Sure, fame brings money and opportunities your way. You can be the house with good Halloween candy and send your kids to a fancy private school where they can learn to hate you for being so distant. But you’re not really famous unless these 7 things are happening.
Side note: I had to make some rather uncouth google image searches to find these photos. My laptop suffered for my art.
1. Someone has hacked your phone for nude photos. This is really only for female celebrities. Nobody is trying to track down Steve Buscemi’s nude selfies. (Yes, I had to google “Steve Buscemi nude” to find that picture. I immediately deleted my browser history.
2. You’re the defendant in a paternity suit. Even if you’ve never met the woman, she swears you impregnated her with your sultry stare from a hundreds yards away. This one is only for male celebrities. Not a lot of maternity suits happening out there.
(Yep, that’s the only maternity suit I could find. I suppose for a few months, every day is Take Your Kid To Work Day.)
3. People with cameras follow you around. And you’re not just a tall blonde person on vacation in Japan.
(You can’t beat them unless you throw Rock.)
4. Something you wore once ends up in a museum. It’s usually something nice. Never that pair of underwear with the broken elastic that you wore for decades and never threw out.
(Nobody wants their granny panties labeled as “infamous”.)
5. Busloads of tourists are driven by your house every day to snap photos. Much less likely if you’re Val Kilmer living in New Mexico. That’s a long bus trip for tourists visiting Hollywood. Val just gets local drunks yelling, “I’ll be your Huckleberry!”
(“If you look to your left, you’ll see another dumbass who paid $25 to ride in my creepy cutoff van.”)
6. Unauthorized biographies of you start to appear on shelves. The incorrect facts don’t necessarily upset you, but it’s just so….. short.
(Page 1: “Remember she had that one song?” Page 2: “Yeah, I don’t know why either.” Page 3: “This page intentionally left blank.”)
7. At some point a designed will put you in clothes that you’ll regret for years after.
(And you thought looking back at your high school year book pictures was tough…)
Now, maybe with a little work and a whole lot of carelessness, you too can have all these trappings of fame without people recognizing you at 2am in McDonald’s.
Aim high friends. Aim high.