I Have Been Inside George Clooney

By now you have heard my tale of woe regarding the malicious prank pulled on me during "Black Christmas". As a result of the emotional scars suffered that day (and the physical scars on my resulting victims), I vowed to do whatever necessary to get my hands on the holiest of all electronics: The Nintendo Entertainment System.

Being that it was now 1988 and I lived in Stumblebum, I had very few choices. This being a recycling state, I could try and collect as many cans and bottles as necessary to claim my prize, or I could just bite the bullet and...gasp...get a job.

Let's put this into a little bit of perspective first. In early 1988 I was a wee lad of 12. I wouldn't turn 13 until the end of August, so I hadn't even achieved the rank of teenager yet. How in the hell was I supposed to find a job? Well, sometimes living in the ass end of a cow town can work to your advantage.

There was, in the sparse downtown area that my grandfather lovingly referred to as "Greater Metropolitan Stumblebum" a grand total of two job options; the local store (family owned) and a small restaurant called Granny's Place.

Granny's was well known to me as she had a small gaming room filled with all of 6 video games. (At the time that I started working there: Sky Shark, Ikari Warriors, Shinobi, Pole Position, Party Animal (Pinball) and Double Dragon. Being the kind of guy that would end up with Pac-Man and Adventure tattoos on my leg, you can imagine that I spent a great deal of time there playing the games. Granny's held a monthly gaming competition with fabulous prizes like waffle cones and milkshakes as the spoils and each month it was myself or one other regular who claimed the booty.

Granny knew who I was and appreciated the burning desire I possessed to claim a Nintendo for myself. After a few weeks of begging, needling and general cajoling, I got her to agree to take me on as an employee. By the time I turned 13 I was managing the restaurant.

Yes, you heard that correctly. At the age of 13 I was managing a restaurant. And yes, you're probably thinking correctly that this showed a horrible lapse of judgment on Granny's part. I wasn't necessarily a bad kid, (not yet anyways) but putting a teenager in complete control of a business intended to turn a profit is just, well, dumb.

Granny's quickly turned into a haven of free food for my friends and a refuge of general chicanery. My friends and I, though never intending any ill intent, were nonetheless a bunch of young hooligans and reprobates.

I managed to continue the charade long enough to get Terry hired as well, placing me in a position of authority over him which I loved to exploit for my own amusement. I would frequently assign him the shit duties just because I could. To his credit, he took it all with resigned humor.

Stumblebum was a town of about 30 people, a town so insignificant that we didn't even appear in all of the atlases of repute. Because of our minuscule populous, an average day there was spent doing very little real work. With the exception of the rush of ice cream sales after little league games, it was very rare to see more than one or two people there that weren't there just to visit and hang out.

I could regale you for hours with whimsical tales of our antics, but that would be foolish of me. Come on, I'm trying to run a blog here, and it would do me little good to throw all the great stories into ONE entry, now wouldn't it?

But there is one story that stands out from the pack a bit. A tale of intrigue involving Hollywood's cultural elite, sinister voodoo and an unfulfilled debt that I'm certain plagues the thoughts and dreams of at least one A-List actor currently working in the industry.

This is the tale of George Clooney's chance meeting with E.

Terry and I were tooling about the restaurant in our standard manner, i.e. doing nothing productive and ensuring the financial ruin of our employer. Having already taken care of our standard duties for the day, we were simply enjoying youth to our fullest potential.

I stood in front of Sky Shark, hoping to shatter my current high score, singing the jaunty tunes of the game as I played. Terry sat at the bar, gleefully snacking on whatever foodstuff he had snuck from the preparation area. I blasted another wave of enemy ships, oblivious to the world around me when I heard Terry call out.

"Dude, a limo just pulled up!" he shouted over to me, triggering a lapse of concentration and the untimely death of my fighter.

I turned to assault him with a barrage of curses but found myself stunned by the look of excitement in his eyes.

"A limo?" I snorted out, not believing his line for a second. Seriously, this is Stumblebum in the middle of summer. Limos don't pull into my parking lot. Limos don't even drive THROUGH Stumblebum, let alone stop here.

"Yeah," he said, while straining to see out the window. There was a brief pause and then he blurted out, "HOLY SHIT!"

"What?"

"It's that guy from The Facts of Life!" Terry said, giddy with the excitement of recognition.

"Huh? What guy?" I asked, not knowing of any male characters from that show, before tossing out, "You mean Tootie?" Har dee har har, my cutting wit knows no boundaries.

I had no idea who Terry was talking about. At this stage in his career Clooney had done The Facts of Life but had not yet done Roseanne. He was still, for all intents and purposes, a nobody. Terry was intent that this was indeed "That guy from that show" and resolved himself to finding out for certain once he came inside.

Mr. Clooney stepped into our restaurant and made his way to a table, the look on his face indicating that he was every bit as starstruck by me as I was by him. In other words, he could not have cared less if he tried.

Within minutes Terry was excitedly bouncing to the dining room to get Mr. Clooney's order while I began preparing the grill area for whatever he might want. After a short while Terry returned to hand in his order.

"Yeah, it's him alright," he said. "His name's George Clooney. He'd like a gyro and a bowl of potato soup."

A simple enough order for us to fill. I set to work preparing the gyro while Terry enthusiastically poured a bowl of soup, which he delivered to our diner with thumb deeply ensconced. (This was a bad habit of Terry's, and one for which my father yelled at him countless times...Keep your damn fingers OUT OF THE SOUP.)

Luckily for us, George did not notice the thumb in his soup, or at least had the common decency not to mention it. And thankfully Terry had attracted his attention well enough that George did not notice his gyro meat accidentally dropping to the floor. I quickly stooped and grabbed the meat, brushing it briskly against my apron.

Most people have the designated "five second rule" when food falls to the ground, a mistaken belief that it takes a few moments for bacteria and other assorted ickies to make their way onto wayward food. This is of course crap, and seeing as how this food wasn't destined for me, I was adhering to the "five minute rule", which this discarded meat fell well within the boundaries of.

Just prior to slathering a healthy dose of cucumber sauce onto Clooney's gyro, I noticed a hair drop from my head into the sizzling pile of meat and vegetables laid out before me. A little bit of voodoo magic never hurt anybody, I figured, and I let the incident slide.

Terry delivered the hairy, filth encrusted gyro to George's table and we watched with giggly glee as he ate every last bite.

That's right, YOU HEAR ME CLOONEY? I fed you a dirty gyro filled with my hair. My hair is inside you now. Not many people can make the claim that they've been deep inside George Clooney, but I can.

And I can't help but notice that prior to being fed the grimy meat sandwich by yours truly, Clooney was nothing but a bit player, a nobody. But within months of his chance encounter with E, Clooney was well on his way to super-stardom.

Coincidence? Or was it perhaps a machination set into motion by yours truly?

Oh, it was machination alright. Again, you listening Clooney? I demand reparation! If it weren't for me and the potentially deadly foodstuffs I provided, you'd still be nothing. NOTHING.

Time to repay the favor, Clooney.