Truly - S W McFarland

 For those of you too cheap to buy my books, Trouble in Taos Taos and Volition Man Volition are free downloads on Amazon this weekend (June 27 – 29 2014.)

That doesn’t mean you can’t go back and buy it later. I could use the cash.

Stanley McFarland, a fellow living in the delusion of his own hilarity, has asked for this post for his “humorous,” (I have to assume he’s talking about a bone,) essay.

Actors, Stay to the Script – Truly

by Stanley McFarland

I think I was 10 or 12. I’m pretty sure I wasn't 11 because odd number years don’t work out so well for me. I was watching the Academy Awards for the last time without being socially coerced to do so. In that even numbered moment, I learned the one great secret that the Academy Awards and the acting profession had to tell me:

When someone says, Truly – get ready for the big lie.

“I am so moved – truly. The people I worked with on this film are truly very special, very wonderful people. I will truly treasure their friendships for the rest of my life.

I want to thank the director who truly showed me amazing things about this profession. I am truly, truly so very grateful.”

What a load of hooey!

Six months later you read about the bickering, the nasty jealousies, and how incompetent everyone thought everyone else (except themselves) was.

Here’s a Stanley maxim: Actors never act so poorly, than when they are portraying themselves. Well maybe I borrowed that from..? Somebody.

Not that I’m disparaging movie-making. I love movies, and watch four or five a week (usually borrowed from the library.) But while a Coen Brothers or Joss Whedon film is a thing of beauty, the actors that inhabit these films are frequently tedious, disgusting, arrogant, and sophomorically ill-informed.

(Sometimes all at the same time.)

This isn’t just true of actors. Singers, athletes, writers, politicians, news-people and celebrities in general tend to be people I really don’t want to know – or know more about. This raises the question why information about these flawed and dull glitterati is a multi-billion dollar industry.

Are we a masochistic society, never happy when not scratching at our scabs, or poking at our toothaches? You could make an argument for that, but I think it’s something darker in our social character.

We, the public, take joy in seeing the mighty fallen. How much of our Revolution was about seeing King George III get his? 

 So many of our early movies were slapstick romps where pompous big shots got a pie in the face. Perhaps our schadenfreude has evolved beyond the script – to puffing up real life straw men and women of no real nobility, but great notoriety, and seeing them make fools of themselves in debaucheries, court appearances, and inane pontifical diatribes.

So to the celebrity, feeling a sense of noblesse-oblige that requires them to preach to us unwashed masses about the latest, faddish, social or political concern, you might as well know…

The joke’s on you –

Really.

I searched through several of the celebrity stupidity vids on YouTube.  I got depressed, so I'll spare you.  Here's two stupid celebrities I actually like!