I was just reading this, and my mind got to reflecting on the job I will be leaving in about a month.

Celebrity is a phenomenon that I personally have found very difficult to pin down in any manner. In my current job, I'm around celebrities just about every day. Many of them are somewhat famous, a few are very famous, and a very few require an entourage of not only makeup and PR people, but a few menacing bodyguards as well. The one thing they all seem to have in common is a hyperawareness of who is watching them, of their own physical presence in a room. The reason behind this is obvious, and the tension they radiate is understandable, even for the ones who are being watched by the aforementioned menacing bodyguards.

After that, the similarities stop. People go on and on about "star quality," and I do not deny its existence, but I think a lot of the reason a person seems to emit a star quality is because we've been told over and over that they're a star.

The contradictions that have nagged at me a bit come with the rare occasions when it has really been required that I interact with a given celebrity. Here's the problem with being famous (I think) - picture this: it's raining. No, sorry. Picture this: you're famous. You must get very tired of being hounded for attention, autographs, whatever - and yet, your ego must in some way come to depend on the very recognition that earns you $20 million for six weeks of work.

Cut to me, the lowest member on the ladder of what we laughingly call a press crew, the person who shows you to your chair, tries to make sure lights don't fall on or near you, keep people in the hall quiet as you give your interview. You give your interviews every day. I see people like you every day. We're both unimpressed with each other. And yet I'm not allowed to be unimpressed with you. If I don't recognize your celebrity, I am insulting you. If I am impressed with your celebrity and betray that admiration with so much as a beam in your direction, I am breaking the rule that I don't exist.

It's late, and this is really ceasing to make any sense outside of my head.

More when I'm feeling a bit more coherent.