This past Tuesday, more than 95 music acts were announced for this year's Summerfest ground stages. From the likes of Weird Al Yankovic and electronic violinist Lindsey Stirling to pop rockers Bastille and the somewhat forgotten '90s phenomena known as Smash Mouth, there's something for everyone at Henry Maier Festival Park.
One act in particular, though, stood out from the extensive list: DJ Paris Hilton. Yes, the star of former reality show "The Simple Life" and the popular home movie "One Night in Paris," is going to be dropping beats in the Milwaukee summer heat.
While I'm personally not a fan, I and quite a few others are humored by Hilton being included in the line-up. Some, however, like Thomas Neill, from Caldwell, N.J., don't find any humor in it whatsoever.
Neill must have some extra time and pent-up Hilton-fueled anger because he started a petition on change.org to remove her from the Summerfest lineup.
"This is a middle finger to anyone who paid to go this festival. You claim to be one of the premier festivals in America and then you go ahead and hire someone like Paris Hilton," Neill wrote. "She is a disgrace to dance music and is a perfect example of what spoiled celebrities do when they're bored."
"She has no right to be paid good money to stand up there and clap her hands on a stage. That money could be used to hire credible DJs that actually work hard on their craft. If Paris has any respect for dance music she would step down as she's clearly not worthy. Signing her to Summerfest is supporting a false, non credible, and quite frankly overall terrible 'musician'/'DJ.'"
"This diminishes dance music as nothing more than a cheap show and if you have any respect for the integrity of music you will remove Paris Hilton from the lineup. Please sign and share this petition together we can at least show Paris that we won't stand for this."
If it already wasn't clear, he really doesn't like Hilton and apparently, as of this post, 2,054 people are in the same boat and have signed, creeping slowly towards its 5,000 signature goal.
Hey, Neill or anyone who signed the petition so far: Take a deep breath and relax.
No one is forcing you to travel to Summerfest solely to see Hilton on stage. Did you happen to see the other acts included on the list? And that the night that Hilton is going to be on stage, there are going to be other bands performing at different stages at the same time? There may be someone on there that's more aligned with your taste.
It's a wild concept, especially for a music festival, but I just wanted to clarify.
This isn't any different from when DJ Pauly D, the second douchiest of the cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore," was at Summerfest a couple years ago for a set.
It's random, ridiculous and not something I'll be catching, but I won't sign a petition that essentially means nothing.
Here's a short list of things that you can do instead at Summerfest:
- Go see someone else play music that's more to your liking.
- Eat a lot of food (I highly recommend Solo's pizza cones. Better yet, find those amazingly greasy eggplant fries and a funnel cake. Basically, eat until you get sick.)
- Drink a few beers.
- Ride the sky glider.
- Walk around and soak in the crowded chaos.
- Watch drunk people argue, fight and escorted out of the festival.
Sometimes things that you don't like or don't want to take part in, like, say, going to see Hilton perform on stage, don't exactly require a petition. It just requires you to do something a little less dramatic like, you know, staying home or doing something else entirely.
Colton Dunham's passion for movies began back as far as he can remember. Before he reached double digits in age, he stayed up on Saturday nights and watched numerous classic horror movies with his grandfather. Eventually, he branched out to other genres and the passion grew to what it is today.
Only this time, he's writing about his response to each movie he sees, whether it's a review for a website, or a short, 140-character review on Twitter. When he's not inside of a movie theater, at home binge watching a television show, or bragging that he's a published author, he's pursuing to keep movies a huge part of his life, whether it's as a journalist/critic or, ahem, a screenwriter.