1. I sat next to John Goodman on a flight from St. Louis to Los Angeles. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans and was exactly as his character appeared to be on TV.  He was funny and charming and nice and admited to me that he felt depressed because he was told he needed to lose weight in order to play Babe Ruth in the movies.   I don't think his weight actually depressed him - what depressed him was the judgmenet of the studio execs, that it was some sort of liability to his acting.  I didn't blame him. It's not like anyone goes to a movie about Babe Ruth and thinks, hey, wait a minute, the Babe was thinner than *that*.
   
   
2. 
   I went backastge after a Rush concert. My friend Steve's sister was on staff for the arena.  We met the band and Geddy Lee kissed me on the cheek.  He has a memorable nose.
   
3. I met George Strait when my company sponsored his concert series. He kissed me  - I turned my cheek but he turned with me and got me on the lips.  He's eerily handsome and quite  short.
   
   
4. In the same job I got to meet the Rolling Stones.  Mick Jagger said "hello, angel".
5. 
   Once, walking through Houtson Hobby airport, I saw Steven Tyler, accompanied by a sort of rough looking woman and a pink and white baby in a pink and white carriage - it looked like a sleeping cupcake.  Psst, I said to my older colleague. That's Steven Tyler! My colleague nodded sagely. From Journey, right?  I groaned. "Pump" had just come out, and there was much ado about how the entire band was now clean and sober.  It was a pretty good album, I thought. So I walked back to where Steven Tyler was sitting (man, he has some rough looking skin) and said "I just wanted to say how much I like your new album."  Why thanks, he said. I appreciate that.  And congratulations on the whole clean and sober thing, I added.  He jumped up and came toward me. Thanks! he said. That really means a lot.  It wasn't easy man.  It never is, I agreed.  Can I sign something for you? he asked, pleasant-like.  No, that's OK, I said. I'll remember meeting you. But you won't have proof, he pointed out. True, I said, thinking of my Journey-loving colleague.  I can give you tickets, he said.  Thanks, but I already have pretty good tickets - I work for Budweiser, I told him. (Budweiser was the major sponsor of the Pump tour).   Oh, he said.  Paused. Got any beer? he asked in a low voice.  I looked at him blankly - it was maybe 6:30 a.m. - and he burst out laughing. Just kidding, he said.  Behind us, his wife scowled.
   
6. I met Bobby Unser in a small garage in my home town. My school friend Tina's father was an Indy race car driver, and Bobby was his friend. They called the garage The Todge, a word that has stuck pleasantly in my head all these  years. Someday I'll find a use for it, too.
   
7. I was in LAX, talking on the phone to one of my empoyees. Lyle Lovett walked by, saw my sudden surprised grin and tipped his hat at me in an amiable way.  You'll never guess who just passed me, I gushed to my employee.  Lyle Lovette!  Are you sure? he asked, to which I had no answer.  I mean, really - who could mistake that hair?  Later that night Lyle was the guest on The Tonight Show, where he announced his marriage to Julia Roberts.Years later I moved to Houston and ate at this little restaurant in Spring Texas that Lyle would frequent with his parents, who seemed to be very nice sweet country people.  Lyle looks *just* like his mom.
8. 
   I saw Claudia Schiffer  - sat next to her in fact - in the restaurant Gotham in (where else) New York. She was with a short bald dude. She was wearing a simple, casual strapless black dress  (a sentence that will never, ever be written to desribe my sartorial selections). She wasn't as pretty as she is in her pictures - she was prettier.  She looked like an angel.  Everyone was busy doing that blase New York thing, turning their eyeballs painfully in their sockets to see her, necks and heads unmoving. Not me though - I figured, I'm not from here, that's Claudia Schiffer and I'm getting me an eyeful. She gave me a sweet smile.
9.  I was in a TGI Friday's in Dallas, and Darryl Strawberry was there hitting on some women.  He semed pretty, uh, animated. I don't think it was the beer. Or the women.
10. 
    I was sitting in a cool bar called The Train Wreck in St. Louis when the Blues hockey team walked in en masse.  I got to sit next to Curtis Joseph for about an hour.  He talked about his recent break up. He was sad about it, you could tell. 

And the best for last:

 

11. I was walking down Haight Street on a balmy San Francisco night.  The door to Books Inc. was chocked open and I glimpsed some folding chairs near the back, all in a row. 

I wandered in and who should be standing nervously by the podium but Rick Moody, there to read from his latest, The Diviners. I stayed to hear if he'd read from the opening of the book, a sort of extended prologue that describes the sun rising (I can't do it justice, so you'll just have to read it).

A small crowd gathered - small enough that if I ever do an author reading and there's an itty bitty turnout I can remember that Rick Moody Himself drew a crowd of less than 20, and feel better. 

He said, I'm not reading from the opening but I'll put it to a vote - should I read something light and funny, or dark? My hand shot up for dark, and a few others did too, and so he read a scene involving a girl in a coma. 

After, he noted he had no idea if the details about the coma were accurate - his research did not include talking to girls who'd been in comas.  Anyone here ever in a coma? he askd. I glanced around, then raised my hand.

Oh! he said.  What happened? (thus establishing himself as a bona fide nice guy, since the real reason he was interested in my coma was to know how well he'd sussed the details).

I got hit by a softball, I told him.  In the face.   

Oh, he said doubtfully.  

It's not as weird as it sounds, I told him.  I was playing softball at the time, for one.

I'd like to hear more, he said.  Stick around after the reading, wouldja? 

I agreed, but then a line formed and he got busy signing books and I felt too bashful to wait around, so I escaped back into the balmy night.  I ended up having a few glasses of wine at a neighborhood place, and the more the wine loosened me up, the more I castigated myself for running away from my chance to chat with Rick Moody, my Purple American hero, my own private Ice Storm.

So I went home and sat down and wrote him the story of how I came to be in a coma, and then I looked up his publisher's address and mailed the letter off to Rick Moody, Author, c/o the publisher.

Then I went to bed, and when I woke up the effects of the wine were quite worn off and I went to my PC with dread, because surely I hadn't written Rick Moody a FIVE PAGE LETTER about my coma?

But I did. 

 Five pages? I fumed at myself.  FIVE?  You. Idiot.

I gratefully forgot about it (except that whenever I drank wine after that, I'd feel a crushing momentary embarassment).   A few months later I got a letter in the mail. It was a plain white envelope, and the sheet inside was typed, single spaced, with a sort of logo at the top - a blue star.  Underneath,  there was an address. 

I scanned down to the signature: Rick Moody!

 Rick Moody wrote me back!

He thanked me for the coma story.  He apologized for taking too long to write me back. He said, I didn't feel like I could write something worthy of the story.  He said, If there is a way to feel insecure, I will find it.

He said  "you have a great voice". 

I should clarify, this is was in the context of the coma story I wrote, not in the context of my actual speaking voice, which is pretty ordinary.  He was complimenting my writing voice. Rick Moody! Complimenting my writing!  Years later he wrote the foreward to Miranda July's collection of shorts. I was jealous. 

Still, he said it. 

 He said lots of other stuff, too. He was quite funny in that oddly endearing, depressive way many writers seem to have.  In the letter he mentioned he'd be doing some signing at City Lights (the book store/publisher that published Kerouac) in San Francisco a week or so hence. 

At least, I thought he *meant* signing - what he wrote was singing, an easy enough typo to make, and he'd made a few in his letter, all of which (but this one) were neatly crossed out with a pen with the right spelling printed above.

Which leads me to:

 

12. I went to City Lights to a Rick Moody signing. Only there was no reading or signing.  But there was singing. Rick Moody sang! Along with a band! And the band also featured Daniel Handler. As I realized this I felt briefly cool. It was like being in someone else's life.