Nick Lachey's ear hair

You know that you've completely and dangerously o.d.'ed on Extra!, Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, People, O.K.!, In Style, and Hello!, when you start having dreams about Nick Lachey. Especially his ear hair.

I r.e.m.'ed that moment earlier in the week, a quick snippet of a dream that involved my watching Nick Lachey perform on something akin to American Bandstand. I was standing behind ol' sinner Nick, on a platform slightly above him, which afforded me a view directly into his eustachian tubes and thus was able to spot the offending ear hair. After he did his big number--which the gods in all their mercy have prevented me from recalling one note of--I pulled him and the director aside and told them that Nick would need a trim before the show could go on. They obliged and thanked me for the keen observation. And then my mind moved on to another dream.

Why I would dream about Nick Lachey of all people is kind of a mystery to me. I'll admit, he is cute in that button-nosed, pretty boy, Ken doll kind of way, the kind I always fantasize will look totally ridiculous at 50 or 60 with his plastic boytoy looks, but who will, in fact, still look fabulous, even as a corpse. He'll have his perfect, fawn-colored curls; he'll have his pearly, porcelain teeth; he'll have his desiccated and decaying portrait in the attic. "Our limbs fail, our senses rot . . . Youth, youth, there is absolutely nothing in the world but youth."

The bastard.

Nonetheless, Dorian . . . erm . . . Nick and Jessica Simpson have been in the news constantly for weeks, nay, months, nay, years! So perhaps it's inevitable that I would dream about him at least once. As a child, I occasionally dreamed about being lost and having to find my way home. As a college student, I dreamed about forgetting to show up for exams and failing to graduate on time. As a twenty-something during the Reagan era, I dreamed about the Soviet Union invading Washington, where I lived at the time, and how my colleagues and I had to prevent nuclear war from starting at the Smithsonian Castle. Also during the '80s I dreamed more than once about being friends with Madonna and advising her on selecting the best Ethiopian restaurant when she visited the Adams-Morgan neighborhood.

So it really does stand to reason that I would be haunted in my dreams by other cataclysmic, psychologically scarring events--ergo, a dream about Nick Lachey's ear hair and its possible detriment to his career. My ear hair is frightening enough, growing and curly-cueing more than an Eva Gabor wig during a rainstorm in New Orleans. But the ear hair of the otherwise plucked and pruned Darling Nicky? *Shiver.* That is indeed horrifying to imagine.

I have this theory that everything anyone in Celebritydom does--whether good, bad, or indifferent--is all consciously and purposefully designed to draw constant attention to themselves, to make we mere mortals tune into every action, every thought, every moment of their public and private lives--at least the part of their private lives they want us to witness. No one in Oprah's entourage can tell time, so they show up late to a boutique in Paris and get locked out--let's debate it on Anderson Cooper 360. J. Lo sleeps with pretty much anyone who's ever appeared in front of a camera (including a Brownie and a Polaroid)--let's chronicle each sweaty interlude in the pages of the National Enquirer. During yet another inquiry into child molestation allegations, Michael Jackson jumps on top of a car to wave to his adoring fans (a group who've never mastered the concept of "where there's smoke and the desire to remake yourself to look like Diana Ross's Silk Electric album cover, there's fire")--and it's covered on websites and news broadcasts around the world. Tom Cruise argues with Matt Lauer over the merits of psychotropic drugs, totally not getting the irony, and it receives plenty of play on the next day's front pages.

No news is just that, no news. But even bad news is good news on the global stage upon which celebs appear.

So congratulations, Nick. Like a river parasite in a Third World country, you've entered my body through some undetermined orifice--perhaps an earhole?--and have burrowed yourself into my brain. Now, literally and figuratively, I can't get you out of my head.

That's the measure of success. For you.

For me, it's the measure of a slow and painful death through a brain-wasting disease.