The idea of the American Dream endures to this day, and at least one version of it is about getting famous and, therefore, getting rich. This is obviously pretty easy, reliable, and comes with no risks or repercussions. If you want it, you can have it, no fuss, no muss!
There are so many ways to go about it, you can develop paralysis by analysis and not see the most obvious, best, most fun moves. You can just release an album, or make some major professional sports team’s roster, or you can discover gold, if that’s your thing, for sure.
Or you can do what one cyclist in Santa Monica went for, which many people overlook because of its elegant simplicity. Because as you get a little older you really yearn for the no-nonsense technique of getting famous by falling like an idiot in front of a national television audience.
Guad Venegas, a reporter for MSNBC, was at a local beach in Santa Monica to deliver a live report on new Covid guidelines, little realizing that the fame of a 24 hour news network was about to be eclipsed by a new star in the heavens: a bike rider who saw the camera setup for what it was, the opportunity to record their place in a historic moment, and through that to be recognized in their own right as one off the greats.
The plan? First, ride into the background of the shot. Then, simply hold out their phone in order to take a selfie proving that, yes indeed, they were there the day that Guad Venegas related the news of the pandemic guidelines. Step three? Cash in big time, which is pretty much inevitable.
The bid to get famous and therefore very wealthy was even more successful than the cyclist could have guessed. She rode into that shot. Done. She lifted up that cellphone while remaining astride her bike, and went to take the critical selfie pic. Done.
But before she could complete the pic, chance intervened! They say there aren’t accidents, and that in show biz mistakes are a gift, and that has never been truer than when this woman clumsily lost her balance and fell to the ground live before a national audience of potentially millions- some of them no doubt very powerful and influential. Such a person could pluck her from obscurity and elevate her to that rarified air of super-stardom. After all, we find clumsiness so endearing, like when a Jennifer Lawrence relatably falls down.
And it worked! This cyclist, who shall go nameless here- only because giving her name would be pointless considering how famous she is. You know her name. You can hardly escape it, or her face. She’s the new It Person. We all now live in her world. Following the fateful, star-making fall, the now-celebrity cyclist, as chronicled by history’s witness Guad Venegas, got up and rode away. Needless to say she rode into the sunset, having cemented herself in the firmament and having had her lifetime’s grand adventure.
And if you want to repeat her feat, you can! You just have to do what she did, and if you stand as precariously atop your bicycle as she did, you will go down, but not too hard to get up and ride away to the bank.
