Name-dropping

All through my improbable life I’ve had the good fortune to rub shoulders with the celebrated.  It has been my great privilege to meet some of the most gifted people on the planet.  Some of these encounters have been planned for.  Others have been “totally random,” as my daughter, Natasha, likes to say.

But when confronted with the power of celebrity and talent, I’d like to think that I hold my own.  I try not to embarrass the object of my adulation- or myself.

My stats are pretty good in this department.  I was too cool for school with legendary couturier Hubert de Givenchy and Oriole’s pitcher/Cy Young Award winner Jim Palmer.  (Both quelle handsome, btw.)

And I didn’t pass out when Vince Gill appeared out of nowhere on our Colorado golf course and hugged me.

I even scored a big, full-on movie star grin out of the heretofore-bored and unsmiling Kevin Costner when I asked what he thought of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson’s eligibility into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“I think it’s just great,” he said, his huge smile instantly transforming him into a matinee idol heartthrob that made my knees go weak.  “What do you think?”

“I think it’s great, too,” I murmured breathlessly.  I was surprised I was still upright.  Close-up big screen wattage hits you like a taser.

But I’ve had my less-than-perfect savoir faire moments, too.  One of my favorites is the time that I stopped a guy on Michigan Avenue with the immortal line, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

I knew that I knew him.

And he patiently stood there and grinned while I feverishly tried to place him.  High school?  Nope.  Did we go to college together?  Nope.  Had we dated?  Nope.  Had I been married to him?

(Don’t laugh.  This has actually happened.  Once I saw a guy from a distance and thought that he looked vaguely familiar.  As I approached, I became more and more convinced that I knew him.  Right before he spotted me, I saw that it was a former husband- with his now-wife.  I beat a tactful retreat.)

Anyway, the guy on Michigan Avenue was a good sport (and handsome too, btw) and he kept laughing at my more desperate attempts to locate his file in my memory bank.

Finally I had to give up and move on.

A half a block away it hit me.

He was Alejandro Rey from The Flying Nun.

(And no, I hadn’t been married to him.)

Bill was a spouse of a completely different color.

Bill never recognized celebrities.  And he never remembered their names or achievements.  It didn’t matter what walk of life.  Sports, the arts, science.  He had no interest in other people’s accomplishments.  Period.

I always found this odd.  I had so many idols in every field of human endeavor.  (And in the animal kingdom, too, for that matter.  I have many favorite dog and horse heroes.)

But Bill was indifferent at best.

In the twenty years that we were married, I never heard him express admiration for another person- except once.  He mentioned John DeLorean, legendary entrepreneur- and player.  This is the only guy I can ever remember Bill saying was ok by him.

So, over the years, as I mingled with the cast of SNL or hobnobbed with the crew from Married with Children, I knew where Bill would be.  Sitting it out on the sidelines, waiting for me to come back to the real world.

But on rare occasion, like it or not, he, too, would have to mingle with the glitterati.

I always had to prep him in advance as to who the famous players were.  But the good news was I knew he would never embarrass himself- or me- with stupid questions or requests for autographs.

Before a big meet and greet, I would catch him up on the c.v. with whomever we were scheduled to encounter.  He might not remember their names but at least he knew from my prior faux pas never to say “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Thus coached in Celebrity 101, in 1994 we visited the set of L.A. Law.  I had won it in a charity auction, and the package included a day on the set with the entire cast and lunch with Jill Eikenberry and Corbin Bernsen.

The day of the visit we had some trouble negotiating the back waters of the Twentieth Century-Fox lot.  It was enormous, and even though we had a map, we could not find Sound Stage B.

Finally I stopped a security guard.

“Could you please tell us where Sound Stage B is?” I asked.

“I’m not a security guard, lady.  I’m an actor.  I play a deputy on Picket Fences,” was his surly reply.

“Then couldn’t you act like you knew where it was?”  I was not amused.

We finally found it ourselves, and for the next few hours, I watched, transported, as the cast shot the “conference room” scene that opened every show.  There were a lot of re-takes.  Poor Abbie Green.  She had to bite into a pastry again and again.

At long last the shot was in the can.  The actors broke and they all eyed us warily.  Finally, Richard Dysart- Leland Mackenzie, senior partner of the firm on the show- made his way over to me.

(I found out later that because Bill and I were both wearing suits- mine was a nifty gray men’s glen plaid number that I paired with patent leather oxfords- the entire company thought we were the “suits” from New York.  And we had scared them!)

I was thrilled.  I so admired his work on the show. And I had to ask him about his wonderful accent. Wherever was he from?

“I’m from a small town you’ve never heard of.  Readfield, Maine,” he told me.

I was suprised.

“Readfield, Maine? My kids went to camp there.  I go there every summer.”

Now it was his turn to be surprised.

Soon it was time for lunch.  Bill and I made our way over to the famous commissary. (Where we saw Mel Brooks being… Mel Brooks.)

We sat down at the table.  And before Corbin and Jill joined us, I went over their vital statistics one more time. “His name is Corbin Bernsen.  You’ve seen him in Major League. Her name is Jill Eikenberry.  She was in Arthur…. oh hello.”

The stars had arrived.  We all looked at each other and smiled.  And before I had a chance to open my mouth, Corbin leaned across the table and said to Bill:

“Hey, you look familiar.  Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Curtain.