Brush With Fame

One of my favorite ice-breakers to play when I used to work with college students was a game I called "Brush with Fame." This was a simple game where you would go around the room to introduce yourself and then share a story about some type of celebrity interaction or sighting. I usually shared two stories. The first was Mr. McFeely of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood visiting my kindergarten class. (I also met him in DC about 30 years later.)

The second story occurred at the hotel lobby (I don't remember the name) next to Pittsburgh's Civic Arena during the 1990 NHL All-Star weekend. Wayne Gretzky signed autographs for at least an hour and was very cool about it. Meanwhile, Mario Lemieux ran through the lobby as quickly as possible and signed only a handful of autographs. I'm not at all bitter all these years later that my brother was one of the handful of people that got an autograph. Plus, I still had my Wise potato chips Lemieux poster in my room for many years. Meanwhile, I also brought some hockey cards and may have asked Kirk Muller of the New Jersey Devils to sign his card. Unfortunately, I think I handed him a John MacLean card and he replied, "That's not me."

So why do I bring this up? When I lived in San Diego in the late 90s, I visited Los Angeles several times. I assumed that people see famous folks in LA all the time, but apparently, that wasn't the case. I did have one celebrity sighting though. While waiting for (probably well over an hour for) a table at the extremely popular and trendy restaurant called The Cheesecake Factory, I recognized someone picking up food to go. I tried to overhear the conversation between this guy and the restaurant staff, but I didn't get any significant information. The guy: Teddy from the NBC Saturday morning teen TV show Hang Time.

You may know the character Teddy better by his real name, Anthony Anderson. Anderson received an Emmy nomination for Lead Actor in a Comedy for his role on Black-ish. Whether or not he wins an Emmy this weekend, I can now include Anderson the next time I play Brush With Fame. And Carson Daly.

LAX to IAD

I don’t travel much these days, but a flight from Los Angeles to Washington Dulles, including a celebrity sighting and the chance to share my thoughts about the 2011 edition of Footloose, is certainly worth a blog post.

With an almost 3-hour layover at LAX and not wanting to pay for airplane food, I searched for a snack for the return flight. I thought about getting a bag of Combos, and although I don’t usually look at calories that often, I couldn’t justify buying something that had 130 calories per serving with 7 SERVINGS per bag!

Instead I purchased three chocolate chip cookies from McDonalds even though I would have preferred a box of McDonaldLand cookies. Do they make McDonaldLand cookies anymore?



I also bought a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, but I didn’t end up opening them on the flight. The bag provides information about winning “ultimate access to Super Bowl XLVI” in Indianapolis. I really hope I win!

The flight back to DC was delayed since the plane arriving to LAX from Chicago was late. One of the first people off of the Chicago flight was Carson Daly with his wife or girlfriend and his young son. He wore a Raiders hat as a possible attempt to go incognito. It didn’t work since my celebrity radar recognized him almost immediately (as did everyone else in my group).



If you ever need to fly from LA to DC, I highly recommend taking a Monday afternoon flight. The flight was half-way full at best, so I had my own row. I placed my bag under the seat next to me so that I could stretch out my legs. I also put my seat back since there was no one sitting behind me.

Time to briefly address Footloose. It completely lived up to my expectations as a movie that I would never pay to see. Please note that my random thoughts about this movie may contain some spoiler alerts, but really, the original film was released in 1984, so there shouldn’t be any spoilers.

The main male character moves from Boston to Texas at the beginning of his senior year of high school, meaning that he’s probably 17 or 18. We learn that he was/is a gymnast who got to go to Russia for a competition and was regularly drug-tested to be eligible for his team. He also plays football, fights, plays music loudly, is an excellent car mechanic, races school buses, and of course, dances, including flawlessly performing country line dances. I call shenanigans since this person doesn’t exist.

In addition, this character makes a speech to the town council near the end of the movie in an attempt to end the dancing ban. While he quotes several bible verses, I think he would have been more effective by quoting C + C Music Factory and proclaiming Everybody Dance Now.

While the trip was great, it’s nice to be home. This was the longest I’ve been away from my child, and I really missed him.