Formerly Relevant Celebrity News

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You know how there are some people who seem really important or popular for a while, and then their 15 minutes of fame expires? And then, in a desperate bid to recapture their former glory, they engage in some kind of cheap publicity stunt? “Pay attention to me!”

So, anyway,  I guess there was actual important stuff happening last week when the “news” broke that Meghan McCain is going to become a grown-up Honey Boo-Boo, and I missed an opportunity to make fun of that shallow narcissistic bitch.

Meghan, I mean, not Honey Boo-Boo, although the resemblance is kind of remarkable, if you think about it.

Speaking of remarkable resemblances to Meghan McCain, Michael Moore says only right-wingers think he’s fat.

And speaking of people who have been failing predictably since the early years of the Bush administration, Jim Carrey.

Do you realize that it’s been nearly 20 years since Carrey starred in Ace Venture: Pet Detective, arguably the only really funny movie he ever made? And I say “arguably” because some people didn’t think it was very funny at all. But it was certifiably popular at least, grossing $72 million in 1994, when $72 million was pretty good money.  It was considered successful enough that the next year they made a sequel — not as funny — that grossed more than $100  million.

Carrey’s career since then has been erratic, and by “erratic,” I mean he’s been stinking it up for the past 10 years, playing cartoon characters in Seuss-themed kiddie flicks and bombing like the RAF over Dresden every time he tries to do anything aimed at an audience old enough to drive.

Who remembers Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The Number 23 (2007), I Love You Phillip Morris (2009) or The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)? Nobody.

Heck, Burt Wonderstone has only been out four weeks and to say it has been forgotten would be a misstatement because it disappeared like a fart in a hurricane. It made back about two-thirds of the $30 million it cost to make it, and everybody who saw it — that is to say, a total audience measured in the thousands — left the theater telling all their friends to stay away from this cinematic turd. This is obviously why, in a desperate bid to seem relevant, Jim Carrey lashed out at the gun industry, which created a brief bubble of attention and — we might assume — signaled to liberal directors in Hollywood, “Hey, I’m one of you guys, so please consider casting me in your next movie.”

This is sad, because it’s not as if Carrey were Warren Beatty or Sean Penn or some other Hollywood guy who’s been doing the celebrity-leftist trip for decades. Just out of the blue one day, he decides to grab himself some “Courage Points” on the cheap by Standing Up to the NRA, as if that were some kind of rare and risky move in Hollywood.

Carrey’s celebrity-politics blip has come and gone, but for some reason (I don’t know why) Ace of Spades decided today to give Carrey a few punches on Twitter:

Nobody really noticed this, of course, because Jim Carrey isn’t really much of a celebrity any more. He’s actually on the verge of becoming more like Farrah Abraham. And I’m sure you’re like me: “Farrah Who?”

What the reality-TV industry has spawned is the phenomenon of micro-celebrities, people who are “famous” to a comparatively small audience of people who are fans of one or another series on one of those cable channels that are lucky to get a half-million viewers for one of their “hit” shows. I honestly don’t know how many people watch MTV any more,  but watching the petty misadventures of a bunch of trashy knocked-up high-school girls and their baby-daddies isn’t really my idea of entertainment. So I kind of get annoyed when a “celebrity” site puts Farrah Abraham’s name in a headline as if everybody knows who Farrah Abraham is, which we don’t.

It’s the “famous for being famous” syndrome, except that we’ve devalued “fame” to the point that it applies to people who aren’t actually famous in any sense other than “they used to be on a cable TV show watched by less than 1 percent of the U.S. population.” In a nation of 300 million people, 3 million isn’t a lot of TV viewers and I don’t think more than 3 million people know who Farrah Abraham is.

Maybe she should make a sex tape with Jim Carrey.

 

48 comments

  1. Maybe she should make a sex tape with Jim Carrey.

    You are a sick bastard, aren’t you? But then, there are probably some out there who would get their kicks from watching it.

  2. “Maybe she should make a sex tape with Jim Carrey.”

    Or maybe she’d do better making one with Mr. Ed? At least she she could one-up the K clan an the hotel heiress that way.

  3. I remember enjoying Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Even so it seems like Carrey is taking the politically correct, pro-government regulation stance to get headlines. Even if he was sincere (he probably is) it sure doesn’t motivate me to watch any future movies he appears in.

  6. “Maybe she should make a sex tape with Jim Carrey….”

    Now you did it…Schmalfeldt is sitting in his darkened office, blinds closed..or not , a dirty sock in one hand and a bottle of Dawn in the other…..marching his little German soldier, so to speak…..

    the door…gotcha, I’ll be leaving now.

  10. Oh, my. This is why people hate you, others love you, and no one ignores you. I almost peed myself I was laughing so hard.

  12. What the reality-TV industry has spawned is the phenomenon of micro-celebrities, people who are “famous” to a comparatively small audience of people who are fans of one or another series on one of those cable channels that are lucky to get a half-million viewers for one of their “hit” shows.

    You mean like Alex Debogorski, Reed Timmer and Tanner Foust?

  13. show names:

    My Two Boobs

    Three Boobs are Company Too

    Two Boobs and a Twit.

    Tit’s UP!

    Once Upon a Boob

    Boob Nation.

  14. Whoa! How did I miss THIS?

    I dunno, Stacy, as I dropped this on your FB account when it came out. Maybe I was laughing too hard, and hit cancel by accident.

  15. The only thing Meghan is good for is if you are alone in a bar at 15 minutes to closing and need some company. But it helps to be really drunk, a bit depressed and with a sad country music song playing in the background.

  19. I think I remember liking that movie, too. Probably one of the last movies we ever took our kids to. I never noticed Carrey was in it, though. I was actually surprised to read that.

  21. Francis the talking mule then? Nah, never mind, I couldn’t do that to a vet of 2 branches. Wait! I know! Flipper! Dolphins are supposed to be sex fiends anyway.

  23. Heh, she wants a couple Mil for her tape. Didn’t Stacy point out some time ago that p0rn stars aren’t making any money these days?

  24. How I Met Your Boobs
    The Love Boobs
    Top Boobs
    The Deadliest Boobs
    Dancing with the Boobs
    The Man from B.O.O.B.S.

  26. I remember Jim Carrey as pretty funny – on In Living Color. Since then, not so much.

    Meghan McCain is at least putting her best feature forward but I have to wonder how big the audience is for a me-me-me-fest with an airhead with boobs. I suppose some guys will hit “Mute” and put on some classic rock.

    The worst thing is we’re here talking about this irrelevant crap when the Zombie Apocalypse has begun in California: http://po.st/b6bfQ1 Scary stuff!

  27. Glad you enjoyed it. I thought “bombing like the RAF over Dresden” was a pretty good figure of speech, myself.

  28. Yeah, the Internet killed the profit machine. They were really rolling in it back in the VHS/DVD era of the ’80s and ’90s, but the past 15 years have pretty much reduced everything to 5-minute clips people download from file-sharing P2P networks, And because everybody now has a video camera, what Marxists would call “the means of production” translates to a lot of college kids creating cheapo “amateur” clips for next to nothing, and therefore the Adult Entertainment Industry, as such, is on hard times. Or maybe I should say hard-core times.
    There was a time, about 20 years ago, when many “porn stars” might have made six-figure annual incomes, and the major commercial production companies in the Adult Entertainment Industry made millions, but the low-budget online operations have squeezed the profits, and everything gets pirated and shared P2P, so the mass-market cash nexus is just not there like it was Back in the Day.

  36. My favorite Jim Carrey role was in Liar, Liar. I often repeat, and crack up every time I think about it, his line when on the phone with one of his habitual offender clients:

    Stop breaking the law, asshole!

    Not just funny, but good advice.

  37. Research. He was doing research when he watched. It was for a good cause and to stay properly informed on these matters.
    Nothing to see here. Move along.

  39. Seemed a little tepid; I was thinking “USAAF over Tokyo” because at least Dresden wasn’t made of paper and bamboo. Which works as a metaphor for Carrey’s career.

  41. Who remembers Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The Number 23 (2007), I Love You Phillip Morris (2009) or The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)?

    Hard to remember a film that one didn’t even know existed. Speaks volumes on why he pumped up the volume for Kick Ass 2.

  43. Susannah Breslin observed the same facts and reached the same conclusion quite a while back. Good writer too.

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