FACE OFF
Everyone I know has fantastical celebrity stories.
How they used to babysit for, met up with, hung out with, slept with, fought with, were next door neighbors to, or just palled around with various famous and/or important people. Bar fights. Seedy motel room encounters. AA meeting bondings. Cocaine swapping solidarities.
Save myself.
When it comes to the fabulously wealthy, influential, or well known, my experiences are quite tame. Even the pseudo celebrities who I have come in contact had to slip down a few rungs from their already unenviable position on the collective consensus of tabloid self worth.
So in a true tribute to banality, here are my biggest celebrity moment:
Getting my picture taken with that guy who played "Face" on the A-TEAM.
See what I mean? I couldnt even fit Murdock into my social calender. Forget having George Peppard stop over for Thanksgiving, or Mister T over for a tupperwear party.
It was some half assed auto show, that tauted all of your favorite tee-vee show gadgets, cars, and paraphernalia.
On the whole it was quite a disappointment. First off, the A TEAM van that they promised wasn't even the correct color. It was just your run of the mill grey van, with nothing at all special about it. If there wasn't a poorly constructed banner rumply announcing "The official A TEAM VAN!!!" I would have thought the caterers had simply decided to park in the civic center. Kit from KNIGHT RIDER wasn't that impressive either. I guess I expected to be able to talk to the car. I was young, so the notion of artificially intelligent cars were well within my scope of reason. Made a hell of a lot more sense than how David Hasslesoff got to be an international celebrity and actually threw a concert on the Berlin Wall.
Either way, Face was going to be there. For those of you innocent to the pop cultural landscape of the mid eighties, all you need to know about the A Team is that they were four vietnam vets wrongly accused of yada yada, and now they wandered around helping out the little guy whenever they ran into them. They also shot magic bullets that couldnt hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range. They could also build anything from the contents of a metal lunch box and an alarm clock.
Mister T had a fear of flying, yet would foolishly eat or drink anything offered to him while he ranted and raved about not wanting to fly, even though each week they poison him and drag his fool pitying carcass on board.
Face was the token "good looking" guy. As long as your tastes tend to favor JC PENNY khaki slack models. He looked like a slightly less radioactive George Hamilton. He didnt really seem to have a personality, but boy could he wow the ladies. How this would come in handy in some paramilitary capacity is never fully explained. When the shit hits the fan you really want that guy whose ass looks just so in dockers pleated pants, and want to die with the knowledge that the guy laying bleeding next to you got a hell of a lot more action in his lifetime than you.
Maybe you could ride his coat-tails into handsome man's heaven, at least.
Then again, really wasn't all that good looking. It was just written into the show that he was irresistible to the ladies. He would bed farmer's daughters or dress up in a suit and wander around aimlessly in mansions filling the rest of the team with information about locations and what not, all the while displaying as much charisma as a paper towel dispenser.
At least Murdock had the power of insanity on his side.
But he was at the civic center. Allowing people to drag in their kids or their confused elderly to get pictures next to him. We arrived late and Face had someplace to be. Probably had to bleach his skin or try and iron out those crow's feet that looked like the fancy footwork of one thousand ravens next to his hollow eyes.
Face was a sport, though, and fit a ten second photo op into his busy schedule. Despite his Soap Opera understudy looks, he took some time out for the little guy.
I was the littlest guy around. And I was unfortunately going through some uniquely child logic driven phase where I decided my smile wasn't as big as it could be. The solution? Curl the top lip up against the teeth! The end result were a year's worth of pictures making me look like some sort of pasty white rat boy.
Seeing that smile warming up, I guess face thought it was the least he could do for this little blond haired rodent child who was probably dragged out of the cellar for the off chance of seeing the mudflaps for the original BIGFOOT monster truck.
Outside of this? I got Mo Tucker's autograph and drunkenly asked John Vanderslice to throw away my trash.
He was a sport and dutifully threw away my empty Gatorade bottle and cigarette pack. Vanderslice 'o life.
Ok. Let's see what you guys got.
The seedier, the better.
How they used to babysit for, met up with, hung out with, slept with, fought with, were next door neighbors to, or just palled around with various famous and/or important people. Bar fights. Seedy motel room encounters. AA meeting bondings. Cocaine swapping solidarities.
Save myself.
When it comes to the fabulously wealthy, influential, or well known, my experiences are quite tame. Even the pseudo celebrities who I have come in contact had to slip down a few rungs from their already unenviable position on the collective consensus of tabloid self worth.
So in a true tribute to banality, here are my biggest celebrity moment:
Getting my picture taken with that guy who played "Face" on the A-TEAM.
See what I mean? I couldnt even fit Murdock into my social calender. Forget having George Peppard stop over for Thanksgiving, or Mister T over for a tupperwear party.
It was some half assed auto show, that tauted all of your favorite tee-vee show gadgets, cars, and paraphernalia.
On the whole it was quite a disappointment. First off, the A TEAM van that they promised wasn't even the correct color. It was just your run of the mill grey van, with nothing at all special about it. If there wasn't a poorly constructed banner rumply announcing "The official A TEAM VAN!!!" I would have thought the caterers had simply decided to park in the civic center. Kit from KNIGHT RIDER wasn't that impressive either. I guess I expected to be able to talk to the car. I was young, so the notion of artificially intelligent cars were well within my scope of reason. Made a hell of a lot more sense than how David Hasslesoff got to be an international celebrity and actually threw a concert on the Berlin Wall.
Either way, Face was going to be there. For those of you innocent to the pop cultural landscape of the mid eighties, all you need to know about the A Team is that they were four vietnam vets wrongly accused of yada yada, and now they wandered around helping out the little guy whenever they ran into them. They also shot magic bullets that couldnt hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range. They could also build anything from the contents of a metal lunch box and an alarm clock.
Mister T had a fear of flying, yet would foolishly eat or drink anything offered to him while he ranted and raved about not wanting to fly, even though each week they poison him and drag his fool pitying carcass on board.
Face was the token "good looking" guy. As long as your tastes tend to favor JC PENNY khaki slack models. He looked like a slightly less radioactive George Hamilton. He didnt really seem to have a personality, but boy could he wow the ladies. How this would come in handy in some paramilitary capacity is never fully explained. When the shit hits the fan you really want that guy whose ass looks just so in dockers pleated pants, and want to die with the knowledge that the guy laying bleeding next to you got a hell of a lot more action in his lifetime than you.
Maybe you could ride his coat-tails into handsome man's heaven, at least.
Then again, really wasn't all that good looking. It was just written into the show that he was irresistible to the ladies. He would bed farmer's daughters or dress up in a suit and wander around aimlessly in mansions filling the rest of the team with information about locations and what not, all the while displaying as much charisma as a paper towel dispenser.
At least Murdock had the power of insanity on his side.
But he was at the civic center. Allowing people to drag in their kids or their confused elderly to get pictures next to him. We arrived late and Face had someplace to be. Probably had to bleach his skin or try and iron out those crow's feet that looked like the fancy footwork of one thousand ravens next to his hollow eyes.
Face was a sport, though, and fit a ten second photo op into his busy schedule. Despite his Soap Opera understudy looks, he took some time out for the little guy.
I was the littlest guy around. And I was unfortunately going through some uniquely child logic driven phase where I decided my smile wasn't as big as it could be. The solution? Curl the top lip up against the teeth! The end result were a year's worth of pictures making me look like some sort of pasty white rat boy.
Seeing that smile warming up, I guess face thought it was the least he could do for this little blond haired rodent child who was probably dragged out of the cellar for the off chance of seeing the mudflaps for the original BIGFOOT monster truck.
Outside of this? I got Mo Tucker's autograph and drunkenly asked John Vanderslice to throw away my trash.
He was a sport and dutifully threw away my empty Gatorade bottle and cigarette pack. Vanderslice 'o life.
Ok. Let's see what you guys got.
The seedier, the better.