My 15 Minutes

I always wanted to be famous. A famous painter, a famous writer ... it didn't really matter what for, I just desired FAME. How I would get to that point, well, that wasn't something I really considered.
When I graduated from college, I had no clue what I wanted to do. Again, that fame was just lurking in the background. When I got my first job as an assistant editor at a travel magazine, I started to get a taste of the good life. I was treated well on press junkets and it was always fun to see my name in print, even if it was as the writer and not as the subject. I moved onto other jobs and my byline seemed to satisfy my narcissistic needs. But then it hit: the Big 3-0.
I'm not ashamed to admit it: I freaked when I was 29 1/2 and realized that soon I would be entering the adult zone and what had I done with my life? Not much.
"Try everything once," my mother always said. Finally, in the last few weeks of 20-somethingness, I began to take her advice. I did semi-adventurous things like get a tattoo, go parasailing, fly in an open cockpit bi-plane and eat a scorpion. I was well on my way to living the glamourous life. And then it happened: I turned 30 and suddenly the hunger to be famous disappeared. Poof! I felt like a burden had been lifted. I could go on my merry way living in the suburbs, shopping at Marshall's and going to bed at 9 p.m.
Now, fast-forward seven years, and I've finally had my chance at the silver screen. I was contacted (along with other bloggers, doctors, authors and such) by a film crew making a pilot for an upcoming Food Network show on-- you guessed it-- candy! A very nice woman named Jenn asked if I'd be interested in participating. Uh, YEAH!
So I headed to the city yesterday with June as my moral support. I'm a writer, not a talker, so there was the brief underlying fear that I might actually pass out or something equally as bad. I took a few drops of Bach's Rescue Remedy, we hit a bar beforehand and had a drink and then ... it was lights, camera, action!
They made me feel quite comfortable and of course, it's great to be able to talk about candy. I sat in a seat under the hot lights and the producer sat across from me asking questions. It was a lot like therapy, actually; he asked questions ("Would you say blahblahblah?" or "How do you feel about thisthatandtheotherthing?") and I would answer and he would nod, sometimes smile or laugh, sometimes take notes. No big deal.
Apparently now they'll be moving onto the editing stage and hopefully, if all goes well, the show will run in January, I'll be in it (cross your fingers!) and I'll have had my fifteen minutes. You know I'll keep you posted.
(P.S. Everyone I told this to asked the same thing: "What did you wear?" My first instinct was to just be myself-- a T-shirt and jeans-- but the day before I panicked and went out and tried on every damn shirt in the entire metro area. It was horribly disappointing. I couldn't find anything and I was pressed for time, so I finally grabbed two sweaters on my way out of the last store and bought them. One was a rust-colored cashmere ("too conservative," said Mr. Goodbar) and the other was so hideously perky that I loved it in a strange way. It had a thick pink stripe on one side, and a thick orange stripe on the other side. In the end, it turned out to be a bizarrely hot day, so I wore a burgundy short-sleeve job with an interesting neckline. The suave Euro guy who hooked my mike up said, "You have a fancy shirt." I told him I brought a plain black shirt if he thought that would be better, but he said that no, this was perfect. So today I returned the two sweaters and bought a pair of earrings instead.)