The one explains the other

[Dear readers, This is a re-post of an item that appeared here Saturday. I took it down at the request of an editor, mentioned below, who didn't want to tip off her competition before their deadlines, today. -- Mark]

I've now done the top two things I never thought I would in my life: get a lobotomy*, and pay $200 to see Jessica Simpson.

Longtime M&M readers already know about the brain surgery, but the Jessica Simpson episode may come as a surprise. I know it did to me.

To back up briefly, it's been two years now since I last worked for a living. The break was good for my health, but what with the eventual boredom and lack of purpose -- not to mention the expiring health insurance and the threatened end to my disability payments -- I've been casting about lately for some paying work. My timing's a bit off. As we know, it's a tough time in the ol' news business. A couple of nearby newspaper gigs that I thought would have been a natural fit didn't generate so much as a return phone call.

But I've nevertheless managed to snag some offers. For work, that is, just not for pay. Of the four recent opportunities that have come my way, one would have paid $200 a week for full-time employment. The other three would have paid nothing but the joy of seeing my name in pixels. I tried to be polite as I declined the generous terms of those proposals. (Sorry to the regular M&M readers on the other end of those conversations if I didn't come across that way.)

So, when my email inbox dinged the other day with an inquiry from an old colleague in Los Angeles I was ready to consider most anything.

"Hey Mister," said my friend Martha, "you know anyone who would be interested in doing a little reporting for me in Snoqualmie Casino, Snoqualmie, Washington? Jessica Simpson is performing."

That rang a bell. The Snoqualmie is the new, long-awaited tribal casino located 30 miles east of Seattle, just a smidge closer than my standby the Muckleshoot, and its grand opening was Thursday night. Simpson was headlining the venue's inaugural concert on Friday night. I'm not much of a Jessica fan, I told Martha, but I'm a total casino whore and planned on checking out the place anyway, so bring on the details.

Martha and I worked together at the LA Times, but she has since moved on to Us Weekly magazine, where she is West Coast news editor. As a celebrity-focused mag, she said, Us Weekly was not much concerned with the casino or even the performance and instead interested primarily in the latest Jessica "news": Was her boyfriend Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback, traveling with her and was there any talk of marriage? Stuff like that.

No, it wasn't blogging about the election, or becoming a local media critic, or covering the environment or technology, or reviewing books or writing snarky, misanthropic essays for a startup publication. But it was a paying gig -- at many times the rate of my best previous offer -- and it included mileage to the casino. Deal me in.

And so I found myself offering up my credit card for a ticket to the big show (on the promise that Us would reimburse). I've attended a lot of concerts and seen a lot of big acts in a lot of top-tier venues, but I can't remember paying anything near the $175 they were charging for Jessica's casino show (plus a $23 Ticketmaster surcharge). But pay I did, withstanding a lot of strange looks from box-office workers, ushers and fellow audience members as a single ticket holder, a middle-aged man, sitting alone, to watch this pop-music screamer turned reality-show star turned tabloid fodder turned, now, country-music screamer.

Honestly I didn't know even that much about Jessica Simpson before a long day online reading about her, listening to her music and watching videos in preparation for my assignment. What a story! Always something new! The Nick romance, marriage and divorce. The brief John romance. The dad/manager influence. The sister angle. The new Tony romance. The paparazzi clashes. The best friend/hairstylist who got whacked in the face last week protecting Jess from photographers. And this is only one celebrity. You can see why entire magazines spring up to cover this stuff.

It seemed the only consistencies in Jessica's career were her bouncy blond locks and her ability to keep her name in the press. Plus she can rock a low-cut shirt.

Anyway, Jessica didn't disappoint. She scream/sang, she talked about her love life, she spilled provocatively out of her black sequined top. She even ditzed out, in character, forgetting the words to one of her own biggest hits. [I took the above illegal concert pic with my iPhone; for a professional's view see the P-I's fine concert photo gallery.]

I wrote it all down and emailed it off, with passages like this: "Tony does not have to prove anything," Jessica said. "He's amazing."

My editor Martha responded right away: "Hey Mark, you are a natural!"

So that's one thing. I mentioned the lobotomy*, right?

[* Editor's note: Michelle informs me that technically I did not get a lobotomy but a partial resection of the right frontal lobe. Close enough if you ask me, but whatever. For precision's sake, please read this as "brainectomy."]