James Franco & A Cat
This past weekend James Franco participated in the annual Broadway Barks adopt-a-thon event and posed for a bunch of publicity photos with this adorable 3-month-old tuxedo kitten named Totes McGotes. Totes McGotes is an Anjellicle Rescue Cat, just like my Ali! And I’ve been volunteering with ACR at least once a week for a year and a half now. Very cool to have this kind of celebrity promotion, but unfortunately when Franco posted some of the pics on his social media outlets with the caption “YOU’VE GOTTA BE KITTEN ME!” and “adopt a pet,” he didn’t mention the name of our organization, the ASPCA, or the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals.
WHATEVER, JAMES. Totes McGotes can promote himself for adoption. Just look at dat wittle face. (Excuse me. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just that KITTENS!!!)
Or you could click here to read more about our awesome no-kill, grassroots, volunteer-run animal rescue nonprofit. Adopt adopt adopt.
Ahem. We can now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
OK, fine. So I do love how both James and the kitten are making smoldering, come-hither faces at the camera. It’s almost like James Franco needs a loving forever home too.
And I do have this weird hobby of posting photos of famous people with cats on Pinterest. For example:
Bob Dylan & A Cat
John Lennon & A Cat
Andy Warhol & A Cat
The point being, of course, that only really cool people have cats. Or interact with cats. Or pose with them for photographs, at least. But now I’m off topic.
My point is that James Franco is always popping up in my life! He is the only famous person I’ve ever seen in real life without having to, you know, pay money to see perform or whatever. (He was at the same preview performance of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on New Year’s Eve 2012. He was wearing a striped scarf. He also loves Southern literature. We might be the same person.) Funnily enough, almost everyone I know who’s lived here for a year or more seems to have a Franco-sighting story. One of my co-workers has seen him trying to bum cigarettes off NYU students. Another saw him eating tacos, like a normal person. JAMES FRANCO IS EVERYWHERE, I TELL YA.
For example, Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” is one of my favorite novels, and who adapted it for film, both directing and acting in the movie version? James Franco. Whose novels do I see on display tables every time I walk into a bookstore? James Franco’s. And who was filling up my Instagram feed, until I remembered that is one of the few things in life I have control over, and unsubscribed? James freaking Franco.
A couple months ago there was some controversy because James Franco sent skeevy text messages to an underage teenage girl visiting NYC from Scotland. She had seen him perform in “Of Mice & Men” on Broadway, and tagged him in a photo she took of him as he was leaving the show, signing autographs, etc. And then he private messaged her wanting to meet up a hotel room. Um, ew.
Anyway, when this news broke, my Twitter-savvy co-worker announced it to our little desk area, as he always does with news items of personal interest. And I was like, “NO, PLEASE DON’T LET THAT BE TRUE. WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?” Because again, um, ew.
My co-worker then asked if James Franco was, I quote, “my boo.”
Me: NO, I AM JUST DEEPLY FASCINATED BY HIM. It’s also how I feel about Kanye West. And no one likes Kanye West. His music, yes, But Kanye the person, no. I mean, why does James Franco have to make so many kinds of art? He paints, he writes reviews for Vice, he teaches creative writing at UCLA, he’s written books. He did a book-signing at The Strand last month! And, of course, he acts in movies and now on Broadway. One person cannot possibly be good at all those things!
Co-worker: You sure have a lot opinions about someone who you claim is not your boo.
Me: Touché.
(For the record, I still don’t know how someone I don’t know personally can be “my boo.”)
Needless to say, it made perfect sense to me that of aaaaaaaaaaaalll the famous people/Broadway actors and allllll the nonprofits participating in this past weekend’s adopt-a-thon, James freaking Franco would be the one paired with an Anjellicle Rescue Cat. Go. Figure.
OK. And James Franco was maybe kinda sorta really great as an ’80s James Dean-esque stoner rebel kid in the wonderful series “Freaks and Geeks,” whose cancellation after less than one full season is a great injustice to classic high school television shows everywhere. That is one version of James Franco I genuinely appreciate.
Do yourself a favor and Netflix this series, OK?
East 82nd 