"I'm Neil, and I'm a loveaholic". (Everyone together now -) "Hi Neil" !!!

   Okay, so from that "tease" at the end of my last post, you thought this was going to be about ME and my lovelife. Sorry, but there's not much entertaining about that, and this is, after all, an entertainment blog. Awwwww, ok. Don't be disappointed, because....

   I will tell you that in late July 2005 I fell in elevated-blood-pressure, heart-thumping-out-of-my-chest, couldn't-wipe-the-stupid-grin-off-my-face-even-in-my-sleep love. For the first time in my life. It was like a new universe was formed and together, for too brief a time, we were the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the planets. But as it turns out, it was just a gaping black hole sucking the essence out of not only itself, but all the other solar systems around it. And, in spite of the existence of this gargantuan swirling vortex where my heart muscle used to reside, it pains me to say I still might be - because she's not. I'm not easy and try as I did, I guess I didn't fool her.

   I only bring this up because it really drives home to me the utter absurdity of our national obsession with, no, addiction to, Celebrity Love. Personal, individual love is a strange thing at absolute best. So why, knowing what most of us know about it, would we encourage the stars we admire to play theirs out in such a public way? And why, (and this is the real, tough question), would they go along with it? It's beautiful, it's ugly, it's pure bliss, it's pure hell, but, for sure, at it's best it's never graceful. And we're not graceful executing it.

   Yes, executing....no mistaken choice of words there. I chose that word carefully, for it's duality. Operating it and killing it. If it was on a more mass scale, it would warrant being the lead story on the news as often as it is. And I admit I watch those stories with more fascination now that I've experienced it's ugly side than I ever did before. Just waiting for the wreck. I slow down for wrecks. The majority of us do.

   This all really hit home a few weeks ago when a big story about another massive W blunder was the second item on the news that entire day and night. For the life of me, I can't remember which fuck up it was, (the "animal hybrid" comment, I think),  but I haven't forgotten that the Chad Lowe Hilary Swank split was the lead item. I swear. Of course, she's got TWO oscars, and he's virtually unknown except for some award he won for a show with a handicapped, excuse me, challenged, lead actor some 20 odd years ago, so we all expected it, didn't we? They weren't equals, and that never works. The newscaster was so serious I could've sworn our national security was at stake. Maybe it was.

   My favorite future train wreck, though, has got to be Angelina and Brad. Really just Angelina, but, hey, Brad signed on consciously, I'd imagine. She's the one who got tattooed and wore a vial of her former husband Billy Bob's blood around her neck, remember? Now that was true love. The kind that lasts forever. Or at least until the blood clots. (Not sure what happened to the tat). She's also a UN Ambassador, of sorts, a Video Game queen, and the owner of "the most luscious lips on the planet", (according to that esteemed informational, People Magazine). Wow. And he's the one....well, I'm not really sure, (can you say Chad?). He's great looking, even from a male perspective, he was the "sexiest man alive" at least once, I think, and he was formerly married to one of America's sweethearts. They made a movie together playing married secret agents who each didn't know the other was. The entire time they were filming, and for a while afterwards, they denied, very publicly, there was anything going on between them while they made a game of hiding from the press and paparazzi. 

   Then, all of a sudden one day, they stopped hiding. They seem to have given in to the urge to see themselves, on covers and newscasts, on beaches in Tahiti and in villages in Botswana, with and without her, (their - didn't he legally give them his last name? I forget), evergrowing brood. Always doing good, and feeding on their own images. AND POSING, or at least letting their pictures get taken. Maybe they realized her growing belly was a sure sign they couldn't hide anymore. Whatever the reason, they started enjoying the openness of it all, and the need to share it with the rest of us for whatever brief time it lasts. Or the need to hardsell it so they don't vanish completely from our view before we can pull the bodies from the twisted remains.

   Or maybe they just discovered they, too, were loveaholics. 

   Next up - The Oscars. Why name an award for a garbage can residing grouch?