Brushes With Fame

Kate at One More Thing… told us some of her favorite celebrity stories, and asked readers to comment. This post started as a comment, but I had verbal diarrhea and it got too long. A blog post is born!

I’ve had many run-ins with the famous and the wish-they-were-more so. All of them are memorable, except the ones I’ve forgotten.

The band at my 8th grade St. Valentine’s Day Dance was a terrific band named Atlantic City Expressway. I was on the Dance Committee, so was involved in set-up and break-down. Now we were quite rockin’ in the Jersey burbs, and would dance the night away at our dances. At that dance, though, there was little dancing because the band was soooo good. In addition to the normal drums, bass and electric guitar they had a horn section! And did I mention that the lead singer was hot? Hot! Afterwards my pubescent friends and I took some of the paper cupids we’d used to decorate the gym and got his autograph. I also got a very Monica Bradyesque kiss on the cheek. A few years later that lead singer, Jon Bon Jovi, became a Really Big Deal with a different band. A note to Wikipedia: I see you removed my contribution about Jon being in Atlantic City Expressway and playing at least one local school dance but you kept the edit about him having a very large penis. Couldn’t they both be true?

I hit the jackpot when I was doing promotions for a large fair, including but not limited to:

• I had to keep hiding newly-opened beer bottles from a very drunk Peter Noone (of Herman’s Hermits fame)
• Took a fun-filled golf-cart ride with a smokin’ hot John Stamos and a huge bodyguard named Tiny and later turned down an offer to hang out at his hotel (no hanky or panky being offered, just a really nice guy)
• Watched security remove a belligerent John Waite from the premises
• Was told off by Randy Travis’ wife/manager for no good reason, though he was perfectly wonderful
• Michael Damien. Enough said.

When I was eleven I spent our country’s Bicentennial 4th of July weekend in a hotel room in Toledo, Ohio. My siblings and I spent one of the Most Special Days in History in our hotel room while my father and stepmother went out on the town. In those days it wasn’t an arrestable offense to leave your children alone (and our ages ranged from 10-14), but at the time I thought they should have been arrested for robbing their children of the experience of celebrating the Bicentennial. Therapy has only slightly lessened the pain.

Still, there were two celebrity bright spots that weekend. We played pinball in the game room of the hotel with Mark Spitz and members of the US Olympic Swim Team. We also discovered that Peter Cole of Mod Squad fame was staying there. I had a mad, mod crush on him, so my sister and I snuck up to his floor and listened at his door. And we heard…nothing. We did not come away empty-handed: we reached under his door and pulled out a few carpet fibers and ran back to our room with our treasure. What can I tell you? I was eleven.

My father and stepmother were personal friends of the late, great Joe Williams. In addition to being one of the greatest Jazz singers ever, some of you may remember him as Bill Cosby’s father-in-law on The Cosby Show. One of my favorite celebrity moments was at my sister’s wedding, when he joined the band to sing my sister and new brother-in-law a special song. A terrific, warm man. May he rest in peace.

My most embarrassing brush with fame occurred in a local bar/dance club in the early 1990’s. Ed Begley, Jr. was there, and we wound up chatting with him for a few minutes. I knew who he was, sort of. I’d not watched St. Elsewhere, but I knew he was in it. I told him I loved him in the movie Something Wild . He looked at me like the moron I am and said, “Uh, that wasn’t me, that was Jeff Daniels.”

Whoops.

What about you?

How I Saved $10 in Gas

Husband has a pinched nerve, or something, in his neck-shoulder-arm region. While he’s no longer in agony it is still painful, and at this point he’s sick and tired of being in pain. Really, who could blame him?

I made an appointment for him with his orthopedist for tomorrow morning. Tonight as we cleared the dinner dishes I asked him if he wanted me to go with him.

He considered for a moment and asked if he was going to have to complete paperwork, and before I even answered him he said he’d like me to come.

I thought about it, and I’d need to change my plans for tomorrow. Not a huge problem, and I could do it, so I agreed.

After a moment I said, “Honey, do you really want me to come be with you? If you do then of course I will. But if you just want me to come to fill out your paperwork for you, well, then I’d rather not waste the gas.”

As I’m speaking a huge cheshire cat grin spreads across his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. You don’t have to come.”

Then he asked, “How did you know?”

“You’re not new,” I replied.

Competitive Credit

Husband has been asking me for almost a year to get his credit score. He’d been talking to a girl he works with and wanted to confirm that his score was higher than hers, most likely to gloat.

I’d avoided doing this because I don’t want to pay just to get the score, and indeed they charge you. Of course you’re entitled to one free report per year by going to www.annualcreditreport.com, but those reports do not include your credit score. I know we both have excellent credit, so to me the exact number is unimportant. I didn’t think spending money so Husband could beat his chest in superiority was a frugal choice.

Well, today he asked me about it again, and pretty much insisted. I’m his wife, not his mother or his boss. It’s important to him, even if I disagree. Still, I wasn’t going to pay for it so I went to www.experian.com and signed us up for their Triple Advantage credit monitoring service’s seven day free trial. I can get copies of our reports, including the score, and if I cancel during the trial period they will not charge my credit card. Of course I will thoroughly explore the Triple Advantage Program and not decide until my free trial is up whether or not to keep the service. Anything else would be unfair, would it not?

I ran Husband’s report first. His score is excellent, just as we expected. Approximately 95% of Americans have a lower score than he. Bravo! But not his co-worker. Uh-oh.

I then ran mine. My score was also excellent, just as we expected. Approximately 99.97% of Americans have a lower score than me.

Including Husband.

Hee hee.

Stamp Prices Are Going Up, Even if You Don’t Care

The United States Postal Service has announced a rate increase effective May 8, 2008. Whoopee!

The price of a first class stamp will raise from 41 cents to 42 cents. Not a huge jump, but doesn’t every penny count?

You can stave off this and future single stamp price increases by purchasing the United States Postal Services best kept secret: the Forever Stamp.

First introduced in 2007, the Forever stamp will always be valid as First-Class postage on standard envelopes weighing one ounce or less, regardless of any subsequent increases in the First-Class rate. Always.

Isn’t that great?

What was that?

You don’t use snail mail? You never mail actual letters anymore? You e-mail your friends and family and pay all of your bills online?

Okay, okay. You’re not going to get rich off of what you save. But at least in this era of shrinking package sizes and exploding gas prices it’s a place you can win. Even if it’s only a penny.

So, my frugal friends, go buy as many Forever Stamps as your budget can handle, but please don’t take out a second mortgage.  And please walk, because the price of gas will undo your frugal coup before you pull out of the driveway.

After all, you and I both know that someday soon it will cost fifty cents to mail a letter. And I’ll bet before Son enters high school it’s going to be $1. And you can use the stamps on packages, too. We can’t use the internet to freely deliver those. At least not yet.

And to think postage was only six cents the year I was born.

What’s that? By investing the money you’d buy Forever Stamps with and paying the price increases as they come you’ll be ahead?

Oh.

Never mind.

These New Related Links Are Right On the Money…

WordPress has started placing links at the end of our posts in an effort to promote other blogs.

I wrote the post Wish I Had Some Pretend Money, about my son and a lesson he learned about money.

Apparently WordPress thinks these links are possible related:

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• downward spiral
• Broken Piggy Bank
• kuanju is disturbed and she bullshitted the toilet guard lady…..

I’m afraid to even click on that third one…

If you’d like to remove this lovely option from your blog do the following:

• Go to your dashboard.
• Click on “Design”.
• Click on “Extras”.
• Click on “Hide related links on this blog, which means this blog won’t show up on other’s blogs or get traffic that way”.

Yeah.  That would be the one to click.

Wish I Had Some Pretend Money

Son is nearly four and has just recently started asking me to buy him things. Last week we were at the airport waiting for some relatives and he eyed the Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk a few feet away.

“I want a donut!” was out of his mouth before the kiosk even registered in my subconscious.

“You do?”

“Yes!”

I looked at him and asked, “Well, do you have any money?” This is my standard response to that type of statement.

He looked at me, reached into his pocket and said, “I have pretend money!” This is his standard response to that type of statement.

“Hmmm,” I replied, “I don’t think the lady will take pretend money. You need real money to buy donuts and toys and food and trains.”

My determined little guy pronounced, “Yes she will!” and proceeded to walk up to the cashier and offer her pretend money in exchange for a donut.

The lady declined, despite the extreme cuteness factor.

I did not buy him a donut. I wanted him to take the lesson with him.

This morning we were in a store and he saw a toy he really wanted. We had the same conversation we had at the airport (with truck substituted for donut), but this time when I told him I didn’t think the lady would take the pretend money he looked at the cashier, looked at the toy and put it back on the shelf.

And my son just learned something about money.

I’d love to find someplace that takes pretend money. I could use me some of that.

Something Bad Happened to Howdy Doody

My older sister is in town and together we’re going through the crap things my stepmother accumulated, sorting what gets kept, what gets sold in the massive garage sale we’ll be having, and what goes directly into the trash.

For several years a Howdy Doody doll sat on a shelf in one of the bedrooms, his creepy persona smiling down upon all who dared enter. The room is one all the kids use when they stay over, so it’s full of toys and dolls and other detritus of youth.

I noticed he was missing a few months ago but didn’t mention it to anyone. My younger sister, also visiting from out of town, noticed it right away when she arrived last week. She’d wanted to take him home with her (better her home than mine!) She did a cursory search for it to no avail, and after spending some lovely time together she went back to Georgia empty-handed.

Today as my older sister and I were sorting crap crap I heard her say, “I found him!” I turned around to see her pull Howdy from a corner of the room, where he’d been buried under a pile of dolls and stuffed animals. Howdy’s shirt was unbuttoned.

And his pants were around his ankles.

We called our younger sister and told her we’d found Howdy, that he’d been violated, but we’re hopeful that with some good therapy he’ll eventually be okay.

Poor Howdy. Those dolls look so innocent. And they chose their victim well. Howdy will never tell.