A Brush with Fame

A little more than a week ago, I got a phone call one evening. The voice on the other end asked if it was me. I said 'yes'. "This is Andy," he said and then because my "Oh, hi!" must not have convinced him that I knew who I was talking to, he added, "...Z."

"Oh, hi Andy! How are you?" So embarrassing to be caught out when my kids' foremost musical idol, Andy Z calls me on the phone.

Anyway, he was calling to invite the kids to a special concert he was doing at a real, live sound stage not-so-close to here. He's making a DVD as a demo and to sell, presumably.

So, no, there's not much of a brush with fame here. The closest we really got to fame was a little boy exclaiming just before filming, "I'm gonna be famous!" And, no, it wasn't Smunch.

But it felt kind of like the kids would be famous. Bright lights, high-quality video cameras, takes and re-takes. This was my view for most of the performance.
Obviously, my chair didn't afford much of a view of the proceedings, but it was so much fun hearing about 40 of Andy's biggest fans singing along, chattering in the breaks, laughing and smiling. Smunch and Mam intially stuck together like sticky bubblegum, but Mam eventually made friends with another little girl, who was probably in kindergarten. They chatted and held hands during parts of the performance. Daddy got this more comprehensive photo of the event.
The kids had a great time...and while some of the other kids had meltdowns or were waaay to hyper by the end of the show, ours behaved like little angels. It's a weird side effect of being happy and having us mostly out of their line of sight. After hugs with Andy (and a hug for Mam from her new, nameless friend, also pictured), we were off to lunch and some unsuccessful letterboxing...made successful when a freight train went over the railroad bridge we had just walked under. A good day, all in all!