Brushes

I was leaving my coffee house in University City, right around the corner from the old place. I was heading back to the car, when two black youths passed by, one of them on bike. The pedestrian one said, "Excuse me."

Now, as my friend Ben can attest, very little good can possibly come of responding to someone who says "Excuse me", unless you actually know the guy. I tend to stick with that admonition, and when someone says "Excuse me", I just keep walking.

This time, though, I didn't do that. I stopped said, "Yeah".

He pointed to the guy on the bike. "Do you recognize this guy."

We were right at that gap between streetlights (another good reason to have kept on walking), so the light wasn't good. But I noticed a familiar big grin, showing more teeth than ought to be there, each of them covered with gold.

"Wait, is that Nelly?"

"Yes it is."

"Holy shit!" I said, in an "I won $5 in the lottery scracher" way. It had been a long day, and I was feeling especially nonchalant, but it was still a pleasant surprise.

And then I shook hands with the multi-platinum artist.

Some doubt crept into my head, so I threw out a question. "Do you know Nathan? The producer with Phat Buddha?"

And he said, "Yeah, Phat Buddha Records. Big guy." Holding his arms out to the side, to disambiguate the word "big" and indicate that Nathan needs to drop a few pounds. "Yeah, he's good."

"Indeed. Good friend of mine." Not exactly the truth, but I didn't think it'd work as well if I'd said "He's a friendly acquaintance of mine."

Then he asked if I knew someone, and I missed the name, and suspected I didn't, but I said I did anyway.

The pedestrian said, "We decided to hit the old neighborhood [Nelly's from right up the street from where we were talking] and we're in disguise." Nelly tugged at the hood over his head for emphasis. "I'm the only body guard he's got." Which might have been a joke, since it looked kind of like I could have taken him*. "You're the only one we've pointed him out to. So you're the only one who has any idea.'

I said, "Yeah, it worked. If you hadn't pointed him out, I'd have have had no idea." Which was true. I'd passed them on the way to the coffee place, and missed who it was.

Anyway, under the assumption that big-time celebrities have better things to do with themselves than jawbone with the likes of me, I drew the conversation to a close and said, "Well, I'll let you guys get to it. Have fun, and it was nice meeting you."

And then I went home.

So, I've had two near-brushes with near-greatness. Billy Pumpkins and Cedric the Entertainer. Actually, three of them, but I haven't told that third story yet. I'll do that some other day.

This one might be my first an actual brush with real greatness. Depending on how expansive you want define the term "greatness". Well, I'll call him great. "Hot in Herre" has one of the greatest hooks to come out of pop music in the last 20 years, and that's no mean feat. And I got to shake the hand that wrote those words tonight.

And that's my story for the day.

* I couldn't actually have taken him, but still.