entire blocks of trucks, rigs, and shithead interns to try and get my coffee of a morning.

Anyway, not to get off topic: celebrities.

They were filming an episode of Rescue Me on the block in front of our office. As a result, I saw Dennis Leary today. However, shortly after I bumped into a celebrity that was of greater intrigue to me...a MySpace Celebrity.

What is a MySpace Celebrity? Well, as per my definition, it's a person who you know of strictly through the world wide web, but since you don't communicate as friends or acquaintances, there remains an air of intrigue. Has this happened to any of you?

We're all aware of the power of the world wide web to enlarge one's stature, and how Average Joe's and Jane's can be made to appear larger-than-life (or at least larger than they are in real life) with the right presentation. Shortly after I first started up the Jake Palumbo MySpace about two years ago, I added this girl from Brooklyn. I added her mainly because:

a) she was really hot, and
b) she seemed to be a big enthusiast for underground hip-hop.

I was also intrigued that she appeared to have posed for a website that focused on nude and semi-nude girls with tattoos and a "counter-culture" look. I figured worst case I could at least try to pimp my music or myself to her from behind the safety of a computer screen. She had the look of a girl who probably has a wide choice of hipster men to date.

Well, in all that time since becoming cyber-friends, we've not spoken a word to each other, outside of possibly a "Thanks For The Add" on one of our parts. I didn't know her from Adam, most hot girls have creepy stalker dude's bothering them anyway, and her page had a statement about how she doesn't date musicians or emcees, so I conceded that we would never meet, and she was relegated to The Stroke Files (we all know MySpace is beginning to render porn obsolete), and only thought of sporadically. Although a year or so ago I did randomly surf into her page and she'd mentioned landing a job at a well known hip-hop company (known for rejecting Jake's demo twice) who's offices I always forget are just a few blocks from mine.

Today, after seeing a 700-lb. hunk of metal dropped on the windshield of a Ford in a shoot for Rescue Me, I went into the grocery/deli I frequent to get lunch. As I'm in line to pay for my veggie burger. I get a weird tremor in The Force and turn around only to see a girl standing behind me whose tattoos look familiar. I did a double-take and realized it was her. Thinking I was crazy, I stood for a second while she and the metro-sexual hipster boy she was with had a discussion. Using "context clues" (thanks, 5th grade) I was able to deduce they were talking about the well known hip-hop company located in our neighborhood, of which I recall her working for. Realizing this, I was semi-star-struck, since I'd seen her photos (both professional and amateur) numerous times and wanted to holla but didn't...at the same time, seeing that she was barely 5 feet tall, as well as paying for part of her lunch with change, made me realize that it was largely the internet and it's power of presentation that had gotten me so gassed up about this girl's stature. She was in real life just a girl, nothing more, nothing less, albeit a hot one with an ultra-hip job.

My initial reaction upon this mental liberation, was to turn around and say:

"Hey, I know you, you're L*** ***, we're friends on MySpace. Your pictures are really nice. Now that I realize you're not a celebrity I should be intimidated by, I think you would greatly enjoy my rugged looks, scathing wit and sardonic sense of humor, cutting-edge music, vast pool of knowledge, and staggering sexual prowess, combined with my blue-collar Southern values. I suddenly feel qualified to date you, and it's very liberating to know that you're not as glamorously amazing as I'd assumed on the internet."

But then folks, I'm pretty sure that would have resulted in:

a) her being freaked the fuck out and
b) me being escorted out of BridgeFresh.

Having to accept defeat, I went and ate my veggie burger and pooped it out about an hour and a half later.

The End.