Celebrity Cannibal

At bath time, for no particularly reason, we used to tell my youngest son the story of Virgil the Worm, who ate his entire family.
It wasn’t a Jeffery Dahmer tale, full of ghastly, ghoulish monsters.
It was just your usual, harmless child’s fable – with cannibals and frightening metamorphoses.
One day, the story goes, Virgil went to kindergarten and the teacher, somewhat insensitively, remarked on his diminutive stature.
Actually, when you tell this story you’re supposed to say that the teacher said – in a kind of childish, toothless voice, “Virgil, how come you’re so small?”
In the story Virgil just shrugs, indifferent to his stature at first. But on the way home that day he starts to think about the teacher’s comment and, before the bus arrives at his stop, he vows to grow by any means necessary: (there is no dialogue to that effect, but it is implied by the action that follows).
The next day Virgil goes to school again - a changed worm, and the teacher remarks, “Virgil, how’d you get so big?”
While you’re telling this, you use your hands to indicate that Virgil is now, ‘this much bigger’.
And Virgil replies: “I ate my little sister.”
Suffice it to say that each day Virgil gets bigger, as he eats his way through his entire family: little sister, little brother, big sister, big brother, and so on and so on.
You can make the story as long as you like: just add or delete family members on the way.
The punch line, of a sort, is that after eating his mother and father and growing to over a yard in length (‘this big!’), the very next day Virgil shows up at school at his original, puny, inch and three-quarters length.
And when his teacher asks him what happened, he replied… “I burped”.
My God, Bobby loved that story.
I am not sure if it was the notion of eating all available relatives, rapid growth, or the slapstick image of Virgil ‘burping’ up his entire clan, but when the punch line was delivered he would practically go limp with laughter, sliding down into the tub like a trained seal.
I started thinking about that old story this week, when I heard the latest Keith Richard’s fable.
‘Keef’, the story goes, snorted his father’s ashes – mixed in, of course, with a little of the old Kickapoo Joy Juice.
I don’t believe the story and, in fact, Keef now denies it too. It seems he was having a bit of fun with journalists who would like nothing better than for him to admit such things.
People are going to make these things up about him anyway, so why not get in on the action. It is almost an obligation of the famous, to regularly astound us with their normalcy – which is, to say, their stupidity.
‘Keef’, the eager journalist asks, ‘where’d you learn to play guitar’?
“I snorted Chuck Berry”.
‘Keef’, the next in line queries, ‘where’d you learn to play that lick’?
“I snorted Jimi Hendrix”.
It’s nice, isn’t it, to have celebrities around to ridicule, when we’re feeling blue, but the truth, I think, is that WE are the cannibals. We are the ones who, given the opportunity, would snort up starlets and sports stars and anyone who was somehow famous, and do it without any kind of ‘chaser’. We are the ones, who everyday arrive at school, or work, wearing the designated designer clothes of our favorite soap store, the baseball caps of our famous team, the tee shirt with our favorite band’s logo, the tattoos that reveal our desired tribal affiliation.
Whatever happened to, so-called, individuality?
At one time, in the not too distant past – there was at least a token nod given to being an individual – with all of the quirks and eccentricities that come with going your own way. But perhaps it was naive to think that individuality stood a chance in this, or any age.
And perhaps our worship – our devouring of everything allegedly famous, is our last gasp attempt to be unique, by being anything but who we are.
You might argue that individuality today, is the sum of our desires.
And that may work - for now at least.
But as we watch, science is bridging the gap between who we desire to be, and who we appear to be.
In a few years (I Predict!) celebrity body parts are going to be big, huge, humongous, and mostly importantly - affordable!
Apart from the obvious desire for certain starlets’ partlets, I think the cloning industry will concentrate on those parts that they can reproduce in quantity, cost effectively.
A celebrity breast cloning and transfer, for example, would require a complex, relatively slow, and medically dangerous series of procedures.
If you want Brittney’s Best, it could cost you a fortune, so why not just go with the artificial.
But what about buying some famous somebody’s lips, or lobes, or nails?
How about Beyonce’s lashes?
What if you could grow a movie star’s hair in the privacy of your own home?
Scented soap will be made from the cloned bones of the beautiful people.
Jennifer Lopez – so well preserved after all these years, will have a designer line of genetic knock-offs.
And when this happens the only thing that will separate one clone from another, will be their credit card numbers.
I don’t mean to preach, it just comes out that way. I am not immune to this celebrity fever. To be imperfectly honest, I once worked at Mass General’s laboratories in Charlestown, where I had access to the early research in this area. And they were only too happy to let me – and any other cash-starved youth, volunteer for product testing.
You sign a waiver, you let them inject you, you get a check.
In this case though, I also acquired great personal beauty.
For a time I had Robert Plant’s voice.
For a while, I had Mick Jagger’s lips.
For several years, I had Roger Daltrey’s hair.
I became addicted to celebrity parts, which I just kept adding one after the other until no one recognized me, though everyone said I looked ‘very familiar’.
And then one day it all went away.
One day I was cool, young, hip, and handsome.
And the next day I had the puffer fish face I was born with.
You know the story.
You know what happened.
I burped.