I’m a very private person. I keep to myself, I get uneasy when people pry. You wouldn’t think this would be a problem, but here I am, hiding in an alleyway. Welcome to the 21st century.
The cameras are out there, searching for me. Searching for everybody. A woman walking her poodle just walked by, talking into her cell and snapping pictures as she goes. Thanks to her Web site her dog’s bathroom habits are more well-known to the American people than any three Congressmen. I crouched behind an old HDTV box and waited for her to pass.
Somewhere my ex-girlfriend is uploading intimate images from our last vacation to her MySpace page, her FlickR album, and her LiveJournal.
I’m starving, but I don’t dare go near any restaurants. Too many live cooking shows around, too many taste test informercials. My last meal was a pretzel snatched from a bakery just seconds before The Food Channel’s “Open for Lunch!” crews arrived to start tearing the place apart with the help of “Marketing Guru Rich Montague!” I grabbed a pizza box to cover my face and ran away before they could start handing out waivers to the other customers, who were all — men and women — excitedly touching up their makeup and IMing their friends that they were going to be on TV. Their friends couldn’t respond right away, of course, because they were all on TV themselves, somewhere.
When I tried to call my parents last week, they were being interviewed for a History Channel documentary on the 60’s. Again.
I adjust my baseball cap to hide from traffic cams and leave the alley. I can’t move very quickly because I have to follow a complicated, serpentine path to avoid cameras in front of electronics shops, convenience stores and ATMs. Security footage always comes back to haunt you and your fuzzy profile will be broadcast for the next two news cycles, covered by stock market crawls and promos for “Suicidally Depressed Daredevils,” coming up next!
I haven’t talked to my sister for six weeks. According to her blog she’s busy having her face and hips restructured for FOX’s “We’ll Make You a Model, Dammit” while ABC’s “Eww, You’re Wearing That?” designers ceremonially defile and burn her old wardrobe and, unbeknownst to her, Bravo’s “While You Were Unconscious” crew replace everything in her apartment, including the cat, with a Southwestern motif.
I’m not crazy or paranoid, I don’t think. I’m not afraid that aliens are beaming thoughts into my brain or that a government conspiracy is controlling my cholesterol levels. An aluminum foil hat will not help me. Quite the opposite in fact; it would draw attention and I’d end up featured in a Nightline segment about “The Plight of the Homeless.” I can’t dress too well, either, or too stylishly, or field reporters will grab me to do a standup for another “New Trends!” segment. It happened 12 times before I finally designed a T-shirt so sexually and racially offensive it couldn’t even be seen on cable so they’d skip over me and avoid the hassle of blurring it out.
I just like my privacy, and there isn’t any anymore, not in the new world of Web journals, celebrity sex tapes, reality shows, paparazzi, exposes, and the public’s constant need to for more people to live through.
I managed to avoid screen time for months by working as a prop man for NBC’s “Point at the Loser!”, hiding behind the camera to avoid the front. Then they came around to do a behind-the-scenes documentary for the DVD and I was forced to climb out a window while the other crewmen were pretending to like each other. I’ve kept moving ever since.
Even my best friend Jimmy was too excited about his audition for “Who Wants to Be a Neurosurgeon?” to help me. “Yeah, I know it’s totally exploitative,” he said, packing. “But if I win with the fewest fatalities I get a slot at Johns Hopkins!”
A police car speeds by, followed closely by the “Justice on the Streets” reality show van. After that comes “World’s Most Amusing Serial Killers,” cornering on two wheels to pull ahead of Action TV News Teams from three different channels. Don’t worry, criminals, wherever you are; you have the right to an agent. If you do not have an agent, one will be appointed to you, at 15% of your book deals and cable show gross, plus foreign rights.
“Excuse me, sir?” The chase distracted me, I never noticed her sneaking up behind. She’s beautiful, of course. “Stand still for a sec’. You got good teeth? Right, smile wide. Be sure to pick the second one, ‘k?”
The lights on the cameras glare in my eyes and I can see millions of bored people munching their chips and spending their lives watching other people’s lives, watching me. Staring at me.
I run for it.
Heedless of the yells behind me, I duck around a corner, knocking over two B-list celebrities who were Prank’n another B-list celebrity, and a weatherman doing an onsite. Running is dangerous; it attracts attention from bored news teams and you might not pay enough attention to where you’re going. Once I ran into a Spencer Tunick photoshoot and had the shakes for three days.
Privacy is a thing of the past. Anonymity is passé. No one has any secrets anymore, unless they fight for them. And I’m tired, so very tired…
I dash around the corner and stop dead. Before me are throngs of people milling around huge camera setups and massive Klieg lights. A man with a loudspeaker is booming, “All right, everyone coming in as an extra for ‘Lethal Weapon 6: We’re Too Old for This Sequel,’ remember to look frightened yet oddly pensive, all right? In three, two, one…”
Behind me the excited crowd pushes forward. I struggle, hiding my face in my hands, but the unblinking eye of the camera swings around towards me—
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Tune in for a sneak preview of next week’s episode of “The Last One”! And stick around for an hour-long special on his opinions, personal habits, and baby pictures, after this!
Wow, Chris, you impress me. As always.