Thursday, July 27, 2006

Lame

I should preface this post by stressing how lame it is that I'm even taking the time to show this to you guys. How far has my life sunk when I need to revel in such fleeting and trivial moments of nonexistent celebrity? These moments aren't even in the same ballpark (pun intended) as Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. These are more like 1.5 seconds of fame. I'm so pathetic.

The first moment came during the previously mentioned ballgame that Alex and I went to. They were great seats and we were frequently in the line of the on-field cameras. I had DVR'd the game hoping that we might have shown up on TV. After hunting through an hour of footage, this is the best I could come up with:



Todd Helton had just gotten tossed and the cameras had panned to the right of where they normally did. So, an hour of footage ... frame-by-frame, and that's the best I got. Sad, so sad.

The second moment is my wife's. She just began a job at a huge sporting goods store that is opening only it's 15th store of the country here in Glendale tomorrow. They've been having special nights: family night, VIP night (with the governor), etc. this week and one of the local newschannels were on hand tonight. I'm not saying the name of the place because I don't want to jeopardize her job just because her husband is a wacked-out liberal. I'm probably being too anal-retentive about it all, but you never know.

Her going to work for a company that one could probably assume has a conservative bent seems odd. But the fact that it is a half-mile from home and Michelle can walk to work and that we get a sweet employee discount on camping and fishing gear outweighs the oddness of it. So, that's one less car that we are going to have on the roads polluting. Michelle will put about 15K less miles a year on her car.

Anyway, Michelle's moment was a lot longer (about 5 seconds) and you could clearly see her. It blew my moment away. Sorry, I don't have any video posted, just a shot from my TV:



Pretty uninteresting moments, I know. But it was interesting that they occurred within days of each other. There has only been one other time that I can recall that either of us has appeared on TV. A few years back, Michelle was interviewed by a local newscaster as we were walking to our car from a ballgame. Do any of you have any interesting TV experiences? I'm sure they have to be better than these.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have two:

Being in Chicago, it's relatively easy to get tix to Jerry Springer. The episode was "Long lost children" or some such nonsense - this was early Springer (94) when it trying to be legit. I was sitting next to this black guy who was sitting next to his girlfriend. Being me - I was cracking-wise thru the whole thing, and making this guy crack up, but not his girl. Well - at one point one of the uber-crackers on the stage was looking for his long lost son, and Jerry told the kid to rise so he could be seen. I pinched the guy so he stood up. No one was amused, especially the girlfriend. All throughout the aired show - you could see me cracking this poor guy up, but the "big scene" was cut.

The next is not mine, but my best friend Sean's and relatively short. He's at home watching Fox, and it just happens to be COPS. Lo and behold there's his cousin getting chased, tackled and arrested. That's a surreal moment any way you look at it.

Anonymous said...

two:

Once at the college world series Me and my mom sat in front of the family of a player. So our heads were in a bunch of shots.

Another time at a dodgers game in LA I was getting a hot dog and when I went back to my seat in the bleachers I heard the crowd swell, so I ran up the steps (which are by the outfield wall and stop at the top of the wall at the bottom of the bleachers) to see what was going on. I was just in time to see a home run sail 10 feet over my head. The home run made sportscenter and you could see me come up the stairs and watch the ball sail over my head.

dbackdad said...

John,
Springer and COPS? It doesn't get better than that. Considering how much white trash is in my family, it's kinda surprising that I don't have any stories.

Josh,
Both of those are better than ours. You made national broadcasts with both.

Laura said...

I only have two boring ones. A number of years back my dad burned his hand on a roman candle (not real bad, but he used to hold them - stupid I know). So anyway, he had to wear a white cotton glove on that hand for a while - this is when Michael Jackson was really big. We were at a White Sox game really good seats on one of the baselines. There's a shot of my dad on TV (we recorded it b/c as you said - you never know right?) and there's dad standing and clapping with one white glove, looking oh so Thriller...

The second is just a brief shot of me at a rally outside an Osco Drugs that refused to dispense emergency contraception.

greatwhitebear said...

I have 2, one interesting, one not so much.

The not so much one: My daughter and I were interviewed by a local TV station on St. Patricks day at the local Irish Pub. Everyone I know saw the damned interview but Shelley and I. I heard about it for weeks. What is funny is that only one person caught the fact that my 17 yr old daughter had a pint of hard cider sitting in front of her. The cop at the door was apparently too busy looking at her extremely ample cleavage to look at her face, and stamped her hand as being of legal age. Only person who caught it was an ex gf, who gave me hell for letting her drink.

My sons have a much better story. We were sitting in the right field, lower deck seats at Tiger stadium. My boys, then probably 6th and 10th grade, were standing at the rail where the center field bleachers start, trying to get Brady Anderson to sign autographs as he came out to play center field. There had been a bunch of guys down there the inning before, heckling him pretty hard, and apparently Anerson thought it was them, so as he was coming out to the field, he looked at them and grabbed his "cup". Fox Sports Channel caught the whole thing on tape, and played it on the sports report that night. My kids were heroes at there schools for several weeks, until someboy spilled the beans that THEY weren't the ones who had heckled Anerson so badly he reacted like that. Of course, now we know that 'roid rage likely had something to do with that!

Sadie Lou said...

My grandparents did a local TV ad for their Mexican restaurant. There was a shot of me taking an order from an overly excited family of four; then, at the end of the commercial, my mom and I stood with my grandparents as we waved at the camera.
embarrassing.
Channel 3 news out of Sacramento did a Human Interest story at the furniture store I was a sales rep for. The reporter asked me if it was difficult to keep from blowing my paychecks on furniture--I said," Not really. I enjoy selling people the stuff they need; I don't feel obligated to fill my house with useless objects." to which the reporter asked me to change my answer to something that didn't make the store sound like it was full of useless objects. We had a good laugh about that.

dbackdad said...

GWB,
Both of those are great stories. Any time there is danger of criminal charges, it's a good story.

Sadie,
Love the furniture store bit. They should have hired you for a national ad campaign. :-)