Odes to rats and other celebrity weirdness

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June 27, 2009

By Kelly Kazek The News Courier Sat Jun 27, 2009, 12:05 PM CDT

The untimely death of Michael Jackson led to something I never thought would happen again in my lifetime — I heard the song “Ben” on the radio.

Is it odd that one of my all-time favorite songs is a soft, slow ballad that is an ode to a rat written for a sequel to the 1970s horror movie “Willard?”

Is it a teensy bit creepy that I still know all the lyrics that I learned at age 8 when I played it over and over on my record player, including the ones that say: “Ben, the two of us need look no more; We both found what we were looking for?”

OK, yes. Very creepy.

That’s why no one plays it on the radio anymore. But since Michael died suddenly Thursday, his songs are being played everywhere you turn, including “Ben.”

And I can remember sitting in front of the TV waiting for the premier of “Thriller,” back when MTV still played music videos.

Everyone, at one time or another, was has sung or danced to Michael Jackson songs — dance teachers still make routines for every recital my daughter’s been to — and people like to remember simpler times before M.J. was a paler imitation of himself and people didn’t wonder about alternate meanings when they listened to songs like “Ben” and “Pretty Young Thing.”

Still, I wish Farrah’s death had not been overlooked in all the hoopla.

She didn’t even get one night of retrospectives with men talking about their recollections of the poster with the famous red bathing suit and women recalling how as girls they pretended to be Jill Munroe and got out their squirt guns and shot their big brothers — the bad guys — right between the eyes … oh, was that just me?

Any-hoo, she was an Angel and everything and deserved a little attention.

Not that she didn’t get a little nutty herself in later years.

That’s what celebrity does to you.

None of them are normal; it comes from living in a place like LA-LA land and never eating good, nutritious foods like cheeseburgers and fries.

I am sympathetic toward celebrity types but I have learned they can change on a dime.

Take my good buddy, Billy Bob Thornton.

Didn’t y’all remember how I met Billy Bob last year for those 10 minutes? We are like thisclose. He seemed like a regular guy, though in real life he isn’t big enough to hang from a key chain, but recently went on a bizarre rant to a Canadian radio host about how he was a musician not an ACTOR. Whatever you do, don’t call him an actor.

Well.

I’ll leave that debate for people who aren’t as close to him as I am.

But my ability to empathize with stars stems from that fact that I, myself, have had a brush with celebrity.

Please tell me you haven’t forgotten that, too.

When the film “Constellation” was made in Huntsville in 2005, a reflection of my shirt makes an appearance in the glass inside EarlyWorks Museum, costarring alongside the likes of Billy Dee Williams and Gabrielle Union, who, by the way, is just a lovely girl.

Ever since that movie debuted, doctors practically throw prescriptions at me, designers won’t stop sending beaded gowns and photographers follow me everywhere.

OK, just our newspaper photographer, Kim.

When we’re on assignment.

And I make her.

Still.

It has been difficult, and sometimes painful (like when Kim pushes my out of the front of the camera and tells me I’m not supposed to be IN the shot.)

I have seen the dark side of celebrity — like debt.

Especially the debt.

Hmm. Maybe I can find the shirt I wore in “Constellation” and put it for auction on eBay right next to Michael’s glove.

That should help pay for a car for my soon to be 16-year-old.

Or at least the key ring.

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