THE PROOF IS IN THE BAKED BEANS

My God...you look great today. Did you do something to your hair??

(Flattery in a diary will get you EVERYWHERE).

Soooo...today's the big fashion show deal at Goodwill that I'm involved with.

Goodwill is one of the agencies in town that knows they can always count on me to help them out. I think that what they do out there is a good thing, giving jobs to the handicapped who wouldn't otherwise have jobs.

I'm not actually "in" the fashion show today, rather, I'm one of the "escorts" for the models.

Which means I hold their hand and walk them onto the runway, stand there while everyone "oooohs" and "ahhhhhs" and then I take their hand, help them off the runway, and go get the next model.

It's me and some guys from TV and Radio doing it. We're "celebrity escorts".

...Kinda like Heidi Fleiss, I guess...

It should be fun (the key word being "should"). I'll tell you all about it in the next entry.

The only drawback is, I have to wear a suit while doing this and it's been sooooo hot here this week, I'll probably be a sweaty mess by the time the actual fashion show starts and all the models will ask for other celebrity escorts rather than me to help them on the runway. Meanwhile I'll be leaning against a wall, intently picking my nose like the sweaty slob I am.

I hate wearing suits. I'm a t-shirt and shorts kinda guy.

Speaking of which...jeez...yesterday I'm lazing around the house and I think "Ooooo...American Beauty came out on DVD yesterday! I think I'll go buy a copy!"

So I throw on a t-shirt and shorts combo, some sunglasses and a baseball cap and head to Sam's Club, where DVDs are dirt cheap.

Granted...I looked like HELL. But I planned on just jetting in and jetting out incognito.

Wrong.

The first person I see in the doorway is my good buddy, Dr. Eric Lewis. He was talking to someone else, so I just tapped him on the shoulder, smiled and gave him a silent wave and kept going.

I went to scratch my neck and I felt the tag of my t-shirt underneath my hair.

That was odd.

I felt a little more closely and the tag of my shirt was on the outside of my shirt.

How the hell did that hap....

Oh shit.

My shirt was on inside-out.

I looked at my shoulders and sure as shit...seams everywhere.

I was mortified. It wasn't enough that I looked like hell anyway and was incognito.

My freakin' shirt was on inside out.

I stood there grinning, thinking "ohhhh...this is soooo ignorant."

Finally, I devised a game plan. Get to the car, get in, take the shirt off, turn it inside out, get out of the car and continue my shopping spree.

I did just that, with people staring at me left and right. The checkout lady at Sam's smiled as I breezed past her.

It wasn't a flirty smile either. It was a "You need to let your Mom dress you" smile.

I then went to Wherehouse Music to look for the DVD.

They didn't have it either.

For the hell of it, and because I had nothing better to do, I went to the mall.

Incognito.

I didn't want to have to talk to anyone.

As I walked past the food court, I heard it yelled out.

"UNCLE BOB!!"

It was an old co-worker, Le' French Salter.

I sat down with French and made small talk. He and I had shared an office for four years in the early 90s and were good "Work" friends, which means we never did anything together outside of work, but he was my best bud while at the workplace.

French asked if I had enjoyed my lunch.

I hadn't eaten lunch.

He then pointed out all the spaghetti sauce stains on the front of my shirt.

LESSON TO BE LEARNED: When going out in public, no matter how briefly you plan to be out ... don't pick clothes out of the hamper to dress yourself. Go with the clean clothes.

Oh yeah. And double-check release dates before you go out looking for a DVD that hasn't been released yet.

I was flipping channels on the tube yesterday, and I saw an old commercial that I had filmed back in the early 90s.

It was for the business that French and I shared an office at ... he's still there...I left in '93.

In the original version of the commercial, there was a close-up of me in the end "acting" like I was the owner of the business and inviting everyone to come see me at the business.

My name was Elbert for the commercial, because at the time, that's what the owner's name was.

So you had my big, chunky mug take command of the camera at the end and say:

"Hi!! I'm Elbert, come see me and I'll put your ad in FREE in the Bulletin Board!!"

That was my big line.

But, since I'm no longer with the company and I have since made a name for myself in this city that ISN'T Elbert ... my portion of the commercial has been sadly exorcised.

Instead, they show some old lady dialing a phone.

Where's the justice in that? Me being replaced by an elderly woman???

BUT...you still see my hand as I grab a copy of the Bulletin Board magazine from a rack. So I'm still in the commercial.

That was the first of many commercials I shot for the business. I remember shooting one where I was a "man on the street" talking about why I loved the Bulletin Board.

I always thought those things were honest and straight-forward.

Uh-uh.

I had a script that I had to memorize. Three short lines.

And I could NOT get them right for the director.

"I want emphasis on the phrase 'There's no other magazine LIKE it'," he kept telling me.

There's no other magazine LIKE it.

There's no other magazine LIKE it.

There's no other magazine LIKE it.

Got it.

Ummmmm....no I didn't. Not to the director's liking anyway.

Still, I wound up in the commercial, looking like a man on the street that was stumbling over a script.

I shot a commercial for baked beans, that to the best of my knowledge, has never been shown.

I had a ton of lines for that one. The gist of the commercial was that I would eat baked beans on ANYTHING.

Even ice cream.

So they poured baked beans on ice cream and I "ate" it.

I didn't really. I put an empty spoon in my mouth and then let my acting techniques take over.

Which...in a nutshell ... was me pretending to have an orgasm after eating a mixture of baked beans and ice cream.

See? You only THOUGHT I was weird.

Now you have proof.