Lauren, Heidi and AUDRINA not real STARS?

'WHO ARE you?"
The voice came booming behind me so loudly, I almost dropped my Cocoa Puffs. I quickly counted my items, and glanced nervously at my checkout line category. Had I put 16 items down on the conveyer belt in the 15-items-or-less line? Did I dawdle too long before asking the bagger to put the products in my reusable bags instead of the standard plastic-or-paper?
No, it turned out that the indignant woman behind me simply could not believe the faces gracing the current crop of magazines lining the checkout line.
"I don't know a single so-called celebrity on any of these magazines," she ranted at no one in particular. "Who are these people?"
Lady, if you don't know the cast of MTV's manipulated reality series "The Hills," then you're probably out of luck when it comes to the current crop of celebrity rags. The biggest sellers these days have people like Brody Jenner showing off his sleek body, or Audrina Patridge in close to nothing.
And a quick show of hands of anyone who believes that John McCain really knew who Heidi Montag was when she recently endorsed him for president. Wait: Maybe he is reading those magazines in all those airports.
Ah, don't we all wish we could go back to those heady days of Brangelinaston, when you had real movie stars like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie breaking the heart of TV sweetheart Jennifer Aniston. They provide some level of entertainment in a train wreck kind of way. We'd seen Brit grow up from a naughty schoolgirl to a straitjacket queen. We knew her. She was a celebrity.
Then there was the fairy-tale romance of former "Dawson's Creek" good girl Katie Holmes and box office magician Tom Cruise, merging into TomKat. Aaah, isn't it nice that she used to have a crush on him when she was a teen-ager? Oooh, was he really trying to convert this Catholic girl to Scientology? And in between, we could ponder how she towered over the tiny Cruise, how she could walk in stilettos on the beach and how great she looked after she birthed little Suri. And little Suri. She was born to celebrity.
Those were household names that piqued our checkout interests. Now, the racks can't get enough of "The Hills."
Just a quick rundown, which I didn't provide to grocery-woman. "The Hills" follows the lives of spoiled rich girls and BFFs (well, before the spat over boyfriends) Lauren Conrad and Heidi. Lauren's new roommate and pal is Audrina, a similarly money-enhanced young thing. There's also Whitney Port, but who cares? The four share about half a brain cell.
Since the show and the reality are hopelessly tangled, viewers get involved in what happens both on- and offscreen with the relationships.
Hypester Spencer Pratt's in a tussle with Lauren and dating Heidi. Or not dating, depending on which tabloid you read. Pratt used to be best friends with Brody, who used to date Lauren. They are estranged. Or just playing it up for the cameras. Hard to tell.
In this world, Big Brother — and for those more into pop culture than literature, that's a reference to the novel "1984," not the TV series — is courted rather than reviled. Wouldn't that just send George Orwell spinning in his dirt nap?
It's not that people aren't interested in real stars. Just a mere mention of a split between Brad and Jennifer — who needs last names? — in a recent spate of news articles made it the most clickable item that day online. But it was just a cheap trick, a feeble excuse to grab some juice from a pedestrian story about the two dissolving some business concerns.
Disappointing.
Why can't Jennifer Lopez go back to being J.Lo and we discover the twins were really the result of a one-night stand with Ben Affleck after a tiff with the other Jen? Something with some real stars, and some real juice.
How bad has it gotten for those seeking out some tasty celebrity gossip?
On a recent "TMZ," we actually pitied the paps as they chased down Sigourney Weaver. That's right: Sigourney-haven't-been-in-a-hit-movie-this-decade-Weaver. Even Weaver looked bemused over the fact that she had suddenly become the most attractive paparazzi bait in Hollywood.
So you can see why they would salivate over someone like "The Hills'" Audrina, who actually released her own nude pictures to the press after seeing some that were "leaked." She felt that she needed something a bit better out there.
Wasn't there a time when celebrities attempted to avoid nude pictures of themselves splashed in public?
Oops. Did I just call these people celebrities?