Hey, Pop Idol, Surrender My Name!

By Ashley Parker in the New York Times May 13th 2007


How do you compete with an Angel?


An Ashley Parker Angel, to be exact. As in the boy-band sex symbol and teen icon who is also my famous Internet doppelganger and, most certainly, my higher-achieving alter ego.

I discovered this one night when I was searching for something I had written, and plugged my name into Google. (Let this be a cautionary tale for those who self-Google.) I was surprised when the first page of hits turned up fan clubs in my honor, a fully-functional MySpace page and a rather comprehensive Wikipedia entry. Oh, they shouldn't have, I thought. Then I looked closer. ...

Everything was devoted to another Ashley Parker, to Ashley Parker Angel, 25, heartthrob extraordinaire, with a mop of sun-bleached hair, aqua-blue eyes and high and rosy cheeks that slope down into a perfectly cleft chin. Google turned up his hit singles, his glossy fashion shoots, his German fan clubs.

The points I had scored for my high school basketball team? The articles I had written for my college newspaper? The two decades I had also been alive? You had to scroll to Goooooooooooooogle to find even a mention.

"See," I explained to friends, "If you just go to Google, Page 14 ..."

Of course, they teased me: "Hey, Mrs. Angel." Or, "I saw your boy on MTV last night."

We were the same age, but in every other way, I was the opposite of the preternaturally perky he-Angel: female, dark-haired, dark-humored, occasionally Goth and perpetually awkward.

I fumed. I complained. And then I accepted it. Short of changing my name to Ashley Parker Devil, there wasn't much I could do.

But recently, when I was working out of an office in the theater district, where the other Ashley Parker was playing the lead in "Hairspray," an opportunity emerged for an Ashley vs. Ashley face-off. It was the brainstorm of a well-intentioned theater publicist I had called about a profile I was working on.

"This isn't business related," he interrupted, "but I just have to tell you. Your name is Ashley Parker, and the lead of ‘Hairspray' is also named Ashley Parker ..."

"Angel." I finished the sentence for him.

"Yes, Ashley Parker Angel," he said. "So you're Ashley Parker, and he's Ashley Parker."

Yes. I know.

The publicist arranged for a ticket.

"You simply must meet him," he said. "I put down Ashley Parker, and then next to your name I put a note: Not that Ashley Parker. Another Ashley Parker. Because, you know, you have the same name."

He giggled. I didn't.

Not only had Ashley Parker Angel co-opted my identity, but he also had done great things with it. While I was piddling around in college, Ashley Parker Angel had borrowed $800, hopped onto a plane to Las Vegas and earned a spot on the ABC reality show "Making the Band." Then, horrifyingly, they had actually made the band, O-Town, with him in it.


By the time I moved to New York to dabble in unemployment, Ashley Parker Angel was on his way to his own MTV reality show, "There and Back," and an appearance on the network's "Total Request Live." And now here he was playing the dashing Link Larkin in "Hairspray," an art-imitates-Ashley role that almost mirrors his own boy-wonder-to-pop-idol life story.

Worse, here I was, following him through a squealing throng outside a West 52nd Street theater to a wine bar around the corner.

"Hey, great name," he said, grinning.

I hoped he didn't think I was going to be won over so easily. I was there on business, after all, and I had come with a plan: Over drinks I was going to try to wrest back my identity.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. While I had a few admirers (Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!), it wasn't exactly like I had thousands of fans dying to touch my hand and take my picture.

"So," I began, "do you ever go by your initials? Just A.P.A.?"

"I'm starting to, more and more," he said.

I explained that acronyms were very in these days, but he seemed noncommittal, so I tried another approach.

What about adding a second middle name? Something divine, Heaven, Cherub, Rapture, maybe.

"I like that," he said, still grinning. "The four names. That could be a way to make me stand out." But then he hesitated: "My name already sounds like a porn star."

I tried again. I'd read that he was actually born Ashley Ward Parker, and had taken on "Angel," his stepfather's last name, when was adopted by him at age 3.

"What about bringing back the Ward?"

"No, I don't think so," he said. "It sounds so Leave It to Beaver. "

This isn't about you, I wanted to shout at him.

But the truth was, in person, Ashley Parker Angel was endearing. He was earnest in a way you wouldn't expect him to be, full of small-town friendliness with an open and eager face. He said things like, "This is a cool hang," and he described the rigors of "Hairspray" as, "It's like playing football set to music."

He also glowed when he talked about his 21-month-old son, Lyric Lennon, "I'm into original names," he explained. And he pulled out pictures of Lyric in a red-and-yellow Fisher-Price car, Lyric giggling at the camera.

He didn't even mind having a stereotypically female name. "A girl's name," I goaded. He told me that his mom loved "Gone With the Wind," and that he had been named after Scarlett O'Hara's heartthrob, Ashley Wilkes.

"I had to explain that to people," he said. "Elementary school was tough." (As it will be for Lyric.)

I empathized, I really did. Still ...

"What about just going by Link Larkin?" I asked, nodding encouragingly. "He's very sexy."

"Yeah, I have started to go by L.L. in e-mails," he said. "I do like the L.L., the A.A. It's all very superhero, the double initial like Peter Parker, Lex Luthor."

Finally, I cut to the chase. How frustrated, I asked, would he be if the situation were reversed? What if he woke up one day to discover that I existed and that I had rendered him both un-Googleable and the punch line to boy-band jokes?

"I can see how that might be frustrating," he said, looking concerned. "But I think that if we join forces, we can be even stronger. If we make people aware, we can circumvent the problem. We can be the Ashley Parker Force."

He offered to put an asterisk on his MySpace page, acknowledging the existence of another Ashley Parker.

"Yeah, and you could maybe just link to a few of my articles," I added helpfully.

"We could share all sorts of things," he continued, picking up speed. "We could sign up for a Blockbuster membership and pass it back and forth. We could share Costco membership. We could share a library card. We'd save a lot of money!"

Indeed we would.

Still, I took a deep breath and laid the last of my cards on the table. No offense, I told him, but boy-band stars come and go. And, well, I'm going to be a famous writer. At least, I'm going to be a writer. Aren't you a little concerned that 10 years from now you'll Google yourself and all you'll find is me?

He ducked his head a little, and crinkled his blue eyes.

"That's why we have to stay friends," he said. "So you can remember the little people."

Source: NYTimes.com

09-20-2007 17:39 William Shakespeare
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