There is a young, blonde Paparazzo with spiky hair sitting next to me at The Coffee Bean and I want to yank his computer plug out of the outlet. He’s writing something about Marcia Cross, star of “Desperate Housewives”, whom he photographed with her infant child as they threw pennies into a fountain. Apparently he overheard them making a wish on behalf of the child’s father, who has cancer. And I feel ill over this, this insane invasion of privacy, this ugly obsession with celebrity, which decimates the idea of a personal life.
The scruffy blond keeps looking over his shoulder, like he knows I’m watching, because that’s what he does, what we all do, and maybe he feels a little guilty, or has an awareness that he’s doing something morally ambiguous.
But then I wonder how different we are. He’s sitting at Coffee Bean, sipping an icy drink, trying to make a living, and so am I.
He’s on to Russell Brand, and I’m blogging about Paula Abdul.
I realize how many people depend on the storied world of Hollywood to make their livings and yet, how hard it is for the people we’re writing about to have a normal life.
