I sometimes read my mom's old issues of People magazine while I'm waiting for the damn dialup internet to load, and I recently found out that Colin Farrell is being treated for exhaustion. I'm going to have to say that lately, I've been feeling exhausted too, but I'm glad that it's Colin who is taking a rest.
Now, being an English major might not seem strenuous to some people, but it is. Trust me. Those eight page papers on the religious implications of Derrida or a deconstruction of escape don't just write themselves, you know. It can get to be hard work. Not as hard as say, staying out until all hours of the night in strip clubs, drinking, drugging and having sex with strippers, but it's still difficult.
I don't envy Colin's position. I mean, it's hard to stay up all hours of the night. Have you tried it? Sure, it's fun when you're a kid, struggling hard not to pass out before midnight on December 31, or when you're in your twenties, drinking cheap beer with your buddies. But to make a habit of it, day in and day out? That's not just good for the system. Colin has to wait until he gets tired to go to sleep then waking up when he's ready, unlike the rest of us, who blindly conform to sleeping at night and spending our daylight hours being productive. It's hard to rebel against any system, especially a diurnal society, but Colin is doing his best. I commend him for that.
I mean, I find it hard to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, watching tv and just hanging around my room, chilling with my roommates and people from the building. But no. He's out there, hitting the hottest clubs, drinking the shots, dancing it up. When I stay up late working on a paper, that's one thing, but when Colin stays up, he's doing his patriotic duty by stimulating the economy. Colin is improving lives. I'm just putting words down.
It's hard work to be Hollywood's bad boy. The stakes are eternally rising. Gone are the days when public intoxication gets you on the front pages of a gossip magazine. Even consorting with strippers and hookers gets a pass in this town these days. If someone as goodnatured and all-American as Tom Cruise could deflower Katie Holmes, or someone as pristine as Mandy Moore could be caught drinking underage at a club, or someone as innocent as the Olsen girls are scoring cocaine and sexing it up with millionare playboys, what is left for the true bad boy? There's a fine line between the excesses of someone like Marilyn Manson, who ground up human bones and snorted them, and the banal hijinks of Ashton Kutcher, who occasionally plays practical jokes on other celebrities. The pressure to come up with new ways to rebel against social and sexual norms must be exhausting. No wonder he needs a rest.
Sure, I've been instilled with a guilt unheard of for my religion and socio-economic status. I'm the victim of my own sexual repression, eternally feeling guilt for things, and too scared of losing control to get drunk or have sex with guys I just meet or experiment with pot or anything like that. But my neuroses are purely in my head. Colin's problems consume his whole body, from his alcohol-soaked liver to his cocaine-induced nosebleeds to his dancing sore feet to his sleazy sexually transmitted diseases. He must be drained, night after night, continuing with this debauchery. Let the man rest.
In fact, if it were Colin and me instead of Adam and Eve when God made the world, when God came down on the seventh day and said "Today we rest. We must remember this day, and keep it holy," I would let Colin rest while I continued doing the daily necessary chores, like learning how to control fire, preparing the food and cleaning out our little love hovel. (For, if it were Colin and me instead of Adam and Eve, we would have quite a time trying to get the whole 'procreation' thing down.)
Though I must say, I don't believe that Colin is taking a complete rest. It's hard to imagine him just lying in bed for days on end, watching soap operas and writing poems to try and alleviate his spirits, and sharing his feelings in group therapy. No, I think by the end of the first day, he would have canoozled with at least three young girls also in the clinic, possibly getting his hands on some whiskey. He's probably sprawled out on his bed right now, in his boxers, a cigarette in his hand and a broad passed out by his side. That just seems to be the way the guy relaxes.
Do I blame him? Oh, goodness no. Colin plays an important role in our Hollywood system, and without his cog, the wheel of celebrity rides a little bumpier.
I wish you the best of luck, Colin Farrell, and godspeed!
