Klowns in my Koffee

Armed with Noah's Orange County picture book and little tool box for autographing plus our cool sunglasses so that we would look like proto-Paulie's in a picture, we struck out for the exotic venue of Dick's Sporting Goods in Richfield.

To get to Dick's, one drives around the Best Buy corporate headquarters, a city-sized, winged building complete with daycare center, drycleaner, commercial coffee shop and, for all I know, an alchemist. Every time I drive past the building, I scream, "Let me work for you!" Porkus built twenty thousand PC's for Best Buy's flop private-labeled VPR Matrix brand in about 2002 and I interviewed with them at that time. I flubbed the coolness factor and didn't make the jump. Now that my coolness has expanded but grown more inwardly, I can't decide whether that makes me more or less a viable candidate for another shot. The yelling at the building helps, though.

Arriving at Dick's and piling out of the yellow bus like a thousand clowns, we saw the Coleman trailer and knew that we are at the right place. Then we saw the sign that said "Appearance Canceled" and let out a collective sigh. The attentive Dick's employee quickly explained that there was a death that necessitated the cancellation. Paulie is building a shop across the street from his father's company to compete with Orange Country Choppers and -- surprise, surprise -- from which to launch a new TV show. A contractor was killed two days ago during construction. Out of respect, Paulie decided that this wasn't the right time for a personal appearance. They did send the trailer, free T-shirts and a sign-up sheet to have an autographed picture mailed, so we actually had an interesting time without the necessity of lining up in front of a card table for a 30 second brush with reality TV fame.