Random thoughts about celebrity…

I saw Ron Howard on the Today show. Ron Howard is certainly no looker but he came off as very smart and funny and kind. He clearly knows his craft on both sides of the camera. As a kid he was in everyone’s home first as that kid with the weird name, Opie, on the Andy Griffith show and then Mayberry, RFD. He went on to be everyone’s favorite nerdy teenager Richie Cunningham.

Throughout all of that he managed to learn everything about the business of making TV and movies. He married very young, by any standards but even more surprising he remains married to that same woman all these years later.

Paparazzi don’t seem to chase the Howard family around. I would imagine they could go to Target without being hassled. It would seem that they could have a carefree family dinner at the corner diner without anyone batting an eye.

He’s a hardworking man with a family. He could be any man in America with any family of many decades. One thing, though, he’s most likely really, REALLY RICH! We’re talkin’ megabucks here.

Now let’s flip this over. Brangelina. WTF? Really. I’d have to bet that Ron Howard has more financial assets than those two and yet I don’t hear about them jetsetting to a castle in France for any reason.

Brangelina often acts like it’s a hassle to be them, to have to dodge through airports with a staff to protect them; to be photographed on every family outing; all that happy horseshit.

But the reality here is that they have to love it, they must crave the attention. Neither of them have the broad range of talents that Ron Howard has (or if they do, they’re awfully good at hiding them somewhere out of view) yet their every move, their every career decision is news fodder.

If I were given the opportunity to meet one of those two famous couples and share a meal with them where we could talk about anything I would choose Mr. and Mrs. Ron Howard in a heartbeat. I’ll bet he’s got some great tales to tell and a very genuine way of telling them.

You can keep Brangelina for the headlines, that’s all they’ve got.