My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 3

They say that you should never meet your heroes.  That they'll only disappoint you. Which makes sense, when you think about it.  I mean, how could someone ever live up to the person that you've made them out to be in your mind?  Nobody is perfect, especially for every second of every day.  It's just impossible.  Everyone has a bad day, or says something that they regret.  It's human nature.  When it comes to the people that we admire, we rarely see these moments, because we only ever see their public persona.  The person that they want us to see.  They are aware that they are being viewed and judged, so they try to be the best that they can be. 

We never see them in the seconds right after someone swoops in and steals the spot that they had patiently waited for with their blinker on in a crowded mall parking lot, or after being woken at dawn from a hard night of drinking, when the guy next door decides to start up his chainsaw and do some yard work at 6 o'clock in the morning.  We see them on the red carpet or in interviews, and we see them happy and smiling and witty and charming.  This is how they became the people that we admire.  It might be different if we saw them send back their food for the fifth time at a restaurant, screaming "I said medium-well done!  Don't you know who I am?!"  

Which is why maybe you shouldn't meet your heroes.  Because what if you happen to meet them on one of these off days?

On a side note, when you see a person that is a complete douche, even in their public persona, is that because they just don't care?  Or are they such big douches, that this is them at their best, and it's still deplorable?  Should I be applauding them for not trying to be something they're not, or should I do a bit of mental math and assume that in normal life, they're at least 30 to 60% douchier?  I mean, if that's how they act when the cameras are on, you have to imagine that in the privacy of their own home, they crank the dick meter up to eleven, right? 

Regardless, it was now three days since I had narrowly missed out on crossing paths with Sara Quin in Saskatchewan, and I was once again in the same room with her.  This time we were back in Edmonton, and her sister Tegan was in tow.  Although the term 'hero' feels like a bit much, I would be lying if I said I didn't have a slight infatuation with them.  In fact, I would be down-right devastated to find out that in real life it turned out that they weren't very nice people.  Basically, I was the perfect candidate for the 'never meet your heroes' philosophy to smack me right in the face.

But I didn't care.

For one, I was pretty sure that they're awesomeness was genuine.  But, even if it wasn't, despite the devastation, I honestly think that I would have wanted to know anyways.  And so I stood, patiently waiting my turn.  I had shelled out a few extra ducats for the VIP tickets to their Edmonton show that night, and in this case, it included the chance to sit in on the sound check, receive an autographed poster, and of course, have a brief meet and greet.  I quickly staked out a spot at the end of the line, knowing that if there were people waiting behind me that I would likely feel some sort of self-imposed pressure to 'move it along' and let the next person have their turn, and I was pleased to discover that no one else seemed to have shared this same strategy, and therefore, I was not required to fight anyone for the spot.

And, although I did feel this was a solid strategy for squeezing as much time as I could out of the meet and greet, it also meant that I had to wait as everyone else got their time with the girls first.  Which meant that I was left alone with my thoughts and insecurities.  Particularly, the blunder that I had made in Saskatchewan that was now playing through my mind, wherein I had unintentionally been a dick to Hannah Georgas.  What if I made a similar mistake this time, when it truly mattered?  But I had to shake it off and not think about such things… because it was time.

And it went well.  Granted this would probably still fall under the guise of 'public persona', but they were as awesome as I could have hoped or dreamed.  We even parted ways with hugs all around, which, as you can imagine, warmed the very cockles of my heart.

Then they asked me if I had a song request, and having not really thought about it in advance, that's when I made my blunder.  You see, they released a small four track EP back in 2008, and the song that Sara contributed to it, the criminally under appreciated "I Take All The Blame", is one of my favourite songs in the entire T&S back-catalogue.  That said, apparently not many other fans share this enthusiasm for it and I've never been able to find any evidence that they have ever performed it live.

So, in that moment, when asked if I had a song to request, that was the only thing that came to my mind.  Sure, I could have requested a song that I like more than it - there are 3 or 4 that would easily qualify - but, I had seen them all performed live at previous shows already.  Besides, seeing that these were popular songs,  what was the point of a song request, if they might already  be playing it that night anyways?  I wasn't trying to be unique for the sake of it or anything, but I guess I should have known that there was a reason why they had never played that song live before.

Sure, the argument could be made that because it's not as popular as their 'hits' then they would be doing a disservice to their fans by playing a song that only a few people in the audience might enjoy, when they could play a different song that everybody would like instead.  But, based upon the look on Sara's face when the title of that song left my lips (I'm still undecided as to whether I would describe the look as 'disgust' or 'horror') I think it's safe to say that there might be other reasons why she might not want to perform it.  Which is fair.  But that expression on her face might haunt me for the rest of my life.

I'm still trying to decide if she doesn't like the song, or if she loves the song, but is too emotionally attached to it to perform it.  You see, Tegan and Sara often cater to their fans.  If the fans don't respond well to a song as much as they do another, then they often drop that song from the set list and play the one that everyone will clap in unison over their heads and sing along with.  Which leaves some of the songs that they personally love, often never being played.  So you might think me foolish and deserving of the reaction that I got, for straying from the path and not requesting a 'sure thing', but I would argue that had it turned out that Sara had always wanted to play that song, but it just wasn't popular enough with the fans for her to do so, then the look of joy and appreciation on her face would have easily been worth the gamble.  Obviously it didn't turn out that way, but I swung for the fences, and regret nothing.

Besides, if that was the biggest faux pas I made, then I should consider myself lucky.  She didn't seem mad at me for requesting it, she just obviously had no desire to play that particular song, and we still parted with a hug (did I mention that already?  Well too bad… it won't be the last time).  So, as it stood, my summer of meeting B-List celebrities had come and gone rather successfully.

Or had it?

Perhaps there was some unexpected encounters that had yet to present themselves in the coming days.  But that, of course, is a story for another day.

My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 2

Success is a funny thing.  It's a weird phenomenon where you're obviously rooting for the people that you're fans of, but at the same time, there's a certain level of success, that once they achieve it, you no longer celebrate that success, but instead become disenfranchised by it.

I've had it happen to me twice in sports.  The first was in the spring of 1996, I read a Sports Illustrated article about a young high school player named Kobe Bryant.  By the time I had finished reading, I had decided that I would try my best to follow his career from that point forward.  I was intrigued.  Now, I'm not saying that he was undiscovered or anything - obviously, he was a big enough deal to make the pages of Sports Illustrated - but I would still say that if you asked a hundred basketball fans (not just random people, but actual basketball fans) at that time, if they knew who Kobe Bryant was, I doubt more than one or two would have said yes.  Especially in Canada. 

From then on I followed him closely, or as close as a person could follow a high school player in the seemingly basketball-deprived tundra of Alberta (keep in mind that the internet was in it's infancy at this point, and we were lucky to get more than ten NBA games televised per season back then).  Once it was clear that he would be suiting up for the Lakers, I rolled the dice and bought my first ever NBA jersey: a yellow Los Angeles Lakers home jersey, with the number 8 on the back, and Bryant on the name tag.  And this was all before he had even played a single minute of NBA basketball.

I followed his early struggles; his battle to win minutes from the incumbent starting guard at his position (the criminally underrated Eddie Jones); his air-ball attempt(s) in a playoff elimination game; all of it.  And despite the occasional flashes of brilliance, I was starting to worry that I had put all my eggs into a losing basket.  Then something funny happened.  He won the dunk contest; he got voted in as a starter to the All-Star game in his second year, despite not even starting for his own team; Michael Jordan seemingly passed the torch to him, as he easily had the best highlights of the game.  People were taking notice - more towards the flashy nature of his game, than of his burgeoning talent, but taking notice none-the-less.  And for some reason, this meteoric rise made me like him less.

I preferred to walk down the hallway at school and have people ask 'A Bryant Lakers jersey… who the heck is that?' than have everyone think that I was just another bandwagon hopper.  I liked seeing him crack the weekly Top 10 plays of the week with a bit of surprise than I did when it became commonplace and even expected.  I liked having to go into the settings of NBA video games and move him into the starting line up more than I liked seeing his name in the title of his own game.  My fandom was beginning to waver. 

Eventually, I even grew to dislike him.  I will always respect him as a basketball player, don't get me wrong, but looking back now, I'm glad I didn't remain a life-long fan.  Sure, this means that I missed out on having been along for the ride of the career of one of the top 15 greatest players in NBA history - but he still seems like a bit of a douche, and has always been a me-first player, and that's just not what I look for in a player that I admire.  That said, every year that I rooted against his team, and they ended up winning it all, could have been a year that I threw my fists triumphantly in the air along side him, rather then trying to punch them through a wall in the anger of defeat.

But, there's no point in wondering what my life as an NBA fan would have been like if I had stuck with him, because the truth of the matter is that by the end of the 1999 season, I had already moved on.

In fact, it was in the winter of 1997, that I happened upon a North Carolina Tar Heel’s game one afternoon at my aunt's place (she had satellite, the big dish kind that took up your entire back yard, and I couldn't get college games on my three channels of peasant-vision at home, so I'd go to her place to watch games), when I saw a highlight dunk unlike anything I had ever seen before.  The skinny kid responsible was a relatively unknown player from Daytona Beach named Vince Carter, and I made it my new mission in life to find out every thing that I could about him.  It turned out he was barely even the third best player on his own team, and yet the name managed to stick with me right up until that year's draft.  I remember the very moment that I found out he had been picked by the Toronto Raptors.  I had never before, and have never since, been more excited by a single draft pick than I was about that one.  But even I could not have foreseen what was to come.

Again, I had gotten in on the ground floor, only this time, the meager expectations placed on Vince were exceeded almost instantly, and his dunks came to be a staple on Sportscenter highlight packages almost over night.  I stuck with him for a while, being a Raptors fan and all, and I rode some pretty big highs in those first couple seasons: the legendary 2000 dunk contest, the Raptor's first taste of playoff success, the Freddy Weis dunk in the Olympics.  We did have some good times together, to be sure.  But so huge was his popularity so quickly, that long before he quit on the Raptors and forced them to trade him for pennies on the dollar, I had already begun to look elsewhere in my basketball fandom.

In that case, I had chosen correctly, as Vince will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the most talented players ever that never lived up to his potential, and always coasted by and avoided putting in the work that could have made him great.  Had I stuck with him, I would have experienced far more moments of frustration than I would have moments of fan-bliss.  But that's not the point.  Rather, this is just another example of how success can actually turn a fan off.  And while it is some-what prevalent in sports, the most common example of this has always been in music.

There's nothing people want more than to have known a band before they got huge.  In fact, much like I turned on Kobe Bryant, often times the fans will turn on a band and label them as 'sellouts' as soon as they start having a little success.  Is it really the band's fault that they're selling records?  If they're good, shouldn't millions of people enjoy their music? It's almost like, as a fan, you want them to be good at what they do, but you don't want too many other people to realize it.  I'm sure there were thousands of Nirvana fans that cursed the band's mainstream success the day that Smells Like Teen Spirit started showing up on MTV.  They weren't mad because Nirvana stopped being good (although SLTS is a bit overrated, the album that it came from, Nevermind, is one of the greatest ever recorded), it's just that as a fan, you want to feel special.  You want to feel like you're part of an exclusive club.  And if just anyone is allowed into that club, of course you're not going to feel special at all. 

I know.  I've been there.  In my case it was Nickelback.  Go ahead and laugh, but sadly, that's not even the biggest blemish in the history of my musical fandom (I'm looking at you, Vanilla Ice…)  As much as it puts my complete musical opinion at risk, I will still argue that The State is actually a really good album, but that's beside the point.  Prior to the release of Silver Side Up, and the juggernaut that was it's lead single, How You Remind Me, these local Alberta boys were probably my favourite band.  In fact, I remember being asked at my new job what my favourite band was, and having answered Nickelback, I was met only with blank stares.  And although they really weren't that unknown (locally, especially), that is still one of the great moments you can have as fan: the chance to introduce someone to a band that they might love.

It's funny, because as we've already discussed, by introducing the band to more people, all you're really doing is contributing to the success that might eventually turn you off of them.  Really, if you think about it, people should be guarding their favourite bands the same way some people guard the names they plan to give their unborn children.  You know the ones, that won't even give you a hint as to what the name might be for fear that it's so good that by the time they actually give birth, there might already be a million other Mason's or Madison's running around, because they whispered the name to you at a cocktail party once.

I mention all of this, because currently there are two bands that I feel I have gotten in on the ground floor with.  The first is Sleeper Agent, a sextet from Bowling Green, Kentucky, whose first single is ridiculously catchy, and probably has the biggest chance of turning it into something big.  Whether that ends up turning me off of them or not, remains to be seen, but I've come to realize that, in the end, it doesn't really matter.  So long as I enjoy the time I'm having with the band now, what does it matter if I still like them in five years or not.  And the thing that is the most fun about being a fan of a band in it's early stages is the accessibility and interactivity. 

Tegan and Sara used to sell their own merch at a table in the back of the room after they were finished their shows.  That's because they were only playing to 100 people every night, and hiring a merch person would probably cancel out any profit that they had hoped to make for that show.  Now, seeing that they can sell out 5000 seats, not only can they afford to have a merch person, but they almost need to.  The lineups at the end of shows would be too crazy if they were the ones sitting there handing people CD's and T-shirts.  And they’re not even that mainstream.  Imagine if Bono tried to do this after U2 concerts…

I've sat in on an online Q&A with Bill Simmons, and I feel that I asked some pretty good questions.  Had he seen them, he probably would have responded.  But, by the sheer number of people also online for that Q&A (Simmons has 1.5 million followers on Twitter) there was just no way for him to see every question that was being asked, out of the hundreds that were coming in every second.  It's not Simmons fault, he's just a victim of his own success.  Or, at least, my questions were.  But when Sleeper Agent did a Livestream Video Q&A recently, every question that I asked got a response.  And it was a fun feeling to be interacting with them like that.

The same goes for the other band that I've been following lately.  In this case, a band out of Vancouver that was formed in part by the former bassist and drummer from Tegan and Sara, called Rococode.  Again, having gotten on board in the early stages, I've had a fair bit of interaction with them through Twitter (with everything I've ever @mentioned them in having gotten a response).  And sure, it's just another social media site, and I shouldn't (and don't) read too much into it, but if I'm honest, as a fan, it does make me feel a little bit special.

And this all (sorry, that lead-in got a little out of hand there, didn't it?) leads to the story of my second B-List (although, no offence to Rococode, but in this case, it might be more like D-List) Celebrity Encounter of the summer.  I was still in Saskatoon, and it was still July 3rd.  The opening act for the Tegan and Sara show had been another Vancouver artist named Hannah Georgas, whom I had heard of before, but still knew nothing about.  As she took the stage, her only other band mate was a skinny blond gentleman, who provided her with backing guitars, keyboards and vocal harmonies.  Nothing was unusual about this, except for the fact that I swear that I recognized him from somewhere.  In fact, he looked very much like Andrew Braun, the co-lead singer of this new band Rococode.

As the set progressed, at one point Hannah even acknowledged him as Andrew, thus confirming my suspicions, but in general, the crowd just assumed that he was some no-name hired gun, and he received only a smattering of polite applause.  Not that it wasn't true, the no-name hired gun thing - it's not like he was some big deal, and she had Bruce Springsteen backing her up, and no one had noticed - but it did make her set all the more cool to me, on a personal level, because of it.

That's when, later that night, as I was leaving the bar in defeat (having lacked the testicular fortitude to chase down Sara Quin a mere ten minutes earlier) I found myself face to face with Andrew Braun.  I was getting on the elevator at the same moment that he was getting off.  It's funny how awkward you can be when you're completely unprepared for something.  Had I known I was going to run into Andrew that night, I probably would have come up with a few interesting things to ask him or at least something funny or clever to say.  Instead, I just blurted out that I was a fan, and started rambling - probably incoherently - about how I was enjoying his band, Rococode.

He was perfectly friendly - although I think I had caught him completely by surprise, since he probably hadn't been recognized for Rococode at all that evening - so he did seem a bit shocked and taken aback.  That's when I came to discover the part about meeting semi-famous people that you don't really think about.  Not that they might be dicks to you, as some people might expect/fear, but rather, that you might accidentally be a dick to them.  You see, he hadn't been getting off the elevator alone.  He was with Hannah Georgas at the time, and she had stood patiently by as I had ambushed him and lavished him with praise.  That's when I thought to myself, that as an actual billed performer, it was kind of rude of me to have gone on this long to Andrew, without having really acknowledged her existence.

I should have realized that I was nowhere near at the top of my conversational game, based on the yammering that I had already been doing thus far.  Yet, I still turned to her, in hopes that I could make up for what had thus far been a complete lack of social grace.  And, after having just finished telling Andrew how much I liked his band, I didn't miss a beat as I turned to her and said '…oh, and you were good too.'

Yes, it sounded just as douchey in person as it sounded in your head just now as you read it back.  I didn't mean for it to be.  Her set had been really good, and I genuinely meant it.  But in the way in which I said it, and with the wording that I had used, there's no way it came across to her as anything other than how you might address a special needs child that had managed to tie his own shoe lace. 

“Good for you!!”

The difference being that a special needs child is likely unaware of your condescending tone, and since your heart is in the right place, all you’ve really done is make them feel good about themselves. Hannah Georgas didn’t exactly strike me as Rain Man; so instead of complimenting her, I probably just sounded like a dick.

I got on the elevator, pressed the button to my floor, and as the doors finally slid shut, I smacked myself on the forehead and called myself an idiot.  But I couldn’t dwell on it for long.  I needed to shake it off and regroup, because my summer of meeting B-List celebrities was far from over.  But, as you already know, that is a story for another day…
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My Summer of B-List Celebrity Encounters, Part 1

It was the evening of July 3rd.  I sat, alone, not only in the hotel's lounge, but also in the city of Saskatoon.  It was probably safe to say that I didn't know a single person within a 300 km radius.  Some might find this awkward - to travel alone, to be alone in a strange city - but I've always been kind of fond of it.  Not for excessive stretches of time, mind you, just every now and then.

There's just something about doing things at your own pace.  Not having to consider, even for a moment, what another person is thinking or how they are feeling.  There is no discussion about where to eat, how to pass the down time or whether or not everyone is enjoying themselves.  There's no one else to blame for a poor decision, and no worrying that you are being blamed if the poor decision was yours.  It's very liberating.  But it is most certainly not for everyone.

My current situation was proof of that.  Riding alone on a highway was no big deal to me.  Nor was attending the concert by myself.  But in this moment, trying to enjoy a drink, alone, in a mostly-empty hotel lounge, I was suddenly very aware of my solidarity.  Some people would never eat at a restaurant alone, or watch a movie in a theatre alone.  They think that doing such things by one's self is sad, and that the people that do, deserve their pity.  I've never had a problem with it, personally.  Most things are decidedly more fun shared in the company of others, sure, but I've never worried too much about the stigma of doing something on my own, either.

This was different.  This was a social situation, and I was doing it quite anti-socially.  I was not chatting with the bartender; I was not trying to engage with what little other patronage occupied the place; I was simply sitting at a table, and having a beer.  Despite my discomfort with the situation, I still felt even more silly sitting up in my room, flipping through channels on the television.  This was a mini-vacation, and I could do that at home. 

That may seem like reason enough for me to be down in the lounge, but, if I'm honest, that's not why I was there.  You see, I don't really believe in random luck.  Winning the lottery is the very definition of luck, sure, but true luck would be winning the lottery without ever having bought a ticket.  So, although I don't play the lottery, or really even agree with it (and the false-hope that it gives to poor, stupid and lazy people), I still believe, that by buying a ticket, you have had a slight hand in making your own luck.  However misguided it might be.

On this particular night, my definition of luck would be for something exciting to happen.  The concert had been great, as always, but the night was still young, and I was not ready for it to end.  I didn't know what I was hoping for, exactly, all I knew was that had I been sitting up in my room watching tv, the chances for something exciting to happen would have been next to none.  And, although this lounge didn't seem to be much better at this particular moment, it still had potential.  That's when I looked up from my half-empty glass of beer, and saw the tiny frame of none other than Sara Quin making her way across the hotel lobby.

If some people don't understand how I can travel by myself, then you had better believe that even more people don't understand my love for Tegan and Sara.  In this case, I had seemingly rode all the way to Saskatoon just to see them in concert, which, on it's own, does sound a little excessive.  And, admittedly, without the Tegan and Sara concert to attend, I would not have been in Saskatoon at that very moment.  But that alone was not the sole reason that I had gone.  Truthfully, I had been looking for a small trip that I could take on my motorcycle that summer, and the concert just happened to make a perfect destination.  Without the concert I would not have gone on the bike trip, sure, but without the bike trip I would not have gone to the concert either.

Of course, that might not have been the case, had I known I might have the chance to meet Sara Quin.  Which, all of sudden, I did.

I'd like to say that the story ended happily ever after.  That Sara spotted a lone patron in the lounge and, on a whim, decided to befriend him.  But this was not the case.  Seemingly intent on her goal - the lobby elevator - she strode with purpose towards it, and away from me.  It was in that moment that I needed to make a quick decision.  I could spring up from my table, vault over the lounge railing, make the staff think I was skipping out on my bill, and sprint half way across the room in hopes that I might make it to the elevator at the same time as she did; or I could do what I actually ended up doing.

Nothing at all.

I stayed where I was, finished my beer, and wallowed in my own cowardice.  Luck had presented itself to me that night, but I had not seized it.  Instead, I accepted that my chance for excitement had been squandered, and the evening had passed me by.  Perhaps my time would have been better spent up in my room, watching tv, after all.  All I could do was try to convince myself that the acrobatic display that would have been required to make mine and Sara's paths cross, likely would have freaked her out far more than it would have created the foundation of a lasting friendship. 

Besides, I knew I would have another chance to meet her in the following days, but that my friends, is a story for another day…
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