Does Debbie

Friday, March 11, 2005

My 15 Minutes of Fame

P.T. Barnum once had some quote about everyone wanting their 15 minutes of fame. And in case it ever comes up on Jeopardy, his last words upon dying were "how were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?" Ok, back to the fame. Notorioty and a moment in the spotlight have always been a secret desire of mine. Guess it's not so secret anymore. While I have not come remotely close to the fame of people such as Jennifer Aniston or Mrs. Butterworth, I have had one or two on-camera moments worthy of sharing.

The majority of camera-time occurred in high school. There was the time when I was at the mall with my mom in November and the Christmas lights had gone up- early as usual. The local news were there asking local Baltimorons their two-cents about the lights. I got screen time, but no clue what I said.

I was also on the news that day in high school when a select group got to follow around local government employees for the day. For one shining moment, I was the Director of Communications or something like that. This was truly my acting debut- on camera, 5pm news, asking the "mayor" about a press conference. Man, was I good.

Then of course there was the embarassing, wish I could take back moment where friends and I spotted the local news downtown and begged the reporter to let us ask our boyfriends to prom on the 6pm news. What were we thinking?? Of course she said yes, and thousands of people, including my orthodontist, saw me plead for a prom date in between the traffic and weather reports.

(Don't worry readers, only two more news moments.)

Flash forward several years to 1996 or so. An event every New Yorker and Baltimorean (hell, every baseball fan) will remember. Play-offs, fly ball, Jeffrey Mayer. Yup, I was at that game and upon that dreadful moment, I turned in my seat, to see the local Baltimore news in Yankee Stadium. Next thing you know, I was asking the reporter if they wanted to interview me, as I was from Baltimore and living in New York. And of course, I had an opinion about that piece of shit 12 year old that caught the ball. 11pm news. That was a good one.

The last of my 15 minutes (and this one clocked in at 4 of those 15 minutes) was in 2001, following the 9/11 attacks. For those of you that don't know, I was laid off from my ad agency job one week before 9/11 and one day after my 28th birthday. Rather than getting another agency job (which there were none of at the time) I was hired by Nino's to help run the restaurant operation that was feeding the rescue workers 24/7 (this experience is another story on its own.) But one day in December, Osama bin Laden released his frist tape following the attacks, claiming responsibility. This was covered by the news, of course, and CNN had 24-hour coverage of this. Loving Nino's, CNN filmed there often, and on this day, they were looking for people to share their opinions of the tape. Enter me. CNN aired, in sequential order, Colon Powell's reaction to the tape, Mayor Guiliani's reaction to that tape, and then my reaction to the tape. 4 minutes, recorded live for the world to see. The first time it aired was on Headline News, and the reported liked my interview so much they had me do it again for regular CNN. Crazy. A moment I will never forget.

1 Comments:

  • At 10:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Ah, but Does Debby has forgotten one other time period in her fifteen minutes of fame. When Does Debbie and I were in highschool, Debbie did her all too famous monkey face (or was it monkey noise) on the local TV news. I air sewed my lip if you can get a visual on that. We went down to the inner harbor to try out for America's Funniest Video's. Unfortunately they wouldn't let us try out because we were under 18 years old. That did not stop the 6 o'clock news from thinking we were damn funny. Add a minute Deb!!

     

Post a Comment

<< Home