TrendWatch

Fads, Crazes, and Other Things Wealthy Celebrities Do with Money They Don’t Need, by Film Crew Trends Editor Kevin Murphy

Welcome back to TrendWatch. As the Film Crew Trends Editor, it's my job to periodically slip the cuff on the upper arm of the celebrity corpus and take its trend pressure. Rest assured, the pacesetting behavior of people unnecessarily lauded for their desperate grasps at attention is as robust as ever. To wit:

Infants, those living, breathing stabs at immortality are trending toward an all-time craze. Portable and generally cute, infants hold the promise of an endless battery of accessories: nannies, baby stylists, infant caterers, in utero psychologists, and robotic wet-nurses are among the hottest sub-trends focused on privileged loin-fruit. But the highest high-profile sub-trend remains as always Stupid Baby Names, of the variety once foisted only on purebred dogs and race horses. The ever popular last-name-as-first (Sutton, Maddox, Ripley, Truman, Zola) and more recent place name trend (Brooklyn, Madison, Shiloh) have been eclipsed by the far stupider Abstract Naming Craze (Apple, Pirate, Blanket, Willow, Banjo, Dixie Dot) Not yet taken: Hammer, Lefty, Barrage, Chin-stripe, Throttle, Arugula, Lush-Red Lychee, Fornication, and Pomegranate.

Cabbage is back with a vengeance! The cruciferous leafy cousin of mustard is the basis for the diets of dozens of those who want to be known. Award season always finds emaciated gown-hangers at local delicatessens slurping bowl after bowl of the famous watery soup, and on Thursdays (“banana day") one can delight in observing Andersonville-thin starlets forcing banana after banana down their throats.

Adjunct to the cabbage diet is the burgeoning trend of Flatulence. Stars are ripping them with rapidly growing frequency, and the particular tang of sulfurous bowel-breath produced by the dicotyledonous diet flower is known to burn the eyes of guests at the best of parties. Cabbage-gas redolence has become such a sign of status that many Tony party-throwers have taken to hiring emaciated models to come in and pre-fart the house before an important soirée.

The dependable alternative to any diet, Starvation, is trending up for the autumn and Important Film Premiere Season, causing more than one well-heeled luminary to find herself treated at the emergency room for injury caused by bones breaking through papery, overbuffed skin.

Of course these high-profile waifs wouldn't be caught dead in anything less than the latest in health care, the Designer Hospitals. The posh emergency room at Karl Lagerfeld / St. Jude is bedecked with original Warhols, and the beds sport pima cotton sheets and vomit towels. The waiting room boasts WiFi and a Dean & Deluca snack bar. In Miami Beach at Ian Schrager's exclusive hospital and club sic/well, the rooms are appointed with Barcelona chairs, iPod docks, and tanning beds, and offer round-the-clock nurse, concierge, and laundry, while downstairs at Club Morgue guests can dance or linger over organic vodka martinis while keeping their IV meds connected through convenient tableside drip stations. Club Morgue is fast becoming the town's hottest club, but you have to be admitted to be admitted.

The Short List: Among the trends currently trending up are vintage Australian bowling shirts, tooth shortening, wearable skin-toned latex phones, and Egyptian pork, which is smoked, seasoned, mummified and packed in a sarcophagus for a year before serving. Personal hovercrafts are bouncing back, as are individual made-to order tequilas, blended by the bottle, which include a drop of the client's sweat. On the bleeding edge you'll find RAID-configured redundant hearts, fuel flavorings for the biodiesel set, and talking credit cards.

Those are all the trends we can fit in the space allowed, but watch this spot as we keep a keen eye on the things idle people do to ward off despair. Salud!