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This may go without saying, but we have never Fame Audited a fetus before.
We've never audited a newborn, an infant, or a toddler either, though Dakota Fanning does have a certain zygotic sheen about her.
We can't, however, ignore the most significant celebrity news that occurred over our holiday break, which is also quite possibly the most significant news about an as-yet unborn person in the History Of, Like, Ever.
Brad and Angelina are having a baby.
Now, there will no doubt be an awesome maelstrom of information, speculation, pontification, hysteric fawning, and general glazed-eyed swooning and vomiting over every follicle and fibre of said baby, until that magic day that he or she is brought, squalling and bawling and beautiful, into this unworthy world. And if you've ever wondered how significant historical events -- the fall of Rome, the eruption at Pompeii, the birth of Christ -- might have played out in today's hyperventilating media jabbersphere, this will be your answer.
There will be pealing of trumpets and tributes by armies. There will be speeches and car chases and stabbings. There will be tears, and visions, and healings. Larry King will be involved in some way.
But the actual news of their baby -- coming, as it did so appropriately, in the holy tailwind of the holiday season -- was greeted with, dare we say, reserve? Understatement? Hushed reverence?
Sure, there was the People cover, and the resultant tabloid pile-on, and the sudden great flash-paper response of the bloggeratti. All to be expected. But as far as we know, no churches were formed. No eyes gouged out. No virgins as yet sacrificed.
Is it possible that, in the frenzy to cover each Lindsay Lohan poledance as though it were the cracking of the seventh apocalyptic seal, we've actually run out of ways to herald celebrity events?
To which we can only say: people. Come on. Let's get it together. Because this time, we really need to lose our shit. For reals.
Allow us to backtrack to a moment, some years ago, when Jude Law and Cate Blanchett were co-presenting at the Oscars. We recall watching the telecast at Fametracker HQ, deep in the side of a secure, undisclosed mountain, and thinking, "Imagine if these two ever procreated?" Side by side, they were as glorious as the archangels Gabriel and Saraquael.
During these twinned star's canned award-show banter, the camera cut to the audience which stared, open-eyed and blinded. I think I saw a single tear roll down the cheek of Mel Gibson. Behind him, Steven Spielberg muttered, "It's beautiful," over and over again, like the doomed villains in his own Raiders after cracking open the Ark of the Covenant.
And let's face it: Brad makes Jude Law look like a snaggle-toothed gargoyle, and Angelina makes Cate Blanchett look like Ann B. Davis.
So for their child?
We will need special goggles. No, the goggles won't protect us. We'll need artists, great artists, who'll sacrifice their eyes for one brief gaze upon the Brangelina infant (or, as we like to call it, the Infangelina), sketch its glory quickly, then spend their rest of their lives as blind babbling fools, jibbering in some monastery somewhere.
To which we can also say: Oh, TomKitten, your ass just got served.
But now comes the tough love, and here we speak directly to the unborn Infangelina, as it glows elsewhere in its celestial holding cell: yes, you'll be beautiful, genetically flawless, and famous from the moment you're born. Yes, you'll be received by the public like some combination of the dauphin heir and a foolproof new diet drug. You will be worshipped. You will be gobbled.
But not yet. And not by us.
Because you already have such a high risk factor of Michael Jacksonitis, we won't help incubate the virus. You're going to have to earn your fame. Not just by mewling and twitching and being all cute and baby-like. Not just by casting your poor adoptive siblings in shadow, those who were rescued from unfortunate conditions only now to become the most Outshone Kids in Human History. Oy, talk about issues. Talk about therapy.
But you, The Infangelina, will need to, you know, do something. You run the risk of becoming the biggest Paris Hilton of all time. So no sooner will you come tumbling out of the womb and dazzling us with your glory, then you need to pick up a guitar. Maybe write a book. Adopt some pets. Make your papa proud and become an architect. By which we really mean, become a grounded, well-rounded, compassionate person, so that you'll be able to handle all the attention, once the whole healing-the-lame, making-the-blind-to-see stuff starts.
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