Wednesday, June 3, 2009

K-Fed, We Hardly Knew Ye

I sort of miss K-Fed.

Oh, keep your shirts on (or not). I don't actually miss his stoned blithering and pregnant-girlfriend-leaving ways. I miss the easy punchline - Popozao, anyone? - that marked his months in limelight as something special. Kevin Federline was sort of a shared national treasure, like Mount Rushmore or Tomorrowland. It was so easy. Britney was so crazy. They were so dirty. It was good times.

My friend Emily remarked on November 5th that the days of Sarah Palin punchlines were over, and it's been ages since I heard a good Dick In A Box reference. Where do these things go to die? Is there some elephant graveyard out there? Is Michael Jackson roaming the night, side by side with the guy Dick Cheney shot in the face? We have hundreds of zombie cultural memes, left behind by a civilization that no longer finds "I Kissed A Girl" funny.

Which is why I sort of miss Feder-sleazy. I used to be totally addicted to online gossip blogs like DListed and Perez, which would stuff my head with celebrity "news" (a lot of it seemed to feature celebrities I have no reference to, or reverence for, like the Jonas Brothers and whoever Selena Gomez is) and would thus share in-jokes with other people who read celebrity gossip blogs. Or watched Youtube videos. Or The Daily Show. Or The Simpsons. Or any of the myriad sources of in-jokes and of-the-moment punchlines that gather like so much bellybutton lint in the abdomens of our collective unconscious (or...something?).

Seriously, these jokes serve to unite us: one nation, committed to cracking wise at K-Fed's expense, no matter what the cost. Like Palin and the guy Cheney shot in the face, K-Fed was ubiquitous and pointless (one might argue that Palin had a "point" by running for veep; I might counter that by arguing that her "point" was filling out her blazers real nice), but also hilarious in an oh-God-when-will-it-end sort of way. I remember 2007, when all the tabloid rags were crowing things like "BRITNEY: I FEED MY KIDS DORITO OMELETTES, Y'ALL" and K-Fed was regularily oozing all over L.A., an ashy Marlboro perpetually stuffed in his piehole. It was glorious.

Now, K-Fed is fat and golfing, Britney's hair has grown out, and the whole sordid affair seems so tired. There's no joy in those jokes. I'm so far out of the loop that I'm not even sure who I'm supposed to hate these days - is it Phoebe Price? Is it that scuzzy naked girl from Danity Kane? I don't feel like either of those ladies (sorry: "ladies") have reached the kind of saturation that Federline enjoyed at the apex (or nadir) of his notoriety. Can someone please email me with the Next Big Joke?

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