2010-03-18

Disaster Tourism

Hi everyone. My name's Lisa, and I'm a disaster tourist.

Oh, I don't travel to physical disaster sites. I don't need to board a plane or a train to see the disasters I'm currently allowing to gobble up my "free time." Point, click, and there are SO many disasters to be had.

But in recent weeks I have become obsessed with the chaos of others. This is bad enough when it's the chaos of someone I actually KNOW. When it's that of z-list "celebrities," it becomes a whole other bubbling cauldron o' stupid.

Nearly everyone is a disaster tourist to some degree. You don't think you are? What magazines do you subscribe to? Do you watch Sunday morning political shows? Do you have a Twitter account? I rest my case. You're just as plugged into the noise as we are, the ones who frequent TMZ.com and know who Tila Tequila is. The culture more or less drives our noses into the business of others, and the only way to avoid it is to jettison your cellphone and go live in a yurt out in the middle of nowhere.

And even then Perez Hilton will find you. Oh, yes he will.

Generally speaking, I don't apologize for my pop culture predilections. But I'll freely admit when I let them get the best of me. Since December or so, I've been following the sad case of the aforementioned Tila Tequila, n�e Nguyen.

An import model who used MySpace (remember MySpace, kids?) to shoot to "fame," Tila enjoyed a stint on the reality show circuit (beginning with the hilariously awful "Surviving Nugent," and culminating in her "A Shot At Love" dating adventures) before falling off that particular radar. What followed was a series of desperate ploys for attention until she met the "love her life," disinherited Johnson & Johnson scioness Casey Johnson. The two merrily cavorted in various states of undress until Johnson was found dead in early January, from diabetic ketoacidosis.

Tila, never the most stable pig in the pen, has since flown off the handle and landed face-first into Crazytown, Population: 1. And she's naturally turned to the best possible vehicle for transmitting her self-absorbed flights of fancy: Twitter, where If You Think It, It Must Be Important.

In the course of two months, she's accused the Johnson and Hilton families of murdering Casey AND Casey's dogs, started her own record label/management firm, signed a host of AMAZING TALENTS, started her own charity, become pregnant (she has claimed the father to be, at turns, a former-Iraq-War-Vet-turned-EMT, a Swedish gentleman who is NOT in "the business," and rapper The Game), fell off her chair and hit her head, embarked upon a tour of three crummy bars in Australia, began the process of adopting a baby boy from Russia, began talks with some nebulous "friends" about becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, had a miscarriage, and - mirabile dictu! - immediately got pregnant again via IVF. As of last night, though, she's NOT gonna adopt from Russia, because there are lots of worthy kids right here in America, even though Americans are stupid.

What an amazing life, right?

What's even more amazing is that I've allowed myself to rent considerable space in my head to the storage of all this incredibly useful information.

And so -- as with booze, credit card purchases, and MySpace -- the time has come for me to walk away from all things Tila Tequila. I have allowed her crazy to seep into my own. Tila and her sob stories offer no pleasant distraction from the low-frequency thrumming of my own addled head. Trying to "reason" with her 14-year-old fans is time spent away from more important pursuits.

Like watching "RuPaul's Drag Race."

lisamcc at 10:43 a.m.

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