LITTLE ROCK — There's a new hot thing for celebrities to do.
Besides getting hammered. And then driving. And then going to rehab or prison for getting hammered and driving.
It's falling down!
Yes, that once clumsy, humiliating act that nobody wanted to be caught dead doing is so very new and now. Everybody is doing it!
We never suspected taking a public spill would be so fashionable back when, in April, Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's ex, fell off her artificial leg and onto her tush at the end of a Dancing With the Stars number. Fans, or at least sympathizers, kept her in the competition for another week.
Then in May Miss USA Rachel Smith took a well-publicized tumble onto her keister during the evening gown competition at the Miss Universe pageant - much to the delight of the Mexico City audience that booed Smith, as if the pageant queen had anything to do with U.S. immigration policy ... or even knows what immigration policy is. But the crowd underestimated the power of this fresh falling down fad. Miss USA placed in the top five. (Miss Mexico, you ask? The senorita who remained standing only made the top 10.)
When Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert fell and broke his wrist this summer, he turned it into show fodder for weeks. And into a whopping $17,200 for charity when he auctioned his starsigned cast on eBay.
Falling down hasn't shown any signs of falling in popularity since. Thanks, in large part, to the YouTubesphere (www.youtube.com). That's where so many falling stars - including Beyonce, who took a head-first spill down a dozen stairs at a concert this summer and then asked fans not to post it on the Internet (like it hadn't already gone halfway around the world by the time she stood up) - can become even more famous.
Just a few weeks ago, former 90210 star Jennie Garth and her Dancing With the Stars partner Derek Hough became casualties of a catastrophic quickstep. The fall was hardly her downfall. The actress is still sambaing several weeks later.
Then model Sarah Welch, once a contender on a previous installment of The Bachelor, fell through a huge hole on a fashion show runway last week (reward: she has been interviewed on TV, and she's all over the Internet) - the same week we saw a contender on the current season of The Bachelor fall down a flight of stairs in front of the guy right before a romantic date (reward: she still got a rose).
And the same day as the second Bachelor fall was Marie Osmond's much hyped Dancing With the Stars collapse on the same network. Just as the judges were about to critique her performance, she passed out, later blaming allergies and poor air quality caused by the California fires. Of course the audience voted to spare her for at least another week.
When it comes to people falling down, we've fallen in love.
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Spin Cycle is a weekly smirk at pop culture.
Style, Pages 61 on 10/28/2007