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.

Workout’s Deenie and Gregg - a Lack of Respect

Workout is not a show I usually watch. I did catch part of the show last night, though, and it royally pissed me off.

I have seen it a few times, but usually it’s only on in the background after I’ve moved onto another activity while not bothering to turn the television off.

If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a reality show set in a gym owned by a woman named Jackie. The show depicts gym life and Jackie’s personal life. As part of the show they run a special, intense boot camp program called Skylab for very out-of-shape people to get into shape.

The portion that caught my eye involved Gregg, one of the trainers, and Deenie, one of the trainees. Deenie went into the assistant manager’s office to voice her concerns about her relationship with Gregg. He was late for their training session that day, and he’d been consistently late. She had a hard time scheduling sessions due to his intense schedule, and he also was not returning her calls in a timely manner.

Deenie is a morbidly obese girl who wants to be able to walk into the Gap and buy a pair of jeans. She wanted a relationship with her trainer that’s warm and supportive, motivating her and making her feel that she’s part of a team - just the way Jackie, the owner, described the program.

As they’re talking Gregg arrives and Deenie and the assistant manager confront him. Deenie’s trying to diplomatically tell him what she wants and Gregg is not open at all. Not even a little bit. He tries to make it all about her lack of commitment. She may or may not have a lack of commitment, but what Deenie is trying to address is his lack of respect. She’s paying him. Be on time.  And she wants a relationship with her trainer like the one Jackie described.

Gregg gets very defensive and starts bellowing about her speaking disrespectfully to him (she commented that the dismissive comment he made was “bullshit”), and at this point my blood pressure is boiling.

He’s dismissive, he keeps cutting her off, even says that Jackie doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And Deenie gets upset because she’s not being understood. At one point she comments that she wants more from him than the three hours per week in the gym and he replies that she can call him any time. She says, “You. Don’t. Call. Me. Back.” He doesn’t address this at all. He says, “Just, first of all, it needs to be understood that, I mean that, as far as this situation goes I am the expert.”

WHAT?

Then the assistant manager tells Gregg, in a misguided attempt to calm things down, that all Deenie wants is some love and attention, and Deenie and I both look at the assistant manager like she’s NUTS. He’s not her Daddy (though part of me wondered if she wasn’t reliving a past conversation in THAT relationship). He’s her trainer!  It’s not about love and affection, it’s about R-E-S-P-E-C-T (bow down to Aretha).

That’s NOT it, people. She’s not feeling like her trainer is responsible, and she’s not feeling like they’re a team.

True, she wasn’t effectively communicating her point. Also true, he was not open to listening AT ALL. He’s the expert and she has to trust him. She can’t work out due to injury (which he was derisive about), she tries to reply that there must be other suggestions he can make/things she can do to move things along but she can’t even get it out of her mouth before he gives a dismissive and final “No.”

No? There’s nothing? Nothing?

“There’s got to be a certain respect that comes with us talking or us training together,” Gregg says in an interview later. Exactly, Gregg. Why don’t you start doing that?!!!!!

UGH.

Later Gregg talks to Jackie, the owner, and totally skews it so that Deenie looks like a lunatic. Jackie totally backs Gregg, but tells him to work it out because he’ll feel good if he does, and if it doesn’t work out at least he’ll know he tried.

In the end Gregg calls Deenie and says, “Let’s let bygones be bygones,” and she agrees. And then he admits he doesn’t like her.

I would so not work out with him again. He would be so fired. I think Deenie is setting herself up to fail by staying with a trainer who has no respect for her. It shouldn’t be about him, but at the same time part of the motivation to keep working is knowing you have someone who will walk with you, sweat with you and kick your butt if need be.

Jackie should give this girl a refund. I don’t even need to see another show to know that this girl, who probably should never have been accepted to such an intense program to begin with (for medical reasons), will likely not succeed.

I know that there are good trainers out there who are not only educated in exercise physiology but also in how to keep individuals motivate. Having been a member of several gyms, though, I’ve run across attitudes like Gregg’s before. Why is it that so many trainers have contempt for the people that pay them? Of course many of the students lack consistent commitment. Of course they’re going to get discouraged and want to quit.

If they knew how to keep themselves motivated and knew what exercises to do and how to do them correctly they wouldn’t need to hire a trainer.

If all you want to do is train hardbodies to be harder than only have them as clients. Leave the really challenged people alone. But if you want to really make a difference in someone’s life let go of your contempt and your judgments and ride the wave of emotions to help create a healthier life with a fat chick.

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.

I Was Lucky. This Time.

Dear Petroliance,

I am alive, and I am thankful.

On Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 9:34 am I was driving westbound on C_____ Rd in P________, Florida. As I was approaching the Railroad tracks at D______ the lights started flashing to indicate an approaching train. I came to a complete stop as the gate arms started descending, and was dismayed to see an eastbound motorist trying to slip through at the last moment.

It was a tanker truck, and it was so late slipping through that I saw the gate arm hit the top of the truck. Right on the tank. The tank that holds whatever highly flammable chemicals you transport.

Yes, it was one of your trucks. I could clearly read “Petroliance” and the phone number (800-226-7011) painted on the back of the tank. Unfortunately I could not make out a truck number.

I am appalled. I sat there as your truck was crossing the tracks, and I flashed back, remembering the accident that happened fifteen years ago just a few miles to the south. That day a train hit a tanker that was sitting on the tracks, and the ensuing fireball fried five people doing nothing more than sitting in their cars waiting for the train to go by. You know, the people who had obeyed the signals and stopped. Of course the tanker driver died that day, too.

Here I was in that very vulnerable spot, first in line nearest the tracks, watching the signal gate hit your tanker.

Did your driver think the five minutes saved was worth the risk? I’ll bet he did. I’ll bet that driver fifteen years ago did, too. But I know that six families and one company (that was likely sued into oblivion) don’t think so.

And neither do I.

Perhaps it’s time to have a refresher course in railroad safety for your drivers, particulary the one that crossed the railroad tracks on eastbound C____ Rd at 9:34 am this past Thursday.

Agony

Well, we had an interesting day.

I woke at 5 am to whimpering. Thinking something was wrong with Son I jumped out of bed.

Turns out it was Husband, and he was in our bathroom about to run a bath. He had what he thought was a pulled muscle in his upper back/shoulder/neck, and was in an incredible amount of pain. He was moaning and cursing and breathing hard. I’d never seen him like that before.

So he soaked in the warm tub for awhile, and Son woke up shortly thereafter. I kept him away from Husband but could still hear him upstairs moaning. I kept asking if he wanted to go to a doctor or the hospital and he refused. I called his sister who happened to have some muscle relaxers, and she dropped them off on her way to work.

An hour later he couldn’t take it anymore. At this point we figured it was a pinched nerve because there was no relief, no matter how he positioned his body. I was going to take him to the hospital, but he asked me to call a family friend who is a chiropractor instead.

I’m skeptical of chiropractic care. Most of the chiropractors I’ve met have seemed more like used car salesmen than doctors. I’m not saying they don’t help anyone, but they’ve surely never helped me. I went several times to this same man after I threw out my back, and I tried him again when I was pregnant and Son was camped out on my sciatic nerve. It was of no help to me at all. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Still, Husband swears by chiropractic, so of course we go.

After one of the most disturbing car rides of my life (lots of moaning and even some tears, along with his observation that I’d never be able to handle the kind of pain he was dealing with (never mind the 8 hours of hard labor, six without an epidural, thankyouverymuch )), said friend saw Husband a half hour later. “Doc” pushed and prodded and massaged and electrically stimulated for about 45 minutes and Husband walked out of there a new man. Doc says he had two ribs that were out of place. I say he has a pinched nerve. But whatever, he feels better. $120 of not-covered-by-insurance fees later.

And thank goodness. I hated to see him in so much pain. It was really awful. Husband is a power-through-the-pain guy, and to see him in agony and not be able to help was no fun at all.

He slept most of the afternoon, and it started to bother him a bit around 4 pm. Long story short we were back at Doc’s office at 9:45pm, a sleeping Son in his PJs in the car with us. Doc offering to meet us so late was a godsend, even though he was a little surly. Now he’s telling us he doesn’t know if he can do much more, that the spot is really angry and needs to settle down. And he’s also asking for cash, as he doesn’t want to pay the credit card fees. Okay, fine. But it would have been better if you told me that before we left the house, as we have about $20 on us. I offered to write a check and mail it the next day, but the family friend opted to pay the credit card fees on the $60 of not-covered-by-insurance fees instead of letting me mail him a check. Whatever.

Sigh.

As I’m writing this Son is back sleeping in his bed, Husband is flat on his back in ours. I’m trying to get the image of my husband in agony out of my head. I want him to heal quickly.

Because he’s definitely getting poked in the eye for telling the woman who bore his child that she couldn’t handle pain.

Love Uncluttered

I spent the past two weeks pretty entrenched in family stuff. My Dad is selling his house and buying a condo on the beach. My sisters were in town, so we’ve been furniture shopping and started to sort through some of the stuff in the house, figuring out what he’ll take with him (15%), what my brothers and sisters and I will take (15%) and what will be sold at the massive garage sale we’ll have (we can all figure out this percentage, I hope).

I’ve talked in the past about the mounds and mounds of clutter and crap my stepmother amassed. My Dad lived in a house full of clutter with her for thirty-five years and never complained. The house was always relatively clean, but there was nary a surface unoccupied. And as each of us moved out of the house she took over our rooms and filled the closets and drawers with little gifts she thought the kids would like, or napkins for a future dinner party, or address books (we’ve found at least twenty, filled with the same addresses over and over and over again). There are hundreds of glasses, every kitchen gizmo and gadget you can think of (and some we still have no clue about), family heirlooms and enough serving dishes to give one to every soldier in Iraq. Well, not really. But a LOT.

Now that she’s not there my Dad’s innate need for order (I am an accountant’s daughter) has resurfaced, and with a vengeance. He cannot tolerate any new mess, any new clutter. Extra food brought into the house for the duration of my sisters’ stay is already out of the house, and my sister doesn’t leave until tomorrow. This after noon he asked us to clean up the kids’ toys, about 1/2 hour before more grandkids were showing up. We explained and he relented, but the mess really bothers him.

His new home will be very different from the one he lives in today. The furniture will be less ornate (his new bedroom and dining room sets are lovely and elegant with very clean lines), there will be surfaces uncluttered, and likely there will be empty drawers. To me a much more relaxing place to be.

But that’s not the point.

What’s so fascinating, so wonderful, so cool, is how he adapted for the woman he loved. She brought him so much joy that he learned to live with the clutter, the shopping bags, and the bills. He didn’t try to control the house or her love of stuff. I don’t think he even noticed that much; not until she was gone.

We all deserve to be loved like that, don’t we?

How’s it Hangin’?

Dear Florida Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller,

I’m so very glad that truck-nutz are going to be banned.  I must say I agree with you; there are better things the State Senate could be debating.

But really, who needs to see that?

How Men Hang Curtains

Six months ago I bought new curtains for our dining room. The cheap white sheers that are hanging there are too short and, thanks to Son, yogurt stained. Last weekend I asked Husband to hang the new curtains. After grousing, as usual, Husband went out to the garage to get some tools.

When he walked into the garage he commented that we’d had the last garage sale we’ll be having for awhile, so it was time to get it back in order (a socially acceptable translation to what was actually said).

He went through the shelves and moved things around so that they fit better and were more organized, and only threw a few things.

He got rid of empty boxes we’d been saving for moving, which doesn’t look like it’s happening soon. He told me at this rate we’d never move, and he was giving up all his dreams and accepting that we’re stuck here.

He spilled purple paint on the floor of the garage, cursed colorfully, and cleaned it up.

He organized his power tools, then started to straighten up his toolbox (one of those red Crafstsman boxes with the drawers and such). He decided he needed another toolbox. At my suggestion he went to Home Depot and got some pegboard (at $10 a much more frugal alternative).

He took out the power tools, cut the pegboard to the proper size, then hung the pegboard on the wall.

He built a table as a stand for the toolbox to provide more storage underneath for his power tools.

He lovingly organized his tool box and hung some tools on his new pegboard.

He re-organized his power tools again, storing some underneath his toolbox in the new space now provided for them.

He swept out the garage.

The garage looks great!

And can someone please tell me why a man would spend six hours organizing and straightening a garage, then throw the wax ring from a gallon of milk on the floor not two hours later?

My curtains? Still in the bag.

Red Flags and FedEx and Are You Sure That Check’s Not Going to Bounce?

Sometimes I just know things are going to go wrong. My internal red flags go up, and they keep waving, trying to get my attention.

They’re usually right, and they were this time too. Just not in the way I thought. In much weirder ways.

Last month I wrote about the freelance job Husband secured, and that we were waiting for a check to arrive before we fronted money from our pockets for a photo shoot. The check, for 50% of the contracted amount, arrived just in the nick of time and was deposited to our business account within fifteen minutes of the postal worker placing it into my slightly dewy (hey, it’s Florida) palm.

I was still nervous that the check wouldn’t clear. Just because a bank makes it available doesn’t mean the other party’s bank can’t refuse the check. Banking regulations require banks to make the money available to depositors within a few days, but if the maker puts a stop payment on it, or if it’s written on a closed account, or if the wrong person signed the check, or if for any other reason the bank decides not to honor the check it could take a week or more before my bank is notified, and then another 3-4 days for them to notify me via a bounced check notice.

Oddly, no one at the bank - not the teller, the head teller or even the bank manager - could tell me how long to wait before I was sure to be safe, though the manager did keep saying, “I wish more people cared so much about making sure they were writing good checks!” That’s disturbing on more than one level, isn’t it?

So, fast forward to yesterday. The first check has cleared and the project is over. They tell us they’ve overnighted a check to us (and faxed Husband a copy), then asked us to overnight the completed product back to them that day. It does not include an expense reimbursement for the photo shoot, which they agreed to pay and we invoiced them for separately but at the same time we invoiced the final payment.

Red flag alert!

Husband talks to them, and they balk about paying the expense (they didn’t use most of the footage from the shoot). Husband made a deal with their local representative that he would pay us for the photo shoot (next week some time, hopefully) and release the final product once we get a tracking number for the check. I’m not holding my breath on that expense payment. The dang red flags are blinding me at this point.

Fine. Whatever. I’m not happy about it, but it’s Husband’s call.

So, we’re waiting for the check, and it’s not arriving by the 3pm FedEx promise deadline. Or 4pm. Or 5 pm.

Red flags waving faster than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

We find out that there’s a weather delay in Memphis and we will not get delivery until today. Husband decides to go ahead and FedEx them the final product. I have visions of a FedEx envelope empty but for the “April Fools!” scribbled on a used tissue.

Breathe…

Now, you’d think FedEx would have us as one of the earliest deliveries, since it was already a day late. Customer service and all. But nooooooooo. I’d set it up to get e-mailed status updates, and at 3:06 pm I get an e-mail that the check was delivered at 2:59 pm. Yahooooooooo……….???????????????????!!!

Um, it was?

Red flags a-wavin’.

I didn’t hear the truck. Contrary to what some people think, I don’t nap the afternoon away (well, not every day). I was pretty sure I hadn’t been napping seven minutes ago, unless I’d suddenly been afflicted with narcolepsy.

I walk to the front door and open it. Nope. No package. I go to the tracking site and it says that the envelope was left at the door. Hmmm. My dog didn’t hear anyone approach…

So now I go outside and look around my front patio. I think perhaps the driver went to the wrong house, so I check my neighbors’ patios. Nope.

I go back inside and call FedEx. And as I’m making my way through the FedEx automated phone maze I hear a truck pull up.

Gotcha, sucka!

I rush to open the front door, and it’s obvious that he was not going to knock; he was just going to leave it.

“I know what you did, ” I say. He looks stricken. “I know that you said you delivered it at 2:59 when you weren’t anywhere near here. It’s now 3:14. That’s fraud, dude. ” FedEx has a policy that they will refund you if they’re late, and at this point they were 24 hours and fourteen minutes late. FedEx guy would get in trouble for delivering late, so he fudged it.

I told him I was going to call FedEx, that he better make this right; I’m pretty steamed. I’m irate. I’m offended.
The guy gives me a million mea culpas, and takes full responsibility. Tells me he’s totally wrong, it’s on him. Tells me he’s going to call his supervisor. He’s shaking.

The wind so totally went out of my sails. I’m a sucker for a guy who takes responsibility.

I realized that our client was getting their money refunded anyway. I realized that this guy could get fired. I realized that my next package could get accidentally “lost” if I made an enemy.

And he took responsibility.

So I told him I wasn’t going to turn him in. And I warned him that the next time the person could very well be even more of a bitch than I am, and he could very easily get busted. Seriously. And I sent him on his way.

Sigh.

Part of me wishes that I’d turned him in. What he did was just so wrong.

Ah, well.

At least we got the check. And in 3-6 months if it doesn’t bounce I’ll even write checks against it.