More Silly Celebrity Stories (I have nothing of substance to write.)

I think I stood behind Ray Liotta in a Lowe's food line once. I'm not really sure.

I'm pretty sure I saw Jack Osbourne at Target a couple of days before Christmas. I figured the guy just looked like him, but then a few days later I remembered that he used to come here to be on Dawson's Creek so maybe it was him.

My plumber was late one time because he was on jury duty that day deciding a case where James Van Der Beek sued someone over real estate. I only ever saw that dude once the whole time that show filmed here. I saw the back of his head at a breakfast house.

I saw Julia Styles eating dinner in a window once last year. My friend said, "So you saw Ben Stiller to then? I walked by that same window that night and they were eating together." I said, "Huh? I didn't see Ben Stiller. When I'm looking at girls I don't notice the guys around them. I'm way to focused."

I saw the oldest brother from Home Improvement walk by me on the beach carrying a surfboard.

My friend Kat saw Niles from Frasier in her rear view mirror one time. He was pulling a boat. He had a nephew that was in a bar band here. He would fly in just to watch him at Lucky's Pub.

A girl I knew waited on Donald Sutherland and tried to bag him up with free bottles of wine as he left. He told her he didn't drink, so she told him to take the shit anyway and give it to his friends. I would never give celebrities free shit. They should give me stuff.

All the actor guys in this town go to the liquid room when the get horny. It's not a strip club, it's a club where you can find nineteen year old girls who might strip for you later. A man is too old for that place at age 25. That Mr. Big guy was in there last year. Isn't he like 60? My sister saw him in Hawaii with his girlfriend and took boring pictures of him packing his car with luggage.

Martin Lawrence would stay in his hotel room at night but send his goons out to the bars to find strictly blond sluts for him under this premise: "Aye, girl! You wanna meet MaHH-INNN? Then come back with us to'da HILT-INN. He waitin' fuh ya."

Martin also had a basketball court built for him on the set of Black Knight and made the production company pay to bring Hooters girls to play basketball against him all day. Yes, I wrote that right. It's as dumb as it sounds.

He also didn't learn how to ride a horse for the movie like he promised but didn't tell the crew that. So they had to scramble to find "The World's Foremost Fake Horse Builder" to make a robot horse for Martin to ride in the movie. That one, too, is as stupid as it sounds.

Martin also had a "assistants aren't allowed to look me in my eyes" policy on the set.

Carrie Underwood: supposedly mean to little girls at the airport who just wanted an autograph. She signed it, but was visibly "bothered" by the whole thing.

A radio DJ told me that the rudest celebrity he ever saw was Ashley Judd. She flat out told some eager little girls that she wasn't signing anything for them.

Andy Griffith lives here. I've never seen him. I have heard several people say (brace yourself) "Andy Griffith is the biggest piece of shit you will ever encounter in your entire life. He's an awful, awful man.)

I tested this rumor on the radio once. I said, "I bet Ol' Andy of Mayberry isn't as bad as they say he is. I'm taking calls live on the air from anyone who has had a positive experience with Andy Griffith." Not only did nobody call to say that he was a good guy. Several people prophetically called me and said, "You are not going to get one call tonight from one person anywhere who has a nice thing to say about that guy. He is a vile person. He abuses his help." They turned out to be right. Not one nice call came in about him.

Those are my vapid celebrity stories for the night. I hope my mindless writing has entertained you.

More Celebrity Stories Why Not?

My study partner in college once showed me several polaroids of him making out with Katie Holmes. This was in about '99 when she was his neighbor in Ashton Place living here for Dawson's Creek. I can't remember the guy's name anymore. The secret name that Hawaiian Bryan and I had for him behind his back was "Arvid" because he was such a nerd.

So when he showed the pictures to me, I said, "Dude, why haven't you sold this shit to a tabloid, yet? Make that money, man!"

He said, "Hell no. Can't do it. I'm an aspiring actor. I've got an audition out in L.A. for Freaks and Geeks next week. If I set Katie Holmes up, I'll never get an acting gig again in my life. She'll fuck me up. And besides, I wasn't really making out with her. We just posed for the camera with our lips pressed on each other in every single picture. I never actually hooked up with her."

Of course he didn't, that dude was a nerd.

And I don't care what anybody says, Katie Holmes was even more gorgeous in person. I know she drove a green del sol the entire time she lived here and that she went to the Catholic church by the beach and that she loved Target (What girl doesn't?). Oh, and one time my friend Benzo went up to her in a movie theatre and confronted her during the previews.

Here's what happened: they were the only two people in the theatre preparing to watch a matinee. They didn't go together. They were both there alone. (I guess actors still like watching movies so much that they will go alone.) Anyway, Benzo grew up around famous musicians all his life, because his dad was a blues producer (He once called Dr. John at home to ask him if he would record my voicemail. Unfortunately, his wife answered and said Dr. John was out with his boyfriend - the younger black bass player in his band. Benzo also was around the night Albert Collins died. He got to have fun as a kid.), so he's never been star-struck at all- and I have no doubt Benzo did what he said he did.

He went up to Katie Holmes and had this conversation. Mind you - he didn't even say hello.

Benzo: You're a liar.

Katie Holmes: Excuse me?

Benzo: You're a liar.

Katie Holmes: OK, please tell me why?

Benzo: Because I saw you on your E! celebrity profile show thingy talking about how it's so hard for you to find a date. You were complaining how guys never ask you out. That's B.S. because I know for a fact that my good friend asked you out last week and you said no. So that makes you a liar.

Katie Holmes: It's called show-business, buddy. What do you want me to do - go on their and be all like "My life is so great. I'm on a TV show, and men are falling all over me asking me out all the time! I have everything I want!" Wouldn't I sound like the biggest bitch ever? Everyone would hate me. So you have to lie and say that you are lonely on those shows.

Benzo: I agree. But you're still a liar. And my friend is cool. You should've gone out with him. Oh yeah, American Pie - forgot about him.

And I think the whole world now has forgotten about him.

Tales from the Mobster.

My old radio boss, Mobs, told me a funny story about a time he was drinking at Wilmington Hilton Riverside Bar. Mobs said that he looked over and saw a guy rolling around on the floor of the bar just babbling nonsense. People that didn't even know the guy were trying to pick that fat old guy up and get him wherever the hell he needed to be. But he just kept rolling around and saying senseless dumb shit.

Mobs said to himself, "Damn, that drunken asshole on the floor sure looks a lot like Nick Nolte."

Then he said to himself, "Damn, that drunken asshole on the floor IS Nick Nolte! He really is the way they say he is. That's hilarious."

Mobs also told me that he knew Julia Roberts' limo driver when she was filming a movie here and that she smelled like ass all the time and never bathed.

That's why I love Wilmington. We get to see celebrities be the retards we heard they were. Did you know that Dr. Cox from Scrubs really is a cock. My girl Pokey Pants told me that her roommate was his assistant on a movie a couple of years back and that he tripped on some metal stairs coming out of his trailer all by himself, but looked at his assistant right after it happened and said, "DAMMIT, CHRIS! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!"

Yeah, Chris, why did you do whatever you did - witness an actor make himself fall I guess.

Motley Who?

Girls think they have a curse because they hear that tick tick tick all the time. But being a man is also annoying because you never hear that triple tick ever once.

My point is: there's always another good 2 or 3 years of fun left... eternally.

I enjoy the fun. But I think one day I'd enjoy the fun of boring life and having daughters with one girl that I'm ------whatever.

That's why I'm not married right now. I still haven't lived my stupidest moments. And living stupid for two is impossible to do. It just slows you down. It kills your "get up and go," you know. You always get asked annoying questions, and you can't just hop a flight without hearing "why aren't we both going?"

Because I can't affort to pay for two lives all the time! That's why I'm not legally married!

I'm just saying, my life doesn't have enough regrets yet. I don't want to be the fifty year old guy with the 33 year old wife. But I think I will eventually have to be. (Lucky for me, my 31 year old ass still gets treated like I have a fake ID when I try to buy beer. I won't lie - I love it.) I just have too much dumb crap to do, and when I'm done, all the girls my age will be on their 3rd marriages., so I'll have to one day be the old guy with the young wife who doesn't get my "Diffrent Stokes" references or understand my stupid love for Motley Crue.

Funny, I didn't know how to end this, and then I realized a cheesy Billy Joel video is on. That guy's wife is like really young. And he's really old - and HOLY SHIT, now Motley Crue is on. Kickstart My Heart! (Mick Mars is the only talent in that band. I have two personal stories about Vince and Tommy separately but that's for another time.) G'night.

The girl I'm currently banging

The title is a little bit misleading. I may talk about a lot of things, but I’d never write about who I’m banging. Heck, I don’t mention when or if I’m dating a girl. (You won’t believe how many times I’ve heard this nag: “How come you never write anything about me? Funny stuff happens to us. You should write about us.” Hell. No. I’ll tell you why. For one thing, not writing about current lovers is the only shred of near-classiness I have left, so I’m clinging to it. Also, writing about girlfriends bores the ever-living shit out of your readers. It’s as nauseating as watching a stand-up comic who one day has children and lets his once edgy routine suddenly turn all Full House on you when he trades in his coke jokes for jokes about baby carriages.. Besides my current relationships, everything else I consider to be “writable,” but when it comes to girls of recent times, I usually won’t even describe what ladies I have even taken in a movie with. No good ever comes out of that shit. I only stand to lose

That being said, let me tell you a story that happened at a time we won’t call “last night.” I’ve never been a big substance user. I like the drink, but every blue moon or so, I dip into the milder recreations. (Read: I’ve never done crack, x, coke, heroin, acid, mushrooms, or meth. Now think of the things I left out. Those few minor-league things come into play about 2 to 5 times a year.) This night in question was one of those nights. I was having a green day. That crap makes me so hyper. I know it’s supposed to mellow you out, but substance often has opposite effects on my weird ass. For example, Xanax makes me hyper, too. It makes me do a stand-up comedian for all my friends. Drinking makes me a damn hippy peacenik who never wants to fight anybody unless of course they hit me first. Benadryl? That shit never makes me sleep. Hydrocodone gives me boners. And it also makes me smoother than a lounge singer. When I take take the codeine, I can hit on three girls at the same time and they will all love it. I’ll be making a drink for one, lighting a cigarette for another, and telling a hilarious one-liner all Groucho Marx style to the third one - all at the same time. It makes me so 1940’s. And adderol makes me have sex on my front porch standing up in the daylight in front of traffic in my downtown neighborhood. (I wish that was an exaggeration.) (No, I don’t.)

So here’s the thing with substance: it doesn’t make me make crazy things happen, it makes crazy things happen to me. For example, on this night we will once again call “not last night,” I met my friends at the bar down the street from my house. None of them ever have green days. And I only have like five a year at max. So of course, what were they talking about for the first ten minutes when I met them there: green days! It was really weirding me out. They even pointed out how none of them do that, and how I almost never do it. But I could tell that they didn’t know I was currently green. So I finally said, “You guys are weirding me out. You guys never talk about this subject. And the one time I’m “on the subject,” you’re talking about it.” They were like, “You’re currently ____?” Wow, we couldn’t tell…until now.”

Then when I got home the night got greener. And SOMEHOW I ended up on the phone with a girl I’m friends with but haven’t seen in forever. She’s crazy. I mean for-real crazy. But she manages her crazy just enough to make her cool. She knows she’s nuts and she doesn’t run from it or use it as a crutch. She also was currently on powder. So she did all the talking. And because I was green dayed, I was completely cool with doing all the listening. It was a match made in heaven. Then she started saying stuff so funny and weird that I thought maybe I was so fucked up that I was hearing her wrong. But I wasn’t hearing her wrong. Remember - when I’m zonked, other people do the crazy stuff. Here’s what she said to me:

“Dude, we are totally fucking by the way.”

I said, “Are you saying you’re trying to arrange this?”

She said in her coked out pace (so read it fast), “Oh, hell no. I’m never sleeping with you again. But since you were the last guy I had sex with - which was like forever ago, I picked you.. By the way, why would you even want to sleep with me again? You know I give boys bad sex on purpose? You didn’t? Yeah, I totally do. That way they won’t try to love me and be with me afterwards. Because I don’t want to be loved. I can’t handle it. I’m crazy. What? You thought I was good? That was me trying to suck. Here’s what I was getting at when I was saying that we are fucking: I don’t have sex anymore. But it makes my life sound boring and it makes men think they can approach me. So when people around town ask me if I’m doing anybody, I say: “Oh yeah, totally. There’s this guy name Roth Wriscey. We fuck all the time. But only when I feel like having him around. Then when he gets annoying I kick his ass to the curb for a while. That‘s who I‘m doing.” So if you ever hear from anyone that you are currently fucking me a lot, it’s because I told them that. I don’t know why I picked you for my fake-fuck guy, but you just seemed like the right choice.”

Yeah. Imagine hearing that while you’re baked.

What about a karaoke funeral do you not understand?

At my 90 year old grandfather's funeral last month, I was getting alarmed at how normal it was going. The only awkward moment was when the preacher said, "Now Bill did have ONE bad habit." We all tried not to laugh because we were also in suspense about which bad habit of Granddaddy's that Ol' Preach knew about. (By the way, I admire Granddaddy. I just told you he had bad habits. He ruled!) The preacher only touched on his cigar smoking habit. And I never knew that Granddaddy traveled to Cuba twice. Once pre and once post Castro.

So as the funeral was about to wrap, it got good. And by good, I mean embarrassingly bad. The preacher said, "Before we depart, Bill's oldest son - Bill Jr. would like everyone to hear a song that he sang for his dad while we all reflect on Bill's life. " In case I haven't told you (and I haven't) My dad decided six years ago to be one of those sing-every-night karaoke guys. He's pretty sure he's going to be the next new star in Nashville. He's almost sixty. He walks with a cane. But I wish him well on that. But I will admit that throughout the three minute song that felt like 300 minutes, I kept my head down, because I could feel my family looking at me thinking I would be touched, since the song was inadvertantly about how I was such a lucky boy to have such a dad. You're about to see why:

Dad didn't get up to perform at the funeral. He had a CD of him singing a cover of that 1980's country song about how "Daddy's don't just love their children every now and then, it's a love without end, amen." It's a song about how some guy's dad teaches him to also be a great dad towards his own son. Here's the funny part: He hadn't seen one of his daughter's in four years. He hadn't seen his only son (me) in six years! But he was playing a cd of himself singing a song about how he's a great dad. I wish him well on that. The best part was that we never had a fight. And he lives somewhere within ten minutes of my mom. He just likes to be by himself and do his own thing. I kid you not: when I saw him last month at the burial for the first time in six years - I bet he thought it had only been six months. That's cool. I don't let him get to me. I like the guy. My mom said that I was the only one of his three kids that didn't get affected by his nearly complete-departure, because I had already figured out at a young age that he wasn't a big fan of me and that he just tolerated me. My sisters both got hurt in adulthood, because he actually used to spoil them from time to time, so the were set up for a let down. I was already shrugging my shoulders at his being annoyed by us when I was five. Hey, he worked hard to pay the bills and he didn't beat us. I'm cool with that. I wish him well. He's a nice guy.

Gimme back my garbage can!

OK, first off. Who in the hell stole our gigantic government-issued garbage can last night? And why in the hell did they steal our gigantic government-issued garbage can? It even had garbage in it! And they took that, too! I thought maybe someone was using it for a new year's eve party and would return it today. Then I remembered that someone that cool wouldn't steal my can in the first place. And I also remembered that people that cool rarely exist, either. And why did they take one of my porch-chairs and turn it upside down and put it where the garbage bin used to rest. This is making my head explode. Not because they they stole it - but because I don't understand the motive. I don't admire them.

I do admire the person who stole the halloween candy that my roommate left out. Why? Because my roommate left a note that said, "Please be nice and only take a few pieces so everybody gets candy tonight." The thief responded by taking her note and writing this on the other side: "HA HA! WE JUST TOOK ALL YOUR CANDY. SUCKERS!"

That's my kind of evil. I'd buy that person dinner. They may have stolen from me, but they also made me laugh. Get your evil right, people. And give me back my garbage can.