Friday, August 31, 2007

Seventeen Things

Today was a day in which I had seventeen things to do - appointments, meetings, commitments, etc. I managed to complete them all and get home by 10:07 p.m. The day ended with the United Way kickoff dinner, at which Bush impersonator, John Morgan, performed. Morgan was one of the runner ups on "The Next Best Thing" show. I didn't see the show, but Morgan was funny.



He was also incredibly pleasant afterwards, chatting with anyone who wanted to talk with him and posing for photos. Although I'm certain he would have kindly done it, I didn't stop him to get a photo for the blog because he is leaving the hotel at 4 a.m. to catch his flight. But I noticed he was talking to lots of people at the front of the room, including hotel staff. As he walked toward the back where I was helping pick things up I did tell him I enjoyed his show, but he was a little too realistic, which was true.

I like it when celebrities are gracious - some are, some aren't - and it often has nothing to do with their popularity. My very limited experience has been that it's the people who have a little bit of fame suddenly - i.e. they're starring in a TV show after struggling for years and don't know how to handle their sudden popularity - that are the most obnoxious.

I won't be specific about who it was, but a certain actor from LA Law when it was at its height is the most obnoxious celebrity I've ever had occasion to interview/meet/be around. He had signed on to do an event before he got famous. He wasn't happy about being held to his contract and sitting in the back room of a mall talking to a bunch of reporters was not his idea of fun. You'd be hard pressed to think of his name now, so you know it wasn't Harry Hamlin or Jimmy Smits. It was one of those other guys. Frankly, I'd have to look up the show to find his name.

This is in contrast to The Judds, who performed on the Kansas State Fair free stage in the hot sun years ago, even though they had the number one song at the time. I don't know how gracious they were behind the scenes, but they were giving people a good show. They had been booked a year or two earlier and in the meantime had had two big hits. It's what you dream of when you're a promoter. We left the free show they were doing to get to the show Loretta Lynn was doing at the grandstand. We had been given tickets and I figured one should always take advantage of seeing a legend.

That was years ago, of course, Oddly enough, I ran into Bob Gottschalk, the former director of the state fair, tonight. He would have been the one who booked the Judds all those years ago. I haven't seen him in ages. I interviewed him many times when he was with the fair and I was a reporter. He was always very pleasant and helpful. His daughter was in my leadership class last fall, and she did the Coming Home table for the tea. Yes, it is a small town!

That was the end of the day, and it was a pleasant end to the day. The United Way campaign is officially kicked off. I run a United Way agency and we could not survive without them. When you work for an agency that can't show what they do because of privacy, it's difficult to illustrate what you do.

I'm glad I have a little calmer day tomorrow. I have a list of things to accomplish but I can do them on my time table, which will be a lovely change from today when I was on a tight schedule.


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