Lamar Odom

One more update on Friday night: It turns out I was right with my update below. One of the entertainment shows had a segment tonight with a reporter interviewing a woman who's the manager of the Love Ranch. She said Odom insisted that all the women he came in contact with sign confidentiality agreements. Wow. I think it's safe to say he'll be seriously mortified when he realizes how "not confidential" his activities at the Love Ranch have become. It's not just the cocaine, the fake Viagra and the prostitutes. We now know he selected his two companions out of a lineup, which apparently is how they do it at brothels. We know that he had been texting with a working girl named Madison Montag, who is the brothel's token transgender prostitute, although in the end he selected two other "girls." We've seen the surveillance video from the first day and the credit card receipt showing a charge of $75,000. This really is a sad and disturbing story on so many levels. Based on what I've read Odom is still a very sick man and a full recovery is by no means guaranteed. It will be wonderful if he does recover, but at that point he'll be in for a very different kind of hurt.

Friday afternoon update: There are unofficial reports that Odom is improving slightly - he may have opened his eyes and some sites are even saying he "communicated verbally," i.e., spoke. Maybe. I had an admittedly strange thought about what could happen if he does fully recover. Given Odom's struggles with the harsh and unforgiving spotlight of fame, I'm guessing he won't be pleased to learn that the whole world knows he went to a brothel, did cocaine, took a sexual enhancement supplement and spent the week-end screwing his brains out with not one but two prostitutes, at a reported cost of $75,000.  

Friday morning update: I now know what Kanye West is up to, or at least what Kardashian employer E! wants us to think he's up to: he's home watching the kids (his daughter North and Kourtney's three kids.) That's a little hard for me to picture but, you know, whatever. Read about it here.

And one more thing about Kanye and Kim: back in August, 2013, a few weeks after Miss North West was born, I wrote that I gave Kimye two years as a couple, tops. (Read it here.) That would have taken them to August of this year, by which time I was pretty sure that they would have fallen out of love, or lust, or whatever it is that they're in, and gone their separate ways. August has come and gone, of course, and I humbly admit I was wrong. Apparently Kimye is still going strong. I still can't see them celebrating their 10th anniversary, and possibly not even their 5th, but for better or worse, they're still together now, and that's something.

Original post:


The big news in pop culture this week, of course, is the sad situation with Lamar Odom. As I'm writing on Thursday afternoon, things don't look good for Odom, although there have been no official announcements about his condition, one way or the other, from the hospital or the Kardashians. Jesse Jackson visited the hospital yesterday then announced that Odom was "improving," although he walked that back slightly later in the day. Today, apparently TMZ is reporting that Odom shows no signs of improvement and doctors are telling family members to expect the worst, even as there are reports that he may have squeezed Khloé's hand, or maybe it was Kim's hand. As an example of the feeding frenzy around this story, the Hollywood Life website posted contradictory stories an hour and seven minutes apart:

12.45 p.m. Lamar Odom Opens Eyes And Squeezes Kim Kardashian's Hand In Hospital -- Report
1.52 p.m. Lamar Odom: Kardashian's Hopes Fading As Doctors Say His Condition Worsens

My thoughts:

Where's Kanye? Kim flew to Las Vegas with Khloé Tuesday night. It's being reported that she canceled a baby shower scheduled for this week-end, and will be returning to LA for a doctor's appointment on Friday. Who's missing from all this? Her husband. I've been following this story pretty closely all around the internet and not one, not a single one of the many, many stories I've read has said anything about Kanye West. It's as if he doesn't exist.

Asking For Privacy. It's now standard practice for any celebrity experiencing almost any kind of life event to request "privacy at this difficult time," and apparently the Kardashians have requested the same. I don't mean to be disrespectful but there's more than a little irony there. The Kardashians are requesting privacy? Really? Isn't their entire empire built on letting it all hang out on camera? I promise I'm not being snarky when I say that that ship has sailed. The media abhors a vacuum and it's now been almost 48 hours since the story broke. In the absence of any comments from the K's or Odom's doctors, pretty much everyone else is rushing to talk, with or without any actual, factual information. There's just no way to stop it.

As Famous As I Wanna Be: I've written before about the perils of fame in America and one of the undercurrents of the Odom story is that hitching his star to the Kardashian fame machine is at least part of what led him to this point. True? Maybe, partly. His ex-girlfriend, mother to his three children (one of whom died of SIDS,) has said they were together for 10 years, and got engaged, but he always refused to get married. Then, shortly after they broke up, he married Khloé a month after meeting her. Was the opportunity to get famous on her television show at least part of the appeal? In August, 2013, when Odom's substance abuse and DUI first came to light, Allison Samuels wrote about Odom at The Daily Beast, indicating that he longed for Kardashian-level fame:

“He wanted all the fame and fortune the Kardashian family could give him, but never considered the price he’d pay for it.’’

That price, says the friend, has come in the form of constant cameras and media attention pointed his way. The media’s never-ending obsession with the Kardashian clan quickly began to cause the NBA player tremendous emotional distress, according to those who know him well.

“Lamar was a second-level sports star, particularly on a team like the Lakers with Kobe Bryant,’’ said one former Lakers player. “Not sure he understood that, but he wasn’t in Us and People magazine every week. There was a limit in interest in him off the court. But the Kardashians have an all-consuming fame that Lamar was not prepared for at all. It really is that old saying of ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ He wished for fame, but this hadn’t been on his own terms.’’

… “Not sure why the Lakers agreed to let him do that show at all,’’ says a teammate. “It was a big distraction for him and the team. But he wanted that celebrity so bad that Phil Jackson and others just didn’t want to deny him.


In a story written last night, Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo Sports talks about the costs of that fame:

In recent days too, the Kardashians refused to stop exploiting Odom on that reality show, turning what appeared to be a lost soul in crisis reaching out to his ex-wife only to have his phone calls manufactured into Khloe-Kim argument fodder for one more dreadful episode.

Sex, drugs, a disconsolate Khloe, and Kobe leaving the Lakers locker room at the MGM Grand Arena to get to the hospital. Poor Lamar Odom, unwittingly delivering them a trailer.

So, Khloe ended up at his bedside in Vegas, with her mother, Kris Jenner, dramatically pacing outside Sunrise Hospital in Vegas. The Rev. Jesse Jackson emerged onto the scene to make public proclamations. All the way until now, Odom played the part of a prop, a recurring character in the Kardashian cesspool.

Truth be told, the Kardashians transformed Odom’s frailties and flaws into a societal fascination. Around the Lakers, they would always tell you that the scrutiny of the show played a part in his undoing, that it made a largely shy and private guy far more exposed and vulnerable than he ever imagined. Privately, Odom would tell friends that he never imagined the impact that an entanglement with the Kardashians’ glare would have on his existence.

“You can get tickets for the Oscars, some good perks,” he once told a friend, “but I had no idea what the rest of it would be like.”

How will the story end?  There's no way to know right now. It's just sad.