A Seth Pohorence Pop-Ed: The Image of My Estate

Holograms are hot.  No, seriously, holograms are hot. Never in my life would I ever think a hologram would cause people to break down or freak out or burst into tears. Somehow this was what went down at Sunday’s Billboard Music Awards.

Never would I have thought I’d write about the Billboard Awards, especially since the last time I saw a music awards show was the Grammys circa 1999. Never would I have thought I’d write about holograms, given that they were a fad with baseball cards in the 1990s. What’s next, 3-D glasses ... oh, wait ...

More celebrities have to think about using holograms as the launchpad for more lucrative deals. Think about it, Michael Jackson’s estate made more than $150 million last year. That’s a lot of money that other celebrities could use to buy homes and Ed Hardy tees. Me? I would use that money to build a replica of Double Dare set to then recreate the show.

In that situation, there lies one problem — I would be dead. How do I profit on my deceased estate before I die?

If there is one thing America has learned from the Kardashian family it's that you can make a shitload of money without actually having a job. That family somehow (I still don’t know how) knows how to get people to give them money for their family name.

Kim Kardashian married a mediocre basketball player for a hot second, and they made a ton of money selling the rights to broadcast the wedding, sell the pictures and maybe throw in a side deal to sell the honeymoon tape.

Now think about it. If they can take something like a wedding and make millions, why not take the future holographic image rights and sell them? Next time a multimedia company is in charge of hosting an awards show and wants to use your image to increase ratings, they will need your estate's permission to hologram it. The key part is to be super famous so that people will want to remember you. Billy Ray Cyrus and the Baha Men will never be able to make this happen.

Why stop there? If you’re in music, you need to have a recording session doing any song ever made. Little by little, like how JD Salinger’s estate worked it out, you release more pieces of music (in this case) every year. Unfortunately, once again, you will be dead.

But being smart and selling you image can be lucrative. I expect that if by chance a Kardashian were to meet their demise, Kris would probably pocket a seven-figure deal for autopsy photos. Unfortunately that would mean Kanye would play at the Grammys with a Kardashian hologram. I would only support it if it were Robert Kardashian, but only pleading to OJ Simpson to turn himself in.

The hologram I guess is here to stay. 2Pac, Michael Jackson, why not give us Princess Diana? Have Elton John play "Candle in the Wind" and make more money on that song ... again.