“Brad and Angelina in Fairhope? That’s where you are, right? Oh-my-God, OH-MY-GOD, OH-MY-GOD I can’t believe it? Right there where you are? Have you seen them yet? Oh, OH, OH-MY-GOD – tell me you have – do they look like they do in movies? I’ll bet they’re even better in person?” At this point my female caller had to come up for air and I had a chance to open with a greeting.
“Hello, Tara, I guess you’ve become a Brad and Angelina groupie now,” I replied. Although the caller ID was blocked and she hadn’t provided a word of identification, I knew it was our former ‘cross-the-street neighbor from LA (the left coast LA). A forty-something Valley Girl, Tara could talk Up-Speak better than anybody, with every phrase ending in rising inflection like a barrage of questions, punctuated with her all purpose exclamation “Oh-my-God” delivered with rising emphasis and urgency.
When last we saw her the better part of a decade ago, she was knitting sweaters for “The Back Street Boys.” She was up to six per boy and pressing on. I heard from another neighbor that it took an injunction to turn her needles off and there was further legal action after she applied one of them to the group’s agent in an effort to deliver the last of her wooly-works to the intended victim. But back to the present.
So here I was on the phone – fortunately out of weapons range – with a professional groupie hunting for confirmation of my proximity to her new target – Hollywood’s hottest couple.
“Are you going to send them sweaters?” I asked hoping to get a rise out of her, but Tara never lost focus. “I know that Brad and Angelina are there in your little town – it’s on a tabloid Web site and even shows the house that they bought.” She had lost her chirpy sunny California style of speaking and slipped back into her native New Jersey, Tony Soprano-speak, adding, “Don’t screw with me, I want straight answers and now. Don’t forget I know where you live. I might just fly in and stay with you until I hook up with them.”
It was my turn to say, “OH-MY-GOD.” What a terrifying prospect. “Tara, they are not here – it’s just a wild rumor. No actual human being has seen them anywhere in LA (South Coast one this time). Bet you read about them in a grocery-store checkout rag. You know like The National Enquirer, The Star, The World Weekly News – those kinds of tantalizing, trashy tabloids.” Which of their Web sites carried the story that set you off?”
“None of those – it was one I never saw before,” she replied. “I got it right here – it must be a local version of National Enquirer – called the Mobile Press-Register. You probably passed right by it at the food store but never paid attention. I know that you’re one of those Obama-type elitists who only read The New York Times, but I like my little scandal sheets – even if they sometimes stretch facts. So can you actually get me a copy of this Press-Register’s article, you know, on Brad and Angelina, (Valley-Girl was re-emerging) so I can frame it ….” I interrupted.
“Listen to me. First the Mobile Press-Register is no tabloid. It’s printed in a newspaper-type format, has larger pages and a center fold – it just sometimes reads like one,” I added smugly, moving on before she could get cranked up again.
“Second, Pitt and Jolie aren’t here right now and probably haven’t been around here any time recently, if ever. It’s celebrity-mania – like mass hysteria.”
“But it showed their house – a real picture of a real building,” she countered. It’s really there, not an hallucination – right?”
“Yes, it’s a real house, but did you notice in the article that the listing realtor says it’s still for sale. Nobody has bought the place – certainly not some famous folks from out your way.”
Tara slipped past this argument really easily. “Well, duh. Of course that’s what she would say, so Brad and Angelina can protect their privacy. It’s a cover story. Even I can see that!”
Desperate to score at least a single point and end this call before midnight (10 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time), I hunted for something definitive and hit on it. Who had actually seen them in Fairhope, or even within a thousand miles of the city?
“Tara, you know that everybody the reporters talked to in Fairhope said that they knew someone who has a friend who saw the famous couple around town.”
“OH-MY-GOD. See I was right – Brad and Angelina are right there in Fairhope with you,” she blurted, her energy level returning to that of her opening salvo.
“Not so fast,” I yelled trying to hold the floor by talking fast and loud. “Listen – what it says is that people say that someone has seen them but no one can personally say that he or she has – no direct witnesses. Perry Mason would call it inadmissible as hearsay.”
“Is Perry Mason someone famous?” Tara asked hopefully.
“Forget Perry Mason – do you really understand that you are obsessing over a non-event? Nothing happened. No Brad, no Angelina, no story.”
“I sorta understand – but not totally” she grudgingly admitted.
“Good enough. Now say good night, Tara.”
“Good night, Tara,” she replied as I hung up the phone.
My final thought as I drifted back to sleep: “I wish it were as easy to shut off the Fairhope fantasy, the Mobile mania, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are walking, unseen, among us. Then we all could get back to our real lives.”
Only in my dreams.
Contact Pete Gleszer at jubilee@lagniappemobile.com.
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