Celebrity skin

When you work in the media, you’re bound to come across some celebrities. When you work for a small or mid-size daily newspaper, the celebrities you meet and interview are usually B-list or less. Regardless, I’ve always thought it was cool to meet in person the people you see on TV, the big screen or in magazines.

I’ve seen or met a couple celebs in my non-work life: Mike Ditka (buying baseball hats at the Bloomingdale K-Mart after playing golf at Indian Lakes); Jerry Springer twice (once when I saw “The Jerry Springer Show” and once in Cancun when he was the judge of a bikini contest at Le Boom); David Spade (outside of the same Cancun club, where Lauren had to be physically restrained by the bouncer after she tried to jump the velvet rope to go talk to him); Brandy, Gabrielle Union, some guy from “ER” and a couple of sports stars (playing in a C-list at best poker tournament in Vegas); The Fridge (who I would have not even known was The Fridge if there wasn’t a sign above him with an arrow pointing down that said “The Fridge is here.” He was signing books in Vegas); and Bill Rancic (winner of the first season of “The Apprentice,” who was at the grand opening of Sprinkles cupcakes).

The above were just sightings, no real conversations involved. But as a reporter, I got to interview a few.

*Hilary Duff: She’s a spokeswoman for Blessings in a Backpack, which is a national program that provides backpacks full of food every Friday so low-income kids can eat on the weekend. Duff visited a Fort Wayne elementary school to announce it would be added to the program. My first impression of her was that she is itty bitty in person. When I saw her picture in magazines, by no means did I think she was fat, but she was definitely an actress I thought had some meat on her bones. In “real life” she’s super short and super skinny. And much prettie. I’m gonna go a little gay here, but she really did have mesmerizing eyes. Substance? The verdict is out. I interviewed her for about five minutes (see picture above where I look like a sewer troll next to her), and I got very packaged and rehearsed answers about the program. I was tempted to ask her if she was jealous that her ex Benji Madden was shacking up with Nicole Richie, but I remained professional.

*Jack Hanna: I’ll get right to it: he stared at my boobs the entire interview. Jungle Jack was very interested in the mammal before him. He was in Fort Wayne to do a fundraiser for Black Pine Animal Park, which houses retired circus animals or wild pets. He talks very fast, and I think if I didn’t have boobs (nice ones at that), our interview would have been shorter than it was. My favorite line was when I asked him why he did the fund raiser and he very snarkily said “Because they asked me,” and walked off.

*Alfre Woodard: Gave a lecture in Fort Wayne, and I observed when she worked with a class of drama students at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. I don’t have many memories of this. Sorry.

*Marlee Matlin and Henry Winkler: These two also did a lecture at IPFW. Apparently they’ve been friends for 25 years, so they go on the lecture circuit together. Matlin was very pretty and very tiny in person. The Fonz was very short, 5’6” at best. They’re cute together, kind of have a brother/sister vibe and play off each other well. The Fonz had a lot of sincere and heartfelt advice for the acting students.

*Sandra Day O’Conner: I didn’t get to personally interview the former Supreme Court justice, but I had a nearly front row seat when I covered her lecture. Talk about a saucy lady! During the Q&A portion, she had absolutely no patience for questions she deemed stupid and either wouldn’t answer them or mocked the person who asked them. A lot of people thought she was a bitch, but I found her quite entertaining.

*Cheech Marin: The nation’s top pot smoker gave a lecture on Chicana art. Apparently he’s a huge collector. I don’t know about you, but I could care less what Cheech has to say on the subject. But he was very nice during the press conference and answered all my questions about his entertainment career and what he had coming up.

*Marie Osmond: Marie was the keynote speaker during a women’s event in Fort Wayne, and I had the opportunity to interview her before her speech (Thank God because her speech was one of the most disorganized and rambling I’ve ever heard). Again, she was very short and tiny and had gorgeous hair. You could tell she’d been in show business her whole life, because she was “on” the entire time. I brought my mom to the event because she adores The Osmonds. During our interview, people started taking pictures with Marie, and the photographer with me asked my mom if she wanted her picture taken. She stood there like a deer in the headlights and just shook her head. It was like watching Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties” when he freezes during the game show.

*Clinton Kelly: Prior to meeting him, I had never seen “What Not to Wear,” but I knew the premise of the show. So obviously I was very concerned about what to wear for the interview. I kept it simple with a white shirt, tan pants and some brown, crocodile peep-toe heels, but I’m still convinced he was judging me the entire time. I chickened out on asking him to evaluate my outfit, in fear he would reduce me to a puddle of cotton.

*The Kerry sisters, Cate Edwards and Andre Heinz: These four were stumping for the John Kerry/John Edwards ticket during the 2004 election and did a rally at East Carolina University when I worked in North Carolina. They were about an hour late, provided minimal information during the rally and spoke to the media after. I didn’t have any interaction with Cate but had some interesting moments with the rest of them. Alexandra Kerry, the older filmmaker sister, seemed like she was on drugs. The younger one, Vanessa, mistook me for a handler at one point. Someone brought her a coffee, and she complained out loud that it had Sweet and Low instead of sugar, and I told her I also did not like fake sugar. She responded with “No sweetie I’m fine, I don’t need anything else.” Excuse me? This was all made up for when Andre came up to me. We shook hands, and he held on way longer than was socially acceptable. Then he started talking to me about 7-11 and Krispy Kreme donuts. (This is love people). All the while I’m figuring out how I will explain to my editors that I cannot write this story because the heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune has whisked me away on the Kerry/Edwards jet. I wrote the damn story.

Soderlund estate=Ground Zero

My parents have been unsatisfied with our house since I was probably 9 years old. We moved in when I was around 3, they paid about $68,000 for the house, and it’s since appreciated to probably the mid-$200Ks (yay expensive Chicago housing market!).

Jan and John never intended to stay there for 26 years. They even tried to sell it at one point, but since my dad refuses to take anything less than what he thinks the house is worth (usually an extraordinary amount more than what it’s actually worth) you can see why they got nowhere.

Periodically, they abandoned the idea of moving and zeroed in on putting an addition on the house. It started with the idea of building on to the back of the house but because of a “Communist Roselle” rule that your house can only cover a certain percentage of your property, the Soderlunds had to take to the village board. In the early 90s, the village deemed the plan too grand and the plan was aborted.

Earlier this year, they decided to revisit the idea but put a twist on it: they’d build on to the front and side of the house instead of the back. Again, the Soderlunds stormed village hall and asked for a variance. After a little finagling, some stern looks to crotchety board members, they were granted their wish minus three feet.

The moral of this story is that construction began on said addition last month and Chach and I have had an unwanted front row seat for the action. Living in Ground Zero was not on the terms of the lease we signed when we moved home in March. But being good little soldiers, we decided to endure it for the sake of the cause.

I’m having a hard time conceptualizing the project, but I’ll try to explain: downstairs will have a new powder room, utility room for the washer and dryer, living room, dining room and large family room. A master bathroom will be added upstairs and they’re also completely gutting and redoing the kitchen.

Lovely right? Once it’s done, yeah. So far, the workers have built the frame of the addition, and it hasn’t affected us outside of some dust, strange men in our front yard and people slowing down to gawk at our display. The workers arrive at the house after I leave for work and leave before I get home, so I don’t really care.

Chach is a different issue. Anyone who knows Chach knows he needs his kitty sleep during the day. He can usually be found under the covers in the bed in his “his room” (guest bedroom) or in my parents’ bed. He likes it quiet, and he likes it dark. (For example, I overslept today so I interrupted his morning bedtime by having the lights and TV on in my room. In lieu of a kitty mask, he slept under the bed until I left). So the noise has greatly disrupted the prince’s sleep. Anyone who knows Chach also knows he is the personification of a scaredy cat. So when he sees people outside, he heads for the hills (a.k.a. the nearest bed with blankets).

The outside part is done, and the workers are ready to storm the inside. What this means is our living room will become uninhabitable. My dad’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey” marathons will have to be watched elsewhere since we won’t have power, and the furniture and TV will have to be moved somewhere. At some point, we also won’t have water downstairs. Scratch Laundry Saturdays and cooking dinner (power will also eventually be gone in the kitchen).

Once they start tackling the upstairs master bathroom, my parents will be evicted from their room. Their tentative plan is to move their mattress into Chach’s room (guest bedroom) and sleep there. That means Chach’s toys and his litter box have to be moved into my room.

There’s talk of us possibly relocating to my grandpa’s house in Franklin Park while he’s in Florida. This would be great for me because it would lessen my train commute by 30 minutes. I’m on board with this plan under two conditions: 1.) Just me and Chach go; and 2.) There is DVR and Internet available. However, I am concerned about the dinner situation since my mom has been making me dinner since I moved home (Spoiled? Yes, and proud of it). In all seriousness, I suppose if the slumlords/roommates came with it wouldn’t be horrible.

In the end, it really will all be worth it. Although I think Chach and I are going to discover a new meaning of the word roommates when it comes to my parents. Ugh.