Welcome to Hollywood...What's Your Dream?

For someone who's been involved in pop culture as long and passionately as I have been (and who used to dream of a career in performance), meeting celebrities is always cool. But as someone who's primarily a writer -- by practice, profession and passion -- somehow, meeting the people who give the actors their framework, the characters and the lines that transform them into something worth celebritizing, is especially exciting.

Tonight I attended Richard Belzer's Special Victims Tour. The name alone made me laugh, as Special Victims is my favorite Law & Order (I mean, as much as you can say a show about violence against women and children is your favorite anything). And these were the people in my neighborhood: I saw Chris Meloni hanging with his kids at Starbucks on the Upper West Side, used to regularly run into Dann Florek in the supermarket, and famously encountered Belzer at a Commerce ATM (leading me to think the universe was trying to tell me something).

Thanks to my friend Debbie Jhoon and her comedy connections (see photo at right), I was able to take a visiting friend with me to the venue, Vanguard in Hollywood. But we were late, and were told the main room was full and we were directed toward a side room where we could view the show on monitors. (Uh-oh.) Luckily, I knew some people in the front row, and there were seats with them. (Yippee!) But the seats were front and center, prime space for audience/comic confrontation. (Uh-oh.) Three seconds after Belzer took the stage, he points at me and says, "Where are you from?" And I froze.

My inner rabbi took over a seemingly simple question. Did "from" mean originally, primarily, or currently? Locationally or spiritually? New York, where I'd been living (and where our mutual ATM was)? New Jersey, where I grew up? California, now that I've been here two months? He only gave me a second to respond, so by the time I was done processing the question, he'd moved on. Just as well - this wasn't the Esther Kustanowitz Show, anyway. (Although that show would totally rock once people learned how to spell it.)

The show featured some great performances, most notably from Taylor Negron, with his inimitable tale of a Christmas past, and Eddie Pepitone, with his motivational speaking for the post-apocalyptic era. (We saw Bill Maher, and another comic whose name I'll remember eventually Wayne Federman, offstage, but they didn't perform.)

And then at the end, my friend Simon (who provided these photos) and I realized that my other friends had left at some point, leaving us the only two people in the whole front row. Which was probably the reason why I'm writing this post now: being in the front and center meant that we were prominent. So when Jim Vallely walked by, he thanked us for coming, and I was able to thank him for "Arrested Development," which he co-wrote and produced.

We start schmoozing, and I'm oddly calm, nothing like the great Matthew Perry debacle of 1998. Possibly because Vallely looks familiar to me, kind of like my comedy writer friend Mark Treitel.

Then things got a little surreal. I don't expect that he remembers even having this conversation with me, but the following things definitely transpired:
1) He told me that they had been close to getting everyone on board for an "AD" movie, but that one of the actors was posing a challenge. He told me that he couldn't tell me who the problem was, but then gave me a hint that basically told me. (Plus, the day after, Mitch Hurwitz gave the press a pretty good idea.) I suggested a solution that was actually quite funny, I think. But what would happen if because of my blog, it got back to the actor in question and for that reason, the AD movie never happened? How could I live with myself? And so, all the stuff that makes this part funny will remain a secret between me and my new buddy Jim.
2) Jim asked me what I did, and I said I was a writer/blogger. And he asked for my card, so I gave it to him. He said I should blog about tonight's show, and about "A Pretty Good Show," the sketch show that he and some friends put on regularly in Hollywood, and I told him I was planning on it.(Done and done.)
3) He invited me to the Hollywood Purity Ball. "The what?" I said. "You know, like the Purity Balls you had in high school?" he said. Um, yeah. "Not in my high school," I said. (What I should have said: "No one had balls in my high school.") So I Googled it. And am still not sure what it is, but I'm sure someone will tell me.
4) "Hey, what are you, 31?" That's the oldest anyone's guessed in a while, but I'll go with it. "Sure, Jim, if you say so." "You know, you should perform with us sometime." What? Seriously? Don't toy with me, man.

I guess we'll see what happens as I put away some cash for more improv/sketch-writing classes, and as Jim, who quite obviously will have no memory of this conversation, engages in that sordid act of self-Googling and finds this record of a night in the waning days of 2008 and wonders, "What's an Urban Kvetch, and where did I meet one?"

But you guys know me. If I don't hear from him, I'm not above adding him as a friend on Facebook.

"Welcome to Hollywood! What's your dream??"

Comments

[PepGiraffe]

I also just looked up purity ball and went to the first link and am sickened. Girls pledge their virginity to their fathers? That can't be right.

[Ori]

The link to the Hollywood Purity Ball says it took place in September 2007. Ummm...

[dys]

http://www.areavoices.com/marabrust/?blog=8582

Really bizarre, and creepy.

[Esther Kustanowitz]

Given the context of meeting Jim Vallely at a comedy show and featuring a comedy troupe, I'm willing to bet the "Hollywood Purity Ball" is actually a comedy show spoofing this particularly out-there commoditization [which is clearly not a word] of a girl's chastity. But I don't know: I just work here.

As for outdated websites, I don't know what to say either...

[Simon]

It seemed to me that Belzer didn't give you a chance or expect a response, 'cause he was doing faux-comic shtick-- that standard cliche of asking an audience member "Where they're from."

[m. berru]

I agree with Simon!

Also, I took some pictures too, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/megalope/sets/72157611921354710/

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