Meeting Famous People

I'm constantly reading stories about how people who have met Bill Murray, Jennifer Lawrence, or George Clooney are completely blown away by how nice and down to earth they are.

But you're more likely to hear about when a football player doesn't tip, or a movie star won't make eye contact, or a rock star asks if you can leave them alone.

It's a weird situation where one person is so excited to meet someone they've only seen on album covers or movie screens. It's like something in their brain shuts down. Usually their brain would say, "that's a stranger, stay away from them." But the excitement takes over and their body moves without permission from their brain. Next thing you know, they have stumbled up to Brad Pitt's table while he's having dinner and they blurt out, "Mr. Pitt, ILoveYouSoMuchCanIGetAPicture."

Now the unfair onus is on the celebrity. They have a few options.

1. "Please, I'm having dinner. Can I have a little privacy?"

In this situation, they have to hope this this person isn't going to immediately post this to Twitter how much of a jerk they are.

2. They wipe their mouths off, hand the camera phone to someone at their table, and say, "Sure, let's take a picture."

3. They say, "Why don't you pull up a chair? We'll get another glass for wine."

And then they become an internet celebrity for the next 12 hours.

I've only had run-ins with minor celebrities.

I sat right behind former NHLer Jamal Mayers at the Blues game last year. My plan was to let the game end and then ask him for a picture. However, Blues were winning 3-1 going into the third. Jamal sat down and then the Senators came back and won it 4-3. I decided that his time with the Blackhawks was bad mojo and stayed away from him.

The Riddlin Kids and I hung out in Mississippi Nights parking lot until roughly 12:30, cutting my sleep down to about 5.5 hours the night before I took the ACT. Really awesome guys.

I busted my forehead open in a mosh pit in college. As I was heading back to clean up, I ran into 4 members of Reel Big Fish. They actually stopped me and asked what the hell happened and after I flipped out for a few seconds on them, I had them sign a ticket stub. I pulled out this immaculately crisp ticket stub that didn't go with the image of my bloodied head and torn shirt. They were amazed I had kept it that crisp.

I met both Fall Out Boy and All American Rejects when they were openers for punk bands I was seeing. Pete Wentz bought me a beer and Tyson Ritter talked about music and how to record without a major label getting involved. Both incredibly nice people.

The only incident I had that was awkward, is the reason I thought about this blog.

It was high-school. I was moody as hell and loved yelling and being angry. Finch was one of my favorite bands at the time and I ran into 3 of the members at a Pointfest.

My dumb body turned my brain off and I sprinted across the blacktop and ran up to them saying, "Holy crap, you're Finch."

They said, "Yes."

I hadn't really thought about what to do beyond this point so I said, "I really like you guys."

They sort of awkwardly stared at me waiting for the "and then..." from me. But I had nothing. It was spur of the moment. Camera phones weren't a thing yet, so I couldn't even do the picture. So, after 30 long silent seconds, they just said, "Well, we're going to go watch the Used now."

It wasn't until much later that I thought about how much the "celebrity" has to work to make that interaction now crazy awkward. They have to be friendly, in a good mood, they have to have some standard questions they can ask to get a small conversation going.

I feel like I would be pretty good at making the general populas happy. But then there are days where I feel really tired and I just don't know if I could do it.

Candyland

We aren't a very big candy family. Really, we rarely crave any sweets other than ice cream. We crave that pretty often.

But the candy we have opinions about, we have strong opinions about.

I love Sour Patch Kids, dark chocolate, Baby Ruth, and red rope licorice. Sal is really into Dots and Cadbury Creme Eggs. Those are pretty mainstream and I feel like we could both find a group of people that agree.

I also defend candies that many people abhor. Peeps and Candy Corn... both my jam. Love 'em. But comedians and most people seem to really hate them. Like to the point where I fear physical violence from their reaction.

It's not like I melt Peeps and Candy Corn together to make a solid candied ball that can live in my insides forever. They are candies that I appreciate in moderation during the appropriate holidays.

But if you thought Peeps and Candy Corn were crazy candy choices, just wait until you get to my wife.

Sal loves all the candies I tried once as a child and wanted to throw up.

When I was a kid, my cousin Ryan and I took swim classes together. At the rec center there was to this day one of the best stocked vending machines I've ever seen. We systematically went one by one through the machine, buying a few snacks a week, figuring out things we loved and hated.

There were many things that we deemed were either lame or for old people.

The lame category was the mixed bag of peanuts or the normal potato chips. Stuff that either didn't have a ton of taste or were freely given out at all times.

Then there were the candies that we deemed were for old people. Zero Bars, Good and Plenty, black licorice. All disgusting candies that seemingly seem to be inspired by depression years. (After a short amount of research, all of these apparently were created during boom years, so maybe we were feeling too good about things and had to take it down a notch)

There's a Venn Diagram you could make. It would be pointless because it would essentially be one circle that said both Sallie's name and "Old People Candy."

The purpose of this post wasn't necessarily make fun of Sal's awful candy pallet, but was more of a plea not to let any of these candies into our house because they will sit on a shelf, mocking me with what should be a good thing.

But also, yes, I'm married to an 89-year-old man. Next time you see Sal, ask her if she has a Werther's Original in the bottom of her purse, my money is on "yes."

Will you go to prom with me?

I was listening to the Moth podcast this morning and an Indian American was telling a story about how he was going to go to prom with his best friend and then her family forced her to go with a white guy. He was crushed when he showed up at her door hours before prom and the captain of the water polo team was there.

Although my prom was nowhere near as crushing as that, it was surrounded by the weirdest of circumstances, and everything (including me) did as much as possible to ruin the night.

For most of high-school, my three best friends were this group of girls. It was an interesting dynamic. All three of them were sort of tomboy-ish and I was a sensitive poet future rockstar. In the rare instances where they were doing each other's makeup or clothes shopping, I hung out with one of the girl's gay brothers and played video games.

The leader of our pack was my best friend and I had a hugeeeee crush on her.

It all started the first month of high-school. I was in a new city, new school district, I had a 7:15 am honors geometry class that I hated. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to go in my room, dress in all black, and listen to Korn and be pissed off.

She offered me a piece of candy and introduced herself. From that moment on, she had my undying loyalty.

Anyway, fast forward to senior year, 2003. We almost dated a half dozen times. The timing never really worked out. One of us always had a boyfriend or girlfriend.

I wanted to ask her to prom, but I also knew she sort of liked this other guy. I had sort of shrunk back and figured, "Well, maybe I can pick up an extra shift at work on prom night." I was going to let this goofy dude take my friend to prom.

And then something happened.

The girls started being really secretive. They were hanging out without me. They started skipping our Tuesday - Thursday college class with regularity. We no longer drove around aimlessly on the weekend, stopping at Steak N Shake for cheese fries.

I was regressed to my freshman year where I just wanted to fold inside myself.

Finally, I snapped and asked what was up. My best friend hesitated, and then quietly told me.

I was told that one of the girls, not my best friend, was an idiot. She had sex with her 22 year old boyfriend without protection and got pregnant. And since she was underage (17 at the time) and didn't want her boyfriend to go to jail and didn't want to have a baby at 17, the girls drove to Illinois one weekend and got an abortion. And all the days they were skipping school were check ups at the hospital down the street to make sure everything was OK.

I left my friends house because I had a shift at Bandannas. I felt like I had been kicked right in the stomach. I didn't know how to process things. My brain was swirling.

I arrived to work, dropped my keys off, and decided YOLO. I realized that adulthood was coming quick and soon, my concern for the other guy would mean nothing. I had recently signed a draft card and we were going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. My short life could be over soon.

I called my friend right there and asked her to prom. I caught her severely off guard. She sort of said, "Ummm, I'm not sure. Can we talk about it later?"

Skip ahead a week and next time I saw her, I asked her in person, she said yes.

I went and rented a tux. Now most of you probably didn't know this about me, but I'm not much for formal wear. I had no idea what I was doing. I asked the guy at the mall tux rental place what a good tux was and he essentially rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, you want generic black prom tux."

I showed up to my friend's house and she looked gorgeous. I had made the right choice. She apologized profusely that she didn't look better, but apparently she had to do everyone else's hair all day and didn't have time for hers. She was in a terrible mood from the get go.

This is where the story speeds up because so much happened, the details were lost.

Then we arrived at the prom. Now another thing you might not believe about me is that I'm a terrible dancer. I'm fine for a few seconds, then I start over thinking keeping the rhythm, and then things get really white boy. So we have a couple awkward dances.

My friend's younger sister was also at the prom. She decided to take caffeine pills and wash them down with soda for some dumb reason. So she starts freaking out, and sweating, my date goes to the bathroom with her and is giving her water. Me and the sister's date awkwardly stand there wondering what's happening. We end up leaving prom early.

We go to a house party somewhere around Busch Wildlife. It's a pretty good party. I have a few beers. Everyone at the party does dumb highschool drinking where they are chugging cheap vodka and dropping Skittles into wine coolers. Things get out of hand. Then I walk in on my friend, smoking cigarettes with my only nemesis in all of highschool, and I lose it.

"How can you? This guy is a ... lot's of cursing happened here." Basically, I blew up over a cigarette. We all passed out, woke up the next morning, drove the 30 minutes back home not talking.

The prom hangover lasted about 7 days, and then things were back to basically normal in our small group.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Leave 'em Behind

As I get older, I've realized that growing apart from someone doesn't have to be an upsetting thing. It can just be a fact of life.

In middle-school, high-school, and to some extent in college, you sort of assume that the friends you have will always be your friends. You sort of think, only some huge drama will pull us apart.

I've always felt like there are unspoken tiers of friends.

There's the close ones. Generally, you can only have a few people in this tier because it's special. It's the "best friend" tier. These are the people that when all you want to do is go home and rest, going to their house feels the same way. They re-energize you. They are the people you call to have a drink when you've had a rough week.

Then there's tier 2. Sometimes these are former best friends that you grew apart from. Sometimes they are people that if given the right circumstances, could probably move into the top tier. These are people you invite out to your parties or you meet up to split a pitcher or margaritas with.

Then there's tier 3. These are the ones you like seeing, but you don't need to see. Sort of the peripheral people that you don't mind having drinks with, but you wouldn't call them to hang out unless prompted.

The drama comes when two people see each other as different tiers and one of them are not adult enough to shrug it off.

I thought we would be finished with this drama, but at least three different times we've had issues where someone is a tier 2 to us, but they are looking for a tier 1. I know, it sounds like some crazy MTV teen drama. These are basically 13-year-old relationships.

One guy was a shooting star. He was working his way up to tier 1. But the problem came when I didn't have a car, and we worked different shifts. We hung out maybe every other week or so. Which trust me, as a guy that loves alone time, is a lot of friendship time.

Well, this guy didn't see it that way. In fact, he sent me a message essentially dressing me down. It started with "Listen buddy..." Not a good tone to start things.

I invited him out one last time, but the damage was already done. This shooting star fell to earth, back into tier 3 and eventually out of all the tiers.

We've had another recently who was once a tier 1, but we work mornings, she doesn't go to bed until 2 am. She wants to hang out until 9 pm, we are in bed by 10 pm.

These drama situations always bring up terrible feelings. It's the closest I've felt to having a break-up since high-school. There's not really an easy way to handle these because unless both people feel the same way and accept it, someone's feelings are going to be hurt.

I guess the best you can hope for in that situation is that the other person doesn't make you feel bad about it.