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Idol worship
Best way to get famous is to get famous
I once had dinner with Sean Connery. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to sound like I am one of those people who have dinner with Hollywood stars on a regular basis. To my chagrin the complete opposite is more the case.
I am not totally convinced Connery will include our dinner date with me in his memoirs. And even if he does mention it, it will be in a chapter titled: ‘Dinner with people whose names I don’t remember, whose faces I can’t recall nor why the hell I dined with them in the first place.’
But how many people do you know who dined with 007 himself? The evening I must say was very pleasant. After a few glasses of red wine, Connery began to hold forth on what is clearly his favorite subject: The liberation of Scotland.
Curling up with the dog
It turns out that Mr. Connery is a prominent advocate of separating Scotland from the United Kingdom and having it become an independent sovereignty where its government will encourage citizens to speak with a funny accent.
After a 40 minute lecture I leaned two things: The first is that ever since Scotland lost its independence in 1603, the Scots are miserable and continue to walk around Glasgow asking each other “are you completely sure we’ve lost our independence, George? Is it too late to change our minds?”
The second thing I learned is that you can dine with someone you totally admire and still all you want to do is crawl under the table and fall asleep curled up with the dog.
Coffee, lectures, and autographs
I remembered that dinner last week during the Rosh Pina Television and Media Festival (That’s really a lie of course. Every time Sean Connery releases a new movie, I tell how close we are to anyone who is willing to listen, which of course is no one).
For the uninitiated, the Rosh Pina festival is a serious and circumspect gathering of professionals where you have the opportunity to say ‘hi’ to Yigal Shilon (creator of the Israeli version of ‘Punked’) any time you wish.
Most of the time participants are to be found sitting in one of the quaint coffeehouses of this beautiful Galilee village. Once in a while they attend one of the serious lectures in the conference hall on subjects such as ‘Cell phone broadband downloading precisely when your mother is trying to call you.’
The rest of the time television personalities were basically occupied doing one other thing: signing autographs for the kids of Rosh Pina.
Seven-for-one
Before we continue, I want to make it clear that it has never bothered me to sign autographs for children. It takes exactly two seconds, it makes them happy for some reason and I wasn’t even insulted to learn that seven of my autographs equal one of Ninette (Israeli vocalist). But that is not what I want to talk about.
During one of my few breaks (Hi Yigal, Bye Yigal) I was approached by a group of girls who looked like they just stepped out of an ad for braces. They asked me for my autograph. I was appropriately patient and gave one to each of them.
The last was for a girl with curly hair who offered me her pink notebook lined with a fake fur border. After I signed it I looked into her eyes, just by chance, and I realized something that rather surprised me: she had no clue who I was.
It’s hard to explain now how I knew it, maybe it was the less than enthusiastic way in which she held her notebook, or the fleeting look I got when she discovered someone else walking by, but it was crystal clear.
Mistaken identity
To rid myself of these suspicions, I asked her what my name was. She looked at my signature in her notebook but my handwriting would have sent Jean-Francois Champollion, the man who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics, into early retirement. (I’ll bet you that Sean Connery didn’t know that).
“You’re on television,” she tried to improvise. I said that was true but which guy exactly.
“(News presenter) Gadi Sukenik?” she asked despondently. Sukenik is a redhead.
I swear that I did not get mad. I was just curious.
“If you don’t know who I am,” I asked her, “why do you need my autograph?”
“I collect them in my notebook,” she replied.
“Yes,” I said, “but for what?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I like them.”
Star gazing
At this point all her friends were standing around me, trying to understand why I was bugging her. I asked her who she admires the most. There was a brief conference with her friends and in the end she said, “Agam Rodberg,” a young actress and model.
In the background, they were announcing the beginning of the next lecture (The subject: “Analysis of the channel 10 audience: who is he and where does he live?”)
But I persisted. "Why do you admire her?" She pondered this for a moment. I could swear I heard the whistle of her train of conscience as it left the station but she found the answer.
“Because she’s famous,” she said.
You understand where this is going. Once people were famous because of something they did, like digging the Suez Canal or writing a column in Yedioth Ahronoth.
Today they are famous because, well, they are famous.
This industry of idol worshipping: photographs on the cover of Laisha magazine for women, Internet responses and hysterical SMSing are based on one idea: the best way to be famous is to get famous. The reason for it really doesn’t matter. It’s not that I mind signing autographs, but you have to admit, it’s a little sad.
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