(Almost) Brush With Fame

Odd things happen to us when we travel. It never fails. There was the time we lost Hubby’s luggage, and he had no underwear for two days. And the time a crazy lady walked up to him in the Memphis airport, took her false teeth out of her mouth and yelled at him because she mistakenly thought he had turned her into security for sneaking a dog onto the plane. There was also that time Hubby saw Cameron Diaz at the airport. It never fails. Something unusual always happens before we get to our destination and back. Our weekend in Chicago was no different.

On Friday night, we took the biggest limos I’ve ever seen in my life to the theater and back to see Shout. It was the easiest way to transport twenty-nine people through downtown Chicago in the pouring rain. When we returned to our hotel, we unloaded at the front doors at the same time as a bus full of musicians. They were friendly folks, and we joked with them about the limos before moving inside and out of the rain. Once inside, we briefly mingled around the lobby while our teacher/leader checked on a student’s lost wallet. The musicians stood around us, waiting to check in and making small talk with our group. After instructions on curfews our group was free to disperse, and Hubby and I went upstairs. Now, being two of the ten people in the United States who don’t watch American Idol, we didn’t know that one of the musicians standing around us was this guy.

Or that another one of the musicians was this gal.

But some folks in our party eventually caught on. They stood around and chatted with Michael Johns and Brooke White for a few minutes and had their picture taken with them. Both were recently booted off American Idol and were in Chicago to tape a segment on The Ellen DeGeneres Show the following day….in and around our hotel. The American Idol fans in our party came upstairs sharing their pictures and details of their little adventure in the lobby. I have no picture to share with you because, well, I didn’t know diddly about Michael and Brooke or anything American Idol related and walked off to find my pajamas and a Diet Coke. By they way, what’s with all the stinkin’ Pepsi products in Chicago? Isn’t that town big enough for both bottlers? Anyway, for a few brief minutes I had stood by a couple of almost, kinda, not really famous folks and didn’t know it.

The Ellen taping was scheduled for 2pm Saturday, so we returned from our shopping on Michigan Avenue just in time to catch a glimpse of it before we had to scoot out of the hotel and back to the train station. We didn’t see Ellen in person because she was outside of the NBC Suites about a block away (where our cab driver mistakenly took us on our first day when I told him we needed to go to “Embassy Suites”. Doy!) The segment taped in our hotel just provided a remote live audience for the show.


We didn’t join in because we didn’t have time, but it was fun to watch for a little while. A couple of the folks in our party did manage to see Ellen as they were coming back from Michigan Avenue. I hoped our cab driver from hell would drive by her as we headed to the train station. He didn’t, and it was just as well. I was too busy having visions of Princess Diana as we barreled through a tunnel at 210 miles an hour. Now, that’s a brush with fame I’m not interested in.

*Photos of Brooke White and Michael Johns courtesy of Americanidol.com