The Terrible Catsafterme

Brad's Musings and Meanderings

random acts of quoting

"You gentlemen aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?" - Clara Thornhill, "North By Northwest"

I swear I was beginning to develop a complex when it came to Ed Begley Jr.. If it had happened just one more time, his name would have entered the lexicon of trite phrases where to pull a ‘Begley’ would mean that you don’t bother to show up. Literally this dated back to 2015 when the Hollywood Show first announced him as a guest, and he ended up cancelling. Sure, happens all the time, right? But I got excited again when his name re-appeared in 2017 on both the Chiller and Hollywood Show list. I figured between one of the two, I couldn’t miss him. Nope. He cancelled both. 

As one of the lead actors in the fantasy hospital drama St. Elsewhere, and has someone who had appeared in numerous sitcoms over the years including My Three Sons, Maude, The Bill Cosby Show, The Doris Day Show, Happy Days, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, M*A*S*H, Laverne & Shirley, Roseanne, The Larry Sanders Show, Third Rock from the Sun, Dave’s World, Ellen, Scrubs, Arrested Development, Grace and Frankie, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Curb Your Enthusiasm… just to name a few lest I run out of breath, and heck, had even taken over the role of Whitey Whitney in the Leave It to Beaver reunion film Still the Beaver… and had appeared in The West Wing and Monk, and lots of great movies dating all the way back to 1969, and well, let’s just say since we’re already in the midst of a pretty darn long run-on sentence: an encounter with him was highly desirable.

So when I saw that he was announced to appear at the Hollywood Show on February 10, 2018, part of me thought it might be too good to be true, while another part of me thought, surely he can’t be making a sport out of scheduling and then cancelling these shows.

Not to keep you in suspense, as if you could possibly not have guessed already, Ed Begley Jr. did in fact show up at this show. And to make sure I got him, he was the first on my list. With the high number of celebrities I’d been getting and would be getting at this particular show, I skipped the autograph and just shelled out the $20 for a photo op.

He was a nice guy and his familiar slight lisp put me in mind of every character he’d ever played. I couldn’t resist confronting him about all the shows I’d missed him out, and of course he said that it couldn’t be helped. But by then I’d forgiven him. It didn’t make much difference if I had gotten him elsewhere or elsewhen, as I finally got him, and extremely happy to do so.

Celebrities of the Winter 2018 Hollywood Show will continue…

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