reality star.

After the fact, what should have been a preface to the Strombo story I did for Weekend Post: I went to j-school with many a girl who had every line of Almost Famous memorized, the complete works of Chuck Klosterman on her bedside table, and a massive, drooling crush on George Stroumboulopoulos.

I wasn't one of them.

Still, I spent almost two hours becoming fascinated, so I'll tell you why.

The alarm on Strombo's cell went off, like I said in the beginning of my little story, and then it went off again, and again. So my voice lowers. I ask fewer questions. I look around more slowly. The producers have markered SLEEP! on his whiteboard. He says it's a joke. But he's seriously fucking tired. He says "people exist in two states: tired and exhausted."

I can only ask, "people?" And he says, "well, professionals." I think, strivers. There are strivers who want to move to New York, and strivers who want to move to LA. Strombo's the latter. He already has an apartment there. Fucking loves it: "All these people on a quest. That's beautiful." I wonder if ambition isn't a bit ugly, though. But he shakes his head. He isn't talking about ambition. Knows nothing of it. Well, of course not.

Because here's a guy, almost 40, always working, never sleeping--and yet I'm not sure he has a job. I mean, yes, he's hosting and playing music and interviewing. (People, even people who don't like him, few as they are, say he's a good interviewer. I'm not sure. He's a good talker -- a really good talker, as those almost two hours would indicate -- and he's a good listener, and it's rare and difficult to be both.)

So Strombo's job is all of those things, but it's none of them, because really it's only this: being himself. Relentlessly, restlessly himself. On air. On the street. On my tape recorder. Dear god. Can you imagine anything harder? A hundred times harder than acting. The person, the personality: one, the same. Strombo is always Strombo. That's what his friends call him, and it's what his fans call him, and strangers, and it's what I'm calling him, and I don't even know why.

I wonder if, when he was drawing pentagrams on his bedroom wall, he imagined this cult of person/ality. I don't wonder it out loud. I know he'd say no, never.

And I know this isn't what George meant me to think, but it's what I left with: this guy never gets tired of himself! How?