Pearls of Wisdom: Living legends: Farm-fresh fame

“Oh Ken, we think you’re sooooo great.” Ken, as in the svelte, 20-something, power-hitting Griffey Jr., stared at my mother, as in the bumbling 40-year-old woman gushing and blushing in front of him. While mommy dearest dug through her purse, looking for something, anything, that he might sign, my adolescent self attempted to fade into the hotel wall behind me. Which is not to say that I wasn’t as starry-eyed as she was — I was just far too embarrassed to breathe, let alone speak.

In the years that followed, my mother’s effusive phrase and the lost autograph opportunity entered family folklore, along with a number of other, remarkably similar brushes with fame. Four consecutive April vacations in Peoria, Arizona, home of the Mariners’ spring training camp, led to a handful of superstar encounters (producing, to my mother’s great relief and my father’s great pride, signatures belonging to Ken, his father, and his brother; we stopped short of asking his mother).

Over the years, my mother’s tastes have changed, shifting from young, male athletes (as we moved from Seattle to a Philadelphia suburb to Palo Alto, Ken was replaced by Kobe was replaced by Tiger), to young, male artists. She’s flown to Phoenix to see 25-year-old jazz vocalist Peter Cincotti, purchased books she will never read to get them signed by Daniel Mason and Michael Cunningham (OK, so he’s gay and nearly 55) and spent countless hours perusing the blogs of Tony-award-winning Broadway stars John Tartaglia and John Lloyd Young.

Although my brother and I joke about my mother’s ever-growing list of celebrity crushes and the mortifying encounters that often accompany them, I know the phenomenon is only human. Take Anna Nicole Smith, for example. Her entire career (if 20 years of provocative posing can be called that) was based on our fascination with stardom and the large breasts that often accompany its female form.

As is the case with many human phenomena, however, Stanford students approach celebrity differently. While the rest of the world relies on “The Surreal Life” and “In Touch” to satisfy its need for pop idol voyeurism on a weekly basis, we get our daily up-close-and-personal glimpses into the lifestyles of the rich and somewhat/someday-famous courtesy of our ever-impressive current and former student body.

Three weeks into my freshman year, I had joined 30 clubs and enrolled in five classes when the Farm offered up yet another unique opportunity. Sitting in Annenberg Auditorium one morning, waiting eagerly for IHUM lecture to begin, I barely looked up when a bleach-blond version of the Jolly Green Giant took the seat next to me.

“Hey.” He leaned over, and a powerful whiff of chlorine/cologne came my way. “What’d I miss?”

“Class hasn’t started yet.” I was a bright, little 18-year-old.

“No, I mean, like, what’d I miss?” He paused and registered the blank look on my face. “I just got here. I mean, I haven’t been here. Like, on campus.”

“What?”

“I was in Sydney.” (FYI: In the year 2000, the summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia.)

“Oh! Were you watching the Olympics?”

“No, I was playing in them.”

I played it cool at the time, giving him a knowing smile and a quick nod, but the second lecture ended, I bolted back to my dorm. One trip to the Stanford men’s water polo website and 30 seconds of Google-searching later, I had 800,000 hits identifying Tony Azevedo, the 18-year-old water polo phenom modestly nicknamed “The Savior.”

For Tony (whose moniker went unused during his four years on the Farm) and for most Stanford pseudo-celebrities, the rest of the world is much more impressed than the people on this campus. Just ask a tour guide: even the most SAT-GPA-obsessed parent can be successfully diverted by a lengthy list of past and present students. Back in my tour-guiding heyday (that would be AD 2002-2004), the toughest audience, middle school girls, could be silenced with the drop of a single, precious name.

“You know,” I’d shout over the din of chatting pre-teens and their anxious chaperones, “Corey Matthews goes to school here. If you’re quiet for the rest of the tour, I’ll show you where he lives.” Just like that, you could hear a bike crash on the opposite side of the Quad.

For those of you not in touch with the pubescent tendencies of the past 10 years, Corey Matthews is Ben Savage’s character from “Boy Meets World.” I’ve never actually seen the show, but I’m fairly sure that the girls would have been in for a shock if I’d ever let them go up and knock on his door, a request I fielded virtually every tour. Even from 300 yards away, the shirtless boys and empty kegs of Sigma Chi are not exactly Nickelodeon material.

As “The Newlyweds” duly proved, celebrity tends to lose its glamour under scrutiny; the personalities we see drunk at frat parties can’t hold a candle to the ones who visit. And visit they do. Indeed, the fliers covering every blank, non-sandstone inch of this campus suggest that, if you’re willing to expand your definition of “fame” to include academics, you could dedicate four solid years to star-stalking.

Last week, for example, LA Times columnist/TV personality Joel Stein returned to his old stomping grounds at The Daily. I’ll be honest: prior to Joel’s 45-minute inspirational speech about getting lucky (in a professional sense, that is), I was only vaguely aware of his impressive resume. And before to seeing him walk through the door, I had no interest in his, um, other attributes.

For most of my 24 years of life, I’ve followed my scientist-mother’s example, separating my celebrity crushes from my intellectual ones (although I maintain that Jake Gyllenhaal is brilliant). With Joel Stein, however, I’m not sure whether I want to marry him or be him.

I’d like to think this change indicates some sort of progress in terms of my emotional development, but there is only one advance of which I’m now certain. On that distant evening in Ken Griffey Jr.’s hotel, I swore I would never make a comment as mortifying as my mother’s zealous declaration. But if I’d gotten close enough last Thursday night, I would have said something to the effect of “Joel, I think you’re soooo great.” If he’d been willing to hook me up with a wedding ring and/or a writing gig, I’d have been willing to upgrade the self-effacement (though to what I’m not sure). The only thing worse than our interest in fame is what we’ll do to get it.

Lisa Mendelman respects the boundaries of Joel Stein’s marriage but chose to disregard them for artistic purposes. If you are THE Joel Stein, email her at lisame@stanford.edu.