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battle of the proxy celebrities
Friday, July 7 2000
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In the evening, Kim was entertaining a visitor from Ocean Beach, San Diego, a guy named Thomas who was her massage therapist when we lived there. He's tall, loves Dave Matthews, and is usually as quiet as a stop sign. For some reason Kim thought he might be a good match for Jolie. He's a good-looking guy and a skilled body worker, what else could a girl want in a man?
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So Kim had arranged for us four to go on a double date to the Canal Club in the heart of Venice Beach.
"I have to go back to my car for a moment," said Thomas as we were preparing to leave. When he climbed into the back seat of Kim's Volvo, we realized that he now smelled strongly of cologne.
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It was, I suppose, a fairly typical Friday night at the Canal Club. The place was crowded with fashionably-attired 20 somethings and there was no place for us except at the bar. Thomas paid for the first round of drinks, a fact that Kim seemed to miss.
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When it seemed clear that sitting in the fancier part of the restaurant would not lead to better service, we found our way to the sushi bar.
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When Jolie gets going conversationally, her stories pour forth with the inevitability of Mexican immigration. The stories are fascinating, though, so her desire to tell them is definitely a good thing. Tonight, her principle story concerned one of her brushes with celebrity, in this case Perry Farrell, enigmatic singer for Janes Addiction. It turns out that she knows Mr. Farrell rather well. She even knows where lives in Venice, so we actually did the stalker thing and drove by his house. It's a discrete black mansion on a cul-du-sac not far from Jolie's apartment. As we passed it a second time, Jolie ducked down in the back seat. She doesn't want Mr. Farrell to think she's stalking him.
Back when Jolie first met Perry Farrell, she had no idea that he was a rock star. She'd never heard of Janes Addiction or Porno for Pyros. She just thought Perry, whom she met through a mutual friend, was one hell of a cool dude. She started showing up at events where Perry would appear, often finding that she was the only one he actually knew. Often when they were in public, she was the only one Perry would be seen talking to. This usually gave people the impression that Jolie was his girlfriend. It was a position she could have used for all sorts of benefits, a position others had shamelessly exploited, much to Perry's dismay.
But this story has a sad ending, one conclusively demonstrating that celebrities are a different sort of person from mere mortals. Not long into their friendship, it seems that Perry gave Jolie his phone number. She was nervous about it and didn't call immediately. Nobody wants to seem too eager. When she finally got up the nerve and dialed the number, she found it had been disconnected. So the next time she saw Perry, she mentioned that she'd called his number and found it no longer in service. His reply was just as cold and icy and matter-of-fact as anything else a celebrity must be in the habit of doing to preserve his privacy. Said Perry, "Well, I guess I'll see you on the boardwalk sometime." Jolie got the message. Perry Farrell could never really be her friend.
Whenever somebody starts talking a brush with celebrity, there's always a tendency among the others present to tell their own celebrity stories. For my part, I'm shockingly devoid of celebrity stories. I knew the brother of the lead singer of Weezer and my mother once had the singing cowboy Gene Autrey yell at her to get out of his way. That's about it. I hung out in Charlottesville for three years but never met Dave Matthews. I lived near Staunton for 20 some years but never met a Statler Brother (they're the guys who brought you "Counting Flowers on the Wall"). About the best I ever did during my year and a half in San Diego was walk past Mike Tyson in Horton Plaza (I wouldn't have noticed had not someone pointed him out to me). Most telling of all: I've been living in Los Angeles, the city of fame, for three months but I've never even seen a celebrity here.
But Thomas actually did have celebrity stories. His best concerned the folk musician Jewel, who developed her craft on the streets of my former residential community: Ocean Beach, San Diego. It turned out that Thomas was her massage therapist for a time. He also had a big crush on her, but that's what cute female celebrities are for, right?
While Jolie and Thomas were duking it out with their proxy celebrities, I walked up to a nearby Ralf's supermarket in Brentwood and bought a six pack of Guiness. By the time I returned home, Thomas had left. We'd been expecting him to spend the night, but he would be sleeping in San Diego tonight. In the end it was Jolie who slept on our couch.
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