Mini Three, Andrew Damiter

I like to think that I spend very little time engaging in celebrity-centered conversations, but the truth I tend to ignore is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid such conversations all the time. Not that there is anything wrong with discussing the latest happenings of the celebrity world, I just don’t wish to get too caught up in it. It’s nice to get your feet wet every now and then, perhaps even a little bit of wading is appropriate, but the deep end of the pool should not be voluntarily entered often. Sometimes you might be thrown in, and in that case it’s good to have enough useless information kicking around to make a proper flotation device out of.

Thankfully I had my stock of odds and ends on me over the weekend, as more than once I was pulled into a conversation against my will. I work retail at an EBGames on weekends, and various sporting topics often get brought up by customers. Last weekend just so happened to be the weekend of the boxing match between Oscar De Le Hoya and Floyd Mayweather. I didn’t watch it and I had to fake that I cared. One particular customer went off on a ten minute diatribe of how Mayweather didn’t take the fight seriously, all while I went through my usual routine of occasionally laughing or scoffing, adding an appropriate approving or disapproving nod as needed. Surprisingly, this was the only celebrity conversation I had to fake my way through.

Back at home the results were somewhat different. There was a small gathering at my apartment on Saturday, and what with the bounty of food, booze and games, there were bound to be celebrity conversations. As I came to find out there certainly were, but in a roundabout sort of way. Very few actual names were brought up. The first occurrence was during a music argument, which is obviously going to have some sort of celebrity slant as musicians do work in the public eye. My roommate and his girlfriend groaned and rolled their eyes as I sang praises for The Flower Kings (I can’t help it that “What ff God Is Alone” is the greatest song of all time), while another friend tried to interject with something about punk. She was ignored.

The music conversation bounced around a bit but no actual band member names were ever mentioned. In fact, the only name that was dropped all night was Bruce Willis (and no, it wasn’t a musical reference), and that was simply because I was trying to remember, out loud, the movie “12 Monkeys” and at that instant the only association I could make was through Bruce Willis. If you want to count the Howard the Duck reference then I suppose two names were dropped. In any case, most conversations that had anything to do with celebrities were of the “You’ve never seen that?” variety, but still no names were mentioned.

I find all of this rather odd to be honest. I knew I used celebrity references to further conversations, but I had no idea how truly vague I was about it. Eight hours of conversation and the only names I managed to blurt out were Bruce Willis and Howard? I must be out of touch. Then again, my intoxicated roommate and I did spend a solid two hours ironing out a theory to explain the inner workings of time travel, so perhaps I’m not the best barometer of celebrity consciousness.