How I Met Dan Aykroyd /OR/ Lovely, I Have To Tell You Something

 

I can't believe I haven't written about this till now. See -- there's a couple of pictures on my Facebook page that I never explained very well of Mark and me with Dan Aykroyd . Yes, that Dan Aykroyd. The one and only (I bet) Dan Aykroyd. Comedian, writer, actor. One of THE original Saturday Night Live Alums. One of the Coneheads. One half of The Blues Brothers. One fourth of the Ghostbusters (who ya gonna call?).

And proprietor of Crystal Head Vodka.

A couple of years ago, my husband sent me an email saying that Dan Aykroyd would be at The Shoppette on Redstone Arsenal to promote Crystal Head Vodka. He would autograph your bottle, too.

Oh my!

The Shoppette is a gas station -- a gas station, people -- and Dan Aykroyd was going to sit in it and autograph your pre-purchased, exquisitely crafted glass skull and let you have your picture taken with him.

Um...yes, please.

I don't remember the exact dates -- my Facebook pictures were uploaded on May 14, 2010, so it was somewhere around in there...but Mark had sent me an email announcing Dan Aykroyd's illustrious presence in a gas station on the military base in Huntsville a mere day before he was to be there. I don't know what came over me. I just got this wild hair that we were going to do this, by gosh, and I only had twenty-four hours to pro cur a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka to take to The Shoppette. Yes, The Shoppette had plenty bottles of CHV on sale -- boxes and boxes of them -- but without a military ID, neither Mark nor I could purchase it there.

So that very afternoon, I dropped Nicholas off at his gymnastics class, and I drove to a liquor store. Isn't that what good moms do -- drop off their kids at their extracurricular activities and go buy liquor? I wondered what my deceased grandmother would think of me driving to the liquor store while her great grandson was at gymnastics. I decided she'd think it was pretty cool, what I was doing. :-] She was hip like that. She used to ferment her own wine from her own grapes, for Pete's sake.

Nicholas' gymnastics class happened to be in my hometown of Albertville. Only two or three weeks before, a tornado had ripped through this small town and literally tore it apart. Really, it was a sad and awful thing.  Because of trees down and roads closed, I had to take a different route to the ABC Package Store. I had to go down some side streets I wasn't that familiar with, and since all the trees were split, damaged, or just completely no longer there, I got lost. Being lost in the town where you grew up is a strange thing. It simply should not happen. But when you look down a street that once had century-old trees lining it, and suddenly those trees are GONE and now you see nothing but blue sky...it's disorienting. But I eventually found my way to the package store. :) They had two whole bottles of Crystal Head Vodka at around $70 apiece. I bought 50% of their stock and found my way back to the community center just in time to pick up Nicholas at the end of his class.


That was long-winded and only marginally relevant to my Dan Aykroyd story. Sorry.


So the next morning (also called The Day I Would Meet Dan Aykroyd In The Flesh), I met Mark somewhere in Huntsville and he drove me on post. I don't remember where in the world we parked, but we had to walk several minutes to get to The Shoppette. Bear in mind that The Shoppette is an average size gas station -- maybe 1000 square feet? Maybe 700? I don't know. But it's a smallish place that on that day in May held a LOT of people! Mark and I got there early enough that we were inside the door, but late enough that we still had to stand in line more than an hour and a half. If you were wearing your military uniform, you were ushered to the front of the line ahead of all us civilians (and rightly so, if you ask me). It seems like Mr. Aykroyd was going to be there from 11:00 till 2:00, or something like that -- right smack in the middle of lunch time. We were STARVING, but we didn't care!  

And then it was our turn to meet Dan. He is really, really tall! And handsome -- there, I said it. He said hi, and we said hi. Mark asked him about the newest installment of Ghostbusters while he signed our bottle of Crystal Head Vodka AND our "Blues Brothers" DVD. Outwardly, I was smiling, and I was calm and collected. But inwardly...
I was doing the Snoopy happy dance!
I also found myself wishing my name was Jane so that I could have asked him to say, "Jane, you ignorant slut!"







Forget I said that.






So after he signed our stuff, one of his assistants used our camera to take our picture with him.




{Read the following in my squealy, extra-girly voice:} LOOK AT US! There we are with THE Dan Aykroyd with HIS HANDS on our bottle of Crystal Head Vodka and "Blues Brothers" DVD -- the Sharpie ink is probably still wet!

I swoon. I swooned then and I swoon now. And I will continue to swoon for some time. Did I just conjugate all the tenses of the verb "swoon?"

Later that evening Mark and I uploaded our Dan Aykroyd pictures on our PC. We looked at them and giggled and talked about how much fun it was to have that experience. And during one of those lulls in the conversation where you've both said a lot of things enthusiastically and you kind of pause to reflect and breathe, I abruptly said, "Lovely (I call Mark 'Lovely'), I have to tell you something." Mark said, "OK..." WELL, right after this picture was taken, Mark and I thanked Dan Aykroyd for coming to Huntsville and for signing our stuff and for letting us have our picture taken with him. He was very gracious and polite, by the way. He also said that he and all the rest of the cast were going to work "really hard" on the upcoming "Ghostbusters" movie. Then he shook each of our hands before we left.

But here's what I had to confess to Mark:

Me: Lovely, you know how he shook my hand? Well, his right hand was shaking my right hand, right? Well...{read this next part in my squealy, extra-girly voice too} I took my left hand and placed it on top of his right hand and his hands were SO SOFT! And I did that on purpose so that I could say both of my hands were touching his hand!
Mark: That is SO COOL! Well, Lovely (he calls me 'Lovely' as well), I have to tell you something too.
Me: OK...
Mark: Do you see in this picture how I'm smiling? Like, really, really smiling, kind of like I'm up to something? Well...{This time Mark's voice went kind of squealy and girly. Read it in your head as such.} I had my left arm on your back, right? And I was like, "What should I do with my right hand?" So [imagine severely geeking-out facial expressions here] I put my right hand on his back so that I could say I touched Dan Aykroyd's back!
Me: That is SO COOL!

I have yet to sample my $70 bottle of vodka. I don't think I can bring myself to open that autographed bottle. It's sitting on a shelf in the living room right next to our "Blues Brothers" DVD. But I have a birthday coming up, so maybe someone will give me an unautographed bottle of CHV so I can finally try it.
Hint-hint, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.