Intermission at a Broadway show. Rhea Perlman was good, and so was the guy from _Spin City,_ though the show was pretty forgettable. The title, for example, escapes me.
I'm sitting next to my brother on a bench sipping a Coke that cost too much. Danny DeVito, alone, comes around the bar with a drink and stands a few feet away.
We're tourists, a family of …
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A few years back, my husband, my mother, and I had just ended a vacation in Hawaii.
There was some delay at the airport, and we waited on the tarmac for at least 20 minutes before the plane moved from the gate. All of a sudden, we heard silly giggles that we assumed came from the stewardesses. We looked up and, to our pleasure, saw Tom Selleck.
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In 1993, I was at a sweets shop on Bancroft Avenue, just across from the UC Berkeley campus, buying gifts for people I'd worked with as president of my dormitory that year. Trying to decide between pecan turtles and truffles, I became aware of another customer who had come into the shop and who was patiently waiting for me to make up my mind. I glanced at him, and offered …
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On one of David Letterman's final shows for NBC, Tom Hanks shared a story about being a doorman and helping Fatty Arbuckle place his golf clubs into a cab. On the show, Hanks impersonated Arbuckle by screaming, "Stop bendin' the shafts!"
Years later, I was on a studio lot in Los Angeles, and out of a trailer came Tom Hanks. I yelled out, "Stop bendin' the shafts!" We both …
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At the last U2 show I attended, in Boston, the luck of the Irish was with me. My date and I were lucky enough to be selected for special wristbands that allowed us to enter the VIP section inside the ramps. Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam were only feet away.
At one point during the show, I noticed a guy who had walked up next to me on the …
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"Elle":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elle_Macpherson at "Daniel":http://www.danielnyc.com/; "Gisele":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gisele_B%C3%BCndchen at "Savoy":http://www.savoynyc.com/.
Everybody knew Efrem Zimbalist Jr. from his role in the 1970s TV series _The F.B.I.,_ but not everyone knew that his father was a famous violinist.
I was eating a pizza in Encino, California, and saw the actor sitting by himself. I went up to him and asked, "Isn't your father the famous violinist?" It did catch him off-guard, to say the least.
Back in very late 1991 or early '92, I found myself working part-time for a newspaper called _Long Island Jewish World._ I was asked to attend a meeting of some big-time Jewish organization in Manhattan. The featured speaker was Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas and one of the "six-pack"—the half dozen Democratic candidates running for president.
I was unenthusiastic, being a supporter of the more left-liberal Tom Harkin, …
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A few years back, my parents came to New York from California for a visit. I had recently moved here from San Francisco. My parents, being your traditional-minded kind of Arabs, weren't thrilled by the idea of their daughter moving to New York City alone. Especially my dad. His last trip to New York had been in the winter of 1973 on a kind of business trip. He sold tapestries …
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When I was a freshman, my high school coach took me to the 8,000-seat gym at Elkhart Central High. We watched future L.A. Laker Rick Fox battle future Seattle Sonic Shawn Kemp. A beautiful, classic gym, the kind where the incandescent yellow light of the floor barely trickles up to the dark seating high above. Late in the game, my coach turned to this 15-year-old and said, "There's no reason …
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I was 14 years old, waiting for a plane at the Martha’s Vineyard airport with my friend Rachel. It’s a tiny building, and there were only two other people in the place--a man and a woman chatting together about 20 feet away from us. The woman looked familiar.
“I know that woman,†I said to Rachel.
She was slender, with good posture. My mom was a …
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It's hard to believe it was me, but I had dinner at Nelson Mandela's table along with Bob De Niro and others.
Then, out of nowhere, Muhammad Ali shows up! Two of my heroes! I would have never imagined it, but yes I was there.
It was a room of bigwigs and celebs, but no one could eclipse the light and force of these two men. Nobody — …
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1990, Linz, Austria. Hitler's favorite city. The Ars Electronica Festival is on, and I'm bearing witness. It's post-performance, and I sit at a restaurant table with a large group of artists, musicians, scientists, technical types who blow things up, various hangers-on, and the people who love them.
Nature calls me, and on my way to answer I note that the men's room door is open; my eye is caught …
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I used to be a DJ.
In December of 2000, I was hired for a party for the staff of the San Diego Sports Arena. My boss explained to me that I would have to be escorted by security to the backstage area, because *NSYNC was playing a show there that night.
Upon arrival, as I started sorting out what wires hook into what amp, a gentleman wearing …
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It was spring in NYC, circa 1986. I was ambling down Broadway, heading to an improv class at Music and Art High School, when I stopped in some overpriced bodega around 70th Street to pick up a pack of gum. Standing at the counter, his dry cleaning slung over his shoulder, was Roy Scheider. It was a B-celeb sighting, even back in the day, but a sighting nevertheless.
Still, …
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Over a decade ago, I worked for a production company in California that shot a lot of infomercials — the scourge and the glory of insomniacs around the country. Our work was seen by millions, drawn in by the promise of thinner thighs, fewer wrinkles, more money, and less body hair. In fact, my waxing infomercial _Sweet Simplicity_ was spoofed on a critical episode of _Friends,_ season 3, when Ross …
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I was lying on a paper-covered table, my legs propped in sock-covered stirrups, when my doctor asked: “Has anyone ever said your lips look like Angelina Jolie’s? And is your cervix normally this red?â€
Truth is, I wasn't so put off by her question. People have been wisecracking about my lips — the ones on my face — since I was a little girl. Back then, comments like …
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He was, of course, kind and attentive. Or maybe his attention is what made him seem so kind.
“Did you see that?†a woman in front of me marveled to her friend, fingering the white silk scarf that she had offered to the Dalai Lama and that he, in turn, had placed back around her shoulders as a kind of blessing.
“He just holds your hands and looks …
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This past October 15 would have been Mario Puzo’s 85th birthday. Not exactly common knowledge, sure, but in the years before his death I learned a lot of little things about the man who wrote _The Godfather,_ the book that begat the movie that begat more quotations among guys than anything short of the Bible.
See, nine years ago, I was assigned by an airline magazine to do a …
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The pressure is always on when members of my _famiglia_ come to town. They want Mr. Fancypants to show them a good time, because they think I live a totally charmed life as an underpaid freelance writer. For a good vibe and great food, I like to take them to Babbo down on Waverly, with hopes that celebrity chef and owner Mario Batali will walk by in his orange clogs …
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