Evidently I'm famous

So in South Africa they have this tradition – there is a specific man called an Imbongi that is given the job of essentially shouting before the President. It works something like this, if Nelson Mandela is walking through a crowd, this man jumps around and crouches down shouting in poetic form about the wonder that is the president. I was commenting to the kids how funny this was to me, mostly because I don’t understand the language, so it looks like a crazy man jumping around and screaming in a crowd of people.

I also have an Imbongi – and her name is Nana. She is one of my film students and she wants to work in “media”. The word media is used a lot here – and it pretty much is the word that I hear from every student. When I ask them to tell me what aspect of media specifically they don’t really know. Nana is a very talented writer, so we have been discussing a journalism future, but she also wants to be famous so we’re thinking maybe a news anchor. ☺

Nana pretty much thinks that anyone that works “in media” is famous. Even to the point of posing for pictures with the man that is hired to take photos of the 10k, calling him paparazzi . So when Nana first learned what I do I had to explain it several times so that she would understand that I’m not famous, I just once in awhile run into people that are famous. When I enter a room where Nana has gone before me, I am often flooded with students that joke about wanting my autograph and tell me that they had no idea I was a producer on Spider-man. Funny, I didn’t know I was a producer on Spider-man either. I should make a few calls about residual checks…