Poor Me No Invite to George's Wedding

Oh the disappointment

So there was this big wedding in Venice this weekend. Perhaps you heard about it. Clooney got hitched, and I didn't get an invite. Did I expect one? Not really, but then again, in this crazy voyeuristic world, I am constantly encouraged to peer into the private lives of my celebrity icons. My most basic instincts are constantly stimulated by a steady diet of personal stories, some real, some fiction, (thought it really doesn't matter) about those who dominate the pop world. After all, I know a lot about Georgie. For instance, he once was the most eligible bachelor and each and every bade he squired I got to see and to be honest harbored some less than gentlemanly phantasies. George has been in my world for so long that it is hard for me to feel that I am not intimate with his life. Hell I was compelled to see every movie he made even the less than entertaining “Monument Men.” I know a lot about George and while many of these "A Listers" like to complain about the paparazzi, we all know that much of pop coverage is actually the work of the “PR” folks who are paid handsomely to constantly feed the beast of popularity.

The fact George can command 8 figures for a role, or allowed to spend bundles of money on producing or directing is directly related to my spending and viewing habits. To think that and not get an invite, well, I figured it was downright rude of him. An aside, I once bought a chance to attend a red carpet event with him through Omaze. Now I knew entering that it was pure chance to get that opportunity. But the wedding? Hell, I am sure the great pop icon could afford another plate of food, but then again I realize it would have played hell with the seating arrangement. Kinda of like the awful decision as to who is going to sit at the table with the drunken uncle who is a leech and is wont to slobber on to every female especially those within reach and to be hit by his spittle as he attempts to talk.

But hell I have follow George through all his liberal endeavors. Where he went, I followed with my contribution. When he was in Africa for one thing or another, I was with him in spirit. As I mentioned I was with him through every movie. It was me the fan who made him what he was. An invite would have shown that the more than larger than life star was really with the common guy. But alas, rather than a first hand account, I was reduced to seeing the reports on Facebook. I was compelled to see Matt Damon on the water taxi all duded up in his tux with a big smile on his puss. It was almost like the bubble over his head would have read, “Yeah you suck, I am here, and you are not.” Oh well, such is the life of us little folks. We can look but not touch. We can imagine, but we can never truly appreciate what is like to be in that rarefied air where you can actually hear the icons fart, and excuse themselves to empty their bladders. I am left on my lonely isthmus. Left on the shores of smallness while those who are larger than life, my life, dance on clouds of popularity. I now will have to wait and read about how scrumptious the meal was, how embarrassing it was when Bill Murray tried to do the twist and his back gave out, how the wedding party got together to pull a prank on George, but failed when he learned of it and came up with counter that set the whole room laughing. All of that fun and frivolity unfolded while I spent the day in my small world. And then, again, it is Autumn in New York and nature filled me with so many colors that it was easy to let my mind wander, let my eyes feasts on the vibrant leaves and vines. There are the larger than life personalities and their doings, but none larger than the world in which I exist. Congratulations guys. I know you too were filled with all the splendor of living as was I.

A View

From “selfies” to endless self promotion, the ego has never seen a period such as this. Facebook has rocketed the individual to a self-proclaimed celebrity as banal and self serving as any camera hog especially the no talent ones who have profited on the most vacuous of human proclivities to stare at anything. No one is exempt. The “see me now” personality is exhibiting the ego being egged on by the id, the base aspect of our personality that Freud saw in the most direst of human psychological pathologies. Given evolution rather than falling into a psychotic state or living with some neurotic tendency, we merely sit about promoting our selves in the form of posts.

Self-absorption has permeated every nook and cranny of human existence. From the crazed Jihadist spouting praise to god while sawing off a head to the self proclaimed ignoramus explaining creationist theory on the origin of life, each cocksure that their paths are the sacred paths we were all destined to follow or be damned. That astronomers have discovered that even where we exist in the cosmos is vastly larger than previous thought cannot penetrate the skulls of those who revel in knowing all there is to know. In the meantime, the gap between knowing and believing grows larger and larger. How can the cycle of inhumanity be broken if the very condition that bring it about continue to flourish. That people would leave a somewhat civilized world to fill the ranks of armies looking to establish a barbaric and primitive society speaks to a most chilling dimension of the human intellect. While science has taken us beyond the cave, it seems the cave is the place where humans find a sense of belonging. It is not stars that capture the hearts of humans, it is the knowledge of certainty.

This idea that god has cast our fate is a fatal flaw in human destiny. That we can do all that we wish given the authority of some entity that has created us from dust and breathed life into our being is at the heart of all our greatest failures to exist in harmony with this place we find ourselves. That the mind cannot get beyond the reality of our condition, that a vast majority needs to cling to some insane notion that all of what we are and what we see and what we experience can be tied to texts written so long ago that their words do not even reflect what we know to be real is a testament to the fact that we cannot leave our past behind and venture into a dimension defined by reason.

From a twelve step groups that gathers at the end to give allegiance to some concocted being to nearly every state leader uttering a blessing from above, we are doomed because it seems we cannot accept our responsibility to do the right thing. We need to allude to something greater than ourselves for it would appear we are too feeble to act without this grace. The most appalling aspect of this delusion is that charity and hatred can be substituted for one another without a scintilla of rationality. Thus the recovered drunk gives praise, the madman severs a head, a believer can blow up a clinic, a priest can abuse a child, a race can be slaughtered, a greedy bastards can exploit, and on and on – all in the name of a creator who has given life to this madness for its own justification.