it’s funny to me how people think that because someone is an actor or a politician or a rock star that they are therefore to be revered. it’s even funnier to me that though i find such a thing rather odd, i am just as inclined to revere someone famous as is the next guy.

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last new year’s eve, i was hanging out in downtown lancaster with a bunch of friends for the festivities, which included tons of obscure musicians playing here and there. we heard a few songs by an irish duo in an old episcopal church, we heard and watched some native americans chant and dance in the basement of some other building, and my friends, the suburban sound, rocked out in the ballroom of the masonic center. basically there was stuff going on all over the city, but it all culminated before midnight in the center of the city where a band played patriotic songs and welcomed in the new year with auld lang syne, a tune i’ve never tracked with. the city’s emblem, the red rose, was either lowered or raised (i forget which), a la new york city, and the night sky erupted with a dazzling array of fireworks.

when the last bomb had burst and the last horn had been blown and the masses had scattered to make their way home, we were still in the square chatting, when next thing we knew, there, approaching us in the street, just twenty feet away, was charlie smithgall.

now, to most of you, the name charlie smithgall doesn’t mean much of anything. you have probably never heard of the guy, and you’re probably wondering why i would mention him when i am writing about celebrities. well, i’ll have you know that charlie smithgall is the mayor of the city of lancaster, and to us 500,000 lancastrians in the county, smithgall is a bit of a celebrity.

to be honest, i don’t know much about the guy, and recently discussed with someone whether he was a republican or a democrat, but i do know that he really likes canons, those mighty weapons of old, intended to kill pirates on the high seas. he loans them to the fireworks people at longs park every fourth of july so they can fire them off during the one symphony piece. i also know that the smithgall family used to own a pharmacy and that my friend judy used to get ice cream there when she was growing up. i know this because she once told me so when we were comparing bragging rights. i think i countered with the fact that christian musician steve green has a nephew in guatemala at the school i attended through ninth grade. or maybe i told her that eugene h. peterson, the guy who wrote the message, has hoiland for a middle name, and because of that, of course, i am cool.

anyway, on new year’s eve, when we spotted charlie smithgall, i suggested (with a shameful degree of excitement) that we really ought to go get our picture taken with him. no one objected, and before you knew it we were all surrounding the mayor. his wife wasn’t going to be in the picture but we insisted that we liked her too, but really we just didn’t want her to know that we valued her husband more than her because he was famous and she wasn’t. i positioned myself next to him, on his left, and as we all squeezed in together for the photo, he rested his hand on what i’m sure he thought was my lower back but was, in actuality, my upper buttocks. this was strange for me, as i never imagined that i would find myself in this situation, with my arm around the mayor, with his hand on my posterior.

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maybe i was excited to get my picture taken with the mayor because i really don’t come in contact with celebrities all that often, and i take every opportunity i can get to obtain bragging rights, for conversations with judy, among others. for instance, there are a couple of politicians who are members at my church. on a couple occasions, when one has walked past, i will lean over to whoever is lucky enough to be sitting next to me and i’ll whisper, that’s so and so. he’s a politician. i voted for him.

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sometimes when i am in the restroom doing number two, i pretend like i am sitting down to an interview with david letterman. he is asking me about how i changed the world, and how so many people have been captivated by my writing and how my documentaries on pbs have uncovered massive injustices in third world countries and how i am up for awards for my photography and how i manage to keep my life in order with all the success i have enjoyed.

this goes on for a few minutes, as i give him very thoughtful and brilliant answers, and maybe slip in some dry humor here and there to charm the ladies. then, as i finish up what i’m doing in real life, i realize that people who watch david letterman wouldn’t care about me, even if i was a young writer who had written a book and had dabbled in some other forms of media. i wouldn’t make for exciting television. letterman has bigger fish to fry, like paris hilton or richard simmons. and even if i was asked to appear on the show, and even if someone watched the duration of the interview and nodded when i used cool words and sounded intelligent, i doubt i would have safety issues leaving the theater. no one would be waiting to jump me or anything. no one cares about people who write books.

in a way though, that would be the ultimate level of fame, the kind of fame that famous writers enjoy. i’d imagine most writers can shop at the grocery store or hang out at a cafe and not deal with a lot of paparazzi and not have to seclude themselves from society for the sake of their safety, since most people wouldn’t recognize them. you don’t often see stories of writers having affairs on the cover of the national enquirer, any more than you’d find them on the cover of weekly world news, having given birth to an alien baby that insists on eating rubber or something. as far as i’m concerned, that would be great, to be famous but able to go unnoticed. at the same time, writers get to enjoy hearing people talk about them if their book was worth talking about, and who knows, maybe someone could throw around bragging rights with their friends about having gone to school with the writer “back in the day, back before he was famous” or could relate stories to friends about meeting them somewhere, and the name would garner some respect.

i don’t want to be a celebrity, i really don’t. sure, i like to pretend i am sort of famous, but i can never envision myself being capable of maintaining my sanity if i had to live behind a gate in a multi-million dollar palace with pit bulls and surveillance cameras and body guards who follow me around. i don’t think many of the people we idolize in hollywood are really happy, and i think, in a sense, we did it to them. sure, they chose their occupation and worked hard to make it happen, but i doubt many of them bargained for the headaches that go along with it all, like not being able to just hang out in a park with the one they love, content to go unnoticed by the occasional passerby walking their dog or riding their bike.

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i was always a huge baseball fan, and growing up in guatemala, you don’t get to attend many big league games, so whenever we were in the states during the summer visiting friends and family, i made it a point to get to as many games as i could. i’d always go early, eagerly awaiting the emergence of players from the dugout. i was never alone, and really, i had to squeeze my way through the other fans until i was close enough to lean over the railing and almost smell the grass, or at least the dirt on the warning track. we’d yell and scream and my heart would pound as the player i had pretended to be while swinging my bat in the backyard at home would walk past. most of the time, the player would ignore me and the rest of the other fans, and i would think to myself, he would sign my ball if he could, but he is busy, and with all these other people here, he can’t just sign my ball and then get back to stretching and socializing and taking some practice cuts. he’d have to sign for everyone.

nonetheless, i did get several autographs in my day. i have baseballs signed by david justice, bip roberts, tom goodwin, jim leyritz, and others. one time, rod carew, a hall of famer as far as i know, who was coaching with the angels for a while, threw me a baseball - one of those scuffed up batting practice ones that actual real-life players had used as they warmed up. i knew it was rod carew because i had a video series he put together that is supposed to help you play better baseball, but it never really helped my game all that much. i also have a framed color photo of edgar martinez which he autographed at some point before my grandpa won it at some raffle. my grandpa gave it to me when i pretty much drooled on it in their tv room in seattle, the room where i would watch mariners game religiously every evening that summer at 7:05 pacific time.

one other piece of memorabilia in my collection that is worthy of note is a black and white photo of frank thomas which he sent me when i wrote him and asked for an autograph while i was in middle school. my brother, having a much more scientific mind than myself, took a close look at it and stifled all my joy when he informed me that the autograph was printed, mass-produced, and that frank thomas had probably never even read my letter which i had so eloquently written.

i don’t think much about my memorabilia collection these days. frank thomas, in all his fake glory, rests on the top shelf in my closet, almost out of sight, and edgar martinez is collecting dust in the corner, with the occasional spider paying him a visit, leaving a cobweb behind as a token of respect. all those autographed baseballs are packed away in a box somewhere, and some of the signatures have smeared.

this is what seems to happen to celebrities, you know? they are given a whole lot of attention and respect and people try to be like them and next thing you know, they have been forgotten about. that is the only thing that really separates the famous from the rest of us - they are in the spotlight for a spell. whether you are on posters in bedrooms the world over, and dreamed about in backyards by middle school boys, or you go unnoticed by most of the people in your daily life, death has a way of leveling the playing field. only a few live on in the stories told by those down through history, and i doubt very much that the people who are going to be talking about centuries from now are the actors and pop stars and the baseball players who write their names in cursive on round pieces of leather.

death can be, at best, sobering, and at worst, terrifying, but for those of us who believe that we’ll spend eternity with the Famous One in a place that knows no dust, no cobwebs, no smears, a place so glorious and incomprehensible to our finite minds that we can only draw pictures of clouds and palaces and white people with wings and scratch our heads at the mystery of it all, we don’t need to lose sleep over the fact that one day, we will be forgotten about here on earth. i have come to terms with the fact that i will probably not be talked about hundreds or thousands of years from now like people talk about aristotle or michelangelo or albert einstein or gandhi or moses or king david or Jesus. i will probably never even appear on david letterman’s show to talk about my books and documentaries and prize-winning photography. but when you realize that the famous people in the world are probably no more happy than any given employee at a gas station or at a roadside diner, it kind of frees you to be ok with obscurity. and if you are still interested in leaving a legacy worth talking about, you could try investing in people’s lives and doing something to make this world a better place, more heaven-like, so that people can get a taste of what we have to look forward to.

because the truth is, nothing in this world can satisfy like Jesus. His is the only fame that will never fade, and if i can wrap my mind around that concept and try to live in light of that knowledge every day, i think that maybe the concept of celebrity as this world knows it won’t mean as much to me as a hill of beans.