Shia LaBeouf: The Man.

Celebrities are an enormous part of the heartbeat of America. Most of us live vicariously through them in some way, and some of us would even like to be them. They are our role models, idols, or whatever you want to call it. For this particular essay, I would like to talk about actors: the people who act like someone that they really aren't in the name of entertainment. The ultimate escapists. When you and I are daydreaming about being them, they are actually being someone else, and for a ridiculous sum of money.

I have nothing but respect for these people, though. They have very glamorous jobs and lead very priveleged lives. Lives where they cannot make one misstep without the press revealing it to the entire world. They must watch their every move as close or even closer than the middle-aged women that pore over US Weekly for three hours on Thursday afternoon. If they don't, they will end up like Lindsay Lohan, who is perceived by the general public as...well we won't really put it into print.

Objection your honor! This rambling has nothing to do with the heart of the matter!

Anyway.

Every few years there is one or two very prominent actors and actresses that fly above the rest of the celebrity population. They are the idol to many of the same sex, and the wet dream of many of the opposite sex. They have some kind of appeal that cannot always be explained, but can never, ever be denied.

There was James Dean and Marilyn Monroe way back in the day. Then there was John Wayne. Then there was Jonathan Taylor Thomas for the teeny boppers in the nineties (by the way, what the happened to that guy? I miss him), and then more recently came the popularity of Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. Angelina Jolie and Jessica Alba. These are the people who attract an enormous audience to the theaters on opening night, just because they are in the movie.

This year it seems to me that a new star is being born, if you will. His name: Shia LaBeouf.

I saw the new and highly anticipated film, Transformers, a couple of nights ago. This was deemed the movie of the summer by pretty much anyone who had a say in the matter. At the MTV Movie Awards in June, it won the award for "Best Movie You Haven't Seen Yet."

Tell me that that's not big time. This movie won awards before it was even a fucking movie.

I was totally blown away by this movie. I didn't know exactly what to expect going into it, because I didn't know if anyone could pull off the kind of special effects that would be needed to make a movie like this watchable. (For the record, all of the special effects were amazing.)

I may not have even gone to see it. I knew that Michael Bay was an extremely capable director (Bad Boys II, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon), but just hearing that he directs a movie doesn't make me rush to the box office.

The reason I really went to see this movie was the starring actor, who was obviously Shia LaBeouf. I'd grown up with this kid, since Even Stevens was one of my favorite shows in my junior high years. He'd played Lewis (or Louis) the eccentric boy in a family. I'd been attracted to this show initially because of his sexy sister, Ren, who looked a lot like a girl I used to date. After a while though, Shia's witty character won me over. He made me laugh, and that is my favorite thing to do in the world.

He made a movie a few years back called Holes, which I saw with my family but don't really remember. He was pretty good in it, but it wasn't extremely remarkable to me.

Then, he went under the radar for a few years, appearing only--to my knowledge--in the HBO series Project Greenlight.

But he is raging back. He was magnificent in the suspenseful horror/thriller Disturbia that came out this year, and then he landed the starring role in the summer's biggest blockbuster. It also seems as though he is going to be around for a while, since he has just begun filming the fourth Indiana Jones film. He also did the voice for the starring character in the movie about surfing penguins ( yes, I know), Surfs Up

He's the it guy for my age group, and I can't imagine a guy that wouldn't want to be like him. In both Disturbia and Transformers, he plays a character that would serve as a role model to any teenage or adolescent boy that is in anywhere near their right mind.

The type of character he plays begins the movie as a high school loser. The kind of guy that can't catch a break, a weakling on the social ladder. He progresses through the movie in an upward motion, becoming braver and braver and more accepted. Then, by the end of the movie he pulls off certain acts of unspeakably heroic proportions that yield all types of advantages. In both of his recent movies, he gets with extremely beautiful girls (Megan Fox in his latest, who my friends and me have deemed "possibly the hottest girl we have ever seen in our entire existence") and is viewed as the hero at the end of the film. In Transformers he even gets a brand new Camaro that turns into a fucking robot!

As I stated before, lots of kids want to be the kind of guy that LaBeouf plays in his movies. Even the jocks. Everyone wants to be the outcast underdog at the beginning, because then there is nowhere to go but up. Then, they want to battle evil robots or the psychopathic killer next door and win so that everyone respects them. After this, they want to bang unbelievably hott teenage women that live nextdoor to them and know how to fix cars.

I think that Shia LaBeouf is the next big thing as far as celebrities go. I think that if this happens, there will be a certain paradigm shift which would be absolutely amazing and beneficial for the general public. Instead of people idolizing and pining after beautiful and extraordinary celebrities, they can start to follow people that they can actually relate to. Ordinary guys that happen to have a personality that goes very well when parallell to the underdog movie character.

LaBeouf can usher in a new era for famous people. He comes off as a dork, and as long as he keeps becoming more popular, dorks will become a more accepted part of society. He is unintentionally helping misfits around the world by lowering the wedgy percentage by 37 percent.

It is a new age for Hollywood and the rest of its worshipping world. An ordinary guy has become a celebrity, and ordinary people will relate to him and act as he does, which will benefit the world as a whole: people will be ordinary. Or something.

Anyway, with this entry I would like to reveal a new monthly deal with this endeavor: The Man-Crush Of The Month. Every month, I will profile a new man-crush.

July's Man-Crush of the Month: Shia LaBeouf.