Starstruck

A friend of mine produced a movie he was in - THE FURNACE. He said that out of all the people he's worked with Danny Trejo got the most reaction out of people on the street. He also said he's a real champ of a guy, would give the shirt off his back to help a friend. Plus, to show off his bad ass prison tats.

He's very approachable, from what my friend said. Shake his hand, I bet he's a nice guy.

Edit because I misspelled shirt.

Al, where is this party???????

Sorry, fabfunk, I don't think Danny Trejo is gonna make out with you.

Dude, you know you had that coming.

I guess I'll have to settle for drinks with Jack Black tonight on the East Side.

And by "drinks with Jack Black tonight on the East Side" I mean doing laundry.

Get down with the Thicke-ness...

I spent a good portion of my Monday rubbing elbows (disclaimer: no actual physical contact took place) with non-other than "Dr. Jonas Carson" from Not Quite Human 1 AND 2. Wipe your drool, mortals.


* Not my tattoo, BTW.

Here in Portland, all the celebs we get are basketball players. I work across the street from the Benson, the most expensive place in town, where most away teams stay. On that note, I was stalking Kobe Bryant yesterday as he was walking towards a nearby gym for a workout. Yeah, my lunch breaks are sad.

And by "doing laundry," you mean socket-fucking a hogtied and shrieking Ecuadorian fishmonger.

Danny Trejo is a real nice guy in person. I met him in a BajaFresh a few years back. My girlfriend at the time didn't know who he was (dumped THAT bitch like a sack of potatos!) so she didn't understand why I was excited. Great guy.

Who the fuck gets an Alan Thicke tattoo? The same kind of douche who gets Adam Duritz tattooed on his back?

Carla Gugino is doing a Tennesee Williams play off Broadway right now with Blythe Danner. I'm planning on going to see it in a couple weeks. Hopefully I won't make an ass of myself if I get the chance to meet her.

Tracey Gold maybe? If she can find the room on that bony "Lifetime MOTW" frame of hers. Not KC... Mike Seaver's got a new Father Figure since he's been Left Behind.

Doing laundry with Jack Black sounds pretty cool too.

I wish I could claim like Alex, but I've never been cool around pseudo celebrities, less the real thing. I was the guy who'd wind up getting too chatty with local bands I liked. "Hey man, what's the meaning behind that shitty facsimile of a pop metal song that if it were on the radio I'd change the channel to House music, Norteño or even our local version of Dingo and the Baby to get away from?" So when I finally started seeing real ones here in California, I'm usually too dumbstruck staring and thinking, Damn, they're short to be cool or otherwise.

C'mon. Let's not say things we can't take back.

....Show me that smile again (show me that smile)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEqw3...elated&search=

It would be awesome if that guy has Joanna Kerns tattooed to his other arm.

Danny Trejo, from all I've read, sounds like an awesome guy who's lived one packed life. I'd love to read his memoirs if he ever writes them.

Like Alex, living in New York for those three years got me pretty cool around celebrities--and I'd heard enough stories from my dad about them to know that the hype was just hype, but my one starstruck moment came on this night where I was completely tired and sitting on the steps outside a building at NYU at about 1030 at night when Martin Sheen walks by. I was alone, just taking a breather, so he probally thought I was a homeless dude or something. He said "hey" and I said "hey," and he keeps walking.

Now, like I said, I'm pretty cool about celebrites, but I'm also a huge, obsessive West Wing fan, and we'd only met eye contact for a second. He was much grayer and not as short as you'd think he'd be, but this was Bartlet. I had to know.

So I got up, followed after him (as he was probally twenty feet up the block), and I just go "I just go "Excuse me, are you Martin Sheen?" (luckily the only bit of lameness) and he says "Yes." We talk for a little bit about stuff; The West Wing and how it's awesome and my favorite show, the School of the Americas protest I saw him speak at in high school, how I had to leave school and stuff like that. He seems genuinly interested, which I appreciated. If, though, if I was any less exhausted, I probally would have been rambling on about Mrs. Landingham and Toby Ziegler and OMG ARE THEY REALLY GONNA KILL BARTLET?, totally laming myself out to the nth degree. (This was after the end of the sixth season.

But I don't. So we talk, and closing out with "I don't want to take too much of your time, I just wanted to say thanks," I depart. He thanks me for my kind words, and I head off.

So, in conclusion, I shook the hand of Josiah Bartlet. To this day, I still wonder if I dreamed all that shit up.

I just ran into Alan Thicke at the 7-11. We jammed to "show me that smile" and then talked about what a whack job Kirk Cameron is.

Did you ask him what it was like to bang Kristy Swanson?

I've never really met any celebrities, but my last job was as a receptionist in the Hamptons, so I spoke to a couple over the phone. It's a little strange to answer the phone and find yourself speaking to Martha Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Calvin Klein, and Helmut Lang. They were all very polite and professional. I only freaked out a little bit with Stewart and Klein, but only because she wanted to speak to the owner who was never in her office and notioriously hard to find, and he needed to speak to someone about ordering a vase and there were no salespeople available at first. I got enough shit from regular customers when I couldn't get them what they wanted, I didn't want to know what would happen with VIPs.

John Schneider (Bo Duke, Mr. Kent from Smallville) came into the station the other day for something on the news. He's a cool guy - cut us a station ID which is always groovy. A lot of people here freaked out and wanted pics and autographs and what not. He was a trooper. Again - cool guy.

I've met Helmut Lang in person and I wasn't impressed. For a guy who has become synonymous with the cerebral brand of minimalism that took the fashion world by storm in the late eighties he's a bit of a bore. I respect that his razor-sharp lines and high-tech fabrics are made for only the most disciplined of bodies but you can't coast on that forever. Honestly I'm a bit puzzled as to why he was named CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year in 2000.

Well, our conversation was pretty much along the lines of:
Me: Thank you for calling [Place Where I Work], this is SarahLynne, how may I help you?
HL: Hello, this is Helmut Lang. I have a one o'clock appointment with [your boss] today and I wanted to speak to him.
Me: Sure, I'll transfer you to [bossman's secretary].
HL: Thank you.

It's not much, but at a job where I had to deal with people who would either ramble on about their problems for ten minutes before letting me transfer them to someone who could actually help, or bitch me out and threaten to get me fired for something I didn't do, anyone who was polite and to the point was A-OK in my book.

Sounds like your experience with Helmut was better than mine. Maybe I just caught Helmut on a bad day, or maybe I was having a bad day. Who's to say?

Haha!

I dreamt once that I met Scorcese in a NY bar. I was in constant fear that someone was going to smash a pint over my face out of nowhere and then proceed to beat me to death. Does that count?

You know how if you haven't met a celebrity, you kind of have an abstract view of who they are based soley on movies, TV and interviews? Well, I just met Crispin Glover, and that doesn't change when you speak to him. What a strange, polite fellow.

Where did you meet him at a meth lab?

He was in New York premiering "What Is It?" Which I both hated and loved.

I once gave Jessica Simpson a wake-up call.

By which I mean...I just gave her a wake-up call.

When I worked for a record store in a mall in the suburb next to Oakland, I used to meet a lot of Oakland atheletes and rappers to the point that it got boring. Plus the fact that I never wanted to meet anyone, it was usually a who gives a shit experience. Yet, I got pretty starstruck the one time I met Tupac (2pac then) and, at the time, he wasn't a huge star. He had one CD out and Juice, yet, I was pretty blown away by meeting him even though, at the time, MC Hammer, Too Short, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco had all come into my store and were bigger stars. Now it makes sense that meeting Tupac was a huge deal but when I put it in perspective I shouldn't have cared.

Actually, at the time, I thought my biggest meeting was selling CD's to Money B from Digital Underground. And that Jim Martin from Faith No More was a regular.

My favorite celebrity FU was blowing off the doubly hated Darryl Strawberry who visited my store with a woman who was clearly not his wife (read: Mission Street Hooker, the season he played for the Giants, while so many customers were fawning over him.

other than that, I got to talk to Angelo Moore from Fishbone at a Lallapolloza and shake Filmore Slim's hand in Tahoe.


Yes, I realize that I'm totally dating myself with the majority of this information.

I'm a little nervous- tomorrow I'm meeting Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I'm gonna see if I can summon the stones to ask Inarritu about Guillermo Arriaga.

I've interviewed some pretty well-known people in the film industry and tend not to get starstruck because 1- I'm meeting them only for a few minutes, 2- it's not really meeting them in the real sense of the word as it's an interview- not that far removed from a business meeting (tho you can still have a laugh sometimes) and 3- I'm more concerned with getting good copy and getting my questions right than anything else.

However, if someone whose work I admired was at a party and a real meeting was possible, I could see myself becoming starstruck and/or nervous.

Does that make sense?

I stepped on a very famous Kurt Cobain murderer's foot in a club in Montreal years ago. And I shot pool with Michael Ironside and Joe Pantoliano.

That's all I have.