Waitress

I saw that movie "Waitress" today with Keri Russell and the late Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote and directed it. It was delightful. And I don't care what Joe W. says, I like Andy Griffith and I really liked him in this flick. It is very sad to me that a great talent like Adrienne Shelly is only now getting the widespread recognition she deserves in light of her untimely death.

I go to the Notable Names Database (nndb.com) every day to get the scoop on people and what they're doing and who they're sleeping with and what their sexual orientation is, among other things. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed to see that Ms. Shelly was not included on NNDB for even months after her death, even. She has a profile now, I'm happy to say, but it came much later than it should have, later than the one they created for the Virginia Tech killer almost immediately after that incident occured.

I guess my question is, how do most people define the word "notable?" Wikipedia says it also seeks to publish information about "notable persons" in our society, and differentiates notable from words like "famous" and "infamous." I recently went on Wikipedia to search for the name of my former guru Joe W. and, I shit you not, the article had been tagged because someone had questioned its notablity. It wasn't me.

Here is something else--NNDB classifies people by gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, occupation, and nationality. They also used to include a heading "level of fame." The levels of fame were, from least to greatest, "niche," "somewhat," "famous," and "icon." For icon, you could even click on the word and get a list of everyone they classified as an icon, such as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, the Pope (John Paul II), and Mary Tyler Moore. No shit. But now they've done away with that, and I wonder why. In my own sick, twisted way I rather like searching for celebrities by level of fame, taking great pleasure in people I like being classified above people I don't like as much. For instance, Donna Reed was classified as "famous" while Barbara Bel Geddes was classified as "somewhat." That means more to me than it does to you.

To view Adrienne Shelly's NNDB profile click here.

To view Seung-Hui Cho's NNDB profile click here.

To view the Wikipedia entry on Joe W. (notability no longer questioned) click here.

By the way, I've altered the spelling of my name because it occurred to me that posting as Carroll Gardens is a bit like posting as "Columbia Grad" or "Writer." That is, it describes a lot of people. And I suppose there are a lot of people who watch the Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network and love to watch Ina Garten cook. Anyway, that's how I chose my new name.