Guess Who I Met!

No, my "Met A Celebrity" stories are not better or worse than anyone else's. Anyway, I happen to know a few people whose interactions with the famous and infamous make mine – and trust me, yours too – seem like accidental run-ins with the meter reader. So I simply can't portray myself as some kind of star-magnet.

My stand-outs, the ones I find the most amusing in hindsight, are those that weren't according to a traditional "script." I didn't own all their CDs. In some cases I hadn't seen all, or even a single episode, of their hit show. Their films weren't exactly on my must-see list.

We crossed paths, and I either knew vaguely who they were, or just happened to figure it out later.

I myself, on the other hand, meant absolutely nothing to them. They were at least on a "list" with an actual letter designation – A, B, C... H.

Some are mere single sentences in length. Like the time Larry King brushed me aside with what was probably his standard duck-n-cover line for strangers: "Hey-how-are-ya-dere."

Think a gravel-throated New-Yawker gurgle of, "I'm not stopping, I don't know you, please be nice and get lost."

There was that magical moment I found myself holding a door for Mary Tyler-Moore, mentally stunned by how impossibly petite she is – like watching a 5-foot-tall animated pencil with perfectly coifed hair, drawing a line out of the building, unaided by any push from some gigantic etherial hand. I could only grin politely, unworthy of actual speech in such close proximity to her awesomeness. I imagine she was used to it.

I've written before of my surreal encounters with Judge Lance Ito and CIA Director Leon Panetta.

There was one instance in which my long held perceptions of a particular famous person were altered 180 degrees, simply by a chance meeting as brief as a gasp. I was standing in the right office at the right time, at the newspaper where I worked, when Julia Child ambled in to hand-deliver a copy of her own press release for an upcoming culinary event in town.

My mind made the connection that I assume most minds would (you may even be doing it now) – a vision of Dan Aykroyd in drag as Julia, inadvertently slicing open a vein on Saturday Night Live.

Just the short batch of minutes I spent in the actual Julia's presence eradicated from my soul the premise of that cruel skit. She was everyone's grandmother – as warm as a cup of hot cocoa to the palm of a hand just in from a winter morning – as sweet as a box of chocolate cordials – as honest and earnest as a summer rain amid a dry spell. It was difficult to forgive Aykroyd after that, for a very long time, about a piece of TV comedy that had once brought laughter. Once.

Some encounters weren't as personal, but equally as touching – as the one in 2002, when on the catering crew for the Latino Film Festival in Los Angeles, I watched Edward James Olmos help his mother around a salad and dessert bar, holding her plate, describing each item for her.

At the same event, I was elected "Honorary Righthand Man" by the late legendary character actor Vincent Schiavelli. The caterer employing me that night made a spiced tortilla wrap that Schiavelli became addicted to. Upon serving him his second platter, I made the standard Waiter 101 comment that if he needed more, to just let me know. He took it literally, and whenever his plate became empty, he had a way of focussing a laser-like gaze at me from across the expansive dining room and drawing me to him – with a smile, and a fresh plate of tortilla wraps in hand.

I'll never forget the visage of a man whose hawkish face graced the screen in so many cherished films, mouthing from a distance with great urgency shaping his brow: "Rob! More!"

The most surreal meet-ups happen in places one would least suspect, but in retrospect suddenly reveal themselves as completely natural. In 2004, I was producing and co-starring in a stageshow about the iconic comedian Lenny Bruce. On our second weekend we arrived at the theater to find another event just concluding, with various crew packing up equipment and cleaning up a lavish hospitality area. We couldn't begin the set-up for our own show until after this group had finished.

During the wait, I stood around with a cup of their caterer's leftover coffee in hand, shooting the breeze with one of the people in charge of that earlier event. We chewed the fat about the combined hardships and joys of producing, and the general rollercoaster ride that show business can become. He asked me about the show we were about to set the stage for, and when I described for him our bio-play tribute to Bruce, he was intensely interested.

"You ought to stick around and see it," I said. He answered that it was a tempting offer, but he was expected at another social gathering elsewhere that evening. "Well," I replied, "if you're back in town the next three weeks or so."

We shook hands, and said our "see-ya's." He left with his crew and cadre of pals, and I went about my own tasks at hand to prepare that night's show. It had been refreshing to talk shop with someone else in "the business," especially someone who made it a full-time living – a trick I hadn't quite mastered.

Not long after, the CD for which that other group's event had been a "release party" hit the retail shelves. It was Brian Wilson's "Smile." The person I had chatted up in the theater kitchen weeks prior, was the man himself. Somehow within the context of a local hospitality event, and a personable conversation so casual, I had distracted myself from recognizing him.

One of the biggest clichés in Hollywood, is that when you meet a star, your "big break" is near. More often than not, it's exactly the opposite. If they are indeed real persons beneath the hoopla and sparkle, their meeting you is a much needed "break" – from their entrapment by the public spotlight – a moment to disengage from the pressures of stardom and allow their very-human real selves to breathe.

If you want to be a celebrity's instant ally, the surest way is to be the kind of person who allows them that freedom.

Up Yours

I'm a very permissive guy, despite my inner code of ethics. As long as you're not intentionally trying to bug me, harm me (or someone else), or engaging in some self-indulgent distraction with no regard for anyone else's risk of arrest for simply being in your vicinity, I'm pretty much okay with whatever it is you do.

Just because I will rarely verbally reflect upon or complain about your behavioral choices, enlightened or stupid, please don't assume that I embrace them myself. If I want a beer, I'll order one. You haven't ordered for both of us just because you've bought a pitcher. It's all yours – go for it, Wundergut, I'll watch. And the next one is on you, too, just like the first.

But there is one act that makes me cringe when I see it done incorrectly. I cringe because it is one of the few social body language cues meant to be pretentious, and in that regard, requires purity. And it's so simple, that to botch it is to shout to the world of one's lack of competence – with a misguided enthusiasm for its pretension. Like driving a racecar into the wall while waving victory to the crowd, on the NEXT-TO-last lap.

It's the "thumb-up" sign. It was invented by the ancient Romans, to communicate to the emperor from the back row how much blood and carnage was needed down in the arena to sate their dark loveless hearts. And in its original form, the "up" sign meant death. There was no "down."

The Upward Thumb underwent a transformation in World War I, used by the then-new breed of warrior, the fighter pilot, to let his crewmen know he was ready to hit the throttle – "Outta the way, I'm headed upward!" He used it to encourage his fellow fliers from across the airfield. And in the air, to reassure them from great distances, that he'd survived a barrage of enemy bullets. It was even used to salute a particularly brave or talented combatant of the other side – the first-generation sky soldiers actually revered each other, regardless of tail insignia.

The tradition continued in World War II, only reserved for one's own, not freely exchanged with those shooting at you.

So this is a hand gesture with a formidable history. Its pretension is counter-balanced by an unwritten résumé of gallantry and emotion. There is just one solemn rule regarding the thumb-up: it's sublimely masculine.

Sure, a woman can do it. A child can do it. There's no restriction as to who may give or receive a thumb-up signal. Roger Ebert considers it his all-but-legally copyrighted trademark, despite being a roly-poly moviehouse nerd his entire life.

The thumb-up is all-inclusive, and universally understood across most every creed and culture around the globe. A few cultures may consider it an insult via symbolic rectal indiscretion, but they are a definite minority.

It is ultimately a manly gesture to be sure. Its heart is hetero, yet that doesn't mean alternate-lifestyled individuals are denied from it. A drag queen managing a beauty salon in an orange-sherbet colored jumpsuit, pumps and painted toenails is totally welcome to utilize a thumb-up to approve the completion of a customer's handsomely worn beehive – no problem.

But the classic execution of a thumb-up... is macho. Despite the irony, it's like ballet: you either point your digits correctly and do it absolutely, or you're a pretender, and even those unschooled in its nuance can spot you.

The fay thumb-up, fraudulent and disgraceful, used by people who lack its implied self-confidence, is a feeble handshake pantomimed. Make a soft fist with your fingers, but poke your thumb out like a meerkat from a dirt hole.

It's holding an unused spatula in cooking class. It's making the head of a hand-turkey with watercolor.

A real thumb-up is a solid fist, with thumb held aloft. Hitchhiking in Death Valley. Popping off a rattlesnake's head. Make it look like your thumb's mere downturn will transform your hand into a pain-dealing flesh hammer. Your intensions need not be ruffian, and ideally shouldn't, but the true thumb-up is a rude buddy. Its message should be the exact polar opposite of the flip-off, but its intensity should be similar.

Just get it right. Regardless of your gender, orientation or circumstance, either do it like a man, or kindly mince your candy-ass out of the room.

I Want Your Blood

I was at a nearby medical center very early in the morning, to have blood drawn for some tests my doctor ordered. Before I could hand my paperwork to the old male nurse, who looked just a little too satisfied leaned back in his creaky office chair, he informed me that he could not accept me just yet. I was required to backtrack across the medical center commons to another office and "register." My name on my paperwork matched the name on my driver's license – not good enough? It was the rule.

Another man, sitting in the waiting area, yelped "do I have to, too?"

"Did you already," the nurse grunted?

"No," the man said, like a command, his face already purpling.

"Then you hafta."

I and this angry fella walked together back to the registration office that we'd apparently skipped over so nihilistically in our earlier haste. "That guy really burns me up," he sputtered. "This here crap. I sat there a good fifteen minutes and he knew it, before you walked in. I could'a done had this crap overwith."

I responded sheepishly, in an acquiescent attempt not to egg him on. Jeans, boots, plaid workshirt, bulging veins – a loaded shotgun I reasoned was close by, in his parked vehicle just an extra minute's walk farther.

"Yeah," I breathed, with a sufficient pause, then committed myself to a complete statement. "He seems pretty comfy in there." What the hell did THAT mean? I didn't know, but my big mad buddy found a grain of mysterious wisdom in it.

"Cushy-jobbed needle-pokin' ... whatever!" I imagine the word "whatever" was meant as a generic stand-in for the epithetic pronoun of one's choice.

When we arrived at the Registrar's desk, she shuffled us off to another waiting area, larger, more nebulous, easier to become lost and forgotten in. My new pal was just getting warmed up. "I sure don't appreciate this," he fumed lowly. "I sat in that other room for fifteen minutes with that nurse sittin' in there, and he knew all the time he was gonna make me walk over here."

The lady behind the computer terminal nodded, with a bent brow and a sympathetic curl at one corner of her scarlet-painted lips. "We're trying to get a sign made," she said, "so people will know to come here first. We sincerely apologize." She'd undoubtable repeated that a hundred times, it sounded so rehearsed. The building looked brand new, spotless and expensive – with no sense that any signage was intended that would lower its real estate value. Without question a recited apology was cheaper than hiring a sign maker.

"He could'a told me right off, but no, he let me sit there fifteen whole minutes."

Whole minutes, not just any. What could she say? He was right. I'd be a little insulted myself. Slowly he resigned himself to sit across the desk from the kind computer woman, who glanced over his paperwork, asked if the contact information on it was correct, typed it in, and deemed him freed to go resume his place in the bloodwork office with the rude male nurse. Just like that. The look on the man's face was quite obvious now. Words he did not speak were nevertheless roiling off his crooked, reddening brow. He rose like a hungry attack dog who's just realized his collar is off. I sat next.

A minute later I was too retracing my path back to the nurse's way-station, about fifteen steps behind Mr. Congeniality. I slowed my pace a beat or two, so as not to become again a human tampon for his torrential disgust – which I could hear pouring out even at my present distance. Finally he got inside, and I was able to fain blithe disregard, and concentrate on my own need to get past this methodical phase of preliminary medical bureaucracy.

By the time I made it into the office, he had already been ushered into the nurse's realm beyond the front counter. Muffled words were being exchanged. Then a low chuckle bounced through the duct system. And all fell silent. The needle had been brought into play.

A minute later, the nurse returned to his front post. My gawd, how sitting in that deskchair had distracted from his size. He was huge. And dressed in medical greens intended to routinely endure blood spatter.

The guy you don't mess with. And keenly self-aware of it.

Mr. Unfairly Treated eventually waddled out, holding his free hand to the bend of his arm, where a mesh bandage held firm a large swab of cotton. His once fiery countenance had been erased, or perhaps, glazed over. He chuckled at me nervously as he passed. "He's really pretty good," he said, as if auditioning for a radio ad for the medical center.

And with that he was gone. Out the door. In a hurry.

The nurse leaned forward, extending his giant hand for my paperwork. I was registered. And I was next.

I attempted to make my facial expression telegraph my thoughts. "All I said was that you looked comfy."

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RANDOM IS AS RANDOM DOES

Bureaucratic committees sit around creating compelling reasons not to let something happen. Let go of your "inner committee." The ego is a bureaucracy of one, with a thousand voices. How do you know "You" from your ego? That voice listing excuses is your ego, and the one listening to the voice is You. Listen to You for awhile.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Randy Travis look like some WWII vet had two families – one in Austria, and one in Arkansas.

Overheard on the Safeway Market loudspeaker: "Bakerage, you have a phonecall. Bakerage, you have a phonecall." It must've been on purpose, she said it twice.

When You Walk Through A Storm

Here I am, up very late, or very early depending on whether you watch the clock or the balance of light and dark between the blinds. Right now it is pitch black, and around three o'clock – when sleep experts tend to think most people are slumbering deepest.

I am not. I now live with a stubborn partner who loves the nightlife – neuropathy. Nerve damage in the lower legs and feet. His favorite time to party is when I'd rather be in bed, joining the rest of humanity on this side of the globe. If I'm not rested for work, keeping a roof over my head will become a bit more difficult than it already is. My pal neuropathy doesn't care.

If he were a separate person, I'd be on the web, looking up the criteria for justifiable homicide under California law.

Most times, my feet don't sense heat, and so assume room temperature. The human body's thermostat is set to run at 98.7 degrees, so room temperature translates into the sensation of standing barefoot outdoors in March before sunrise. That's while in bed with the covers pulled up.

If it were as simple as bundling up, I'd be fine. It's a kind of cold that seems to exist beyond the third dimension; my perception is wacked.

When my numb, frosty hooves aren't shut down, they are hyper. A toe will suddenly think it's just been pounded by an invisible hammer. Or a spot near my instep will at once feel a phantom wire brush being thrust into it, over and over, in rhythm with every other heartbeat.

The only real treatment is to retrain my cells, who've lived on junk for the past five years or so, to start welcoming glucose again – the kind produced by real food. I've actually starved my nerves by consuming so much wrapped and processed garbage, now they are on the brink of a systemic collapse. Only my cells have basically forgotten how to feed them... so I've got to convince them to resume their original job description, with a doctor's and a nutritionist's help.

Then I can walk in the meadow again, or at least feel like I can.

In the meantime, my nighttime companion continues to burn the midnight oil, well into the morning. I have ceased to enjoy the oncoming of bedtime, because I know I won't be alone with my thoughts, my mind free to drift off into the ether.

Well tucked in, I feel like I've been short-sheeted at a cheap motel. And a bland breakfast awaits, by prescription. There's no witty closer here... if I get this thing turned around, maybe I'll write one then.