Before a celebrity descends from the heavens, returning to the world mere mortals must inhabit every day, they watch their dreams crash and burn. At first, their perspective on this must be third-person. As if watching from afar, they bear witness as their true personality begins come to the forefront of the public mind.

Sometimes it's drugs, others it's a penchant for sleepovers with preteen boys, and still others it's nothing more than the blessing and curse that is a single-digit IQ.

Whatever the catalyst, the reaction is the same: civil war erupts among the fandom devoted to the falling celebrity. Often, the war never ends and can, in the hands of a wily publicist, be spun in favor of the star, or at least neutralized (as in the case of the aforementioned extra-terrestrial, boy-touching singer).

As for the others, some fans stick with them as they plummet through the upper atmosphere of high society, while others decry their offensive words or actions and wait anxiously for the moment when their famous face splatters all over the lower levels of obscurity.

Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie have nothing to worry about, though. The very existence of such intra-fan hostility illustrates that average nobodies will sustain the fame or infamy of those who make the effort to burn out brightly instead of merely fading away.

Let me, for the sake of posterity and because I'm sure you all really want to know, explain what I would do if fame ever came a-knocking at my door.

I would not wait around in my $10M home in the foothills of Filthyrichland for disaster and horrible press to find me. I would not let mere chance choose for me how my career will shatter like the facial bones of an ill-fated stuntman. No way. I would dictate the terms of my own downfall.

First, I would stop sleeping. Every hour spent asleep is an hour spent not making the most of your fame. Instead, I would spend that time crafting papier-mache masks and painting a different farm animal on the forehead of each mask. I would require everyone in my entourage to wear the masks whenever they are in my presence, and I would refer to them only by the animal on their mask.

Second, I would purchase an entire wholesale shipment of 24-inch televisions and a hunting rifle. I would play violent video games for two hours every day and whenever my character died, I would shoot the TV with the rifle, and demand that Sheep or Pig (both of whom would be pissed

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