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Late ’80s — I’m sitting in the living room, wrestling with the rabbit ears on a big wood-box TV. Half the time I’m watching static, half the time I’m watching Hollywood royalty. Jack Lemmon is hosting the Oscars, Stallone’s in the spotlight, and even through the snow it feels like another world.

And then there was Prince. Didn’t matter if it was MTV or an award show, whenever he hit the screen the whole room went quiet. Purple jacket, lace gloves, guitar screaming like it was alive — he looked less like a singer and more like someone who’d just stepped off a spaceship. For a kid on the couch with a lava-hot Hot Pocket, that was as close as you got to magic.

Back then, celebrities felt untouchable. Michael Jackson moonwalking across the planet, Hulk Hogan cutting promos like he could personally suplex communism, Madonna pushing buttons on MTV like she was born to piss off parents. Celebs weren’t just people — they were gods wired straight into our living rooms.

But the cracks were always there. The tabloids at the grocery checkout were proof: mugshots, divorces, cocaine busts, “mystery” hospital visits. Whitney Houston’s struggles, Robert Downey Jr. getting arrested, O.J. plastered across every channel. The scandals were half the show — and half the reason we couldn’t look away.

By the 90s, it was clear the whole machine wasn’t about talent. It was about image management. Award shows weren’t celebrating art, they were running damage control between rehab stints and lawsuits. The golden statue? Just a shiny Band-Aid slapped over the chaos.

And those speeches? “Be yourself. Follow your dreams.” Please. Every one of them had been airbrushed, tucked, glued, coached, and carefully edited to keep the scandal just far enough offstage. Authenticity? That was the first thing they sacrificed.

Meanwhile, we were living real lives: mall food courts, splitting breadsticks at Sbarro, quarters disappearing at the arcade, VHS tapes chewing themselves in the VCR. Celebs didn’t know we existed — but we sure talked about them like neighbors: “Did you see what Prince wore?” “Did you hear what Cobain said?” “Did you see that headline at the checkout?”

And then came the flood. Just like Dollar General popping up on every corner, celebrities invaded everything — soda ads, perfume commercials, late-night interviews, charity telethons. They weren’t icons anymore. They were mascots for hire. Walking billboards dressed up as inspiration, distracting us while the real money moved behind the curtain.

Celebrities are the deluxe carton of Expired Milk & Lies — glossy, airbrushed, glowing under the lights. But peel it back and you don’t just find spoiled product — you find the scandals, the cover-ups, the wreckage carefully swept out of frame so the brand could live another day.