Before they were famous...they were sort of embarrassing.

Hey, kids, have I got a treat for you today!

Well, no, actually. I haven't. But it's Tuesday, officially the lamest day of the week. So you'll take what you're fed, and you'll like it.

A lot of people assume celebrity types spring more or less fully-formed from the foreheads of the gods, or some shit. I don't blame them, considering the calculated, pre-packaged nature of most "famous" people these days. I mean, Christ...it used to be that in order to be a household name, you had to be GOOD at something. Now, just chasing a spotlight with the same brand of tireless tenacity a buck rabbit calls up when impregnating an entire hutch of rear-presenting bunnies is more than enough to qualify you to get around-the-clock stalked by TMZ, even if the worth you contribute to the culture can only be measured via the creative application of negative integers. Alternately, you can just crap out and/or adopt a metric assload of kids, and that'll usually also do the trick.

But I'm not here to grouse about how things used to be better. Such a position is as impossible to defend as it is easy to take up, being as every era has chaff, but the cream rises to the top in retrospect. No...I'm here to wave around some humiliating YouTube videos of a few currently-well-known people who have dark and sinister pasts, dating to the days of their pre-sellout periods.

To begin with, we have Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Not that she goes by that any more. No, these days she's better known as wearer of industrial scraps, ceaseless attention-whore, defender of Kanye, and possible hermaphrodite Lady GaGa. But in this video, shot in the misty, hardly-remembered year of 2006, she hadn't yet acquired her fake name, her fake hair, OR her fake celebrity. Check it:



Refreshing, no? I mean, she wasn't any good then, either. But at least then, we hadn't heard of her yet.

Next up is Katy Perry. Or, as she was known then, "Katy Hudson." And here's where I would usually snark it up, and say, "presumably, she changed it in order to not be confused with the other Kate Hudson, who has talent." But here's what sucks: she actually wasn't all that bad. That is, if you go for the sort of Lilith Fair grrrl-songwriter vibe. She wasn't a terrible singer, and while her guitar playing can hardly be described as virtuoso, she's more than competent...Especially when you consider that this video was shot when she was just 16.

Of course, the subject matter of her tunes leaves a little to be desired, being as she was famously a Christian artist in her former life. Still, I find it mighty ironic that with the Flock of Seagulls hairdo, minimal cosmetics, and cowboy shirt she's sportin' up there, she comes off as a lot more of a career muff-diver than now...When she's constantly singing a song about making out with other chicks.

Observe:



Continuing with the theme of irony, The last entrant in our little Laff-a-Lympics is a one Mr. Dan Whitney, a comedian who isn't really all that funny.

Witness this:



Dan was an aspiring comic at the time this video was shot, and though he was hardly what you'd call "funny," he was certainly funnier then than he is now. These days, most people (unfortunately) know him as "Larry the Cable Guy." Yep. Not that it should be a surprise, but "Larry" is no more a real person than Pee-Wee Herman. Though in each case, Dan and Paul Reubens almost never drop character, preferring to present their alter egos as their public personas 24/7. Well, not so much Pee-Wee these days, though, he IS currently staging something of a comeback.

Back then, because his regular act wasn't exactly burning up the clubs, Dan adopted the "Larry" character in order to spoof the particular sort of proud redneck ignorance that permeates sub-Mason-Dixon-line red states like the clap at an orgy. He figured he'd create a stereotypically loutish, loud, and aggressively stupid bumpkin character in order to stand as a walking, talking, belching parody of everything that's wrong with racism, inbreeding, and misdirected regional pride. So he reinvented himself as a drawling, whiskey-swilling, pickup-driving, cousin-humping, confederate-flag-waving über-moron who was too un-self-consciously DUMB to realize that Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might be a Redneck" routine wasn't a goddamned to-do list.

I uncategorically refuse to insert his catch-phrase here.
But something went horribly wrong somewhere along the way. See, the toothless, tarbacky-spittin', hayseed-chomping overall-hosts who Dan was viciously mocking turned out to be too empty-skulled to realize that they were cruelly being made fun of. And instead, they turned around and embraced his NASCAR / Jack Daniels / Skoal persona as one of their own, made good. Needless to say, Dan was a little taken aback. However, while he was too dumb to realize that people who still think Pro Wrestling is real are missing the handful of chromosomes that might otherwise permit them to recognize obvious mean-spirited satire, he was NOT too dumb to change gears, say, "yeah, that's what I meant all along," and milk the gravy train for all it was worth.

So, I leave it up to you. Were we better off then, living in a world where marginally-talented unknowns toiled in relative obscurity, waiting for their big break? Or are we better of now, when the SAME unknowns have abandoned any pretense of talent, instead re-inventing themselves into manufactured characters; avatars of plastic, pop-culture archetypes, only then attaining widespread recognition?

And perhaps more importantly...how long will it take Fox News to blame it all on Obama?