The other day, journalist form the UK asked me about fame. “You’ve written about how when you were young, you wanted to be famous. Now that you’ve achieved fame, is it as you expected? How does that feel?”
And my answer is always, after Pighead (from Dry) died, a lot of things that used to matter to me no longer mattered. And to this day don’t matter. One of the things that died in me was that childhood desire for fame.
And the writer “fame” that I have, if it can even be called, “fame,” isn’t nearly the same thing that I wanted as a child. For the most part, nobody knows or cares much writers. And by “nobody” mean, the mass media. I don’t’ have journalists peeking up my skirt trying to photograph my snatch; I don’t have a camera literally in my face, capturing a macro-shot of my blackheads and pimples and wrinkles (well, if I had wrinkles, that is).
Fame today isn’t nearly as appealing as the fame of my childhood. So what, exactly, was the fame of my childhood? I have described it as, “Silvery curtain fame, Oscar Awards show fame, black Lincoln limousine, one or two flashbulbs, a camera on a dolly fame.
And today, I found on YouTube a perfect example of fame, circa 1970. This, to me, is fame.
Not this.
Just so you know.
Okay, off to take my daily goat milk bath and answer some fan mail, before signing a few autographs in downtown Amherst, when I run out to have my toenails surgically removed and replaced with platinum “hubs.”
The worst commercial I ever created is on YouTube. Though? This copy doesn’t sound familiar, so I think somebody may have revised it and made it even worse.
Also, the music? Could I have been responsible for music that terrible? Anyway, the client received an email from a viewer complaining that when the hair was “mirrored” they could see a vagina in the pattern and it upset them. There was talk of pulling the “pussy hair” commercial but it continued to run in all its glory for another few months. This is my deepest shame. Though I must say, “Softbody” was the strategy the agency had created before I arrived, so I had to work with that deformed baby of a concept. The :30 was much better, as it featured early computer animation and I got to stay at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica or a couple of months while they created it. I still remember the salad with warm miso dressing. And I bought roller blades. REMEMBER THOSE?
