GODSTUFF

CELEBRITY WORSHIP:

HOW PEREZ HILTON’S DISAPPEARANCE SPURRED A CRISIS OF FAITH

I don’t recall the first time I indulged in my guilty pleasure — the dirty little secret I am about to confess to you today. What I do remember is that the first hit was like crack (or so I’m told), and I’ve been addicted ever since.

Admitting one has a problem is the first step to recovery, so here it goes. Try not to judge me too unkindly.

I am a celebaholic.

I’ve been able to trace my addiction back at least 25 years, to the day I watched “Battle of the Network Stars” on television and spent hours daydreaming about which team I’d be on (ABC), what event would be my specialty (tug-o-war) and whether Scott Baio would fall madly in love with me after we became teammates and best friends.

I was 10.

Fast-forward through years of Tiger Beat and People magazines to earlier this week when my favorite cyber-distraction — the celebrity gossip Web site PerezHilton.com — went off-line for most of the day.

I panicked and restarted my computers — both of them — sure that the problem was on my end. Then I tried to fill my idle time with slightly more high-minded offerings like the Huffington Post and Gawker.com.

But they couldn’t scratch my itch. I was chasing the celebrity dragon, and only Perez, a k a Los Angeles blogger Mario Lavandeira — with his gossipy scoops, exclusive photos and snarky, sophomoric doodles — could give me the fix I was after.

For more than two years, Lavandeira, who calls himself “the gossip gangsta,” has been my go-to guy for pop culture consumption, as integral a part of my workaday ritual as a 3 o’clock caffeine fix. (I’m not the only addict out there. Lavandeira’s site gets upward of 4 million hits a day.)

This particular addiction isn’t pretty. And there are far nicer celebrity sites out there I could be reading. Perez’s unfiltered commentary and criticism of certain celebrities can be thoroughly cringeworthy. For example, he has an unabashed, seemingly inexplicable disdain for Jennifer Aniston. How could anyone hate Rachel Green?

Still, without Perez, who would tell me where Amy Winehouse was drinking the night before she canceled a sold-out show? How would I know what Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise — she’s walking! — are wearing while frolicking in the French Riviera? And what of Perez’s eponymous patron, the captive heiress Paris Hilton, and her jailhouse spiritual rebirth? I WANT TO KNOW!

In the soul-sucking throes of withdrawal, I had time to analyze my predicament.

As most predicaments are, in my experience, this celebrity addiction is essentially a spiritual problem. When PerezHilton.com disappeared, I found myself in the midst of a crisis of faith.

Most major religions warn against the insidious nature of gossip and false idols. I don’t think either is at the root of my addiction. It’s more a curiosity, but one fueled by a thirst for information I feel compelled to slake. Which, I suppose, isn’t terribly healthy. Or helpful.

Our society creates celebrities, celebrates and elevates them, idealizes and dehumanizes, unseats and despises them, rejoices in their redemption and mourns (and deconstructs) their sometimes tragic ends.

In the midst of researching the spiritual implications of celebrity addiction, I ran across something called the Church of Celebrity. At first I believed it to be a high-concept joke, but upon closer inspection of the U.K.-based church’s Web site, it appears to be a serious enterprise.

“Celebrity is the religion of the 21st century,” the church site says. “Over the past 100 years, established (antiquated) religions have lost their hold over millions worldwide. These ideologies and dogmas of an age gone by have been superseded by Celebtology.”

Founded in 2005 by a British actor named Andrew Beck and a PR man called Kizzi Nkwocha, the church claims to be both international and “thousands strong.”

Through its Web site the church offers weekly audio services online, as well as opportunities to pray for celebrities (and to vote for which celebrity gets prayed for this week). The church also is soliciting donations from the faithful in order to buy an $8.9 million estate near London (complete with tennis courts, pool and stables) as its headquarters.

Celebtology is “a formalized expression of the mainstream belief of our culture: that celebrities are unique people who share a symbiotic relationship with their supporters.”

“In the place of older philosophies, celebrities have become the focal point of our thoughts and hopes. … David Beckham is recognized by more people than David who fought Goliath in the Valley of Elah. Oprah Winfrey touches more lives than any historical religious icon,” the church site says.

Church doctrine claims to have roots in quantum physics and “applied cymbiology,” wherein “both the celebrity and the fan are able to influence the life of the other through the tangible subatomic strand which connects the two.”

Zoinks! I knew I had a mild celebrity addiction, but I didn’t realize I had drifted into a new realm of theology and astrophysics.

So before I end up tithing to the Church of Celebrity, I resolve to curb my celebrity intake. As with any guilty pleasure, the key is moderation.

And until I master that, I’ll have to pray for strength and fake it till I make it.