My 15 Minutes

I don't know why exactly, but in the last few days, I have really started to think about opportunities I had to achieve some level of fame and how, due to circumstances beyond my control, they have totally shat the bed. Maybe it is the fact that I feel like I should be making more money than I am making. Or maybe I feel that I have a different calling than my current professional field. Maybe I just want to be on one of those VH1's "100 Greatest Facial Hair Sculptures" specials. God, I love VH1.

I'm sure there were brushes with fame when I was younger...I'm sure some ad exec wanted me to be the next Ivory soap baby or something like that. I'm sure some effeminate magazine got ahold of my high school poetry and wanted me to be their sackless torch-bearer. But I really don't remember all that stuff and I'm not about to start regression hypnosis to find out, either.

But two instances in my not-so-terribly-distant-past stand out in my mind and, to be quite frank, they are still pissing me off in an alarming and festering manner. The first occured on October 7, 1997. I was with some buddies and we were seeing the Foo Fighters play at a place called the Strand in Providence, RI. But my near-miss didn't come in the presence of Dave Grohl. Oh no no no. It almost came in the presence of former members of Stone Temple Pilots.

You see, a band called Talk Show opened for the Foos and they basically consisted of STP without Weiland (who was undoubtedly in jail at the time). They has some other doofus singing and they spent the majority of their set playing god-awful songs from their, thankfully, only album. But then, the singer announced to the crowd that they wanted a member of the audience to come on stage and sing a STP song for the last song of the night. The song: "Vaseline". Which just so happened to be a song I sang, brilliantly, I might add, in my old band, Spork. Despite my hollering and pogoing and outward pleading to the band (I think I went so far as to say I would even (shudder) buy their disc if they brought me up on stage), the band didn't hear me and took some friggin' meathead instead. The band launches into the song and said meathead proceeds to sing a mangled version of the first verse of the song three times in a row, including as part of the chorus, before he let out an ear-piercing "wooooooo!!!!!" and then stage dove into the arms of his equally meatheaded buddies.

I sat there, my jaw dropped, knowing, just knowing that I had blown it. That was it. That was my 15 minutes, or more accurately, 3 and a half. And it was gone. Poof. Just like Keyser Soze.

It helps to change up your dreams fairly regularly because there will always be another chance to become famous if you have like a thousand things you would like to do. So, with singing on the back burner, I decided that I liked to write and wouldn't mind being some sort of irreverent music critic.

Fast forward to May 16, 2000. I am at another Rhode Island venue (Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel) seeing Elliott Smith. I'm totally in the vibe of the show, but am getting rapidly annoyed at some dipshit with a notebook sitting next to me who feels the need to ask everyone in the area what the name of every song that Elliott was playing. I seemed to be the only one in the area that knew the tunes and I told this kid what he needed to know so he would shut the hell up.

As the lights come up at the end of the show, this kid asks if he could interview me as he is from Rolling Stone and wants to get some people's opinion of the show. Now, there was no way in hell I believed this idiot's story, but I agreed to be interviewed (and photographed) mainly because I was hammered and didn't know any better.

It was only on the ride home that I sobered up enough to convince myself that the headshot they took of me was going to end up Photoshopped on the body of some hunky naked sailor in the magazine "Stud Puppy" who is doing something unsanitary to his "first mate". I guess beggars for fame can't be choosers.

I pretty much forgot all about the incident until I was at work one day and I got a phone call from March, who was home from work for some reason. I answer the phone, "Hi, this is Dim." and was greeted by "Holy shit, man, I was sitting here eating cereal and I opened up my Rolling Stone and you're in it!!!" "Get the fuck out of here!" was the natural response. He assured me that I was indeed a media celebrity, so I signed out to lunch and ran to the nearest CVS to buy up all of their issues of Rolling Stone.

I should have known it wasn't going according to plan when I saw the cover:

That's right. I'm not in the issue with Janet Jackson, getting her yabs cupped by some guy behind her on the cover. Uh-uh. I don't get a scantily clad Britney Spears. I don't even get Springsteen, who is seemingly on the cover tri-annually.

I get Kid friggin' Rock. But not just regular old Kid Rock. But Kid Rock, who is wearing a goddamn tank top made out of the pulltabs from beer cans. What, they couldn't have had him codding a pit bull swaddled in the Confederate flag while kissing his sister outside his trailer while he was at it? And I'm not even going to comment on the Don Henley story.

But then, my disappointment turns to horror. I get to the page I am on and the headshot they took is OK-looking, but the quotes they decided to use from me were strung together in such a manner that it made me sound less literate than Jar Jar Binks. And then, the coup de grace: they spelled my friggin' name wrong. I have six letters in my last name. Consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant. Not that tough. They took the second consonant (an "n" in real-life) and changed it to a vowel (an "i" in Rolling Stone land), which not only ruined the whole thing for me, but also gave my last name a decidedly thick German sound to it, by which some of my elephant-memoried friends still call me from time to time.

Not sure why I felt the need to post this. Maybe, lately, I wish I was famous. Or just a smidgen more than I am. And I thought about the Foo Fighters show and, especially, my Rolling Stone debut. And it pissed me off.

So, remember. If some dumb-ass wants to interview you for a magazine article, do yourself a favor. Grab the pen out of his grubby little hands and spell your name out yourself in large, clear block letters. Lest your name ends up looking like that of an SS officer. Because that will totally ruin your 15 minute buzz.

Bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy diggy said the boogie said up jump the boogie,

- Dim.