Celebrity is the cheapest coin, the shakiest currency. Debased to begin with, it loses value quickly. Today’s Taylor Swift becomes tomorrow’s Taylor Dayne. Sound impossible? It’s not; it’s inevitable.

The stars themselves are burdened by fame’s presence, then tormented by its absence.

“You used to be big,” Norma Desmond is told in “Sunset Boulevard.” It is not a compliment.

The rest of us ordinary folk hoard the briefest encounter with celebrity, our personal cache of fool’s gold. I catch myself tossing a few chips on the table, bragging how Barack Obama once called me on the phone to complain about a column, how I chatted on TV with Oprah Winfrey and sat in the Bulls locker room, talking with Michael Jordan. I used to be big.

Opinion

But it fools no one, not even myself. “Self-praise

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