Brushes — and Near Brushes — with Greatness

David Let­ter­man used to do a reg­u­lar bit on his old NBC show called “Brushes with Great­ness” dur­ing which mem­bers of the audi­ence would stand up and tell their story about see­ing or meet­ing a famous per­son. Usu­ally the sto­ries were funny because the audi­ence mem­ber didn’t actu­ally meet or inter­act with the per­son at all … I remem­ber one guy telling the story of see­ing Richard Gere in the automat, for instance. Dave would heckle the story-teller and every­one had a great time.

I’m still watch­ing Let­ter­man reg­u­larly and no, I didn’t get to attend a tap­ing in NYC, much to my dis­ap­point­ment. I really wanted to because I was lucky enough to attend tap­ings of both Merv Griffin’s show from the Hol­ly­wood Palace and The Tonight Show star­ring Johnny, Ed, Doc, and the band. So I really wanted to be able to say that I also saw Dave live. Alas, I was not able to get tick­ets in advance.

So on Mon­day evening, our sec­ond night in NYC, we had a ban­quet attended by all mem­bers of the band and the folks trav­el­ing with them. It was at Carmine’s on West 44th. So we just walked there en masse.

We were about half-way through din­ner when one of the kids seated at our table said, “Oh, you didn’t see that guy out in Times Square pass­ing out Let­ter­man tick­ets? We walked right by him on the way here.“

I froze. I never saw the guy, never heard him try­ing to lure tourists into the the­ater for the 5:30 p.m. tap­ing. Had I seen the guy, I would have said, “Din­ner? Fuhgetaboutit. I can eat any time.” I would have been in that the­ater with Dave, Paul, etc. (Sigh) Oh, well … I’ll have to see Dave dur­ing my next trip.

The week went by in a flash. Our per­for­mance at Carnegie Hall was out­stand­ing . . . I’ve never seen our direc­tor with as big a smile on his face as he had at the end of that per­for­mance. We really made him proud which was impor­tant to all of us. We made our­selves proud, too, which was almost as impor­tant, con­sid­er­ing that for most of us it was, in all like­li­hood, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I got back home on Sat­ur­day night and spent Sun­day try­ing to recoup. Then it was back to work on Mon­day, resump­tion of the routine.

You all know that I am obsessed with The Sopra­nos, right? The final nine episodes began air­ing on April 8 and the two episodes we’ve seen so far have been well worth the long wait.

In New York, I stayed at the Sher­a­ton Tow­ers at 53rd Street and 7th Avenue. Radio City Music Hall is at 1260 Avenue of the Amer­i­cas. This map shows you how close the two build­ings are (the green dot is the hotel).

So last Sun­day, April 8, after we came home fol­low­ing a lovely Easter din­ner at my sister’s house, I watched the first episode of The Sopra­nos, and then was read­ing a cou­ple of arti­cles on the ‘Net about it. I hap­pened upon this photo.

“In this photo released by Home Box Office, three of “The Sopra­nos” stars Robert Iler, left, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and James Gan­dolfini, stop for a photo dur­ing a pre­miere of two new episodes of the HBO series at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, Tues­day, March 27, 2007.”

MARCH 27? MARCH 27TH? Are you KIDDING me? I couldn’t believe what I was read­ing. (O.k., that’s not exactly what I said, but it’s close enough for our pur­poses here.)

On March 27, I was at the Sher­a­ton Tow­ers while the entire cast of The Sopra­nos — includ­ing Gan­dolfini — was assem­bling just three short blocks and one long block away? Oh, man … I was sick to my stom­ach. I could have been one of the throng out­side Radio City Music Hall snap­ping pho­tos of all of them as they walked the red car­pet. I could have posted those pho­tos here.

I could have had a major brush with great­ness. Damn!

I wasn’t exactly hav­ing a bad time, mind you. I enjoyed a leisurely meal at Ruby Foo’s Times Square and then saw Mary Pop­pins which was fab­u­lous! And I’ve met my share of famous peo­ple over the years, but we’re talk­ing here about the cast of The Sopra­nos. It’s only the best show ever in the his­tory of television.

At water aer­o­bics a cou­ple of days later, peo­ple were talk­ing about The Sopra­nos. So I told my tale of woe about my near-miss with the great­ness of Gan­dolfini, et. al. And one of my fel­low stu­dents pipes up with this announce­ment: “Oh, I met all those peo­ple once at Harrah’s Tahoe. Yeah, my hus­band and I used to gam­ble a lot so we got a lot of perks. A cou­ple of times they invited us to Sopra­nos week­ends, so we met them all and had our pic­tures taken with them. I didn’t even know who any of them were since I’ve never watched the show.”

Hey, let me open that wound a lit­tle fur­ther so you can pour the salt straight into it, ok?

It gets worse. She came back to the next class … with the pic­tures! Here they are:

And here’s my ver­sion. Tes­ta­ment to my near-brush with greatness!

Mes­sage to Mr. Gan­dolfini:* You and me, babe! We look good, huh? Call me! I’m buy­ing lunch.

*(Hey, don’t laugh. It could hap­pen. He could be sit­ting around Googling him­self now that shoot­ing on The Sopra­nos has wrapped and find his way here. Ya never know!)

Tech­no­rati Tags: Mis­cel­la­neous, Pop Cul­ture

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