No celebrities in the martial arts, if you please.

Having seen my fair share of the celebrated beautiful people, I have learned that in today's world, driven by press releases and photo opportunities, "being somebody" is an expensive and highly regulated career. No matter who the somebody is, they must play by the time-honored rules of significance. One can actually be somebody and still fail to be significant, so the ideal is to be both.

The higher one's standing in both categories of significance and celebrity, the greater latitude we allow them in their sometimes truly bizarre behavior. By now, the point is well made that being significant and being somebody is not without its problems: hate mail, celebrity stalkers, and the like. But everyone seems to forget one important fact, that the significant somebody is here for the benefit of the less fortunate. Where would the great sport of one-upmanship be without the significant somebody?

One-upmanship is the ages-old game designed so that certain people, the are-nots, can at least be able to talk as if they are. A quality match of one-upmanship usually proceeds with the same intensity, speed and indirectness of world-class chess, although the play itself is more like fencing.

The game begins with the opening, and by definition, offensive first lunge:"Did I ever tell you about the time I met so and so?" A lower-level player will immediately parry with something like: "That's interesting since the same thing happened to me when I met ..."

At this juncture in the match, the play is relatively unsophisticated, lacking the finesse of a player who uses the stronger, more subtle thrust: "I was discussing world hunger, the greenhouse effect, and nuclear disarmament with so and so (insert name of significant somebody). So tell me, what are your thoughts on the ozone layer?" The key to winning the game is at each level to keep inserting the name of a person higher in the significant somebody hierarchy.

The hierarchy combines two kinds of somebodies: those who are there because of their achievements, and those there because of their publicist's achievements. A disheartening fact of the modern world is that both tend to be given equal due. Excellence and accomplishment don't really matter anymore. What counts is press coverage of any kind. Simply observe how people who are infamous seem to endure longer than someone who is merely famous.

One element present in the existence of all celebrities is a sense that the person is inaccessable, that they are unavailable for any kind of exchange with mere mortals like us. A natural consequence of perceiving them inaccessible is the autograph. Obtaining a famous person's signature, or even more valuable, having your picture taken with a well-known person, says that "for one brief shining moment" your meandering lives came together. Because no one will believe the impossible happened, you must carry away evidence of your encounter: the autograph.

What does this have to do with the martial arts, you may ask? To answer that question, I have to tell you that when I was the editor of Karate/Kung Fu Illustrated, I usually received at least one call a day, telling me why someone deserved to be on the cover of the magazine. Somehow many people feel that a natural progression of the martial arts is first becoming a black belt, then becoming famous. I've been practicing martial arts for nearly twenty years and in that time, I've met just about anyone who could qualify as a "martial arts celebrity."

I still don't see the connection.