Ashton Kutcher is the pretty much undisputed leading twit on Twitter. As of this moment, he has 2,839,413 followers, outflanking people like Barack Obama, Perez Hilton, Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, and Oprah Winfrey, and even CNN and Twitter itself. He has held the number one spot for quite some time. So, when Ashton Kutcher tweets that his wife Demi Moore has gotten a mohawk, people listen.

I know an awful lot of extremely physically beautiful people, yet, even among celebrities, Ashton Kutcher is so freakishly good-looking that I remember him being in the movie Reindeer Games, even though I don’t think his character had a name. And I think his part was so small it consisted pretty much of stumbling into a bathroom or something at the wrong time. So I stop and think about it and realize that I can’t come up with any other movie Ashton Kutcher has ever been in. I know he was on a TV series called That 70’s Show which ran for a long time, but I don’t even know what network it ran on. So I go and check IMDB and I have actually never seen Ashton Kutcher acting in anything other than Reindeer Games. Yet he is clearly up there at the top of Mount Celebrity. I’ve apparently never really seen him act, yet I know that he dropped out of a biochemical engineering college program to become a male model.

Ashton Kutcher has managed to parlay a certain kind of famous access into something far larger than most. He is a perfect spokesman for digital cameras and micro-blogging services because he has managed to commodify certain parts of his existence in such a flawless and innovative way that, in 2009, the rest of society is panting to catch up.

The Punk’d reality show Ashton Kutcher co-created with producer partner Jason Goldberg at Katalyst Films took the Candid Camera genre to a whole new level. By playing pranks on recognizable people, Punk’d made the viewer feel much more invested in the show; it made the show feel ironically more real and most of the punked celebs more humanized. Maybe this makes some sort of statement about the alienation of modern man and how so many people feel more connected to famous faces on television and online than their, err, IRL peeps. Punk’d was spoofed on The Simpsons as the show Chop Shop with the pranked person crying out anguished “Why would you do that?” in response to their car being chopped for the purpose of filming their reaction for reality television.

Why would Ashton Kutcher do that? To get paid? To become a powerful producer? To be feared? To amuse himself? To get MTV to foot the bill for expensive pranks he wanted to play? To be able to have people to play pranks for him? To come across as more of a man’s man and less of just a pretty boy? To become that special sort of celebrity of the new millennium where he is nominally a famous actor, but the real description is much more complex . . .

So anyway, it appears that Demi Moore would look really hot with a mohawk. But the widely-covered haircut is just a photochop (Chop Shop!) Ashton Kutcher posted to his Twitter via TwitPic. Most of the news covering Ashton Kutcher punking the news media with what is not the most convincing photo manipulation say that Ashton Kutcher actually photoshopped the image. Never mind that minutes after posting the chop with the tweet ” wifey just got a new hair cut what do you guys think? I love it”, he tweeted, “@mrskutcher I”m just playing baby but I think you’d look great with that cut”. Which apparently was enough to convince a large proportion of the news media that Demi Moore actually had gotten a mohawk hairstyle. Because the Punk’d guy would never play the prankster in such matters. And apparently some pundits have poor reading comprehension. Which is ironic, given how many serious think pieces I have seen about Twitter decreasing people’s aptitude to comprehend complex thoughts. How much more complex than j/k are they themselves capable of? And what makes them think Ashton Kutcher did that photoshop job? Surely someone, who can pay other people to do pranks for him, has people for that.

When I started writing this article, a short time ago, the Demi Moore mohawk TwitPic had 179,571 views and now it has 181,371.

What the Duck is the best comic strip anyone has ever done about photography. Now Blue Blood readers, unless they are viewing the site with some sort of high tech braille conversion computer, are familiar with my more professional lit studio and location photography of rock stars, freaks, and naked people.

I also sometimes like to do, uhm, personal work, where I take my snapshot camera out on the town with me (and sometimes rock stars, freaks, and naked people.) In order to achieve my distinctive brand of party time nightlife photography, I do not look through the viewfinder and I keep the display turned off. I do my best work of this type when alcohol is involved.

I’m not much of a drinker, but I can tear it up from time to time on special occasions. Prior to the age of digital photography, I thought I had never blacked out from drinking. I mean, there was never a dead hooker in my bed in the morning and, in the absence of dead hookers, it is difficult to remember not remembering. Since the advent of digital photography, I’ve been made aware that sometimes less booze equals more memories. For example, I was giving my buddy Gonzo grief for not having introduced me to famous, err, computer wiz Kevin Mitnick when we were all partying in Vegas. Unfortunately, Gonzo was able to produce digital photographic evidence of us hanging out.

At any rate, I was first exposed to What the Duck when my brother emailed me the accompanying webcomic because it made him think of me and specifically my painting the town red snapshots. My brother is a professional photographer and he came across the strip because another professional photographer told him about it. When comic strip creator Aaron Johnson is asked whether he is a photographer, he replies, “I’m 40% photographer, 60% Photoshopper.”

Not to in any way belittle the importance of post-production in modern photography, but Aaron Johnson is 100% hilarious and insightful cartoonist. If you’ve ever picked up a camera for art or business or know too many people who have, the humor in What the Duck is very very spot on and funny.

Have a good weekend and make some good memories everyone. Don’t forget your camera.

I live in Los Angeles, so it is probably no surprise that a lot of people I know are making resolutions to either become stars or achieve bigger stardom.

It doesn’t seem like it is much fun to be famous in 2008 though. Entertainment Weekly’s entire year in review issue was all about how much it sucks to have the eyes of the world on you. When I recently went to my OB/GYN, I was reading either Esquire or GQ in his waiting room and there was an interview with Michael J. Fox. The interviewer asked him what his thoughts were on like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or maybe all three. Michael J. Fox was a young Hollywood star in the 80’s, but he still has a pretty squeaky clean rep. Perhaps because he played a wholesome character on TV for a while. At any rate, his response was that he was soooooooooooooo glad the whole tabloid and paparazzi thing did not exist when he was young because it was his opinion that he did a lot of the same dumb things and they just were not recorded for posterity.

When I was a teenager, I lived overseas, mostly in countries where (a) it was legal for me to drink and (b) I had diplomatic immunity so what was legal was not that much of a factor. I am pretty certain that I would cringe at photos and video taken in many of the situations I got myself into. But there aren’t any. Actually, I wish there were more photos of me growing up. But the point is that I could be young and experimental and even a little wild, without it going down on my permanent record.

It feels weird to type, but I suppose I used to be at least a local celebrity within certain geographies and certain scenes. My personality was generally turned up to eleven. I thought shirt was spelled L-I-N-G-E-R-I-E. My writing was getting published all over. And no one had ever seen anything quite like Blue Blood Magazine at the time. I signed a lot of autographs in the 90’s. Maybe I still am some variety of celeb, but I hope not. I want a private life. I want to get to occasionally say something stupid without being haunted by it forever and ever. I want the freedom to be imperfect and the ability to be personal one-on-one. I will never tell a friend to read my LiveJournal or most recent press release or magazine interview to find out what I’ve been up to.

I know I have the juice to make other people pretty famous is certain circles, but it doesn’t really seem like something I want to do as often as I once did. Most people think they crave the attention, but they can’t handle it at all. They simultaneously get addicted to being on magazine covers and completely melt down that they can no long just move to the next town and be totally invisible. And then, of course, they illogically lash out at everyone around them.

Situation gets rough
Then I start to panic
It’s not enough
It’s just a habit
Hey kid you’re sick
Darling this is it
You can all just kiss off into the air
Behind my back I can see them stare
They’ll hurt me bad but I won’t mind
They’ll hurt me bad they do it all the time
Yeah yeah, they do it all the time
I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record

2007 was officially the last year anyone should have even halfway contemplated wanting to be famous for the sake of being famous. I predict that reality TV will grow in 2008, not just because of the WGA strike or economics, but because most people can only handle any modicum of fame for so long. I think a thirteen week reality show is about the right length of time to be in the public eye before snapping, driving your car into someone who could help you, shaving your head (or letting your hair grow in, depending), or passing out on a Hollywood sidewalk.

Before They Were Stars – Commercials courtesy of Metacafe