Unwilling Fandom

The trouble with watching a lot of reality TV is that you start being aware of and occasionally really liking celebrities that you previously 1. didn't know existed, 2. were apathetic towards, or 3. hated.

For example, I was looking forward to watching the first season of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! so that I could enjoy mocking and hating on Melissa Rivers (daughter of Joan Rivers). But after a few episodes, I found that I was actually charmed by her, and liked her! So now I like Melissa Rivers, a celebrity who, by all rights, should be perfectly hateable.

That same series also made me adore Cris Judd, a pseudo-celebrity who seems undeserving of recognition, much less adoration. (For those who are correctly unaware of him, Cris is the second ex-husband of Jennifer Lopez.) And yet he was so damned sweet and adorable on that show that I became a fan!

One of the weirdest reversals I ever did was in my opinion of Dennis Rodman. He appeared on Celebrity Mole and seemed like such an incredible idiot. I spent the entire season mocking his stupidity, as he seemed totally checked out the whole time, and like he didn't even have a basic grasp of the rules of the game.

Well, what did I know? Turns out Dennis Rodman not only understood how the game worked, but had been paying close attention to every single detail and memorizing it all; he ended up winning the whole damn thing. It was shocking. So while I started out thinking, "what a laughable idiot," I ended up being impressed with Dennis Rodman's intelligence. Yes, impressed with Dennis Rodman's intelligence. I couldn't believe it either!

Now, here we go again. The latest celebrity to turn me into an unlikely fan through his appearance on reality TV is Sebastian Bach, currently appearing on Celebrity Fit Club.:

Sebastian Bach (born Sebastian Philip Bierk, on April 3, 1968) is a Canadian heavy metal singer, best known as ex-frontman of Skid Row."

Decidedly not a fan of heavy metal music as a teenager, I barely had any awareness of this band, though I have heard of them. A quick online search brings up a ridiculous number of very girly photos of Sebastian, with luscious blond 80s hair (and obvious "hair pride.") Today, he has that weatherbeaten look of the once-pretty, now-aged hard-partying pseduo-reformed metal star.

The first thing that endeared me to Sebastian was when he described the Celebrity Fit Club drill sergeant Harvey (who is hilarious and right out of central casting) by saying, "Harvey has no levity."

Levity?? Guy and I looked at each other in surprise, with the same thought: "Did he just use the word 'levity'?" That's kind of....articulate.

The second endearing thing Sebastian did was make fun of Bobby Brown's pants. The pants were a hideous monstrosity of mixed colors and patterns. Even Bobby admitted, "You would have to be high to buy these pants." And then later, Sebastian laughingly interviewed, "Those were the most druggy pants I have ever seen!"

So now I am forced to add Sebastian Bach to the list of celebrities whom I grudgingly admire. Rock on, grasshopper!