Once upon a time, I worked on a television sitcom on the WB network. As I sometimes say: Not only did they cancel the show, the canceled the whole network! One of their hits was The Surreal Life, a reality show that dumped C-list celebs in a house to be weird. To do some cross-promotion, former Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil won a guest spot on our show, Greetings from Tucson. After the episode, he invited the whole stage crew to his birthday party.
A party thrown by someone from Mötley Crüe, one of the all-time hardest partying bands? Okay!
The party was thoroughly unwild, a little awkward, in a nice but unremarkable Hancock Park house. The good part it was jam-packed with C-list celebrities, and the ratio of celeb to civilian was pretty high.
In addition to Vince Neil, there was Gabrielle Carteris, aka Andrea Zuckerman from Beverly Hills, 90210; Jeri, a Survivor villain who was on minute 14:55 of her allotted 15; NBA rebound king/future honorary North Korean Dennis Rodman; a guy who was allegedly dating Priscilla Presley; and my ninth grade hero MC Hammer. I stood next to Hammer as the cake came out for Vince Neil, and I wished like hell he'd start a conversation with me. I'd been in LA long enough to know it was wise of me not to corner him and breathlessly confess what "Turn This Mutha Out" once meant to me.
Nothing much happened at the party, but I had already had my Vince Neill moment earlier in the week. Jeff Garlin was booked as Vince's manager, but he wasn't able to make it to an early rehearsal, the table read where the cast reads the script at a table for the writers, network, studio, and staff. And because I'm awesome, they asked me to be Jeff Garlin at the table read.
So I ran lines with Vince Neil at the start of the week, and I went to his birthday party at the end of the week, and I'm not sure that he and I actually ever had a conversation. Hollywood!
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