I'm currently watching the replay of Austin City Limits when a friend of mine and I went to the Jewel taping. I only show up for about 4 seconds in the audience, looking desperately like I want to escape...

Have you ever been featured on TV? How'd you do? Did you recognize yourself?

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

Answers

Is that the only time you've been to Austin CL, Gardanna? Are you not a fan of Jewel?

When I was seventeen, some local outfit did a program about a performing arts company I was in. The funny thing was that I never got to see the show. But when I went back to school for senior year, several kids told me that they'd seen me on the show. Apparently I was in several parts of it, dancing, singing, and talking about the effect the troupe had on us poor disadvantaged kids.

And I was on the local news when there was a protest at my high school. And I appeared briefly on Good Morning Houston, singing, once or twice. But that's it. Only local stuff.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

I used to be on some local (to Cleveland, Ohio) kids' show when I was little, but I don't even remember the name of it. We just basically sat on the floor and listened to stories, and then they showed it on TV. I guess it was as boring as it sounds, as I have zero memories of being in the studio or anything.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

I went to ACL one other time when it was Kim Richie. That was cool and I love, love LOVE Kim Ritchie. I'm not a big Jewel fan, actually. But she mostly did new and unknown stuff and it was fairly good. We were sitting right up front and I had to go to the restroom. They tell you at the beginning of the show not to get up during the songs because they pan the audience. Unfortunately, they also serve free beer and it was one of those bladder about to burst moments.

Jackie, it wasn't the Bozo show was it??

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

No, it wasn't Bozo. That's filmed in Chicago, and I really would have remembered that; my little brother and I used to watch Bozo every morning before we left for school. The Grand Prize Game rocked. The show I was on was a crappy local thing for WEWS, I think.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

I've been on TV a buncha times; I was in a local children's chorus and we'd been filmed for cable TV and we'd shown up on the news a few times. We also made appearances on Romper Room. I was in a commercial for a local barber college; I got a free haircut for that one. And I was on the news a few times: once during the big celebration downtown when the Raiders won the Super Bowl just before leaving for LA, and once because there a big delay on BART and they happened to be filming just as I stepped off the train.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

Jackie, it kills me that you were on a show and you don't care enough to remember the name of it. That cracks me up.

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

In 10th grade each history class got to do a "news" show for six weeks that was aired on the local school channel. When it was my classes turn, we didn't bother with any pretense of covering anything remotely serious and instead prowled the hallways asking people about their shoes and things. I was at the grocery store during this time and this little girl was all "Mommy, it's the woman from TV!" which was pretty cool, even though I never saw myself because my parents didn't have cable.

Then freshman year at MIT I had this show on MIT cable called "Ditch Digest" where I would sum up what happened in all the major freshman classes. If there were tests coming up, if there were problem sets due, if Bob Fields, the 5.11 (Chemistry) professor, who I always called Bob Shields due to his love for the Shielding Effect, wore a different sweater.... It aired like every five minutes. One time I was dating a guy who lived in a fraternity house that didn't get MIT cable, and I never told him about it, and one time he was, um, well, stoned (not me, I would never ever do illegal drugs) and we went down to the snack bar in my dorm and I was on the TV in the lounge and he freaked out. I pretended not to know what he was talking about. Well, I thought it was funny anyway.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

When I was in a play in highschool the local cable channel taped part of it and showed it on tv. It was hideous.

My husband and I and a friend went to the taping of a local decorating show about five years ago. I was panicking about having to go to the washroom because it was a live show.

My husband was on Romper Room when he was four or five. He apparently kicked up a big stink about not having a straw for his juice.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

HA! Maggie, can I please tease him about that the next time I see him?

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I've been on local TV a few times. A friend has regular spots on a local morning show called "Peachtree Morning", and she gets all her friends and their dogs to be part of her spots. I did the Halloween show last year, a fashion show a couple of years ago, and will probably do the Halloween show again this year.

One of my dogs may have a part in a movie they're shooting right now called "Run Ronnie Run." We'll see, I'm still waiting to hear from the animal actor agency lady.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I always wanted to be on Romper Room....

Me and The Husband-Type Man have ended up on a number of Duran- related things. Our first appearence was on Entertainment Tonight's coverage of Duran at The House of Blues in 1993... the camera zoomed right in on us grinning like dorks and my "Simon LeBon is a Poetic Demi-God" sign. I got interviewed by the local news while waiting in line, too, for their in-store appearence. Whoever it was asked me how many hours I'd been waiting to meet Duran Duran, and I babbled some nonsense about "How many hours are in twelve years?" I'm on the VH-1 Hard Rock Live thingie, too, but we all're way to the back, so you can just see a blob of white, and that's my sign. We're at their Today Show appearence from several months back, too, doinging around in the audience like dweebs. I don't remember if my sign was showing or not. And we're on some Early Morning CBS weekend special too, off to the side, singing along with "Halucinating Elvis" or "Lava Lamp" or something.

It's not as good as my friends who're featured on Duran's appearence on the RuPaul show, where Ru teases them for being so, um, *vocal*.....

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

When I was five my parents took me to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and I moved up to the edge of the sidewalk to see the Sesame Street float. When the float went past and I turned around to get back to my parents I couldn't find them and I got upset and started crying, and at that moment an announcer from NBC came over and asked me how I liked the Sesame Street float. I just cried into the microphone telling them I lost my mommy and daddy.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

Gwen, you have my blessing. Go forth and tease!

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I've been on t.v. two times for sure, maybe one more time but I don't know for sure. 1st was when I was in college, I was interviewed by the local news about the "violence in the dorms" where I lived (a gang of football players had been terrorizing smaller, wimpier guys with a broomstick, trying to place said stick where the sun don't shine or somthing). It was a clear case of a couple of rowdies making everyone look bad...there wasn't really the orgy of violence the reporter was trying to portray, and I appeared indignant and disgusted, and very defensive. Kinda cute, actually.

The 2nd time was also on the news, just last year. We had a contest here at work where everyone decorated their cubes/departments however they wanted and CNBC came through for the judging. I had a tent hanging over my cube, all kinds of camping decorations, it was really cute. The camera guy was at least 6 feet away but the camera lens was HUGE -- so big that even at that distance my round, white face filled the entire tv screen, ack.

The 3rd time that I may or may not have been on t.v. was years ago when I was in jr. high. My mom and I were invited to be extras, background people at a restaurant where they were filming a shot to open some variety show, was it Redd Foxx? All I remember is they served some yummy strawberries and cream thing, it was free and we were very poor and so the food was much appreciated, and I had on these god awful shorts and remember thinking how fat my thighs must have been looking all mashed against the chair bottom. The angst of a 13-year-old. I never saw the show so I don't know I made it on.

Okay, gotta share this last brush with stardom. Part of the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High was filmed at my high school. I was in marching band, was drum major in fact, and as we marched around the track at the beginning of a Friday night game, we had two camera guys walking backwards in front of us, filming us marching along. Now, drum majors aren't supposed to smile, and god knows I tried not to, but I was busting up. Plus, the whole front line of brass players I'm pretty sure were making lewd gestures with their horns, if you get my drift. They did film shots of our football team playing, our cheerleaders, and us band geeks freaking out in the stands...if you watch r-e-a-l-l-y closely you see really fast tidbits. The famous Spiccoli-Gets-Pizza-Delivered-to-Class scene took place in our typing lab, and the mall scenes were at the local Sherman Oaks Galleria where a band member friend worked in the theatre. Remember the geek guy in the movie who worked in the theatre, and took Stacy on a date to some German restaurant? My friend, who worked at that same theatre, had a birthday party at that same German place. Strange cosmic connection.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I've been on TV twice. The first time was in high school. My Drama class was to be filmed doing some comic skit for a local community access cable channel. The class decided to do my idea, which was to involve me reciting the story of Rindercella, ala the barber (Earl?) on Hee-Haw, and everyone else in class acting out the various parts of the story as I spoke. It was fun.

The other time was my first semester in college, Fall 1983. My dorm was based on four-bedroom/one-bathroom suite modules with two people per room. Until that semester, that is, when, to accomodate a huge swell in the number of enrolled students choosing to stay in the dorms, the school put three people into each room. Yep, it was crowded. I didn't realize how bad it was, because it was my first time in a college dorm environment, but everybody who knew what a problem it was protested by camping out on the ground in front of the dorm, choosing to spend the nights in tents and sleeping bags instead of cramped up in the overcrowded rooms. I guess part of the complaint was that we were all being charged the same price as when we were getting half a room and now we were getting one third of a room. So a local news station came out one night to shoot footage and interviewage. My friend and I, aspiring rock guitarists, decided this was great free publicity, so we grabbed our guitars and made sure we were in the background of damn near every shot and interview. :-)

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

How amusing! Last week, I was e-mailed a list of useless but vaguely interesting facts (you know - they arrive about once every two months or so) and one of them claimed that 89% of Americans had been on TV*.

I read it out to my work colleagues, and we all laughed and I immediately branded the rest of the trivia fictional.

Looks like I was wrong.

*or something. I don't remember the exact figure. It was high enough to make people in a Less Televised Country dismiss it as nonsense, anyway.

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

once i got to be on the news coz this one place we used to live in our trailer was by a sewar plant and the news did a sotry on it and the lady reporter aksed me what i thot of the situaton and i said it stinks! and it did!!! p-u

-- Anonymous, October 03, 2000

That was pretty witty of you, floosie. Good one! Hee!

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000