How unhappy are we? It seems that, now more than ever, we all want to be someone else, something else. Famous.

The guy who makes your pizza, the girl who delivers your mail, the kid in the 7-11 parking lot messing around on his skateboard — all want to entertain you someday.

Whether it’s the females 18-25 who lined up outside one of those massive movie theatres in Toronto a few weeks ago to audition for the Global reality-TV series Popstars to forego their tedious studies for the chance to maybe someday be interviewed Rick the Temp.

Or Sean, the neurologist from Survivor who has since quit his practice and hired three agents in an effort to capitalize on his fame and his desire to become a TV star.

We all want to be the people in People.

Why? Is making an honest living as passé as Quentin Tarantino?

It might be the lure of being adored and idolized by millions of couch jockeys. It could be the possibility that, once famous, you’re personal life would resemble a Sisqo video that lures others.

But people who have already achieved the fame and prestige that everyone is desperately seeking aren’t even content with what they have. How many times do we have to suffer through an actor who wants to sing? Why does Russell Crowe, a good actor, have to torture us with a bad band? Singers who act are even worse.

And, once they’ve saturated our worlds with all of their varied artistic offerings, they tire of it. (Britney Spears even lip-synchs a song about this and she’s only been famous slightly longer than Christina Aguilera.) ‘It’s time to take some time for myself,’ they say. ‘It’s hard being in the public eye, you know. I guess you wouldn’t, you aren’t famous yet.’ Yet.

With so many of us striving to be a movie star, there should be nothing more insulting than someone bellyaching about their fame.

It is true, however, that you have to work to get to the point where you too can sue tabloids, be fawned over on The Tonight Show, and appear in Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest criminally terrible movie.

And, being trapped in Kingston for at least the next eight months, your options are reduced to being a ticket-taker at the Cineplex Odeon monstrosity on Gardiners Road or jamming with the guitar-wielding performers on Princess Street.

So, may I suggest that you write for the Arts & Entertainment section of The Queen’s Journal. Here you will get to critique your favourite artists and, if you’re likely, you may even get to meet C-level and even a few B-level Canadian celebrities. Plus, you will see your name in print, if not lights.

Please call 533-2800, email journal@post.queensu.ca, or stop by 272 Earl St.

The first entertainment lesson you will learn is how to shill shamelessly.

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Dan Rowe isn’t famous, but he acts like it.