kim kardashian and kanye. (“kimye” if you’re into portmanteau.)

this all went down last thursday. in, like, the blink of an eye. it promptly bulldozed into my google reader and has yielded an unrelenting deluge ever since so- in case you blinked or were away for easter weekend actually living your life- let’s take a look at the epicness that has been unfolding.

(sidenote: i resent the fact that i find myself wanting to write about kim kardashian and am annoyed that she keeps handing me these situations tailor-made for thoughtful undergraduate investigation in General Celebrity Studies 101. oh, and on a technical note, in the interest of brevity i’ve resisted the urge to cushion every.single.word with an “allegedly” so, though that’s absent here, know that allegedness is implicit throughout. as you were…)

game on. for real.

we know it’s for real because he has written a song about her entitled “theraflu” and in rap, fyi, references to influenza remedies = TRUE LOVE.

so they’re dating. in that way that people “date” when they’re on a reality show. meaning: had you any inclination, you could’ve tagged along on what gawker quickly dubbed the “Date of the Century” as it was unfolding last thursday afternoon. in real time. from the comfort of your cubical. no lie.

this story of KK and kanye dating interests me for one reason: the speed with which the relationship has been rolled out to the public has been completely ridic.

their first public date leaked five days ago. this morning, the word “boyfriend” cropped up in a post-mortem of their first week as a couple and i wondered: boyfriend? really? are we there yet?

oh dear world, ready or not, we’re there. kim kardashian and kanye are boyfriend/girlfriend. would that we could all be flies on the wall of that DTR.

presumably this isn’t all nearly so sudden as it looks. if you pay attention to gossip you know there’s been sotto voco about these two for months.

there was also this picture of KK wearing HEAD-TO-TOE KANYE:

from this we can, i think, conclude that wearing HEAD-TO-TOE KANYE is the fashion equivalent of references to influenza remedies in rap.

a timeline of the ro(faux?)mance:

wednesday night, 4/4:  “theraflu” drops, wherein kanye raps that he was in love with KK when she married kris humphries.

thursday, 4/5: KK is seen leaving kanye’s apartment in the clothes she wore last night. she and kanye see the hunger games,  get a pizza after, and go to sleep no more.

friday, 4/6: KK is on the today show and- resorting to the language of fortune cookies-  says cryptically: “you never know what the future holds.” she’s seen sporting a mark reminiscent of a hickey.

saturday, 4/7: TMZ confirms- it IS a hickey. (confession: i find myself legitimately troubled by the hickey business [file that under sentences i had hoped never to write] and the highly charged tone of clinical salaciousness characterizing the reports.)

tuesday, 4/10: surprise! kanye is appearing on the upcoming season of keeping up with the kardashians (which, incidentally, premiers this weekend…) and the show is expanding to a one-hour format.

wednesday, 4/11:  the couple cover US weekly. kanye calls KK his beyonce. “sources” reveal that KK would totally marry kanye if he asked.

you see what this is, right? it isn’t real news and it isn’t reality either. academics have words like “dramality” and “celebreality,” but i find those terms lacking as well. what we have here isn’t so much any version of reality as an extended commercial for must-see-tv.

i’ve written before about how, if you’re going to be a celebrity, it would behoove you to have your private life and your public life and never blend the two. that’s obviously not what we have in the case of KK and kanye. this is private life as public performance taken to the extreme.

the amount of content on KK on any given day is a damn shame to begin with, but the response to the pairing of KK and kanye (at once so logical and yet, undoubtedly, signaling The End of Days) has been total hysteria. like, hysteria beyond the hysteria that is the gossip norm.

the coming together of kanye and kim kardashian. am i wrong in thinking this is precisely the historic moment for which wolf blitzer’s the situation room was invented?  it’s an event occurring at a rate too rapid to be consumed and processed. it begs for thoughtful curation and multiple TVs.