Just finished watching the last episode of The Human Face, a documentary series John Cleese did back in 2001, and it’s got me thinking about fame, faces, and what, exactly, it is that I want.

Here it is, in case you want to take a look at it yourself.

What got me really thinking was the plight of the three male actors in the film who all want to be famous and see their faces on a billboard, and are willing to have this lady casting director, quite a powerful one in fact, completely dissect their looks right to their faces (so to speak) in pursuit of that goal.

My reaction to the whole thing is one of profound discomfort and disgust. The very act of focusing such clinical attention on something so superficial and unimportant and completely arbitrary as the face one got from a random genetic dice roll fills me with a sort of vertiginous nausea, like I am balanced dizzily on the edge of a great abyss.

And yet, I have always thought I would like to be famous. I have a lot of ambition, and would absolutely love to be right at the heart of the media world, working on the big movies, the hot television shows, the top flight magazines, and so on.

But the very idea of looking up at a billboard and seeing my own face disgusts and frightens me. That sort of fame is clearly not what I am looking for.

I mean, it’s not even a particularly good face. I look a lot like a lot of other people. I like to think some of my sparkling personality and flashing wit is visible when you look at my eyes, but otherwise…. they’re just generic blue eyes. You know? Just eyes.

I think what it boils down to is that I just plain do not care about looks. I don’t care about my own (obviously) and I don’t care about other people’s either.

I care about other things, like personality, charm, wit, intellect, and whether or not you are an interesting person. ^[1]

Being a total intellectual, I experience the world far more through my mind than through my senses, and being someone born with very poor vision, I think, has caused me to be someone who does not put a lot of emphasis on the visual.

But deeper than that, I think that I am the sort of person whose natural inclination is to look past the superficial and seek things what I consider to be of true value.

And looks just don’t strike me as being particularly meaningful or valuable. They certainly do not tell you a lot about a person. You can have good looks on bad people, and vice versa. So honestly, who cares?

So what exactly do I mean when I say I want to be famous?

I would like to be well known for, say, my writing. I would love to be thought of as a brilliant and funny guy with a winning and likable and distinct personality. I would absolutely adore being the sort of person who shows up on talk shows and is always good for an entertaining sound bite or a quick quip about something happening on the news.

And of course, I would really like the money and privileges of fame as well. Strangely enough, I don’t find those aspects of it disturbing at all.

Looked at from that point of view, it seems that what I want is a sort of 70’s fame, like a Charles Nelson Reilly or a Zsa Zsa Gabor. What were they famous for? For being on television. They were “television personalities”, a job title I would absolutely love.

So not so much movie star fame (I care more about television anyhow, while it’s still around) and more like the sort of people who show up on the Daily Show with a new book every year or so, and who get to do the whole media junket thing, but don’t necessarily get stopped on the street by hordes of ravenous fans or anything.

So, a writer’s kind of fame, more or less.

I guess that means I should become a writer.

Oh wait, I already am! That’s what I am doing right now, writing an article for my blog! And maybe some day, actually like, trying to get published somewhere or something!

Well, turns out I am right on track, then. Kinda.

Everything turned out better than expected!

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