Rubbing Elbows with the Famous

My daughter Rebecca called me earlier this week, the purpose of the call being to brag. I quickly prepared myself to "one up" her, until I heard her grounds for boasting. She is a customer service representative for DirecTV, which calls for her to assist DirecTV customers all over the country by way of telephone. It wasn't all that surprising then, when she asked me "Guess who I talked to yesterday."

I asked who she had talked to and she responded "Jeff Gordon." I'm sure she wanted to bring this to my attention knowing that he is my favorite of the NASCAR drivers. She asked if she was speaking with THE Jeff Gordon, but certain information in his account information already told her the answer. It was him.

I started thinking about the many people of fame that I have run across, and I found myself on another trip down Memory Lane.

I remember my dad telling a story about me and him being out in a boat on Lake Travis in Austin when I was a little kid, and almost being capsized by the secret service detail for President Lyndon B. Johnson. I don't personally remember this, but it might very well be my first brush with someone famous.

I wonder why we remember so well our meetings with celebrities. Aren't they just like us... for the most part? Aren't I as much a child of God as they are? Then why go all goo goo gaa gaa over a chance meeting with say... Dan Pastorini, starting quarterback for the Houston Oilers back in the '70's? He walked in to the movie theater where I was attending my station at the concession counter. My friend Curtis pointed him out and then asked "Hey, aren't you Dan Pastorini?" The response was a curt "Uh huh" and then he went down the isle to the movie.

I couldn't help but wonder how many times he hears that or something like it every day. Probably dozens, at least. I really liked Dan as our quarterback, but I thought he was a little rude to us kids behind the counter. But then again, why shouldn't he be? He was there to see a movie, not at some public function where he would be expected to be more gracious to his fans.

I was on a train once with John Madden, the television football analyst. I was traveling from Detroit to Los Angeles and I spotted him in the bar car showing off his Super Bowl ring that he won as the coach of the Oakland Raiders. I didn't talk to him, but every time I went through that bar car, he was there talking and having a good time and showing off that ring.

I don't know why I was afraid to go up to him and just say "Hi" or something. You never know how the celebrity will react and I was scared of looking like a fool, I guess. What if he had turned away and not even acknowledged my presence? Not likely, being John Madden, but I wasn't going to take the chance. I might today, being older and not as easily intimidated by fame.

I spent a few days in Graham Nash's house in Los Angeles back in the late '80's. He's the "Nash" part of "Crosby Stills & Nash" fame. I was working for my brother-in-law, Mike, refinishing hardwood floors and he got the call to do Nash's home. I never actually met the guy, because he had taken his family to Hawaii for a vacation before he went back on the road with Crosby and Stills. He had a very nice home, complete with a grand piano in the master bedroom.

There were quite a few projects going on with the house while he was gone. The studio upstairs was being refurbished, for one thing. One guy was in charge of all the work being done, kind of a "contractor to the stars" sort of guy. He came bounding downstairs during our second day there asking if anyone had seen a 6 foot boa constrictor by chance. I jumped atop the nearest piece of furniture I could find, which happened to be the dining room table, and gave him a vigorous negative answer. He explained that one of the workers apparently had knocked over the cage that keeps him from terrorizing hardwood floor refinishers and the public in general, and he had escaped and couldn't be located. I responded by volunteering to keep a sharp eye out for him from the safety of the tabletop. He then, very nonchalantly as if it were an afterthought and totally unrelated to the snake escape, let us in on the fact that one of the kittens was missing too.

I became very afraid that we would find the snake and the kitten at the exact same time, one inside the other. We didn't, and we were told the next day that both had been found, each in different places, and both unharmed. Just another day in the life, but while I was there, I ran across a telephone list taped to a small desk in the living room containing the names and telephone numbers of all sorts of famous people, mostly from the music industry. I wasn't really tempted to copy all of the numbers down for my own use, but I wonder what would have happened if I had and started making phone calls.

Sheri has told me how she saw Tiny Tim in the lobby of a hotel in Toledo, and Ted Nugent at the restaurant next door to where she was working in Lansing, Michigan. She didn't talk to Tiny Tim, but the workers where she was working sent her over to the restaurant to offer Nugent a bottle of champagne, him being the Motor City Madman and a local favorite.

I was at a red light in L.A. next to a car being driven by Marion Ross "Mrs. C." during the "Happy Days" days. Sheri asked me how I knew it was her, and I told her it wasn't only that I recognized her, but the icing of that particular cake was the royal blue "Happy Days" jacket hanging in the back window. I also saw Anthony Geary, "Luke Spencer" on "General Hospital" driving while I was standing in line at Randy's donuts, also in Los Angeles.

And speaking of "General Hospital", I was hired, along with my ex-wife Kelley and her brother Jack, to participate in a television commercial for ABC's new fall line-up back in 1982 or thereabouts. I was taken to wardrobe and dressed like a construction worker, placed on a landing along the gangplank leading to the Love Boat, and all the stars from GH, Happy Days, Hart to Hart, and a few other shows came running down the plank, right past us on the landing, and then onto the Pacific Princess. It was really neat to be a part of that and see how things in the television industry get done.

My favorite though, is when Sheri and I were married by Dan Pastorini's backup quarterback for the Houston Oilers some 25 years after I "met" Dan at that theater. Giff Nielsen had long since retired from professional football, when I knew him as my Elder's Quorum President. A few years later as Sheri and I were preparing for our wedding, I found out that he was called to be a bishop down where my parents lived in Missouri City, Texas. I asked him if he would perform the civil ceremony for Sheri and I, and he accepted. He even wore one of the six Hawaiian leis that I had imported from the islands for the occasion.

I still can't help but be intrigued by the need to rub elbows with the famous. I have never been an autograph seeker, except when I was a youth and went to quite a few Houston Astros baseball games. I didn't get many, but even then I wasn't really into that sort of thing. As I learn more and more about celebrities and the struggles they seem to have with their own fame, I wonder two things... Why did they bother to seek fame if they are ill prepared to handle it? And why do we even care?

I'm just asking.

Maybe it's because we spend so much time with these people that we feel as if we really do know them on a personal level. I don't know. I'd really like your insights on the subject. I don't have a whole lot of interest in meeting Keifer Sutherland, but I would like to have lunch someday with Jack Bauer. That, I could get into.

I'd like to hear about your brushes with fame though... they often make good entertaining stories.

Until next time...