HerKind.com

Last summer, with clearly way too much time on my hands, I developed an uncharacteristic celebrity crush on musician John Mayer.

Well, calling it a celebrity crush is almost a misnomer since it's his music that drew me in... but somewhere between then and now he became super-famous.

Anyway, I passed the crush  off as an avid interest in the singer/songwriter’s accomplished guitar-playing, but truthfully I was trying to figure out why a smart, talented guy, with five Grammys already under his belt and the moniker of “slow-hand junior” would dally with one Jessica Simpson, his girlfriend at the time.

A value judgement on my part, she's probably a really nice girl. In fact, he does credit her with helping get over his shyness. But I digress...

This “obsession” as my friends were keen on calling it, led me to celebrity gossip sites like perezhilton.com and tmz.com, but I could also readily find information at entertainment sites and the web versions of traditional newspapers. That’s because there’s a rather large blur now between news and entertainment and a good deal of entertainment news is pure gossip.

In my eagerness to know all things relating to John Mayer, I soon found myself in the vicious circle that is celebrity watching. Somewhere along the line it dawned on me that these sites employ photographers that hound celebs while they are merely trying to replenish their toilet paper supply at Wal-Mart, or get their requisite Starbucks fix. I worried that my consumption of this unseemly online product might be unhelpful in the plight of, say, Britney. Worse, my brain was turning to mush, my conversations were way too superficial and I almost forgot what a good entertainment story really is.

Believe it or not, I once knew. Even wrote some!

Thank God, I gave up my perezhilton.com habit at the New Year. I can’t honestly tell you that I miss it. Many have tried to get me back on it, but I just can't do it. However, there's one site that I still check daily for all John Mayer news all the time, a fansite called TRY JM that gathers together any and all minutiae about him from around the web.  It's my one stop shop!

Mr. Mayer has become quite the hot "get" by the photogs since he's in the habit of dating the so-called A list. Lately he's been blogging alot about fame, and I guess what it all means to him, but I certainly like him best when he's all about the music.

That's why this item on the front page of MSN today horrified me: Mayer the Player: a dating history

UGH!