Dude, I'm Almost Famous Too!

Karen, of For the Love of Pete asked "How famous are you? Who do you know? Or who has your brother's girlfriend's cousin met?", a couple of weeks ago, and I meant to answer quickly, however, school, that awful sickness, and life got in the way. Now that I'm back in action, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I think I told you about how I used to babysit for our neighbors, innocuous enough, buuuut, they were songwriters. Yeah, everyone in Nashville is. They wrote songs for Willie Nelson.

One of the most popular songs they did was The Last Thing I Needed The First Thing This Morning.
I liked babysitting for them. I learned about Buddha and vegetarianism, and they taught me, the daughter of an avid hunter, the wonderful phrase " the only way to shoot an animal is with a camera"! what a novel notion for my young developing and influential mind. I sopped it up like gravy with a biscuit on Sunday morning!

My uncle Freddy was a fireman. But on the side,he did stage lighting for the Grand Ole' Opry. When I was a little girl, I got to hang out backstage and meet Mini Pearl, Grandpa Jones, Little Jimmy Dickens, and whew, I can't even remember them all, to be honest. I was too young to be impressed with country music. And the Grand Ole' Opry seemed cheesy and silly to me.

My ex girlfriend, The Wanderer, used to have an on again - off again affair with one of The Byrds, at least, that's what she claimed. But I can never remember which one it was. So, by proxy, I've slept with a celebrity! Well, kind of, maybe...

Why couldn't she have slept with Henry Rollins? Sigh.

My wife took me to a party at Alan Jackson's house. Let me just say, that was by far, the coolest party I've ever been to. And I must say,I've been to parties in which ceilings literally fell down. I've been to parties that police had to break up. I've been to parties that had fountains of alcohol and punchbowl's of various drugs and I'll stop there for legal purposes...but the Alan Jackson party had helicopter rides, hot air balloon rides, golf carts to get around his property on, you name it. It even had Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, but they arrived after we left.

I had another brush with a country star, but it didn't go as smoothly as the Alan Jackson party. of course, that was leisure and fun and Alan is genuinely a nice guy, so there's no comparison, really. This incident happened when I worked at Kmart. I was helping an elderly gentleman shop for clothes when I heard this "psssst! PSSSST! PSSSSSST! Hey! HEY! HEY YOU! MISSY! I need some help here!" I turned around and there was this man, somewhat disheveled, waving me over to him. I was somewhat perturbed, because it was obvious that I was already helping someone else, so I said, "Sir, I'll be happy to help you, just as soon as I finish up with this gentleman" to which the disheveled man replied " MISSY, don't you know WHO I AM? DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? YOU MUST NOT KNOW WHO I AM DO YOU MISSY?" Now, I was getting pretty riled up myself, 1. because my name is not Missy 2. because my name is clearly printed on my name tag 3. what a presumptuous ass to expect people to know who the hell you are and to stop helping this nice elderly gentleman to help your belligerent ass4. if you're so friggin important, why the hell are you shopping at Kmart?

I responded something to the effect of, " No, sir, I don't know who you are, and honestly, I don't care. As I said, I'll get to you when I'm done helping this gentleman!" Well, apparently Mr. Marty Stewart doesn't like to be kept waiting, or to not be recognized. Obscenities ensued. My boss, some stock clerks, and security appeared. My boss, a HUGE country music fan, was saying " Oh my god! That's Marty Stewart! I'll handle this!" She smoothed things over and helped him find his jeans. I never was a fan of his before that, and never will be now.

Oh! I almost forgot, last but certainly not least, is my wife's friend, LSP who works at Channel 4. She does graphics for the news and is buddies with the lovely and talented weather lady, Nancy VanCamp. I got to hang at Nancy's house for LSP's birthday. She has nice vincas and great taste in wine and cake.

So you see, in a very obscure way, I'm almost famous too! It's kinda fun to recount brushes with fame, so come on, what's yours?