I enjoy knowing people but I could care less if they are famous or if they are the same people you know. Well, maybe I care about the latter a little but I really don't care if everybody knows someone. I don't care if the media is all over them, curious about their love lives. I don't care that they are an actor or politician. I mean, there are people that everybody knows that I wouldn't mind meeting. Not many, though. Folks who aren't famous are just as interesting.

Last night we were having drinks with Austin Cabaret Theater's performers for this weekend, Karen Mack and Michael Holland. I think it's safe to say they are not really famous. They are performers, however, so maybe some people know who they are without knowing them. I liked them as people. Of course, their act is 70's and 80's music and I think it's safe to say that if it isn't sixties, American standards or jazz I don't know squat about it. And I'm not that informed about those musical eras and idioms. I like stuff or don't, I leave scholarship to others. I hope their show works for me without the nostalgia angle.

So Karen and Michael were appearing in the morn (this morn) on KLBJ 93.7 on the Dudley and Bob Show. Now I've listened to this show exactly twice and today was the second time. I listen to French tapes or books or something in my car. NPR even. I listened another time because they had a cabaret singer on the show, inexplicably, and I really love this guy who is most decidely not famous but is 22 and sounds like Frank Sinatra. He gives me good honest goosebumps singing stuff like When I Fall in Love. But, I digress.

But. Anyway. Dale Dudley came by the bar where we were having drinks with the nice people who do music I never heard of. Mr. Dudley might be locally famous I suppose. I wouldn't have heard of him but he is the brother of someone on Austin Cabaret Theater's board and he came to our benefit. Usually ACT does acts that do songs I know. Anyway.

Yes, anyway. Mr. Dudley brought a date to the bar. I can't remember her name. It's a shame actually because she was a very nice and good-looking and well-spoken gal. I would like to get to know her better because she just seemed like fun. She was talking about buying into that condo thing on the east side where artists will have studios.

But. Apparently she was Bob Schneider's manager or something. Everyone was peppering her (well...not everyone but Dale and Dale's sister and maybe someone else) to get the skinny on Bob. Bob Scnheider, that is, not the Bob (whoever) on the Dudley and Bob show. Oh, I guess they wanted skinny on Sandra Bullock, too. She was honor-bound to say nothing. Like I say, she was nice.

I didn't care, of course. About Bob Schneider or Sandra Bullock, that is. I would have never known that Bob Schneider was someone famous except that the media badgered us with rumors of a liaison between him and Sandra. And famous Sandra?

Well...as reported here long ago (2000 methinks) I sat by Sandra for a couple of hours. We slept in adjoining first class airline seats. I offered to put her bag overhead. (She declined.) She offered me an Altoid when she awoke. (I declined.) Now, I spent the first ten minutes, maybe more, that she sat beside me wondering where I knew her. I'd seen a couple of her movies, but she looked young and athletic and I figured maybe she had been on the UT volleyball team when I followed them. Something like that. Not a big deal, but a little embarrassing. I've met so many people that I'm horrible at remembering faces/names/stories. I stand around in Austin venues with people and we both struggle to figure out what the connection is, knowing we've met.

Anyway, I figured out the gal in the window seat with some books on forensic science was a movie star headed to Hollywood. (The flight was to LA...I was headed to Australia on a business class flight and this was my first leg...hence my presence in First Class on the domestic leg.) I figured this out just before I embarrassed myself and just before a youngster dashed up from coach to get her inflight magazine autographed. Sandra was nice to her but told me after that she didn't mind kids asking but didn't much like adults who did it. I didn't tell her I wouldn't have dreamed of asking for an autograph. Heck, I did good to know I was supposed to care. All the more astute passengers had missed Sandra's entrance to the plane and she went unmolested. I remember a fellow passenger in first class turning to me and asking if that was really her as she dashed off the jet way and into the care of an assistant. (This was pre-2001, you understand, when your assistant could meet your plane. I wonder how that works now?)

Anyway, where is this going? Nowhere really.

We went to a charity event tonight where you had a big cocktail party and then ate a meal with someone who is someone in the local arts, politics, academic, business community. We sat with Lisa Byrd who is the production director for BalletAustin. We all talked about the arts and stuff. Locally famous lawyer, Roy Minton, was at the table with his wife.

It's not that people who are well-known are more or less interesting than anyone else. I think people just want to associate with the fame. And maybe the fortune. I confess to liking to know people who are rich and have big houses you can get a look at. But I don't really care that I can't move in or use the pool. I have everything I want or need between my house and my club. But I like to look.

As far as fame goes, I'm satisfied with the type of subtle fame that comes from being in and around a community, in different roles, making different things happen. Tonight a woman came up to us that we knew from somewhere. She knew someone else we knew and she said, "Didn't you give Brenda a coffee table? I think that I admired it and she said, 'Do you know Forrest and Linda? They gave it to me.'" At first this seemed the most odd, unlikely story and then I remembered the coffee table. I didn't care for it. We always seem to be buying coffee tables and I think we finally got the coffee table situation right. This was a miss. Anyway, so we had it in storage and we gave it to this person. Who apparently tells her friends. Although probably she's gotten rid of the thing by now.

I suspect we are locally infamous for other things, too. And that's cool. I like people and all the connections between them. I just don't care any more about Sandra than I do, say, you.

 

 

 

 

 

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You know...it's amazing how healthy I feel.