Trimspa baby!

So, as one of my astute readers/commenters pointed out yesterday, I DID forget a big one, a major instance of rubbing elbows with a celebrity. In fact, it’s so big I can’t believe I fucking forgot it. It beats the crap out of shaking Shaq’s hand. It wipes its ass with Little Richard giving me a book about god. It totally buttfucks me buttfucking DJ AM and Travis Barker in some of the hottest below the waist, watch melting action you’ve ever fucking seen…okay, tasteless. Yeah, but whatever, they’re alive. Tell it to Jon Benet’s hairdresser. She’ll spin you a tale of woe, boy.
Anyway, so a few years ago, my band played the Roxy in LA with our friends in Hot Water Music (great band, by the way). The Roxy is this famous club that is known for, well, I don’t know, coke and hookers (and dudes who would someday go on to star in a reality show about coked out hookers competing for his gross dong) hanging out there. I guess it’s some sort of legendary bacchanal. Whatever. It’s a lame joint. There’s no room for gear, and the stage is small leaving no room to backline (that’s industry jargon for ‘leaving your shit on stage all night’). They told my band that we had to leave all our amps and instruments and stuff in an alley until we went on stage. This was fucked for a few reasons. First, it was raining and there was no protection from the elements. Secondly, it’s LA and there are all sorts of hobos and junkies and creeps everywhere and they weren’t gonna post any security in the alley. They were telling us to leave all our instruments and amps and equipment-essentially everything we need to play a show/make a living, unattended on the streets of LA in the rain. Shitty, right? Well, that aside, the show was actually great, and afterwards, our roadie had these friends who were bartending Anna Nicole Smith’s private birthday party right across the street. I had finagled my way on the guest list, so I headed over with my other friend Chris (who used to tour manage Snoop…he’s got way better stories than I do. Maybe he has a blog. I’ll check and get back to you) to check it out. Well, I WAS on the list, and I headed to the bar and got a complimentary cosmo. Then another. Then another.
I’d never been to (and have never been back to) a celebrity-who-is-shooting-a-reality-show at-the-time’s birthday party. It’s crazy. Okay, so it’s basically set up like the solar system. In the center, the sun, if you will, there’s Anna Nicole and that creepy lawyer guy and a few other people. Immediately surrounding them, in a super tight, impenetrable circle, are camera crews. Right on the immediate outskirts of the camera crews are desperate famewhores attempting to do whatever it takes to get into the shots, attract the attention of the principals, whatever. Ringing these pathetic dildos are the people with their own video cameras…I don’t know if they won attendance to this event at a lotto at Knotts Berry Farm or something, but it was strange. They were regular dudes out there with their camcorders just a-filmin’ away like it was the most normal thing in the world to bring your video camera into a bar and just kind of record everything (and no, these weren’t paparazzi guys. I know those dudes by their telltale vertical stripe beards. These were joe sixpacks like you and me and their fat wives). Then, right outside this second ring of cameras were the people who were presumably there with anyone caught up in this tightly wound, highly chaotic nucleus. On the outskirts, near Pluto’s orbit, to return briefly to the solar system metaphor, leaning against the walls were the people like me who were there to drink free drinks and stay out of the way. I was sort of by the bar and sort of by the back wall in a place that, despite what this description would lead you to believe, was somehow right between Anna Nicole and the door she would eventually leave from.
Okay, so I know what the big question here is, and let me tell you. No. She wasn’t the gigantic fat mess that we were hoping for when I started this tale. In fact, I later found out that this birthday party was a crossover event to introduce her new fabulous body and miracle-product-turned-death-dealer Trimspa to the world all while pimping out her show. Genius. So, yeah, she was thin and I have to tell you, she was absolutely gorgeous. Oh, I know. Nothing would make me happier than to tell you that she had gross skin or a huge bobble head or something, but there’s a reason she’s famous, and it’s not her talent (do you guys remember those Trimspa commercials when she’s so strung out and she’s like ‘want some money?’ and just kind of flings money at the camera in this “I’m-so-stoned-I’m-barely-able-to-control-my-arm” sort of way? I think she also asked if anyone wanted a Viper while we were supposed to believe that there’s a company in this world that would insure a commercial film crew filming Anna Nicole Smith actually driving a car. Heh).
Okay, so yeah, she’s not a good actress. And, I’m just gonna go ahead and throw out there that I don’t think it was her business acumen that propelled her into the stratosphere of celebrity. She was beautiful, and this night, at least, she was done up, she was in shape and there was no denying it. She was a bombshell. BUT, I was pretty loose, so take it how you will.
Anyway, I’m standing at the wall and the creepy lawyer is trying to get her to leave, so she’s saying good-bye to everyone, hugs all around and shit, but here’s the weird thing, she’s looking at ME the entire time. Kissing that girl on the cheek? Looking at me. Shaking that old man’s hand? Looking at me. It was the kind of thing that was so odd that I decided it was my own paranoia and likened it to some kind of illusion, or figment of my own imagination, like the Mona Lisa’s gaze that kind of follows you around the room wherever you are. Well, as she gets towards the door, it becomes apparent that I’m not just a paranoid guy and she’s no Mona Lisa, because, to creepy lawyer guy’s great chagrin, she’s walking right up to me. So she comes up to where I’m standing and puts her arm around me and before I even really can figure out what’s going on, we’re in kind of a slow dance sort of position, where her arms are around my neck and my hands are around her waist. (This sounds more strange than it is. Next time you’re at a bar, just kind of go up to one of your friends and see if unexpectedly making for the slowdance position doesn’t just work. I know. I know. Just trust me. I was, one second standing there with my thumb up my ass, the next second, in slowdance position. I wish I could say I had engineered it somehow, or even been aware, but alas).
Okay, so all of a sudden, I’m face to face, eye to eye with a woman who’s famous. I used to have a playboy with her in it when I was twelve, for fucks sake, so my mind is attempting to race. She’s about my height, and not to belabor the point, just stunning to look at. Everything was so colorful. Her eyes were so blue and her lips were so red and her skin was so white, she was like what Uncle Sam should have looked like if they really wanted people signing up to die. So, I’m standing there, in complete shock. I’m confused, a little excited, but WAY more confused, and also kind of stunned by her appearance, honestly. I mean, I had been expecting to see the big fat Anna Nicole. Anyhow, her face is maybe an inch from mine and she’s looking me, deeply in the eyes and she says:

“Are you here with Steve?”

And I had no fucking idea what she was talking about. So I said:

“Yes. Yes, I’m here with Steve.”

And then she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. Not with tongue or anything, but not in a way you’d kiss your mom either. Then she says: “Don’t you ever hurt him. If you ever hurt him, I’ll fucking kill you.” And I say “I promise you, I will never hurt Steve.”
Then she kissed me again, same way, and then creepy lawyer came and whisked her away.
I turned to Chris and said “dude, did that just happen?” and he said “Yeah man, I think so.” I’m actually still kind of struck dumb with the notion of what happened there. I’m pretty positive she thought I was some gay dude’s better half. Makes sense. I was in my assless chaps and leather daddy hat at the time. Regardless, it was wild. I called my wife immediately and told her the story and for the next two years every time she had any symptoms of any cold or anything she blamed it on me bringing Anna Nicole’s skank diseases into our home. Whatever. It was awesome. Now she’s dead. Anna Nicole, that is. So, for all the bullshit celeb meetings of my post yesterday, I left out the very, VERY best one. I should really write it all down sometime, you know. I don’t know if I’m always gonna be able to retrieve these memories. Someday, my grand kids will be like ‘grandpa, tell us the story of when you got a rimjob from the Jonas Brothers’, and I’ll be sitting there, eating my curds and playing internet chess with a nine year old girl in Helsinki, and I’ll say “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you kids are talking about.’ And that will be sad. Cuz that’s a real good story too.