Cause Celebre

What is it about our culture that makes us love celebrities so much? What is it that makes us seek fame ourselves, willing to eat goat dung for a five minute spot on a reality show? Heck, I don't know. Living in Manhattan, I've hung out with b-list celebrities from time to time but I'd rather hang out with my friends any day.

That's not to say I am immune to the celebrity fascination. I've written about Schilling twice. And I've been known to frequent the celebrity focused Pink is the New Blog.

And, here I am, writing another celebrity post.

Yes, Dave Chappelle is now a known WoW gamer . But if you want any Rick James catchphrases you're going to have to look elsewhere. Some people are annoyed with Chappelle but I think it's because of the legions of people who run said catchphrases into the ground. That's not his fault. If you actually watch his show you'll find he's very funny and very smart, at least in my opinion. I just hope for his sake he never reveals his character name or he will get several thousand catchphrase tells the moment he logs on. You can check out his parody of GTA here.

Hmm, Schilling misses most of the season because of injury. Chappelle misses his third season because of "creative problems." And they're both MMORPG players....interesting. Eh, just kidding, I hope they both get back on track soon.

Moving on to those who seek celebrity, I read on EQII Vault today that around 150 people signed up for the silly Quest for Antonia and that a million votes were cast. I've written enough about that already.

In yet more celebrity news, the real Queen Heather was nominated for her voice work in EQII for the ridiculous G-phoria awards. Having not done the betrayal quest, I've never met her in "person" but I can say that her voice work on the talking statue was pretty good. Upbeat and inspiring.

The whole category is a joke, to be honest. Three of the five contestants (Heather, Carmen Electra and Brooke Burke) are celebrities. You can make that four if you count Linda Hunt who was on the Practice, Carnivale and actually won an Academy Award. So out of all the voice work that was done in games this year was it really four celebrities who turned in the best performances? Or is this an obvious name value bias? I'm sorry but any award show which nominates Carmen Electra for voiceover work for playing herself is not going be taken seriously by me.

As MMO subscriber numbers continue to grow (two million for WoW), it is likely that we're going to be getting more celebrity stories, like it or not.

I also have to hand it to SOE for linking to that G-Phoria page where their game has a nomination for Best Voice Work while, on the same page, WoW has a nomination for Game of the Year.