Name Dropping

Viper loves name dropping. The thing is, the kind of name dropping he participates in takes about five minutes of explanation per name: "You know The RM, the movie?" Uh... yeah, I watched it a while ago. I can't really remember it. "Well, you know how he's in court at the end of the movie?" I think I vaguely remember something like that, yeah... "Well, he's got this lawyer. Do you remember the lawyer?" No, not really... "The lawyer tries to tell him to do the wrong thing, but then he does the right thing." Oh. Yeah. Okay. I think I sortof remember that. "That's my friend. My friend Curt."*

And the fact is that if I do a google image search for Curt, I find his picture, and that's already pretty cool. When I do a google image search of my name, I get this. No joke.

Viper admits that he loves name dropping. He'll say to me, "I just think it's cool. I think it will be cool to one day see Curt on television and say to my kids, 'I know that guy. That's my friend, Curt. Here, let's give him a call.'"

I smile and nod and he asks, "Don't you think that would be cool?" I just keep smiling and nodding, giving off the impression that really, I'm too cool to think about such things.

The fact is that the moment I'm away from Viper, I start bragging to everyone who'll listen to me. Today, I announced to my English class (a class in which I've never spoken to anyone until today) that last night, I hung out with the guy who played the guy whose wife was dead in that Easter movie. You know. Finding Faith in Christ: "Yeah. We totally hung out. We even talked about relationships and stuff. We're thisclose now. Can you believe it? The guy who plays the guy whose wife was dead!"

The day after I hung out with Kirby Heyborne, I told each of my coworkers individually: "Good morning, how are you doing?... Good?... Oh yeah. Me too. I'm just a little tired today. You know, I was hanging out with Kirby Heyborne last night.... Oh, you've heard of him?... Yeah, yeah, he's a good guy. Seriously. Yeah, I would say that we're pretty good friends... Yes, he is very nice in person. You know, my boyfriend looks just like him. They could be twins. Well, maybe not twins, but definitely brothers or something. I think it's got something to do with their closely-set eyes. No seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if they asked my boyfriend to play his brother in his next movie. Because my boyfriend's an actor too, you know. Yeah, he's actually a little bit of a celebrity, too."

It's true, actually. He played a missionary in a short commercial or inspirational video or something. They played it between General Conference sessions one year. Oh, you don't remember him? Well... he was one of those missionaries... I'm sure that if you were paying attention at the time, you'd remember now. And that's not all. When we go places together, people almost throw themselves at him and say, "You're my favorite player at ComedySportz!" Or sometimes they're more subtle. Like when he and I were looking at cell phones and he made a couple of jokes and walked to the other side of the booth. The salesman leaned in towards me and said in a conspirational sort of way, "He's my favorite at ComedySportz. He's great. Is he funny in real life?"

"Why yes, he is. He's very funny in real life. And you know, he also knows that guy. That guy who played the guy whose wife was dead in Finding Faith in Christ. And to tell the truth, I know him too. Oh, and have you ever seen The RM? Because there's this one scene where Kirby Heyborne---yeah, I know him---goes to court, and the lawyer..."


*Several details in this blog post have been exaggerated for comedic effect. Any dialogue I claim comes from Viper is actually a more accurate representation of what I sound like when I'm name dropping.