It doesn't make me a bad person

Just sitting down to write this piece requires a huge act of will on my part.

Huge.

In order to write this I have to tear myself away from a bounty of pure bliss, a cache of unadulterated comfort, delivered straight from my mother’s house to mine following my Mother’s Day visit last weekend.

I also have to admit to an addiction that has plagued me for almost three decades.

That’s right: my name is Kelly and I am a tabloid-a-holic.

I am not addicted to all tabloids mind you, just two of the decidedly old-school variety: Star magazine and The National Enquirer.

I mean, just because I’m an addict doesn’t mean I don’t have standards: I feel it’s important that the latest vainglorious celebrity gossip be interspersed with gruesome murder mystery cases involving average Joes, outraged (and righteous) condemnations of animal cruelty and uplifting accounts of everyday heroism and true grit.

Now, I don’t want you to think I actually buy these magazines. I would never do that. But my mother, enabler that she is, has for years carefully saved each and every issue and piled them neatly on my childhood bed. When I visit the first order of business is to put them in alternating, (Star, then Enquirer) chronological order and then work my way through them one by one.

Generally at least half a dozen unread papers travel home with me where I spend the first few days post visit reading them to the detriment of everything else in my life. Then I reorganize them and pass them on to my cleaning lady or one of my co-workers, so I can congratulate myself on being fully up to speed on pop culture and environmentally friendly.

I don’t know exactly why these rags hold me in their thrall. I have an honors degree in journalism. I publicly swore off celebrity Internet gossip last fall. I very rarely watch television or go to the movies. The last flick I saw in the theatre was Hairspray and I have never seen a single episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Lost or The Sopranos or House or Desperate Housewives or CSI or any one of the dozens of shows deemed as must-sees. Quite frankly I have never seen most of the actors I read about actually act.

But I don’t care.

It is inexplicably soothing to me, the consumption of these rags and their delicious morsels of desperation and morality and human frailty. No matter what drama is playing out in my own life, it always pales in comparison to the passion plays writ large across their pages: crime, depravity, self-loathing, drug abuse, adultery, financial and emotional bankruptcy.

One of my earliest childhood memories is visiting my late grandmother’s house and seeing a picture of Elvis Presley in his coffin on the cover of the National Enquirer. Back then my mother didn’t buy tabloids either: she would bring home stacks of them that my grandmother had saved for her when we visited. Later when Grandma moved in with us, she and my mother split the cost of the subscriptions. “I don’t care about them", my mom said. “It’s your Grandma who’s used to reading them.”

But my Grandma’s been dead for four years and each week, like clockwork, the National Enquirer and the Star arrive at my parent’s house, glossy and chock-full of possibility.

Sometimes I wonder if there will come a day when I don’t care to be courted by jesters anymore. Will I bother to actually buy the tabloids when my mom passes on or will my addiction resolve itself as I continue to age and, presumably, become further removed from the youth-oriented pop culture milieu? I do wonder.

But of course I’m not wondering about that right now because I just came back from my parent’s house on Sunday.

And I have some reading to catch up on.

Silencing my inner bitch

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite right now.

I feel like I don’t deserve all the nice things you said about me in your comments on this post.

The stuff about me having such a big heart and being so caring: it sounds lovely and oh-so-seductive to my ears, but I’m not sure it’s true.

A few weeks back I wrote about resolutions and how I think they are just part of our genetic makeup: what I didn’t reveal was the resolution I made for myself.

Yes, I am serious about doing this. But quietly, and with no small sense of shame, I also made another resolution.

I resolved to silence my inner bitch.

I hate her. I don’t know where she comes from or why she has taken up residence in my brain. I don’t know why I, someone who cries at the drop of a hat, loses sleep over mistreated animals and always roots for the underdog, continue to tolerate the mean-spirited little voice that makes snarky, snap judgments of far too many innocent strangers who cross my path.

I’m not talking about snarking on celebrities or public figures. Though I have stuck to my resolution to cut out the worst of it, I have no real problem dishing up stupid celebrity antics: in fact I did that here and even pissed off a few readers.

I’m talking about my internal dialogue that too often slices and dices people I encounter when I’m out and about and generally feeling harried and busy and impatient.

Nice makeup job honey, I think, when the overly made-up eccentric at the produce market grabs the avocado I was eyeing. You’re a complete and total idiot, I mentally brand the guy ahead of me in the checkout line who can’t find his wallet.

I can’t believe out of ten million sperm you were the fastest, I seethe when the cashier takes more than a few seconds to make my change.

What is wrong with me? Why do I do this?! Isn’t this kind of bitchiness more suited to high school mean girls than a 30-something adult? I don’t want to be young again. I’m less cocky and more grateful now. I have shed much of youth’s conceit and come to realize that my good fortune in life is mostly attributable to blind, good luck

My circle of friends has expanded over the years to include people of all shapes and circumstances. Especially since becoming a mother I’ve learned a lot about tolerance and hard work. I’ve reflected long and hard on the difficulty of some people’s choices or lack thereof.

So why is my very first instinct so often cruelty rather than compassion?

One of the things I love not just about writing, but writing about everyday stuff, is that I truly believe beauty and poignancy is most often found in the mundane. As cliché as it sounds, I really believe that each and every one of us has a story that would break your heart.

And I need to remember that.

I need to remember it no matter how much of a hurry I am in when I go about my daily business.

I need to be kinder on the inside, not just on the outside, where good behavior earns me accolades and lovely comments.

Even more celebrity madness

Just a few weeks back I wrote a piece about celebrities and addiction.

Today I am writing about my own addiction.

I have become addicted to a certain celebrity gossip site which shall not be named. You know the one. It’s run by that ubiquitous, pudgy blogger famed for photo-shopping nasty drawings and observations over photos and generally being the snarkiest snark that ever snarked.

At first his cheery pink site seemed like such fun. I like to think I got on the bandwagon earlier than most people and as such I felt a certain amount of pride in having discovered him.

And as someone who works in the industry he lampoons, I took no small delight in seeing him mercifully expose certain celebrities as the horrible human beings we all know they can be.

But somewhere along the line the worm turned.

I’m not sure if the content of his site has gotten nastier over the last few months or if the same old nastiness, piled upon itself day after day has culminated in something that suddenly seems inexplicably dark and sad.

Maybe it's his refusal to stop making fun of the children of his celebrity targets, given my recent and sincerely heartfelt musings on bullying.

Maybe it’s his continuing potshots at Brittany Spears who appeared to spiral into a full-blown mental-health collapse right on his gleeful cue.

Maybe it’s my own shame at hypocritically bemoaning our culture’s crass obsession with celebrities, while still making the crassest self-promoter of them all rich with my guilty, surreptitious clicking.

At any rate I think I’ve hit rock bottom.

I’m not having fun anymore. I don’t feel good about my participation anymore. A pastime that once seemed harmless, if edgy and entertaining, now just seems skanky.

And while I don’t delude myself that it’s going to be easy, I’m ready to kick the habit. I’ve even decided to redirect my clicking to my favorite blogs, when the urge to surf the dark side becomes overwhelming.

Who’s with me?