FAME!

20 years ago on the bear-infested and wolf-contaminated mountain slopes of North Vancouver, British Columbia (a misnomer for a province that is no longer distinctively British nor Columbian) there lived a grotesque, glass-boned fetus of a child. Eventually this repulsive parasite grew into a strong and formidable man-boy; currently he lives in Montréal, a place free of bears, wolves, and oddly-named provinces. (Unless, of course, the word Québec translates to something like Ben Affleck, which for all I know it may, as my French is about as good as Ben Affleck’s Mandarin – which I’m assuming is terrible). Just in case you have yet to realize, I am David MacLean. And aside from my linguistic failings, my life story must seem worthy of some sort of Rudyesqe box office mega-hit. Small, Pathetic Child Becomes Quasi-successful Man-boy is the working title of the script I am currently writing.

It saddens me to tell you this – as I know so much of what you do revolves around my personal success – but for all my triumphs I have yet to achieve one goal, that which has consumed my soul since first my gnomish body revoltingly burst forth onto Mother Earth: to achieve a level of fame unknown since the time of The Beatles. It is a goal common to all self-obsessed megalomaniac writers who begin articles with anecdotes about themselves. That’s right, I wanted to be a super-star Steve Guttenberg style. Yet, as I grew older, I let this dream fade away into the same sort of metaphorical dust elves undoubtedly use in the forging of axe blades.

Recently, however, my fiery passion for achieving international celebrity was reawakened. This occurred when an unfamiliar figure friended me on that all-consuming clusterfuck of neo-web-society, Facebook. Perplexed and somewhat astounded, as I neither have friends nor cyber-enemies, I sent this individual a message asking her who she was. To my enormous child-who-has-just-been-introduced-to-the-mechancis-of-a-jack-in-the-box-like surprise, this new Friend replied that she was simply a fan of The Red Herring, and had tracked me down through Facebook. Immediately I turned to my old-timey typewriter and revised Act 2 of Small, Pathetic Child Becomes Quasi Successful Man-boy to include a scene where I’m famous and drinking champagne out of the selective orifices of beautiful alien women. In order to understand why the women are aliens you really have to read Act 1 of the script. However, I digress, for the truly important part of this story is the fact that I, David MacLean, for one brief, shining moment had a fan.

Now, there are two reasons why I use the phrase ‘brief, shining moment’. The first is to convey a sort of sparkly mental image. The second, and more important, is to indicate that the moment was incredibly brief. Within days of gaining my fan I had lost her. How? Well, she didn’t stop liking what I did with the Red Herring – her fandom remained the same. What changed was my attitude towards her. Very soon after our friending I found myself constantly checking her Facebook page, you know, just to see what my admirer had been up to. I read her Info section; I learned her favorite books and movies, I became aware of her life goals, I met her parents, I collected enough of her skin and hair to create a ritualistic alter. Eventually, I was trying to contact my fan more than she was trying to contact me and somehow, through the magical workings of Facebook, she was no longer my fan. I was a fan of hers.

I now exist as a broken and shattered individual. Having tasted the sweet, sweet, nectar of fanaticized admiration, I find it unbearable to walk around generically like all the other plebeians (plebeians is what resentful fame-whores call the people who formerly photographed their vaginas). I suppose I’ll just have to wait until Miramax options my life story. I just hope they don’t cast Ben Affleck in the title role – I mean what kind of idiot can barely speak Mandarin?

~David MacLean