I never "tweet" anymore.   I still receive little notices that someone is "following me" on Twitter.  Usually people I do not know and have no desire to.  Like MySpace, Twitter apparently has a gizmo that just introduces you to new people for the sake of introducing you to new people--a numbers game of some kind.   I don't have time for it.  I mean, Ashton, I love ya' baby, but...I'm out.

When I first started tweeting, though, the sole reason I kept doing it was Leo DiCaprio.  I'm...not a "fan," by the way.   I appreciate his work and his activism, but Titanic drove me up the bloody wall, though I can watch it without wincing and even with a little pleasure.   Not even guilty pleasure--it is what it is.   And I do admit that he kept me utterly, achingly spellbound in Revolutionary Road--oh, those happy/sad, "clueless male caught in a game he cannot begin to comprehend let alone win" eyes.   Ok, maybe I am a fan.  But not that kind.  You know exactly what I mean.

So I shall move on.

The reason I stayed on so long for Leo was pretty simple.   As were his little tweets, back then.  Yes, he urged us to join this cause, send this letter, call this congressman from time to time.  But mostly...every Sunday for awhile...he tweeted to us all about sleeping in and then being beaten at pool by his beautiful lady love all afternoon.   Once, he tweeted trying to find a good Italian restaurant to take her to after a long, languid day of the kind of simple Sunday stuff long time lovers do.   A lotta lovely nothin'.   Basking in it.  And then getting ravenously hungry from it and wanting to go out and eat and gaze into each other's eyes some more.

I loved it.

P.Diddy seemed never to be off the damned thing.  Shooting us silly platitudes like a motivational speaker caught in a rut.   John Mayer tried to wow us with his sang froid and bon mots.   And...yes, I'm doing that to annoy you as much as he did me.   Though the night he kept posting pictures of the bottles of home made beer he was "sampling" was pretty funny, I have to admit.   Every few seconds he'd send a shot of a beer bottle with a little less beer in it.   And it lent him, for a moment, an air of humanity at last.   A single dude, sitting at home, drinking too much.   That seemed, in a way, to be the truth behind the other. 

Every now and then Jane Fonda would tell us about watching a movie with Oprah or changing a blouse backstage for...some reason I forget.  Mariah Carey really did tweet about brushing her teeth...or was it...Britney?   I don't remember.   Mercifully.  And of course Mr. and Mrs. Kutcher...JEEZUS.

In the midst of it all, though...on Sundays...I waited to see if Leo and his girl would be playing pool all afternoon.   No yachts.  No after parties.  No platitudes.   No backstage gossip or updates on his day on the set.    Just...updates on the trouncing he was taking.  Or what a great day he was having.   I got to feelin' like I knew this guy.   And liked this guy.   I felt like if more of them would just do that, Twitter might be kinda cool.  We might all begin to understand each other a little bit.   The "playing field" might actually be leveled some.    Enough so that if we saw some of 'em on the street we might just...nod, smile and keep going the way people did here in Tucson when they spotted Paul McCartney out and about for all those years he had his ranch here.   You smiled.  You nodded.   You maybe wondered, but did not ask, about his dying wife.   You let him be, as his song pleaded for us to do.   Instead of pleading for an autograph or a conversation or a cell phone photo.

As an entertainment reporter I'd learned long ago that celebrities were just people.   Often very sad or very conflicted or very wounded people.   But sometimes really cool people you'd wanna hang out with--I did hang out with.   Still do.   With a handful.  But the rest of the world, given what I read and watch each day, still insists upon making them, as Fitzgerald told Hemingway once, "different from you and me."

I kept hoping that a few others would just tweet me about the quiet beauty of a quiet day off with the one you love.   In little bits, as the day unfolded.  Like a smitten kid, just checkin' in with his friends...still dazzled by the feel of it.

A lot of 'em tried.  But they always seemed to have to try to make it into something more profound than it was.   And it never worked.

After awhile, I lost track of it all.  I started to follow CNN, Obama and some other "meaningful" beings and a few more celebs...some "informational" and "inspirational" folks, too.   Lady Gaga early on.   Before I decided she was just Madonna again, and lost interest.

The only one I miss, and haven't been able to find when I do go back--always on Sundays--is Leo.   I hear that just minutes before he gifted Scorsese with a lifetime achievement award recently, he frantically tweeted to get the precise pronunciation of his name.   Perfect.  I love the way he works it.   It's inadvertently cool.

Miss ya', Leo.   But it was nice while it lasted.