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Sports

9 Photos of Steph Curry and James Corden Singing 'Frozen' While Chewing on Mouthguards

Yes, there's a mouthpiece involved. No, you do not actually have to listen to him singing.

If given the opportunity, you might as well become rich and famous. As exhausting as it seems, on many levels, it is probably still preferable to living on the material knife edge of professional and existential contingency. Also you can afford to take interesting vacations or go to pretty much any restaurant you'd like. Yes, you will almost certainly be recognized and perhaps even bothered by people you don't know on those vacations and in those restaurants, but you won't have to worry about whether you can afford dessert. It's not a perfect deal, but there are no perfect deals. With all that comfort comes some mandatory discomfort. You will be expected to be a good sport about all of it.

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As part of your duties as a rich and famous person, you should know that you may get a call from a booker for The Late Late Show on CBS, asking if you want to appear with host James Corden on that show's popular "Carpool Karaoke" segment. Don't hang up. You can't hang up, but also don't hang up.

They'll mention the other famous people that have appeared on it—Mariah Carey, Adele, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Bill Belichick, Sen. Orrin Hatch—and will point out that the segments humanized those otherwise superhumanly famous and disagreeably human people. They got in the car with Corden, a burbling and pleasant enough man with the high energy of a children's birthday party entertainer, and showed off both their talent and their best approximations of self-effacing good humor. "It'll be fun," the booker will probably say.

The booker will not say that this is part of the deal you've made as a rich and famous person, but this should be understood. The way that everyone knows you is not really the same thing as being known; you are visible, but that is not quite the same as being seen. You have an opportunity, if you get in the car with the loud smiling man and sing Heart's "Barracuda" as well as you can, to reveal yourself in a way that all the crushing exposure you have does not really allow you to be revealed.

For one thing, you're more or less in charge of it. Corden, and the whole infrastructure of people surrounding him, fundamentally need you, and so they work for you. They will work with you. The gimmick belongs to them, but at the most basic level creative control reverts to the most famous person in the shot.

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They might have a joke. Say you are Stephen Curry, rich and famous guard of the Golden State Warriors, and one of the things you are known for, beyond being brilliant at basketball, is chewing hideously on your mouthguard during games. Someone might suggest that mouthguards be made a part of your "Carpool Karaoke" appearance.

The songs you'll sing should be songs you know and love and sing often. If you're Steph Curry, and famously the father of a famously adorable young daughter, you probably have most of the songs in the movie Frozen committed to memory, because your role as a father has required you to watch—or at least be in the room—while your daughter watches the movie over and over again.

So maybe you sing some songs from that, you and James Corden, with your mouthguards dangling outside your mouth as necessary. Is it really that bad?

It's not that bad, really. It's just a thing, a few hours of your time doing something goofy. It's part of the deal, and before you get too upset about it you should remember that it is, really, still a pretty good deal.

You know that the segment will be on television, and that video of it will live forever on the internet. But there is nothing that says you have to listen to it. There's nothing that says anyone does. The bargain is non-negotiable, but it is also very broad. All things considered, you can live with it.