The other night during a Stanley Cup playoff hockey game at Staples Center in Los Angeles the telecaster decided to enthrall us viewers with the sight of Tom Cruise and Victoria and David Beckham in the stands. I merely shrugged and noted that it still left them seventy percent short of a Mensa minyan.
Today I just read an article on the New York Times website (to be published tomorrow in the Magazine) about a teenager named “Sarah M., better known as ‘Stalker Sarah,’” whose purpose on Earth seems to be to have her picture taken with alleged celebrities (convicted ex-governors apparently count) and uploading the results to the internet. According to the Times, her activities have propelled Sarah M. to the sort of fame that causes other teenaged girls to want to have their pictures taken with her.
The walls of many New York City delicatessens attest to an earlier age of photo-taking-with-celebrities. There one can still see fading black-and-white glossies of countermen posing with minor Borscht Belt comedians. But at least the former did something to earn their Kodak moment; they sliced the latter’s pastrami and placed it between pieces of rye bread (with or without seeds).
Four-and-a-half decades ago at Expo67 in Montreal I took a photograph of famed photographer Yousuf Karsh. I am willing—out of the goodness of my heart—to allow you to take a picture of me, so that you can brag that you have photographed the person who photographed the person who photographed (according to Wikipedia) Winston Churchill, Mohammed Ali, Mother Teresa, Humphrey Bogart, Sophia Loren, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ernest Hemingway, Nikita Khrushchev, Martin Luther King, Pope John XXIII, Pablo Picasso, Dizzy Gillespie, and Queen Elizabeth II.
And the glow of greatness can encompass us all.
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