Wisdom of the Ages

Every time a celebrity pipes up with an opinion or a tidbit of information, people rush to dismiss it as bullshit particularly if it is of a political nature. But, you know, celebrities they’re just like us. They’re people with valid experiences to share. People with a metric shit-ton of money and a probably distorted view of reality, BUT still, there is useful practical information to be found encoded in the drama and the pomp and the circumstance. I myself have come away with 3 lessons, over the course of my life thus far, that I have learned from celebrities. Let me share this stunning knowledge of the ages with you.



Of course, it all starts with:
1.) Madonna and one of her appearances on Letterman, the one where she talked about peeing in the shower to stave off athlete’s foot (urine talk at 3:27). It made sense to me; pee is sterile. Heck, you’re already in the shower. Why not? I played every sport in high school and was a scholarship athlete in college. I saw some funky locker rooms, and I’ve showered in some questionable places mostly without shower shoes. Instead, I pee on my feet, and I’ve never had athlete’s foot since I started doing it.

Some of you are totally grossed out right now, but, eh, I don’t care. It’s going right down the drain. I drink a lot of water; my pee does not smell like a dirty urinal in a bus station. Less mess. Less fuss. Is there any scientific evidence to support that this works? Not really, but hey, the SOS Mata Atlantic group has been trying to convince people to pee in the shower to conserve water with (I am confident in stating) the cutest cartoon ever made about pissing in the shower. Bottomline: it can’t hurt, and you’re saving the planet. Madonna I thank you for your golden wisdom.

2) Lisa Marie Presley. I find Lisa Marie an unlikely font of wisdom. She’s a Scientologist which automatically puts her on shaky footing with me. Plus, she married Michael Jackson which I find more than a little telling about her mental state and potential craziness. I’m liable to take anything LMP says with a generous grain of salt. However, I came across this Rolling Stone article about her wherein she mentions that she had been having all these health problems asthma, depression, candida infections, hypoglycemia, acid reflux, gall bladder failure, etc. After seeing a bunch of doctors and having her gall bladder removed she saw a homepathic doctor (cue the windchimes), and he said the root of her problems were stress and the mercury amalgamated fillings in her head. She took ‘em out, and poof, her health stabilized. This article came out in 2003. In 2003, I was working a super stressful job in children’s television, and I was getting crazy infections left and right. Every month, it was a new bout of candida or a bacterial infection. Now, it’s entirely possible that had something to do with my shitbag boyfriend at the time, but my gynecologist pinned it on stress. I read the article, and it was like I had been struck with a lightning bolt of wisdom. It really resonated with me. I also had about 6-8 mercury fillings in the soft tissue of my head. I was drinking a lot of hot coffee all day every day, and hot fluids are supposed to cause the fillings to offgas. I made an appointment at the dentist, and there was an immediate and marked improvement in the health of my ladyparts and my overall health in general after they were removed.

Is there a shred of medical evidence to support this? Eh, not so much according to the most reputable info I could find. However, there’s a ton of people and doctors out there railing against mercury fillings; my actual dentist at the time scoffed heavily at the whole notion and said that there’s not enough mercury in the fillings to cause such a problem and also said that taking them out can be more dangerous because you’re dislodging the mercury and some of it can circulate. So, which is it again? Not enough to cause a problem, or yeah, enough to cause a problem? Jerk. I know that I immediately felt better once that toxic crap was removed from my body. It didn’t cure the TMJ from biting my tongue and grinding my jaw in rage at the daily iniquities I encountered at that job, but it did immediately stop the monthly visits to my gyno with the chronic infections. Sadly, I continued to date the dirtbag. Bottomline: don’t put toxic metals in your body, particularly, the soft tissues of your head. Lisa Marie, we may not agree on for-profit religions made-up by schlocky scifi writers, but I and my ladybits sincerely thank you.

3) Edward Norton. To get to Edward Norton though, we have to take a detour through Courtney Love land. If you’re on twitter and you’re not following Courtney Love, stop reading this and go follow her. Immediately. I’ve always loved her nutty ass. She is a study in demonology and a bitch goddess of the highest order. I could never hang with her myspace blog post rants because they were so long and filled with poor spelling, questionable grammar, and notable for the absence of any punctuation. It made my eyes hurt. Twitter is the perfect medium for her to unleash her rantypants and her various insanities in delicious bite-size chunklets. I find her much more palatable in this format. Also, and best thing ever, she engages other celebrities on twitter and occasionally they engage her back like Billy Corgan’s recent vituperous jabs. Our girl Courtney loves to @EdwardNorton (non Twitterites read that as ‘at reply’ Edward Norton) who I guess she dated briefly at one time. I have never seen him respond on twitter to her, and I keep tabs on that shit which is how I happened to be reading through his twitterstream and came upon Fish Phone.

Have you ever been at a restaurant and wondered if the fish on the menu was sustainably harvested and/or farmed? Wonder no more! Of course, there is totally an app for that, and if you’re not on a smartphone you can text 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish in question, and BAM, you get back a full report. Wonder no more if you are a responsible consumer of our fishy friends. I think the app itself also suggests a wine pairing. All of the FishPhone info comes from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, so it’s a fairly reputable source. Bottomline: if you’re going to eat fish, you should try to do so in a sustainable way that doesn’t contribute to the destruction of the oceans. Thanks Edward Norton for making me a slightly better person.

That’s it. My purely subjective experience of the questionable WISDOM our Promethean friends have reached down from on high to impart to the world at large that I internalized with "possibly-related" positive outcomes. Have you ever learned something valuable and practical from a celebrity source and implemented it in your life? Please tell me I am not alone in my insanity.

Was this blog post worth the YEAR AND A HALF wait? Probably not, but my brain is poo poo right now. I have folded under a relentless onslaught of Dora and consider Yo Gabba Gabba high culture these days. They tell me it gets better after you stop nursing, and you become less like a little old man with dementia, but I think they lie. I chronicle my daily insanity, when I can scrape two words together, on the twitter: here.