High Skool Reunion

Here's the first installment of a recap of the High School Reunion show that's going on right now.

These are students from my high school, man. In fact, they're all about one year younger than me, from the class of '92. It's fucking weird, especially with bald Tim, with whom I did a bunch of plays, back in the day.

The guy who did this particular recap is a friend of mine who used to live in the Chicago area. Our mutual friend is Jon, who worked for the network that's putting on the show - he sat and did logging of raw footage from the show. He's from the very same high school, yes, he is. Wendy, kick-ass recapper over at Television Without Pity, will also be recapping this show. She is also from my high school.

Oh, and my boss? She is also an alum of the high school, and in fact tried to get onto this reality show several months back.

It's so twisty, I tell you. My mom taped this first episode for me, and I can't wait to see it.

connected to celebrity, never a celebrity

I once babysat the infant nephew of Casey and Nina Siemaszko, and ate Casey's dinner (filet mignon! I win!) at a debutante ball one year when I was a teenager. That was the year Nina was presented as a debutante, and I remember giddily walking down hotel hallways with her, gossiping about stuff. She's gorgeous in person, and she once dated David Duchovny. Casey was one of Biff's thugs in Back to the Future -- he was the one with the 3D glasses on all the time.

One time in Oak Park, I was walking down the street to work, or to the library, or something, and I walked right past Emo Phillips and Judy Tenuta, who were deep in conversation. That was the only time I ran into them, even though I think they lived in that town for a while. Seeing them so normally like that broke the illusion of their comedic personas. Emo has a deep voice. It's true. Oak Park is host to many 'celebrity' angles: the birthplace of Hemingway, the architectural stomping grounds of Frank Lloyd Wright -- I used to live next door to a house that was supposed to be FLW-designed. A wacky Frenchwoman lived there, and I had the dubious distinction of being the only one in my family ever to get invited over there. I remember very little of that house, actually.

Oh, I even have a Kevin Bacon link. I took a workshop with someone who performed, ensemble-wise, regularly, with Lusia Strus, who was in Stir of Echoes with Bacon. That movie, incidentally, was filmed just a neighborhood over from my current apartment, and is the same neighborhood where my friend Tom lives. Tom employs me to do web design, and he's currently working on a movie/documentary about Glenn Tillbrook (of Squeeze fame). (I spent one glorious evening sitting with Tom and Amy, who's the chicky behind the whole thing, watching raw footage of the documentary. It rocked.)

Ye gods, work is busy today, otherwise I would sit and mull over what seems like a gabillion connections I have to the entertaiment industry and the business of celebrity. I do sit and think quite a bit about how I seem to teeter in this weird place between being just a regular kid from Chicago, and being perhaps able to worm my way through to getting a foot in the door to something much, much bigger.

A lot of it I am sure is the It factor: I'm not sure I've got It. I used to have this grad student Nicholas tell me in college all the time that I was going to be famous. He'd say, in his strange lilt of a Jamaican accent, "Look at dat face: Krystyn Wells, you are going to be famous." I'd be appropriately (and sincerely) bashful, but I never could see what he saw. I never knew if he'd ever be speaking the truth or not, and I am still not sure he ever will be.

How much would I want fame? To be that visible? To tumble into the miasmic splendor of overload and attention and self-inspection and the marketing of my very person?

Is that belly button lint I see? Har!

Anyway, that was just a slice of the weird circles my life seems to revolve through ...

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I just took a short break, the last five minutes of which I spent passed out on the couch in the little lobby, here. I actually dreamt during that time. The dream resembled Jet Set Radio Future, which I've been playing madly on the XBox lately. Silly me.

I've been sitting up at the front desk of my office for the past few days, since the woman who normally sits here is out on leave for foot surgery. So, essentially, I am doing two jobs at the beginning of a quarter, at the beginning of the year, right after the holidays. It's terribly busy here, and even with the little lulls where the phone finally stops ringing, it's still insanely hectic here.

I can't wait to get back into my groovy little office again. It's too bright here, and I have to paste on my Happy Dealing With the Public face every second I am up here. I refuse to get totally dolled up, though: I am wearing my black Converse sneakers.


I am probably going to sleep on the bus.

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