Biography Time!
I am inordinately fascinated by other people. *
That doesn’t mean I like them. I’m just driven by an obsessive interest in how other people live: how they fill their hours, what scandals and drama weigh them down, what lifts their hearts up, what they eat for breakfast. Whether or not they’re gay, aggressively gay, closeted gay, or somewhere in the middle. I’m the kind of person who will look through your medicine cabinets not because I’m trying to find anything scandalous, but because I’m curious as to how you organize your toiletries. Because maybe there’s a better way out there that I’m unaware of. Or maybe I’d like to assess precisely how anal you are. Or maybe I’m going to find your Valtrex and blackmail you.
No, seriously, I don’t give a shit about your Valtrex. I’m more interested in banal details like whether or not your Q-Tips are accessible.
This warped obsession with human details means I spend more time than I should reading about other people. As soon as I start in on an article, everything falls apart. Do I know who this guy is? Ok, but do I *really* know who he is? Of course not. What other movies has he been in? How’d he get famous in the first place? What’s his real name? Ooh, there’s mention of an ex-wife… what’s her name? What’s her story? Who wrote this article, anyway—what’s his deal? And so on. And once I’m balls-deep in Wikipediaty, there’s no stopping me. Links lead to other links that lead to other links and so on and so forth for hours and hours… staring at my computer screen until my head feels like it’s going to explode.
That thing people say about curiosity killing the cat? Substitute “cat” with “productivity,” and you’re spot on.
Recent Biographical Wikipedia Articles I Have Accessed:
J. Edgar Hoover : “[historian David K. Johnson] views Rosenstiel as a liar who was paid for her story, whose ‘description of Hoover in drag engaging in sex with young blond boys in leather while desecrating the Bible is clearly a homophobic fantasy.’”
Sandra Bernhard (Quote): “My father was a proctologist and my mother was an abstract artist, so that’s how I view the world.”
Tupac Shakur : “Shakur’s body was cremated and some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of the Outlawz.”
Wyclef Jean : “Although his birth date was widely given as October 17, 1972, papers filed for his run as a candidate for the presidency of Haiti, disclosed that he was, in fact, born in 1969.”
Avril Lavigne (Quote): “I won’t wear skanky clothes that show my booty, my belly or my boobs. I have a great body.”
Coen Brothers : “Joel then spent four years in the undergraduate film program at New York University where he made a 30-minute thesis film called Soundings. The film depicted a woman engaged in sex with her deaf boyfriend while verbally fantasizing about having sex with her boyfriend’s best friend, who is listening in the next room. Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1979.His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, ‘Two Views of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’.”
Prahlad Jani : “After fifteen days of observation during which he reportedly did not eat, drink or go to the toilet, all medical tests on Jani were reported as normal and researchers described him as being in better health than someone half his age. The doctors reported that although the amount of liquid in Jani’s bladder fluctuated and that Jani appeared ‘able to generate urine in his bladder’, he did not pass urine.”
Otto Van Bismarck (Quote): “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”
Alia Shawkat : “In October 2009, it was announced that Shawkat, Har Mar, and fellow Whip It co-star Page would produce and write a show for HBO called ‘Stitch N’ Bitch.’”
Carl Sandburg : “In Neshaminy School District of lower Bucks County resides the secondary institution Carl Sandburg Middle School. Located in the lobby is a finished split tree trunk with the quote engraved lengthwise horizontally: MAN IS BORN WITH RAINBOWS IN HIS HEART AND YOU’LL NEVER READ HIM UNLESS YOU CONSIDER RAINBOWS”
Kemp Muhl : “She is dating Sean Lennon, with whom she is involved in a musical project, titled ‘The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger’.”
Aimee Crocker : “The breakup of Aimée’s first marriage became a national scandal. Porter and his brother, Sydney, kidnapped daughter Gladys in Los Angeles, while Aimée and her mother attended a wedding. Charges and countercharges made daily news during the custody battle, and courthouse proceedings attracted a crowd of hundreds. In spite of Porter’s reputation as a notorious gambler, in spite of his kidnapping charge and a weapons charge, and in spite of the Crocker millions, the little girl’s mother would not be awarded custody. Aimée, it seems, had the worse reputation.”
Lotta Crabtree : “Lotta’s mother served as her manager and collected all of Lotta’s earnings in gold, carrying it in a large leather bag. When this became too heavy, it was transferred to a steamer trunk.”
Bernie Ecclestone : “He was then married to Slavica Ecclestone (née Slavica Radić) for almost 25 years. Radić was born in the town of Rijeka in Croatia in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1958. She is a 6’2” (1.88 m) former Armani model who is 28 years his junior, and 11.5 inches (29 cm) taller than her husband.”
Roseanne Barr : “At 16, Barr was hit by a car that left her with a traumatic brain injury. Her behavior changed so radically that she was institutionalized for eight months at Utah State Hospital.”
Vladimir Nabokov : “During the 1940s, as a research fellow in zoology, he was responsible for organizing the butterfly collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.”
Lash LaRue: “A role as the villain in a pornographic western, Hard on the Trail, led him to repentance as a missionary for ten years, as he had not been informed of the adult nature of the film and would not have consented to appear in the film.”
* Not necessarily by Justin Bieber.
