Twenty Famous People

I posted this on Facebook last night in a sleepless daze and then added to it in comments later. As I said there, I hope this doesn't come across as shameless name-dropping. It's meant to be funny and self-effacing. None of these happened because I am cool or hip in any way. Actually, all of them are either 1. family-related, 2. work-related, or 3. I'm-a-huge-dork-related, or all of the above.

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1. The first time Jonathan Safran Foer came to BookPeople, I was a nervous wreck. I had read and freaked out all over Everything Is Illuminated and recommended it to everyone I could. I was basically a literary groupie, except that I had a boyfriend and all so not really. Anyway, we had this 'literary happy hour' thing where people could pay extra to mingle with him with wine and cheese and stuff on the third floor. I got to hang out up there because of my employee status, and I brought a couple friends who were also fans, but I couldn't get up the nerve to go up to him and I kept circling and pacing like a crazy person. Then when I finally did, he made it easy by pointing at my Bright Eyes shirt immediately and saying they were one of his favorite bands. We talked about music for what felt like forever and I thought I would just die. Then he came back about a year later and remembered me by name, much to my delight and incredulous shock. This time I was his BP liason and I sat up on the fourth floor while he signed overstock. After the event, he invited anyone who wanted (and I mean anyone -- including customers) to Club DeVille and then offered me a ride there. When we got there, I almost didn't get in because I had lost my ID and I only had the paper thing they send you, and Jonathan Safran Foer helped convince them I was legit and let me in. This was before DeVille got so weird. Anyway, we sat outside. Chris Hughes was there, but he didn't work at BookPeople yet so we didn't know each other. Jonathan Safran Foer made me write bands I recommended (The Arcade Fire and Okkervil River, neither of which he had heard of at the time) inside his own copy of Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close. I was giddy and crazed. Later, he sent me a christmas card.

2. I've been face-to-face with Bill Clinton several dozen times. I was born in Hope, Arkansas and my dad was friends with Hillary soon after I was born, and later worked on the campaign and for the first year and a half in the White House. The funniest / weirdest Clinton story I have, though, happened when Hillary Clinton came to BookPeople. I was still relatively new at the time, I guess, or at least quieter about things than I am now, and leading up to the event I didn't really tell anyone about the family connection. I volunteered to work the event cause I thought it would be fun but it had been years and years since I'd seen the Clintons and I had gone from being a pre-adolescent to a sort-of grown-up in that time so I assumed she wouldn't remember me. She wouldn't have, but my dad had lunch with her (and several other people) that day and let her know that I worked at BookPeople. So whenever she was in the finishing up signing people's books and we were all kind milling around the 3rd floor events room she stands up and kind of yells "Where's Summer? I need to see Summer!" At which point I became so embarrassed and overwhelmed that when I hugged her I called her Hillary instead of Senator Clinton, which -- just for the record -- you Don't Do even if you're an old family friend. My dad lectured me about it forever later, and of course I had to deal with 90000000 questions from my coworkers, mostly the overambitious marketing director who wanted me to pass notes to the Clintons for him. Sigh.

3. When I was 20, I left my job and went with my two best friends to spend three weeks following Bright Eyes (read: Conor Oberst and 13 of his friends) around Texas and the west coast. By the second show, dudes from the band recognized us from being in the front row and dancing. By the time the tour was over, we'd ridden in the bus and hung out in hotel rooms watching Animal Planet. Nothing tawdry happened other than when we were walking back to our hotel in Eugene, OR and some guy thought we were hookers. All of this is something that I was really proud of at the time, really embarrassed about later, and that I have now come to terms with as something both kind of awesome and also incredibly nerdy. But here's the thing... We tried really, really, really hard not to be fangirls. Even though we were obviously doing the most obsessive possible thing with our summer, we hated and scorned the girls who screamed and cried over Conor, or slept with guys in the band and then wrote livejournals about it, or sang along too loud, or yelled requests. This may have all been very hypocritical, but it worked out for us really well because the people in the band didn't think we were nuts, and we didn't do anything we would have to truly regret later. We somehow managed to remain calm and collected when our shared idol was actually in our presence, sometimes to the point of ignoring him in favor of Casey-the-bass-player or our favorite Nick-the-keyboard-player (now of Tilly and the Wall and always being so super nice fame). We only interacted with Cocoburst a couple times over the course of the trip and every time we did we basically acted completely indifferent. Then in Seattle we were saying goodbye to our 'friends' and Mike Mogis told us to hold on for a minute. The next thing I knew there was a hand on my back and it was the tiny man himself. He hugged all of us and thanked us for following them around. The main thing I remember about it was that his voice seemed really tiny and childlike. I have no idea what any of us said in return. I think all of us were rendered pretty much useless. Despite show after show of feigning nonchalance, that moment was easily the most 'starstruck' I've ever been. Make fun of me starting now.

4. My first real paying job was for this company called Girl Games that made CD-Roms and, later, websites, for pre-teenage & teenage girls. I was their key to authenticity and I wrote pretty much all the content for their website, planetgirl,com, in my 'authentic' teenage girl voice. This was 1999 or 2000. We released a new version of the website and had a 'big' launch party in an empty storefront in this ghetto mall called Northcross that has an ice-skating rink. We had computer kiosks. I'd say approximately 40 girls showed up -- we were planning for 100s. But LaFace records had agreed to bring in this chick they had just signed to make a 'celebrity' appearance, signing giveaway copies of her debut single. It was Pink. ! She was bored since no one was there so she and I went ice skating together for awhile and she talked to me about her boyfriend. She was super nice and she told me she liked my shoes.

5. At SXSW one year, I went to go see Lou Barlow (from Dinosaur Jr.) and in between sets I went up to the bar and while I was waiting, Lou turned around and handed me a shot. We drank. I immediately told him I was a big fan in some kind of stupid giggly way and he walked off. Chance = blown.

6. At SXSW some other year, I sat next to Stephen Malkmus (from Pavement) at a BookPeople event. Every time I really think about the fact that this happened, my heart starts beating faster. Bonus: Mac (from Superchunk / Portastatic / Merge records) was there too. Le sigh!

7. At the second Clinton inauguration, I went with my dad to one of the bigger balls. All-4-One and Sheryl Crow were both playing. We didn't have backstage access but my dad felt that we should, so we snuck backstage together anyway. But the way we went was through some weird curtain business and as we passed through the fourth or fifth set of curtains we found ourselves smack in the middle of All-4-One's dressing room, where they were drinking liquor and playing poker. All we did was apologize and leave, with no time for outcry. My dad was fairly giddy by the time we ran into Sheryl Crow.

8. This story isn't directly mine but it makes me laugh: my dad met Cindy Crawford several time at the White House and, because he's hilarious, he had a picture of the two of them framed in his law office for years following. Some new guy at the firm was once in his office and asked him if she was his wife. !

9. I have lots and lots of Okkervil River stories, due to the awesome / ridiculous coincidence of them being from my town and also being my favorite band. But the best one is this: I was once asked by Will Sheff to indulge the director of a DVD being produced for the band in wanting to follow around a 'hardcore' OR fan around at a show at the Carousel Lounge. This was in 2006 -- after OR had 'taken off' comparatively speaking (the first time I was them was in a room with a capacity of approximately 45 people) but before they were doing things like playing David Letterman. I was flattered (Will Sheff called me! On the phone!) and agreed immediately. I thought I would do a quick interview at the gig and maybe be filmed some during the show. But before I knew what was happening, a cameraman showed up at the bookstore and filmed us from that moment until after the show (we had to stage a fake exit to stop the filming, and then come back to the club to hang out with our friends without the tail). For the record, this brief experience quelled any dalliance with reality television that I might ever entertain. Anyway, when we waiting in line, the cameraman asked me some questions. The conversation went like this:
Camera guy: So, how has Okkervil River changed your life?
Me: Um. Uh. It's. they've. um. brought better music to my life?
Camera guy: But, you know, what's the big deal? You're a huge fan, right? Have you come to Jesus or something?
Me [laughing, freaking out internally knowing full well that the joke I'm about to make is going to be on film forever for the subject to watch and knowing full well I'm about to make it anyway, because I have no self control whatsoever]: No, but I've, uh, 'come' to Will Sheff a few times!

10. When my dad worked in the White House I had a huge crush on George Stephanopoulos -- shutup, I was like 12 -- something that my dad apparently thought was okay to tell George all about, culminating in me actually being at my dad's office one day when he came in and my dad reminded him that I was the one who thought he looked like Tom Cruise. Worst. moment. of. my. life.

11. I was an extra in a movie that was filming in town just because Gael Garcia Bernal was in it and I had/have the hottest hots for that little guy. It was cool and he said hi to us (Michelle was with me, thank goodness) while buttoning his shirt and we freaked out a lot and that was that. But then a few days later, I was hanging out with Jeff and Wellington and we were at Spiderhouse, where we ran into Michelle and Lauren M., who sat down with us. This was fairly early on in my friendship with Jeff and Welly and I was pretty intent on impressing them by being funny, cool, and as mature as possible so they would keep wanting to be my friend. So when I looked up and saw that Gael Garcia Bernal was sitting a few tables away drinking coffee, I didn't make a big deal about it. I simply nudged Michelle and squeezed her leg under the table and tried to carry on as if it was no biggie. Wellington and Jeff didn't even really know who he was. We spent the rest of the coffee date trying really, really, really hard not to look / talk / freak out about it, which seems funny to me now because, I mean, seriously, I was trying that hard to impress Jeff and Wellington?

12. Not my story but I was there when it happened and Oh. Man. : Ted Danson came into the store and Rissa was working the registers and he was waiting in line behind this middle-aged woman who came up to Rissa's register and goes, loudly, "Is that Ted Danza?" to which Larissa responded quietly and coolly, "yes, I think that's Ted Danson," at which point the woman turned around and yelped "You're Ted Danza, aren't you? You are!," to which Ted Danson responded "Yes, yes I am."

13. I went to Comic-Con and I missed Sam Kieth's autograph signing but then I saw him eating lunch and I told him that he was my favorite comic book artist (at the time this was true) and he was really nice and I was really happy. Later on the same day, Judd Winick of Barry Ween fame (ah, who am I kidding, of 'The Real World: San Francisco' fame) told me he liked my Totoro pin. Comic-con was awesome! I am a huge nerd!!!

14. Danny Wallace, who wrote a couple books, including one called 'Yes Man' that the recent Jim Carrey movie was apparently based on, came to BookPeople once. I didn't read his books, although I've flipped through them and they seem funny and clever. But we had this life-sized cardboard cut-out of him in the store for the longest time and I had a weird obsession with it to the point that I had claimed it as my own once the event was over. Anyway, I couldn't work the event because I had a regular floor shift and we were short. So while he was speaking and signing on the second floor, I made everyone around me draw a portrait of Danny Wallace with their eyes closed (I was going through a phase) and I stapled them together and when he came downstairs to leave I gave the little makeshift book to him as a present. I thought, based on some combination of his pleasant visage, the seemingly light / optimistic tone of his books, and plain naivete, that he would be delighted. He wasn't. He was just, simply, weirded out.

15. I exchanged several emails with someone who I thought was the former child prostitute / drug addict turned author JT Leroy, who, as it now turns out, was a middle-aged woman posing as such. I still feel really weird about that and don't really fully accept that Leroy never existed, even though Ms Thang has already written a book all about her elaborate fakery.

16. My friend from adolescence, Dan, is the son of the author Denis Johnson. One time he came by the store and inquired about me. I wasn't there. He picked up a copy of one of his dad's book for some specific reason and when the GM, a good friend of mine as well, rang him up, he commented on the choice. "I love this book. Johnson is great." Dan nodded. "Yeah... um... he's my dad." Later, Bryan asked me if I really knew someone who was related to Denis Johnson. I could tell that he was sure that Dan had been making it up and had probably made that pretty clear at the time A few months later, I randomly ran into Dan at Kerbey Lane and he was like "OMG, I've been hoping to see you, hang on a second." and ran out to his car and came back with a signed copy of one of his dad's books personalized to Bryan. He'd been able to tell that B didn't believe him and he wanted to fix that. Bryan's face when I gave him the book = priceless.

17. Crispin Glover came into the store and i completely lost my shit. Who wouldn't?? Anyway, I kind of tried to follow him around because i'm a huge creep but then i got kind of creeped out myself when he started looking at porn magazines.

18. My dad, my friend Sarah, and I saw Jimmy Smits at this DNC event at a bar in LA, and my dad kept insisting that we would Really Really regret it for the rest of our lives if we didn't go up and talk to him. We were like "no, we have nothing to say to Jimmy Smits" but it had no effect.

19. The guy from the subway commercials, Jared Fogle, made an appearance at the Subway next to Toy Joy when I still worked there. They put him on the street corner along with a person in a subway sandwich costume. Brad said he looked into the mouth of the costume and the person was an ancient woman, but I don't know if that's true. It was really weird and uncomfortable because Jared was basically accosting people on the street asking them if they wanted his autograph, to which the typical response was "who are you?", to which he would respond "I'm that guy from the Subway commercials that lost all that weight" and then sign a Subway nutritional guide for them. I would have felt sorry for him except when he came into the store he was a jackass.

20. I've never met Bob Dylan but once I had a dream that he combed the tangles out of the back of my hair with his long fingers.

PS: I'm starting to think these stories make me sound like a crazy person and I want it to be known that I am capable of acting totally normal around famous people, like asking Luke Wilson if he needs help finding anything and giving him graphic novels to buy and only freaking out about his face the very second he steps out of the store and never, ever before.