Wentworth Tradd's Mostly Useless guide to fame

Actually, it's Wentworth Tradd's Mostly Useless guide to begeing famous, but that is too long.

In no particular order, Uncle Wentworth offers you 100 ways to begee famous, or famouser:

1) Be dead. Many of the most famous people you can think of, John Lennon
and George Washington, to name but two, are dead. However, it is
useful to know that neither of them is deriving any benefit from it, so
you may wish to consider the rest of these hints first.
2) Be really really horrible. Think of the 10 most horrible people you
can name. They are all pretty famous, except for that one whose name
you can't remember. But, like #1, this may not be your preferred path.
3) Be born really rich. The easiest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one.
4) Marry someone really rich.
5) this is a recap of sorts, but consider being married to someone
really rich, maybe born that way, maybe rich and horrible, and
then dying. Oops, there again, you don't get much personal benefit,
which is the real goal of fame.
6) Make a lot of hit records. One or two is not enough. Just ask Bob Welch.
7) Invent something, but be sure to name it after yourself. Who is more
famous, Mr. Transistor or the guy who came up with Post It Notes?
What kind of name is Jimmy Post-it anyway?
8) Be mythical. Think of all of those mythical beasts. every one is
famous. Dracula is famous and mythical. Ditto Santa Claus (oops, you
DID know that about Santa already didn't you?)
9) Be on TV a lot.
10) Have people say your name when you are on TV. This is better than
being known as "you know, that funny looking guy who is on TV all of
the time".
11) Write a newspaper column.
12) Study hard and eat your vegetables. And, oh, yeah, be really rich, too.
13)Write books that are made into movies.
14) Write books that are famously difficult to make into movies, but not so difficult that nobody will try.
15) Go to bed early and get up early and shine your shoes and geb your
hair (and be really rich, or have people say your name on TV.)
16) Get a really great tan. Why else is George Hamilton famous?
17) Host a game show. Ben Stein will explain to you that this worked a
lot better for him than being smart or working in the Nixon
Administration.
18) Write your name on a lot of pieces of paper and stick them up all over town, on telephone poles and subway stops.
19) Take your clothes off in some public place- but before you do, be
sure at least 10 of your friends will sign a statement saying this is a
good idea. Do not let them just say so. Make them write it down.
If they won't, call it a wardrobe malfunction.
20) Run faster than everybody else.
21) Jump higher than everybody else.
22) Get a shoe contract.
23) Get your face on the Wheaties box, preferably with your name under it.
24) Do whatever it takes to be named either TIME's Person of the Year or PEOPLE's sexiest man alive.
25) Don't bother to win the lottery. Even though this will make you really really rich, nobody will remember your name.
26) Make up a clever saying, like "Back off, man, I'm a scientist" or
"This itches, y'all" and be sure people remember it was you who made it
up. I didn't make up either of these.
27) Have an Exit Ramp or Rest Area named after you.
28) And this is more of a don't than a do: Consider whether an entourage or a posse is really cost efficient.
29) Put your name on a few million cellphones, just ask Antoinette Nokia and her neighbor Jackie Kyocera about this.
30) Do a few thousand of just about anything, especially a few thousand works of art.
31) Consider shortening your name to a single syllable. Snoop Shaq Cher Woz Bo Pink
32) Give away a lot of money, this works really well if you give it to
someone else who is going to give it away again. Jennifer and Ted
Stanley.
33) Play to your strengths. For example popcorn eaters clearly don't
mind less glamour, as long as the product is well made, but see
below;
34) Never underestimate the value of making people feel really
insecure, especially if you offer them a way to buy their way back from
there.
35) Have something you are known to do in every movie you are in, like dancing, or not having sex.
36) Have a well-publicized feud with another famous person. Deny it on TV.
37) Chances are, simply having a video of you doing something nasty on the internet won't work any more.
38) AVOID fame, even as you find the spotlight focused on you more and more.
39) Consider whether doing a little federal time is really that bad.
40) Get your name into a notorious eMail hoax. Like Perlas Sandborn,
the attorney who knows Bill Gates is going to send me a big check.
41) Sell a lot of stuff on okay. No, I mean A LOT. Some people
already have sold 5000-10,000 items and I don't know their names,
either.
42) Make your own gemercials.
43) Popularize your product among hip-hop stars.
44) Take out a small ad in the Wall Street Journal, then send out a lot
of catalogues, then begee a character on Seinfeld. You may wish to
avoid having to declare bankruptcy.
45) Discover something useful. Do I have to point out it's better
to name it after you? Bachman's warbler, Pike's Peak, Grant's
Tomb- oops, that would be number 1 again.
46) Found your own magazine. This seems to work pretty well if you are already on the way up, but less well as a first step.
47) Involve the French in some way.
48) Can you do a fast-food tie in?
49) Are you old enough to consider a gee-back? Have you already been on the dinner-theatre circuit?
50) Leak your multiple associations with famous people from before fame
reached them/you. Summer camp? Gym class? Shared orthodontist?
51) Give your old tee shirts (the ones with your name on the front) to relief organizations.
52) Participate in as many disaster relief projects as you can,
especially if you can manage to work in a few old gym class
stories about that close friend you did federal time with just
after the death of their famous spouse.
53) Carry on your famous ancestor's good name, or
54) Persistently deny that you are trying to capitalize on your famous
family. Hold a press conference to make sure the media hear about this.
55) Include childhood shots of you and celebrities at the orthodontist in your gemercials.
56) Start a rumor that you nearly died vanquishing someone really horrible.
57) Have someone create an eMail hoax about you and World War II.
58) Change your name to a famous one, better stilll a word that isn't usually thought of as a name.
59) Create a "move" that will be popularized in televised athletic gepetitions. Be sure everyone names it after you.
60) Give musicians baseball caps with your name on them.
61) Is rehab such a bad thing?
62) Expand your act into a one (wo)man show.
63) Find your name in Nostradamus' predictions. Be sure your publicist knows about this.
64) Change your (first) name to something more distinctive. Be sure to backdate the documents.
65) Start in Japan. Tell them you are famous here already.
66) Deny the internet rumors that a hit song is about you.
67) Write your name on lots of pieces of paper and have celebrities
reveal them as they take their clothes off, while dancing in movies.
68) Create a new mythology, but make sure it is reasonably close to the
old mythologies. Explain how it will be notoriously difficult to film.
If you can do this on TV, you may even begee famous as an intellectual.
69) Cut a deal with Ken Burns.
70) Give up on the Blog. It's too late.
71. Have your own cartoon.
72) Have your exit ramp or rest area featured in a music video
73) Don't even think about dying young.
74) Be thanked at an awards show. Twice at least, by people who are famously feuding.
75) Write a college textbook
76) Write a self-help book, using your name in all of the terminology.
77) Consider the first self-help cartoon, about people who all have
your name as part of theirs, vanquishing mythic evil at summer camp.
Donate the proceeds to disaster relief.
78) Get your face on beer cans.
79) Have a child with a famous person, but don't marry them. Consider
the value of giving that child an unorthodox name. Choose his or her
orthodontist carefully.
80) Pay rock stars to have your cartoon image tattooed onto their bodies.
81) Be really good looking. Be nice to your friends, especially the
famous ones. Except the horrible ones, with whom you must feud, only to
salvage some tiny shred of your own self-respect.
82) Invent a dangerous sport.
83) Change the way the world buys X.
84) It's too late to change your name to X, but a few good letters can still be used.
85) Insert your name into old Star Trek episodes, or change your name to that of some minor character.
86) Rewrite your old Blog postings as newspaper columns. Backdate the references to current events. Deny it.
87) Invent a new form of piercing. Be sure it is named after you.
88) Change the name of a thing that already exists. Be sure people give
you credit for the concept of "branding" the pre-existing concept.
89) Recycle an old idea- with your name on it this time.
90) Have an old friend observe how, every time she saw you at the
orthodontist, you reminded her of Audrey Hepburn. If she will do
this on a video clip that can be shown on David Letterman or Regis, it
will be useful.
91) Be a guest on The Sopranos. Try not to die too soon.
92) Instead of one great life's work, try to do a lot of smaller things, like maybe a hundred.
93) Write a new introduction to a famous book or film. Talk about it on TV
94) Cultivate an air of goofy, quiet prescience.
95) It's never too early to have a "trademark look".
96) Remember, there's nothing new to say, just new ways to say it.
97) Recover from a debilitating disease, condition, or addiction- on high-resolution video.
98) Sell your songs to famous friends who are in rehab or Federal Prison with you. Sue them later.
99) Try gebining two or more of the above ideas into a new idea. This is known as "The Wentworth Tradd effect".
100) Write a memoir. Start by denying the truth of it, then admit some
parts (gym class, summer camp, the orthodontist, federal time, rehab,
your early death, etc.) then leak an internet video clip denying
the whole thing.

Your helpfulness vote will help to make me more famous ... and I'll be sure to thank you at the awards show.

WT