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Paris Hilton Banned in Japan

Drugs and the Stars

By: - Sep 23, 2010

Paris Paris Paris Paris Paris Paris Paris Paris

Paris Hilton is pretty, obscenely rich, privileged, and sexy. You may have seen the video.

Yet again she stumbled and fell. Something about a bit of cocaine in a purse that “did not belong to her.” What happens in Vegas.

When denied entry to Japan because of a drug violation in the US it was global news. It has been played for several days and finally showed up, good grief, in today’s Berkshire Eagle. Must have been a slow news day to stick in such a tired item.

The Globe story states that “I’m going back home and I look forward to coming back to Japan in the future,” a smiling Hilton told reporters before departing on her private jet.”

Tokyo was the first stop of an Asian tour to promote her line of clothing and fragrances. Seems a lot of young wannabes aspire to smell just as sweet as the American heirhead.

Fans in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jakarta, Indonesia were no doubt deeply disappointed.

At 29 just how long can she sustain a career based on no visible talent? Full disclosure, I actually watched her stupid TV series with her former lame sidekick, Nicole Richie. What an embarrassing admission. File it under camp.

More importantly, what does that say about our celebrity obsessed twitter culture where lives are measured out in tweets? Is this just a signifier of the decline and fall of Western Civilization?

Perhaps Hilton will join the Tea Party, when she hits 30, and run for mayor of Vegas. Can you just imagine Paris and Sarah Palin on the same platform. Or sharing fashion tips in the ladies’ room. Perhaps Paris will give Sarah a squirt of her latest fragrance. Just imagine.

In the celebrity and gossip media, a mega industry, Paris seems to be playing tag team mud wrestling with that other twenty something druggy, Lindsay Lohan. The difference is that Lohan appears to have some talent. She’s an actress as compared to Hilton who just shows up.

Truth is I don’t know anything about Lohan other than what runs in the gossip columns. They say she acts but I have never seen her in anything. Not the kind of movies or TV shows I watch. Lohan has tons of fans that hang on her every pratfall.

I did know Jimi Hendrix. Hung out with him in New York when he performed at the Cheetah, as Jimi James, with Curtis Knight and the Flames. They wore funky outfits from Fredericks of Hollywood. Broadway soul until Curtis cut Jimi loose and we first caught all those licks. Wow.

Jimi croaked on September 18, 1970. Suffocated by inhaling his vomit. It was days before he was due to perform in Boston.

Bad luck comes in threes. It started when Al Wilson of Canned Heat OD’d on September 3. Then Janis Joplin nodded out in a hotel room on October 4. She was in LA to cut an album. It seems that when she crashed her face slammed into a table breaking her nose and pushing a bone into her brain.

A year later, July 3, 1971, Jim Morrison, the Lizard King, by then obese, died in his Paris bath tub. I visited his grave some years back. Elvis passed away sitting on the throne on August 16, 1977. Michael Jackson made the Irish Sports Pages on June 25, 2009.

Shortly before Joplin died she gave her last concert at Harvard Stadium. I have a bootleg LP of the performance. The hopped up fans streaming in from the event trashed Harvard Square. I was a part of that and other riots, including the Newport Jazz Festival, which I covered for the daily Boston Herald Traveler.

As the Herald’s rock critic it was sad to write all those obits.

One of the editors, a buzz cut ex Marine, ordered me to write a Sunday feature about the death of all those rock stars. It was supposed to be a preachy piece warning kids of the dangers of drugs and the devastating influence of fallen stars.

You never turn down an assignment.

But I decided to do some research in the Herald’s morgue. Looking into the files I searched the category drugs and the stars. It was a thick envelope of clippings.  

There was a ton of material going back to Fatty Arbuckle. Lots of stuff about drug crazed stars like Sal Mineo, Irma the Body, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Krupa. My favorite was a quote from a Robert Mitchum pot bust. Standing before the judge Mitchum stated that he smoked “Up to three marijuana cigarettes a day.” Shocking.

That was my Sunday feature for the Herald.

The editor with the buzz cut just glared at me when I passed him in the hall. He never gave me another assignment.

Point is why do we keep writing the same story? The last time I saw Paris.