Paris Hilton looks quite ordinary up close, with none of the aura one normally expects from celebrities. You expect them to be at least alpha emitters, but Paris Hilton is just, eh. Still, a picture of Paris with me would make a great blog post, I thought, so I gave my camera, an old-fashioned film-based snapshot camera, to the guy across the table from us and asked Paris if she would mind and she said, Ehn, and I snuggled up to her for the picture and looked over at the guy, who said, This is a very important shot so I have to make sure the film is in order, and he had opened the back of the camera and spooled out the film in a long ribbon, exposing it to the light. Dude, I said. Don’t do that.

Then, the next night, my wife secretly dyed my hair black. I wish she would have warned me, or discussed it with me first, because I was appalled. What will the people at work think, I thought, regarding my image in the mirror, my pixyish jet-black hairdo. All the complications this introduced to my life – the need to touch up the white silver roots daily, for example, or the way it will suggest a midlife crisis that I am so over.

I was so upset. How could she do such a thing. I thought she was just messing around with some mousse or something.