The Road To Pop Stardom
As someone who has seen his share of shooting stars, I've begun to take notice of a longstanding career pattern in the entertainment industry, specifically musicians. Specifically, specific female musicians. Surely I'm not the first to have noticed.
The tried and true pattern goes something like this:
1. Ing'enue - Awww, she's young and fresh-faced and does ProActiv ads even though she's never had a blemish anywhere on her inexplicably toned body. Her vagina is made of rose pedals and she always smells like the breeze off the ocean after an electrical storm. She sings about what love might be like if she could just find the right boy. Disney is somehow involved in getting people to see her. One (or all three) of her names ends in an "eee" sound, because that makes people think of dolphins and who in the shit doesn't love dolphins? People who don't buy records, is who. Ideally, the name would also be ethnic (BUT NOT TOO MUCH!) and would rhyme. If you get all three - "eee", ethnic and rhyming name - you might as well give her a platinum record. Young girls want to be her and mothers believe she is an excellent role model. In some obscure interview, once, at 3:00 in the morning, she tells a reporter that she's still a virgin and plans to be until marriage. Everyone believes it, including her.
2. Reluctant Star - Well, she finally met a boy. There's a 97% chance that he's broken her heart or is about to. At least twice in every interview, she says how overwhelmed and blessed she feels from all of the love and attention the fans give her. She thanks God for her success every day. She says she's looking forward to writing more of her own music on the next album. Whenever she says that, a record exec in the corner of the room coughs. She looks pretty tired. She's purchased a new home for her parents and still lives there with them in a very pink room, stating that for as long as she can remember she's wanted to be a princess and now she feels like one. Off-handedly, during a taping of Cribs at the house, she mentions that she think "Princess" would be a good name for her next album. More coughing from the corner.
3. Butterfly - She just wants to, I don't know...break FREE, ya know? She feels like she's trapped in a shell of some kind. She's seconds from getting a turtle tattoo before one of her friends says she's really more like a butterfly just coming out of its cocoon. They both cry and hug, because that is the most amazing analogy that anyone has created at tattoo parlor, ever. The friend is extremely proud to have come up with it, right on the spot like that. They both decide to get lower back butterfly tattoos to commemorate the genius. She's moved into her own place, because even though she loves her parents, she needs her space. She's got a "pretty serious" boyfriend now. That first boyfriend was her first true love and she'll always have a place in her heart for him, but this new guy "gets" her. Nobody is coming out and saying it, but we're all pretty sure this new guy is nailing her. Her latest record is delayed, but it's only because "there's so much good stuff, it's tough to choose what should go on the record". The record does eventually get released and there is a single hit, the title track from the album, "Liberation!". The crowds at her concert chant it until she sings it and then they go to the bathroom.
4. Whore - She has really gotten the hang of sex. She insists that just because she's "asserting her sexuality as a woman" doesn't mean she's having sex, necessarily. Though that may be true, she is asserting the hell out of two professional baseball players, the guitarist from YumTum, a pro skateboarder named Derek, a guy everyone is pretty sure deals blow named "Narf", Tom Wopat, a closeted boy band member, a hunk from the reality show "Organ Donor!" named Tank, and the lead singer from the girl group "FurClam", Betty Berbermunch. She told her record label to go fuck itself, she knows what her fans want and what they want is reality. They don't want some processed pop queen. She's wrong, that's exactly what they want, and her album "Leather Muff" only debuts at #5, mostly based on the strength of her video for "My Ovaries" in which she rides a zebra in a wet t-shirt for some reason. She has five houses now, "one for every coast", she says. Each home has a deck where the paparazzi can photograph her in a bikini. In most of the photos, she's giving them the finger. Apparently she's gone through a second puberty, because her breasts are inexplicably larger and when people question her about the rather sudden change, she says, "I like my curves! I don't know why people can't just accept my womanly figure!" The only hair anywhere on her body is interweaved with the hair from 12-year-old Guatemalan girls.
5. Artist - She wants to take a break from "the singing thing" and get back to her first love, acting. She's been acting since she was five years old, doing little skits for her parents. Believe me, that more than qualifies her for being in a romantic comedy, "The Great Girl Power Conspiracy", where we see her in boy shorts and a see-through white t-shirt. The director tells her that because of the way the light is "bouncing wrong" off of the t-shirt, it's probably best if she takes it off. She insists that it's not "vital to the plot" that she take off the shirt. In the corner, a movie executive coughs. In the unedited "Director's Cut" on DVD, we see nipple for 3 seconds. Two weeks after the film's release (at #15), she's overheard while having drinks at Club Haze, telling her friends that she's glad she has kept her integrity. As she leaves, the wind from the revolving door to the restaurant catches her wrong, and it becomes quite apparent that she's wearing no underwear of any kind. Eight minutes later, her vagina is on YouTube.
5. Crackhead/Criminal - The record company has stated that she still owes them an album. She releases a "Greatest Hits Collection" to get them off her back, but that's basically three songs, plus acoustic versions of those three songs and five dance remixes of those same three songs. When the paparazzi outside of Bounch nightclub ask what the powder on her nose is, she wipes it quickly saying it's salt from a margarita. She punches one of the cameramen "accidentally". The matter is settled out of court. She is overheard calling her current boyfriend by her first boyfriend's name during a photo shoot for Pussy Magazine (the magazine for empowered women). The next day, he's charged with assault. That night, she's seen vomiting in the women's restroom at Creme Brulee and friends fear that she's bulimic. A record exec in the corner hands her some pills. A new album is in the works.
6. Rehab Redemption - Just as the new album is about to be released, she enters rehab. The record company wishes her well and says they're confident that this "time away" will get her refreshed for the upcoming tour to support the album. She gets out of rehab early and is seen drinking in the Fabulouso Hotel bar with "Narf". Two weeks later she drives through the back of her garage and breaks both wrists. She enters rehab and this time it appears to take. The album comes out (after some last minute remixing) and it gets rave reviews. It generates three hit records and she tours for two years with her mom on the tourbus.
7. Sad - Three years later, her breasts do not inspire anyone anymore. Occasionally, someone will take her picture unexpectedly, but it's never for a magazine. Five years after that, she releases an acoustic guitar-heavy album that "gets back to her first love, music", even though she's never played acoustic guitar on any of her albums. She has a six year engagement to an actor 10 years her junior named Frankie. He's got mommy issues. She has so much Botox, that if you snuck up and set off a garbage can full of firecrackers behind her, she couldn't generate a surprised expression. You and your friends see her do a set at a local club and you're pretty excited until she starts singing. Someone says, "Aww, bless her heart". A record exec in the corner breaks wind.
