LukeGeraghty.com
Life, one story at a time
Legacies
Feb 7th
The sun shone down so hard you could feel your own heartbeat in your head. The cracked, blackened earth groaned – there was no more water here to sweat. The drought was upon them now.
Words can evoke powerful memories or send us to a place where we have never been before. A fantasy land of piping-hot mulled wine to comfort us through bitter nights; of lazy days spent in fields with grass up to our chests; and of bonfires on the beach when even a t-shirt feels too heavy on our skin.
Now, I feel have to plug Randy Pausch a bit here, as it was his lecture on achieving childhood dreams that made me realise that none of us should sacrifice what we want to do in the long term for what we have to do right now. For those of you unfamiliar with his story, Randy was a Carnegie Mellon professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006, shortly before his 46th birthday. In August 2007, he was told he could expect a remaining three to six months of good health.
I’m not sure what it would be like to have a terminal illness. I had a conversation about a week ago with a friend where I took the stance that I’d prefer to get hit by a bus to save myself from thinking, “I’m going to die,” every waking minute of my remaining life. Then, someone I knew got hit by a van a few days later. Straight into hospital and intensive care. Died shortly thereafter. Did not even have an opportunity to say goodbye to anyone she cared about. So, here I am, a week on from that conversation, thinking that Randy Pausch was right: getting a chance to leave your legacy to the world is far better than being robbed of that chance.
Randy died on July 25, 2008. Don’t dwell on his death. The living pities the dead, even those we didn’t even know when they were alive. In the year-and-a-half from being diagnosed to passing away, Randy achieved more than most of us do in a lifetime:
- #1 New York Times best-seller
- Testified before Congress about the importance of research funding for pancreatic cancer
- Gave an abridged version of his talk on Oprah
- Listed by Time as one of the World’s Top 100 Most Influential People in 2008
- Tens of millions of hits for something other than make-up videos on YouTube
His legacy to me is that a body of work can live on long after our corporeal existence is over. A passion, kindled when the flame is small, can burn as bright as those long-forgotten childhood dreams we once cherished more than any worldly possession.
On reflection, I think if you could ask Randy what his greatest achievement was in life, he would say his three children and the marriage with his wife.
The Hills Are Alive…With The $ound Of Fame Whoring
Feb 2nd
This is how I imagine a new book by Heidi Montag on the steps to becoming a tabloid fixture will sound:
1) Undergo 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day in spite of being 23-years-old 2) Say it was a spiritual experience and preach about inner beauty 3) Make it dramatic by unveiling your new look in the press. The trashier the mag, the better. Extra points for saying you almost died and by linking your ordeal to someone famous (dead celebrities like Michael Jackson are fair game).
Scratch that. Instead of writing a whole new book, she can just update the fame whore bible (How To Be Famous…) she co-authored.
The sad thing is that Heidi used to be both fun and human-looking. She had an innocent, head-in-the-clouds appeal in season 1 of The Hills and though Lauren Conrad was supposed to be the main protagonist, she was too serious and too dull compared to her carefree housemate.
A clear change is visible in Heidi once she begins to date Spencer Pratt. From season 2, there is a steady decline in likeability correlated with being associated with that complete and total a-hole. It was as if the magnetic, spunky girl persona was shelved in lieu of the commonplace, Hollywood blonde bimbo role; the scheduled viewing had resumed and it was worse than Battlefield Earth.
Nowadays, Heidi Montag can be seen on Extra, on People magazine and on Demerol. She does not seem to pursue any sort of knowledge or enlightenment beyond the pseudo-knowledge of Cosmopolitan magazine articles. Although even her self-stated “Jay Leno chin” has been shaved off, I doubt that she or the plastic surgeon helping to fuel her delusions will think twice about more enhancements.
Sadly for Heidi, smarter vanguards of fame whoring, such as Paris Hilton, realise that there needs to be a limit to what we do to achieve our dreams. Yes, star in the reality shows and sex tapes but do it on your terms without losing all sense of your identity or the real world. Nobody with two working ears will buy Superficial, but Stars Are Blind wasn’t half bad.
At least Heidi Montag did inspire one great piece of work in her lifetime. God bless you, LisaNova.
101 Classics: Absurd
Jan 23rd
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. La Femme Nikita. Sin City. They all feature this song by the band Fluke. It is often somewhat recognisable to many; generally impossible to name for most. Absurd frequently drifts in one ear and out the other without becoming a fixture on our Top 25 Most Played lists. Maybe it’s understandable considering everybody’s aural attention was siphoned away for other senses as soon as Nancy Callahan hit the stage.
Absurd is a rich and multilayered song, worthy of every jaw drop and head tilt that should occur upon hearing it for the first time. If this is not your ultimate workout song, you are doing your body a disservice.
Listen, rinse, repeat:
