Who's Your Reality?

It occurs to me that I’ve made a few snarky remarks against reality TV since the début of this blog, so let me turn the tide a little. The late Andy Warhol promised everyone would be famous for 15 minutes like prophesy, and lo and behold, the “reality” beast MTV unleashed in 1992 with The Real World is still on the rampage. It also occurs to me that (like in the last post, f’r example) I may name-drop famous people I’ve met in my travels a bit often. But trust me, I don’t mean to point at these folks like they’re any different from me (or us). Sly Stone said “everybody is a star,” and that’s more my attitude, “we all shine on” and all that.

In that spirit, I wanna turn this post over to comments from you; Webalizer says there’s an average of 1,500 of y’all reading this on a regular. By now, practically everybody knows somebody who’s been on a reality TV show through one degree of separation. Outta curiosity, please just do a quick check-in and sound off about who you know that’s gone there.

Years before Paris, I lived for four months in London, at the tail end of 1995. After a dry two months studying international law (long story) and writing for True magazine, I spotted a beautiful Asian-eyed cutie on the tube over my dog-earred Disappearing Acts. Got off the train and we both did the double-take, but alas, too late. So homegirl Elsa comes to visit England, and we stroll into some British hiphop shop, and at the counter: the Asian-eyed cutie (Indonesian, actually), Mirrah Faye! We hit it off right away, and moved into an apartment together at Tooting Bec for the rest of my time in London. I remember a snowball fight in a field with Mirrah, who, growing up in Venice Beach and Sydney, Australia, had never seen snow before. That’s her in our flat, above.

Three years back, UPN ran R U the Girl, the show where TLC’s T-Boz and Chilli chose a female MC to do a song with. I was already living here and didn’t see the show, but the final round was a battle between rappers O’So Krispie and… Mirrah! Long story short, she’s dropping the mixtape Life Love Music in a quick minute, having rocked The Lair on MTV Australia, hosted the televised afterparty to the MTV Video Music Awards down under and more. And we’re both married now, so quit.

Who’s your reality?