Fame

The Coach has gotten some ink in the local press recently, due to his accepting recently a coaching position with a popular local team (different from, or really in addition to, his regular coaching job). Now people we know, both well and only in passing and everything in between, are telling him -- through me, sometimes -- congratulations and looking forward to everything you'll be doing with the team. And that's nice, that people would be happy for you and wish you well when they find out you have a new job.

But sometimes the congratulations can veer off in an odd direction. One guy, after introducing himself to TC, said, "you're famous; you can Google your name and you're all over the place." Which struck both TC and me as just weird. He is so not all over the place; there's been like, two newspaper articles that have mentioned it, and when curiosity got the better of me and I googled his name, I'm sorry, but all that came up were one of the recent articles about him and another one from a couple years ago.

On the way home from church TC and I had a brief discussion on the whole "15 minutes of fame" idea, and it seems to us that not only are people eager to have their own 15 minutes at some point or other in their lives, but they have a real fascination with other people's 15 minutes, too. As far as TC is concerned, he accepted a job offer to coach for a season, but for what seems like an awful lot of outside observers, what he's doing is all about the celebrity status. Such as it is, I mean. This is still a pretty small pond, after all.

I guess in the 21st century, in the age of information access and New Media and all, people's appetites for publicity and exposure and fame and celebrity have just exploded. So even if the topic is something ordinary, like the job you've done for the past 2 dozen years, if it's out there for all the world to see, it's by definition interesting. She said, posting on her blog for all the world to see ...