For the past 10 months or so I’ve been the designated “face” of the Carmel Chamber of Commerce, and I have to say…poor them. I’m in retail so my mood hasn’t been all that great this year and and sometimes I feel like the bandleader on the Titanic. (He did all he could to keep spirits up, but he still went down with the ship.)

Still, I’ve been been playing cheerleader as much as possible. When the 20th Taste of Carmel went for a “Roaring 20’s” theme and asked for costumes, I came dressed in a rather appropriate outfit for 1929 (and sadly, 2008), and luckily people laughed.

And when we had the annual Halloween parade on Saturday? I proved the depths to which I will sink to get a smile out of a crowd. I call the costume “semi” formal.

If the Chamber wanted someone with an ounce of dignity, they sure picked the wrong guy.

Friday was the big day of Homescapes’ annual birthday bash and I’m happy to say, “Thank God THAT’S over!”  That’s probably too big a statement what with the blasphemy and the capitalized letters and all, but man, those parties are MURDER!  (There I go again with the caps…somebody stop me).

The big drama this time was all because of procrastination.  There has been a crackdown lately in Carmel on businesses and galleries that serve wine to the public without a liquor permit.  In the past I’ve used a caterer with a liquor license so I hadn’t really given this party much thought.  Nor have I been paying attention to the aforementioned caterer’s business, as I hadn’t realized they’d retired.

By the time I found out that VERY IMPORTANT turn of events and started looking around for a new caterer with the right kind of licensing, I was so out of time that I didn’t actually find anyone who could make the party legal until after 1 p.m. on Friday…the day of that same-said party.  The party that had been in Wednesdays Weekly as a Hot Pick in part because we serve free wine.

Now, I kinda hope the people who come to our Open Houses actually like us, but I wasn’t born yesterday so the reality is that there are those in our midst who are just coming for the free grub, music and booze.  (Not YOU of course, Gentle Reader…you are golden and well-loved).

But those Others…minus the booze at a Homescapes party we were no-doubt in for a full on mob-with-torches scene.

Luckily that was averted when Tarpy’s Roadhouse and Ventana Vineyards took pity on me and did me the favor of sending over staff and wine after my last minute calls all over the Peninsula had failed.  If I hadn’t gone to the Taste of Carmel event on Thursday night and told them my tale of woe, thus getting in touch with all the right people who could make things happen on the turn of a dime, I’d more than likely be hanging from the beams in front of my store as a warning to all merchants who make Carmelites spend an evening sober.

Phew.

Way, WAY back in the day when I was young and living in Los Angeles, I…like many of my fellow Los Angelenos… embarrassed myself on more than a few TV shows, Game Shows and commercials.  (I won’t say I can’t act, but you’ve seen the commercials I’ve done for Homescapes Carmel so YOU can say it.)

One of the worst and most mortifying was in 1985 when I was hired to do a walk-on in an episode of the ’80’s show “Benson” called “Katie’s Cousin.” The jist of the story was that the characters Missy Gold and her sister Tracey Gold were playing were pretending to be college girls so they could go out on a double-date with some college guys.  The scripted “comedy” in it was that the girls were only 15 and 16 and they were pretending to be older on the date.  The life “comedy” for me, as one of the guys they were dating, was that I was actually 24.

Sheesh.  I kept trying not to be embarrassed about the whole age-inappropriate thing…telling myself that they wouldn’t have hired me if I LOOKED like I should be prosecuted for Lolita-like, geezerish lechery, but then Robert Guillaume, the guy who played Benson, came up to me, raised one eyebrow and asked me a question regarding my character’s “name” in the script.  See, my character didn’t actually have one…just a description in the notes.  So it was more than a bit mortifying when he looked me up and down and said, “YOU’RE the Cutest Guy in College?”

Lawd…it really was horrible and traumatic and, still suffering from post traumatic stress, I hadn’t really thought about it in years until the other day.  See, 20 years after moving from L.A., the TV union AFTRA finally tracked me down to tell me they owed me a check for unclaimed residuals for that oh-so-memorable/vaguely disturbing performance.

For $15.85.

And that, folks, is WAY more than my acting is worth.

But I WILL tell you that when I think back on the whole career-stunting experience there was ONE thing about it that was really sweet (and even then I thought so).  Despite the fact that both Missy and Tracey were working steadily in TV and movies at the time, they were still young girls and there was a very cute nervousness in their demeanor with me and the other guy in the scene because they were playing our dates and we were CLEARLY older than them. (And I can say “CLEARLY older” for the other guy too ’cause we’d gone to UCLA together and we BOTH were weirded out by the almost-decade disparity in the ages between us and the girls.)

Sigh.  Good times.  One day I’ll post my other “claims to fame.”  (Some of them, though, actually amuse me rather than mortify me…every time I see my “big moment” in the movie “Moonstruck” I laugh at the memory of the insider prank we played at 4 in the morning during the Opera house scene (that actually made it into the movie) and go into a whole well-worn tale of my night breathing the same air as Cher.)

And as for Game Shows…won two cars plus plus on “Classic Concentration” even though Alex Trebek really, REALLY didn’t like me.

(See…ya thought ya knew me.  Still-water’s run deep as they say.)

And as for the “Benson” thing?  In this economy….gotta tell ya, happy to get the $15.85.

Last year at this time, Homescapes was asked to do a “library”-esque stage setting as a backdrop for the inaugural Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival at our local cultural center, Sunset Center.

Being the community-minded fellas that we are, Beau and I pulled a bunch of furniture and accessories from the store, loaded up the truck and did our best to help set the stage (bu-dump-bump) for the feel the organizers wanted to evoke.

This year we did it a little differently.  We still wanted to be community-minded and we still wanted to provide the feeling of a home library on the stage…after all, Sandra Day O’Conner, Khaled Hosseini and Michael Pollen were going to be standing in front of our stuff and we didn’t want to embarrass ourselves or Carmel through inattention to detail.  BUT the difference this time around was that we didn’t want to pull everything out of the store to do it.  We gotta make a livin’ here, folks, and we’d rather have stuff for sale in the store than sitting pretty on a stage down the street through a weekend.

So this year I pulled just about everything I used for the set from my house.  Sure, it’s stuff that feels like Homescapes ’cause I BUY for Homescapes.  So THAT’S on purpose.  But it’s not stuff you’ll find in the store (at least anymore ’cause I don’t want to feel like I like live in available merchandise ** ) and if you don’t like it when you see it on the stage of Sunset Center, you probably won’t like it when you’re over at my house for dinner.

Just warnin’ ya.

** Sidebar:  I learned my lesson the hard way about having “available” product in my home.  I was in China and found a grain basket that would make the perfect, perfect coffee table for my house.  There were only two available and I thought, “heck, if I like it, someone else will too” so I bought them both.  Then the one in the store sold and while it was still on the floor waiting to be picked up by its new owner another couple came in and begged me to see if they could contact the buyer to buy from them this ONE THING of all the stuff in the store.  No lie.  And foot-in-mouth-me said, “I know, I KNOW, I love it too so I can see why you want it.  I’d never seen anything like this before in all my trips to China and there were only two.  I loved it so much I bought the other one for myself.”

Beat, beat.  Dead silence.  Long look.

Long story short, they shamed me into selling MY coffee table to them.  And I’ve mourned it ever since.

So it SHOULDN’T have been a great experience, what with the wasp swarms and ankle-twisting, but I gotta say that I don’t know when I’ve had such a great time running.  Last Saturday I ran from Saratoga Gap to Highway 1 through the woods in what was the inaugural Skyline to the Sea 50k and though it was pretty and everything, what will stick with me was the wasp-sting dancing of me and my fellow runners.

At first it was funny watching the people ahead of me on the trail start to hop and swat as we ran through our first swarm.  Of course, by the 4th time the screaming ahead around the bend was more like a bad horror movie.  But it was still funny.

I ended up with 19 stings that I could count, and MAN they burn…it’s almost a week later and they still itch.  And my ankle is still taped up from the fall I took.  But I hobbled on and made it through and STILL think it was a great way to spend an afternoon.

I don’t know if that means I’m out of my mind or if my brain is still numb from all the wasps that got stuck in my hair.