You know that guy from the movie—you know, THAT guy. From the MOVIE. Oh what’s his name?!? To the IMDB machine!Shut up! They did not just break up! People.com, tell me it isn’t so!
Exactly how racist is Arizona’s legislature being today? Huffington Post to the rescue!
How do I make the perfect hard-boiled egg?
When does season 2 of NBC’s The Voice start?
Did the guys from Tag Team ever do anything other than “Whoomp There It Is”?
Perhaps you’ve found yourself in a similar quandary: sitting at home in your pajamas, laptop open, important assignments due. But then . . . the questions start. Maybe they’re not earth-shattering, time-sensitive, or of any immense value to you—but the answers are only a few clicks and keywords away, so why not find them? RIGHT NOW!
In my experience, this sort of procrastinatory exercise only replaces another potential avoidance mechanism—like flipping through overpriced cable channels, making up theme songs for a sit-com about your cat, staring at the wall in front of you until you can make a picture out of the weird stains, smudges, and unused pushpins (it’s like your very own Magic Eye image!).
But when you’re Google-/Yahoo-/Bing-/other-onomatopoeia-ing the answers to your self-imposed riddles, it kind of feels like you’re actually getting something accomplished. After all, that treatment you wrote for “The New Adventures of Old Mr. Mischief” will clearly be tied up in production meetings for
months, but Perez Hilton can tell you who’s in rehab right this second! Instant gratification! “Yet,” as the voice of the killjoy creeps back into your head and makes a decent point, “even such simple pleasures bring compulsions that take me by surprise” (Turkle 154).
Perhaps a personal narrative might throw some light on the room full of an infinite number of monkeys sitting at typewriters diligently clacking at the keys of my mind. I recently saw the genius film Bridesmaids, staring Saturday Night Live superstar Kristen Wiig. In a particularly memorable scene for me, Wiig’s character (a depressed and bankrupt pastry chef) stands alone in her kitchen skillfully crafting a gorgeous cupcake that would put the decorators from Cake Boss to shame, all while Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag” plays in the background. It’s a lovely scene, highlighting the character’s feelings of inadequacy from a failed business venture, the inability to use her talents to make anyone—including herself
—happy, and the apropos link to Apple’s lyrics: “Hunger hurts / And I want it / So bad I would kill / 'Cuz I know I’m a mess he don’t wanna clean up.”
But heeeeeere’s where I fall down the rabbit hole . . .
Wiig’s costar Maya Rudolph is partnered with film director Paul Thomas Anderson (and currently pregnant with their third child). Anderson, however, has famously been romantically linked with Apple in the past, and if you know anything about this gifted songwriter, it’s that she doesn’t exactly take breakups well—not to mention the fact that detailed accounts of her unnamed former beaux often serve as the impetus for her lyrics. So as I sit with my computer attempting to finish an already past-due project, all of my thoughts regarding this scene start to swirl around in my head: Was “Paper Bag” written about P.T.? If so, did Maya know it was going to be used in the movie? Does Fiona hate Maya? Does Maya hate Fiona? Did anyone put this together in the editing process? Damn your ignorance, director Paul Feig—you have thrown the unfeminist match on the glistening pool of gasoline that could possibly become a Girl-Artist on Girl-Artist public brawl the likes of which should be saved for an episode of (whoever-the-more-current-version-is-of) Jerry Springer! How dare you, sir! HOW DARE YOU!
Oh no! Here comes that sultry tenor voice of Marc Anthony chiming in: “If it’s true don’t leave me all alone out here / Wonderin’ if you’re ever gonna take me there / Tell me what you’re feeling ‘cuz I need to know / Girl you gotta let me know which way to go / ‘Cuz I need to know!”*
Long story short: I spent roughly seven hours—yeah, seven—looking through IMDB, Wikipedia, gossip mills, web links, fan sites, message boards, weird forums, blogs (one had to be translated from French to English—thanks Google technology!), and some other stuff I didn’t know existed in order to find out that not only was this information not brawl-worthy enough to warrant an already-present answer online, but . . . I was probably the only person to claim it could be brawl-worthy at all.
Did I invent a reason for my own need for outside-me-but-still-relatable celebrity dramatics? Maybe I just wanted to see if anyone else had put these puzzle pieces together? How could I possible believe that if I found the information I was looking for that I could “help”? Perhaps I really just had gone off the deep end? I think the only answer I can slightly justify is that I know what it’s like to be known as a funny person, and I know what it feels like to act crazy when the person you love loves somebody else. I was searching for a real connection to these real women; I wanted to feel like even if I don’t know them in person, we can still feel the same way in our separate, but still personal lives, even if it's just momentary, ephemeral. Like Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, I wonder “How far away from something do you have to stand in order to know?” (3)--but then again, like Marty tells Frasier: “I know you’re always looking for an explanation for everything, but sometimes, there isn’t one” (“Desperately Seeking Closure”).
Ironically, I’m drinking coffee out of a mug that has a picture of an old-fashioned key and the word “discover” on it. The internet is often the key to finding these answers, even if the questions aren't important, and even if the answers are none of our business. What happens when instant gratification isn't-so-instant? When it takes over our time, or even further, our psyches? In this age when those need-to-know-right-now questions can so often be unlocked by these keys, how do we negotiate the fact that we can’t always find the right doors?
*[I should probably throw in something here to let you all know why I care, in the slightest, about something that, for one) doesn’t concern me; and for two) doesn't really impact my life in the slightest. Fiona is one of my favorite musicians, and I have a soft-spot for crazy. Maya has been one of my comedy-performance heroes ever since I met her talent on SNL, and I wish I could be like her. Given my affection for both, obviously I consider the three of us to be friends. For those of you confused by my reasoning here, maybe this helps: In 1956 Horton and Wohl described para-social interaction: “One of the most striking characteristics of the new mass media—radio, television, and the movies—is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer” (qtd. in Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes 92-93). Building on that, Turkle claims that “From the very beginning, networked technologies designed to share practical information were taken up as technologies of relationships” (157). So, as you can probably tell by now, I have my own issues to work out, but it’s way more fun to play fictional mediator between two of my famous friends who've never met me.]
Works Cited
Gingrich-Philbrook, Craig. “Bite Your Tongue: Four Songs of Body and Language.” The Green Window: Proceedings of the Giant City Conference on Performative Writing, April 26 29,2001. Ed. Lynn C. Miller and Ronald J. Pelias. Southern Illinois University, 2001. 1-7. Print.
Schiappa, Edward, Peter B. Gregg, and Dean E. Hewes. “The Parasocial Contract Hypothesis.” Communication Monographs 72 (2005): 92-115. Print.
