How did I miss it? I was so excited when I saw the sign announcing the upcoming celebrity appearance. It’s not that we are not used to celebrities in our town. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys used to live here, despite our lack of beaches. Prominent anti-vaxxer, actress, and former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy lives here now, along with her husband Donnie Wahlberg, actor and former New Kid on the Block. So proud. We have minor (and occasionally major) musical and comedic acts coming through town every week to play our local theater. And a former professional football player, and son of an NFL Hall of Famer, calls our town home. My wife works at the school where his son attends. So we know how to handle celebrities. We ignore them.
Except for students who see my wife. I get a kick out of seeing the reaction on student’s faces when my wife runs into them out in public. You would think my wife was a Hollywood A-list celebrity. Well, she is in my book.
In a similar manner, I was all agog when I saw this upcoming celebrity appearance advertised …
Would Butch remember me? Yes, we met before. It seems like only yesterday …
It was sometime in the 1980s. I can’t be more specific than that. The early 80s are a bit blurry to me. The Peter Tork Project was headlining at Tut’s in Chicago. Opening the show was Eddie and the Monsters, featuring Butch Patrick of the Munsters, playing their minor novelty hit called “Whatever Happened to Eddie.” Except Butch/Eddie forgot to bring his band, so he did a meet & greet. He seemed like a nice guy when we met.
Would he remember meeting me at the Tut’s show? Hey, I barely remember being there. But I think I was excited when I met him. And then I saw this in the local yokel newspaper this week …
Can you imagine being the reporter assigned to this story? And not just a story, but an exclusive interview. Hey, it’s a living, and the reporter got to meet Butch Patrick. That’s … something.
As for me, I missed it. I completely forgot about it and missed it. Is my memory getting that bad? Or maybe I just didn’t want to tarnish the memory of that first meeting many years ago. Nothing could top that first meeting. I’m going with that. I will have to console myself this Halloween with memories, albeit fleeting, of meeting Butch Patrick in the 1980s at a cool Chicago nightclub before Peter Tork of the Monkees and his Peter Tork Project band delivered a blistering set of anti-apartheid songs, and not last week at a car dealership. I think it is for the best.
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 