Hollywood's Latest Trend: The CDP

Los Angeles, CA - News of Leslie Neilson's death has already spread like wildfire, and we'll all spend the next few days honoring his memory by quoting movie lines, posting clips on our profile pages, and for some of us, dusting off our old "Naked Gun" VHS tapes and watching them again. Leslie Neilson may not have made any blockbuster movies over the last couple of years, but he made us laugh, and over the next couple of days, he will- deservedly- be the talk of the town.

We live in a celebrity culture. And let's face it, nothing does more for a celebrity's career than the act of dying. This is why celebs have started turning to CDP's (celebrity death publicists), who help them time their deaths for maximum exposure and success.

"We're dealing with people who have had very successful careers during their lives, and don't want that to change just because of death," says Kika Buckett, president of Grinning Reaper Publicity, "Essentially, we're redefining the meaning of a crossover artist."

"Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed MacMahon died in the same three day period, and it was a PR nightmare for MacMahon," explains Buckett. "The networks were obviously focused on Michael and Farrah, and because of that, poor Ed MacMahon was largely passed over, excuse the pun. Just imagine, an entire career buried because of bad timing."

On the same day Jackson passed, old time jazz singer Merv Goldblum had been on his deathbed, but fortunately, Goldblum had been working with Buckett, who rushed to his side and warned him that this would be awful timing for those highly coveted post-mortem record sales.

"I decided to wait it out," Goldblum said. "I mean, you only die once!" Goldblum is planning a widely anticipated demise early next spring.

While some celebrities try to plan for their own unique days of departure, other lesser known celebs (soap opera stars, celebrity chefs, state senators) vie for a chance to piggyback their deaths with a better known celebrity, in hopes that this will help elevate their careers. 1970's adult film star Jennie Hooter, for example, arranged to kick off on on the same day as Elvis Presley, "...and she got a restaurant named after her!" says Buckett proudly. Hooter was one of Buckett's first clients.

It is well known that famous artists, singers, and authors experience skyrocketing sales immediately following their deaths. Many sell more after death than they did during life. Some artists, such as Tupac Shakur, even continue to release successful new albums for years after they pass on. ("If that's not the benchmark of a great career, I don't know what is!" Buckett exclaims.)

The death of a celebrity is a time of much publicity, and obituaries are often used as the final barometers of a celebrity's accomplishments. "A bad obituary is the death knell of any career," explains Buckett.

At the same time, a good obituary can resurrect even the most forgotten celebrity. After-death comebacks are nothing new, according to Buckett ("Jesus made the greatest career comeback of all time!") and are quickly becoming accepted as the hottest Hollywood trend.

"Just like a movie release or a political campaign, we just want our client to get the most out of his or her release from this earth," says Buckett. "With the right help, any celeb can be tremendously successful in his or her post-sunset years."

The one drawback for Buckett? "No matter how good a job you do for a client, they'll never hire you again."


- Joe King for the Unassociated Press

Love at First Date

I once told a girl I loved her on our first date. In my defense, I was fourteen, had never been kissed, and it was my first date ever (I’ll spare the suspense and tell you that by the end of this date, I still had never been kissed).

This girl had been my crush for months, and I learned through mutual friends that she liked me too, which, at that age, felt like the equivalent of winning two state lotteries in the same day while breaking a world juggling record. My best friend told me that for our first date, I should take her to a movie, and that he'd come along for moral support. True to teen-dating protocol, she also brought her best friend along. And I think they each brought friends. So we had about five spectators.

I went the entire first hour of the movie without even looking at her, trying to imagine how one transitions from not holding a girl's hand to suddenly holding it without a confrontation. I decided I needed a smooth line to say. I grasped for memories of what I'd seen other people do in this situation. Somehow, at fourteen, the only example I could think of was my parents, and, in a momentary lapse of judgement, I lost track of any difference between the etiquitte of a first-date versus that of an eighteen-year marriage. I leaned over confidently as I'd seen my dad do with my mom, placed my hand on my brand new girlfriend's hand, and said softly, in the most seductive voice I could muster, “I love you.”

Remember in the movie Borat, the way the old woman looks when Borat walks into her dining room holding a bag of his own feces? That about sums up this girl's response. She turned to her best friend and whispered something, her friend turned to her friend, and before you knew it, everyone around me was giggling with such rapture that popcorn was literally spilling off their laps. For the rest of the year, wherever I went, I'd be greeted by all of her friends with "I love you", and a huge grin.

The day after my first date, I was dumped. It was October 21st, 1998, the day the Yankees beat the Padres in the World Series, and the reason she gave for dumping me was that, as a Padres fan, she was in mourning, and was too distraught to date for awhile. We all knew the truth, though. It was the age-old, "It's not you, it's not me...it's the Padres". It's the most common breakup line in San Diego.

I ended up having my first kiss a couple of years later, and it wasn't until long after that I told a girl I loved her and meant it. Everything in its time. But no matter how far we get from puberty, that process of taking a risk, making a mistake, and eventually moving forward- is hopefully something we never grow out of. In fact, I think it's the only way we grow..

I love you,

Jakob

Do Something by Candlelight

I've started showering by candlelight. It's my own little romantic gesture to myself, and it's also a way of returning to a simpler time. I know, the first thing you're asking yourself. How far back in time can you really go while still enjoying the modern luxury of a hot shower? In fact, the Greeks invented the shower, complete with plumbing, in 4 B.C. Now you know.

Aside from time travel, I suppose my candlelight showers are also my own little rebellion against the new 'efficient light bulb' revolution. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that we're creating more energy efficient light bulbs - I just wish they didn't bathe my living room in the same fluorescent radiance as the clearance section of Marshall's.

So, for five-to-seven minutes every day, I close the door (my bathroom is windowless), and use one of my 40,000 matches to light tea-light candles in my bathroom, and bathe in a light that feels half-renaissance, half Cinemax late-night special. I joke, but really, try picking one thing every day to do by candlelight, even for five minutes, and see how quickly it changes the quality of your life. Change the light, and your perspective changes. Change your perspective, and...

Rainy state of mind

It's raining in the desert this weekend. My host says they get about 2 inches a year in this area, and it looks like we're going to get at least one here before the day is over.

I spent a lot of the drive listening to music, listening to books-on-CD, really anything that would keep me from thinking about how this is my first trip to her home-state since we parted ways, and reconciling all the memories we made here with the new ones I'll have to make - trying to disconnect her from the one place I knew her by. Heartache is like a disease that can go into remission for days, weeks, months - You're going about your daily life and Shazam! One tree can trigger a memory, which triggers another, and suddenly you're swimming in an inch of rain.

For me, music is the medicine. The stage is the one place where I can sing about pain, feel pain, and still be happy. It is the one place where emotion and reason coexist without a power struggle. Within the course of a three minute song, I find myself all powerful and yet completely powerless. I am all at once in love, furious, homesick, and somehow comforted in knowing that (whether hundreds of miles away or just a few) life moves forward, and the sky remains open with possibility.

I didn't bring an umbrella this time around. But I say let it rain.

40,000 Matches

I recently came across an arsonal (excuse the pun) of custom matchbooks - 2,000 to be exact, containing a grand total of 40,000 matches, which we had originally ordered as freebees to help promote the release of my first solo album, "Matches", in 2007.

I've always had a thing for matchbooks. I used to scribble notes to my college girlfriend in the flaps of matchbooks from restaurants we'd eaten at, (mostly puns like "hey, hot stuff!" and "Light me up- before you go-go"). I collected matchbooks from everywhere, so you can imagine how finally having matches with my own name and website on them felt like a rite of passage for me.

Soon after the release, however, my web domain -which was printed on the all matchbooks- expired, and before I could renew it (literally within a day), some guy in India stole it from under me, leaving me with 2,000 matchbooks that now advertised his new blog about online gambling.

I quickly burned through ideas of what to do with the matches; I had no girlfriend to write love notes to, no interest in arson, and no desire to cultivate a smoking addiction. I could have kept them in the bathroom, but even using three per day, that's still 38 years worth of air-clearing. So I stowed them away in my Dad's garage under boxes of old books and papers (in retrospect, I'm lucky we didn't have a dry summer).

How funny to come across these 40,000 little treasures again, just days before releasing "Leave The Light On". I recorded "Matches" at a time when I was looking for a way to express the spark I felt artistically - a starting point. Now there's a new title track, "Leave the Light On", which I wrote about holding onto that spark in the face of chaos, loss, heartbreak - all things that can complicate us, cripple us, and yet somehow simultaneously save our lives. Great loss has helped me to find myself. Heartbreak has given me a stronger understanding of love. And darkness has always pointed out where the light is. I hope that comes across on this record, in its own way.

Every project is a new beginning. Even the old songs on this new album, like "Ten Thousand People in White" -which I wrote at 17 - have been recorded in a new way, reflecting where I am right now. We are constantly in cycles of invention and reinvention - striking, glowing, burning out, and learning how to ignite ourselves again. In that sense, I suppose keeping extra matches around isn't a bad idea.