My celebrity weekend, part 2

So I get back to LA late Saturday night, and the next day, my wife Jamie Pachino was receiving an award called the Scientists, Technologists, and Artists Generating Exploration (STAGE) award, sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute. No, I'm not making this up!

It was for her play called Splitting Infinity, and the ceremony included an award presentation by Nobel Laureate David Gross (2004, physics) and a fantastic reading of the play by a star-studded cast. Look, I swear I'm not making this up. Here, go here and read this press release for yourself.

Who are these stars, you say? Well, there was Sharon Lawrence, who you know as Andy's wife on "NYPD Blue", Michael Cassidy, who played Zach Stevens on "The O.C.", and Saul Rubinek, who has literally been in every movie ever.

The cast was uniformly excellent, as well as very nice people, and it was a really lovely afternoon. Nancy Kawalek was the director, and man, she did a great job of putting up a reading in one day. It had like projections and lighting cues, it was definitely the most produced reading of a play that I had ever seen.

Now, because I've composed music for this show twice in the past, Nancy asked me if they could use my music for the reading and, of course I said yes. It worked out great and I was glad to contribute to the night.

So, afterwards, I'm chatting with people and just generally being proud of my wife, when someone comes up to me and says "Lindsay, there's someone who wants to meet you. He loved the music in the play."

Well, hey, great! Sure, I'll meet this person. So I walk over and the person who's introducing me says "Lindsay, this is Howard Hesseman."



Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather!

And he says, "Hey, man, I loved your music! I liked the play a lot but I really loved your music!"

I was like "WOW! Thanks!", and inside my head, I'm thinking "Wow! Dr. Johnny Fever likes my music!" I mean, you have to understand, I NEVER missed "WKRP In Cincinnati" when I was a kid. I was a huge fan! And now he's telling me he's a fan of me!

He said "Hey, so what is that anyway? It's like this crazy cosmic klezmer music or something."

And, you know, I never thought about it, but he's completely right, that's exactly what it is.

But I'm just totally starstruck, and I just say "Um. Yeah! That's...uh...that's what it is."

"Well, can't wait to hear more of what you've got sometime soon." And with that, he left.

I was so tongue-tied, I didn't really say anything, but I have to tell you it made my night. Hopefully, I will see him again someday, but if I don't, I'll just have to pretend that Dr. Fever is spinning one of my records late at night on WKRP.