celebs

Meeting another hero.

Remember way back in 2002 when I met Michael Crichton? Well, about two months ago, when I started reading The Plan by Stephen Cannell, I checked out his website and saw he had a book signing coming up, close to home. So I marked it on the calendar. Tonight was that night.

So I rolled up there with Stout and checked out his discussion session about the new book. About twenty people were there in the seats listening as he talked about how he made it in the business. Need credentials? He’s written more shows than I can count. Basically, he’s the fucing man. Anyway, after the discussion, he took one question (the guy asked a question that required a long ass answer, and Stephen warned us it would take a long time, and was real cool about it, then told it…) he started signing books. So I got my book signed, and I asked him, “Is there any way I can send you a book?” He asked what genre it was and whatnot, and said he typically only reads within his genre, and he reads slowly because of his condition (he’s dyslexic) but said yeah, send it on. He loves to read, and said he’ll get to it when he can.

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Minnesota Chronicles, Vol. 1

What’s there to say about the fine state of Minnesota? Uh, well we’ll see if we can find anything worth saying. I flew in this morning to visit a friend, and – having never been here before – wanted to see the sites. Or is that sights… Either way, there were some things rhyming with “ites” that I had come to see. Let me back up a little though.

I’ll start with the plane flight. We were delayed in taking off by almost an hour. Sigh. Okay, I don’t mind sitting in the terminal. I started a paperback my friend Jim had given me. Called Jupiter. By Ben Bova. Have you read it? Well it may be the kind of book you only read in airport terminals, I’ll have to wait and see. Anyway, I had my iPod playing and was making eyes with a couple of honeys, so I wasn’t terribly upset. Fifty minutes late, we finally boreded. (Boarded. Yeah, I’m full of it today.)

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Backstage Pass

My dad was in the music distribution business for thirty-five years or so. To me this translated to many perks, because though he sold the hell out of all the popular artists, he scarcely liked any of it. I was therefore given boxes and boxes of albums, CDs, tapes, stickers, promo posters, album artwork, concert tickets and backstage passes. My room as a teenager was covered with shiny colorful posters of hundreds of bands – most of which I’d never even heard. By the time I was twenty I’d probably been to a hundred concerts.

I have a few stories of those encounters – some of which are forgettable – but others are pretty good, and good for punk rock points. I would work summers at the distribution plant, stacking CDs on shelves, pulling stock from boxes and other miscellaneous bullshit. I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen at the time. And they paid me one CD per hour. That wasn’t bad considering. I had a free ride at home, so I didn’t really need money as much as I needed the music.

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Cast of Characters

Stout and I sat on the balcony overlooking my pool for one or several hours last night. I don’t know why we didn’t get in the pool. Well, probably because we were drinking pretty heavily and it was dark. We came up with some pretty good character assignments for my books, should they ever be made into movies. For those of you who’ve read Midnight’s Park, check this list out and tell me what you think.

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The Burbank Chronicles, Vol. 1

I flew out to Burbank last night for an early morning appointment today. I’ve never been to Burbank, so the experience has been unique. I have been to California many times, but never this far south I guess. Anyway, a couple of things that have happened have been journalworthy, so I’ll write about them here.

I got to the counter at the Burbank Hilton and they gave me my room key – a 200-dollars-a-night king on the seventh floor. Yeah, that’s right. Two hundred dollars. Yawn. I’m not terribly impressed. The bed was nice, but the room was warm and smelled like fresh possum ass. It didn’t look all posh like I’d expected. I mean come on. It’s a Hilton. Anyway, when I got out of the elevator to go to my room, I didn’t pass Paris Hilton in the hallway.

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Oh, you mean that Pamela Anderson!

For years I’ve been looking at Pamela Anderson and wondering what the hell. I look at all the same pictures everyone else does, I suppose. I check the celebrity sites sometimes to see who’s showing their boobies in public. And I’ve seen just about all her pictures. I have actually even actively sought out her pictures on several occasions for research purposes. Seriously, she never did anything for me. I would look at them to see if I could see what the big deal was for everyone. And I never did.

Yeah she's all right I guess.Until I saw her new show on Fox, called Stacked. I don’t know what it is about seeing her in action, but obviously she became three-dimensional at that point. Of course I’ve seen “the video”. Again, it did nothing for me. But now that I’ve seen her acting and being more than a two-dimensional image in a picture, I’ve begun to find her attractive. She’s definitely got charisma. She’s remarkably charming, and I’d never have guessed it.

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Run-in with Aria

I got the opportunity to attend a new release movie expo the other day with Kimbre, who is an exec at a company that handles the accounting for Blockbuster. I had to of course dress up, which I’m not terribly fond of these days, but I threw a shirt and tie on the iron board and ended up enjoying myself quite a bit. I didn’t know what to expect, having never been to one of these expos, but there were a lot celebrities there. I thought that was pretty cool, and realized this was probably a little bit bigger deal than I had originally thought. I saw Willem Dafoe and Carl Weathers, Colin Firth and Julia Stiles. Probably the biggest star there was Will Smith. That was pretty nifty – though I didn’t get to talk to him or anything. But the one thing that made this event really worth going to was the little run-in I had with a C-List celebrity. Actually, if it weren’t for her fisting videos on the Internet, I doubt anyone would ever have heard of her.

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A Day With No Turkey

Can you believe it’s been a month and a half since I contributed? Well, I feel worthless. But hey, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day! A lot has happened in the last month and a half that I guess you should know about. I got a job (a real one). I work with an old high school buddy of mine now at an IT place doing – well, doing IT stuff. I no longer dread going to work.

The baby has gotten bigger, though it still remains within my wife’s belly. I’ve tried repeatedly to get it to come out and join the world, as we’re no doubt ready for it. All to no avail though, I’m afraid. And we have decided on a name if it be a boy. His name will be Kissel Ramon. Has a touch of class, you know?

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Trading Picks with Patrice

Heather and I are very big fans of Patrice Pike and the Black Box Rebellion. We go see them every time they come to Dallas. We’ve often driven to Austin to check them out, too. They are that good. It helps that our sister, Yvonne, is the world’s biggest fan, (she turned us on to them) and she lives in Austin, so we can stay with her when we make the trip down there. She’s also friends with Patrice, so it’s not rare that Patrice will come to her house to hang out for parties and we sit back in the backyard round a campfire trading guitars and songs.

At one of their shows here in Dallas at the Gypsy Tea Room, we showed up a little early to catch the openers. It was Jason and Zelina and Heather and me. Shelley King was playing that night, if I recall, and I was standing in the middle of the floor, by myself. Jason was against the wall on a barstool, and Z and Heather had gone out looking for a bite to eat.

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Blessed be She With the Boobs

Damn those are pretty.Speaking of women who like to show off their cleavage… Heather Graham sure has been doing a lot of that lately.

I know everyone appreciates a little cleavage in his java, but I think something’s up when a woman just all of a sudden starts wearing revealing clothing. Now I’m not saying she never has, but I don’t remember a trend as such. Recently, every event she’s attended, she’s graced us with a lot of between-the-boobs skin. It’s fine with me. But we haven’t been able to get her to take her top off since Boogie Nights. Is she trying to tell us something? Well, we’re ready to listen, Roller Girl!

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