3/9/07, 5:13 pm EST

Assignment Eight Finalist: Justin Baker on the death of envy

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Note: This is not an official Rolling Stone article. What follows is a submission to the “I’m From Rolling Stone” writing competition.

The Death of Envy

by Justin Baker
Age: 27

Once upon a time, I thought Dave Navarro was the luckiest man alive. He was in a huge rock band and engaged to one of the hottest women on the planet. Then I turned on my television and saw Carmen Electra having a nervous breakdown. She was cutting a thirteen-page list of names into hundreds of millimeter-thick slivers, trying to make the seating chart for their wedding. “Poor Dave,” I thought. “That bitch is crazy.”

Countless words have been spent decrying reality TV, mainly blaming it for the erosion of pop culture. Meanwhile, nobody seems to be concerned about the one meaningful thing that is actually being eroded: The Rock Star Fantasy.

Jessica Simpson. The former Miss USA that Travis Barker married. Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends. Models. I no longer find any of these women attractive, and the problem with that is, I no longer envy the men who get to sleep with them. It’s the job of rock stars (not just musicians, but all “rock stars”) to attain the unattainable, to make the fantasy real. But every time I watch “Girls Next Door” and see playmates in baggy sweatpants, whining about curfew like spoiled sixth graders, I feel sorry for Hef. I don’t want to live in world where I have to feel sorry for Hef, though. I want heroes.

Instead, I get Shanna Barker telling me that her hobby is “sleeping.” I get a wobbly, punch-drunk Ozzy roaming around his cat feces-infested house, looking for the remote. I get the look on Bobby Brown’s face when The Mental Case Formerly Known As Whitney Houston needs manual assistance going to the bathroom. This is what’s happened to the guy who wrote “Humpin’ Around?”

Thanks, Mary-Ellis Bunim, for killing my hopes and dreams.