One thing I have become accustomed to having spent my last couple of years immersed in the glamorous world of radio is meeting celebrities in person. Now most of the celebs I have met have been lesser-known stars, a lot of indie Canadian artists and the like, which has suited me very well, since I am big into indie Canadian artists. I met Mary Murphy when she was judging So You Think You Can Dance and she was as much of a hoot in person as she is on the small screen. I met Tre Armstrong from So You Think You Can Dance Canada and she was kind, humble, and breathtakingly gorgeous. I also met Carole Pope, as I may have mentioned once or twice, and she wasn’t as friendly as I had hoped. And although I had been warned not to expect a warm welcome from k.d. lang, she was as lovely and professional as a human being could be.

So I have learned not to expect anything one way or another from celebrities. You might catch someone on an off day and they could give you the wrong impression, or they might give you exactly the impression they wanted to give. I know better than to wear my hero goggles when meeting famous people, because in the end, once you are face-to-face with them, they cease to be the mythical creatures that fame has made of them and simply become people, and as disappointing as that may be at times, it can also be the biggest relief.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting three celebrities and an unwitting celebrity look-alike. Early in the week, Matthew Morrison stopped by the morning show on The Little Queer Radio Station That Could. He was in town doing a CD signing at a chain record store and was able to pop into the studio in person first, which was a real coup for the producer who booked it; usually someone as famous as a TV star in a top-rated Prime Time show would be too busy to offer anything but a phoner. I showed up early to work to meet him, but as it happened, the morning show hosts were being a bit overly protective of their prized visitor, so I was only very briefly able to catch him for a quick photo. He wasn’t much of a morning person, it appeared, but hey, he was on his way out the door. Plus, he was so incredibly handsome in person that I actually physically felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw him.

Note the photobomber peeking out from the room behind—that’s Pearse, about whom you will hear more in a moment. Hi Pearse!

So that flicker of a brush with celebrity was barely a spark before it faded out. I shrugged and figured I would get a bunch of work done, being that I had arrived so early in the day. However, my buddy Pearse Murray had other plans. After Mr. Morrison was ushered out the door in a cloud of record reps and publicists, Pearse came over to me and said, “Ah, well, that was that. I hope Ms. Cattrall is more receptive.”

I was like, “Ms. Cattrall? As in…Kim Cattrall?!”

And Pearse said, “Yes, I have an interview with her at ten at the Royal Alex Theatre. You want to come? You can be my producer.”

And I said, “HELLS, YES.”

So off we went to meet Kim Cattrall. She was giving a press conference to announce her co-star in the upcoming Toronto production of Private Lives at the Royal Alexandra. Cattrall had starred in the play in London’s West End, and now they were bringing it to Canada before heading to Broadway, but in the leap across the pond the production had lost its leading man to British television. Thus, they had decided to add Paul Gross to the cast in what will be his Broadway debut.

Paul Gross, it turns out, is actually an old friend of Pearse’s, so after the press conference, as the two of them were being ushered from interview to interview with television and newspaper reporters, Mr. Gross would walk by and offer subtle quips in our direction. Our little radio station is pretty low on the totem pole, so we had to wait for nearly two hours before we finally had our chance to sit down with them, but even after having given something like twenty other interviews, they were both still in very high spirits when it came to hanging out with us. They were just lovely. Polite, friendly, passionate… And also, they are both soooooo pretty.

You would think that celebrities would look less attractive in real life, what without the staff of hairdressers and makeup people on hand to keep them photo-ready. Well, actually Kim Cattrall did have a woman dusting her up with a powder puff every ten minutes or so, but still. One thing I have noticed across the board is that many of them are actually sexier in real life. Maybe it is just because I find real people sexy.

And so it wasn’t that surprising that a couple of days later when I ran into a real person who looked a lot like a celebrity, I found myself flirting a bit. I was in this gorgeous new gallery at a party for Paramount Pictures, where they were announcing the year’s new releases in theatres and on DVD. My friend and I stepped out to get some air, and this woman came strolling down the alley into which the gallery opened. She was staring unabashedly at me, smiling with such familiarity that I thought that she must know me. She looked vaguely like someone I might have recognized from somewhere, so I smiled back and said, “Hello.”

It became very clear very quickly that she did not, in fact, know me at all, but that I had thought her familiar because she looked a lot like Elizabeth Berkley.

…but, like, you know, clothed. And kind of arty. And totally hitting on me. Which was very nice. And now, see, here is the difference between how I treat celebrities and how I treat real people. Yes, I make that distinction. While I have learned—mostly—not to go all gaga over the rich and famous, I have not yet learned that trick when it comes to dealing with regular human beings. So here was this very beautiful Elizabeth Berkley-alike trying to get to know me a bit better, and all I could do was stammer and stumble and blush until I decided to take my leave and go back inside.

The entertainment industry is full of tips on how not to lose your cool over celebrities, but if anyone knows how to apply that knowledge to everyday encounters in the real world, I would appreciate the advice. Seriously, I am like, oh, whatever, you’re in Glee, you were in Sex in the City, and you used to be that Mountie guy, but here’s a woman who looks like someone who was in a movie so offensive as to be ludicrously cracktastic, and it’s—ohmigad! I don’t know what to say! HIDE ME!

And this is why I am only ever an *accidental* VIP.

A couple of weeks ago I went with my friend and coworker, Sabrina Pirillo, known as the Grace Adler of The Little Queer Radio Station That Could, to BluGod Tattoos and Piercings to hold her hand while she got a new tattoo. We had picked up a new client at the station and she made a deal with them to promote them with her weekend show in exchange for some free ink. Good deal!

The owner of BluGod, Yovany Cabanas, is a renowned tattoo artist and has been featured in several international tattoo magazines since his humble beginnings as an underground tattooist in the side streets of Havana. One of his less conventional tattoos has also been featured on the Gallery of Regrets, but even then in the comments, people noted that the work itself was incredible if the design was…questionable. Hey, but if someone really wants a tiger in a Goldilocks wig, the man is not going to talk you out of it. He’s just going to do a fantastic job with the material he is given.

So anyway, Sa-bay-bay got her tattoo, all the while crushing my hands into lobster claws, and I discovered a new artist for the tattoo I have been planning for two years now.

I take some time to decide on tattoos. I know people who just wake up in the morning and say, I’m gonna go get a tattoo today, and then do it. Those people are not me. If I am going to have something on my skin for the rest of my life, I want to know that I still want that thing for at least a year or so after it popped into my head. I have avoided more than a few really regrettable choices with this method. I know myself, and I am fickle. I change my mind all of the time.

But there is one tattoo about which I have not changed my mind, and at this point I was just shopping around for someone to do it, as I was not pleased with the last artist I had. Yovany fit the bill perfectly, but he is so popular that he was booked up until mid-July already, and I was hoping to get the tattoo by the end of May. So I booked with one of his other artists, on Yovany’s recommendation, and made a deal with him as to price.

However, when I went in for my appointment, I found that the artist with whom I had booked had unexpectedly left the company, and everyone working there thought that someone else had already contacted me, so nobody ended up letting me know about this until I arrived. Yovany was mortified, so he offered to make room in his schedule to tattoo me that week, honouring the deal that I had struck with my previous artist. I was well pleased. Not only was I going to get the tattoo within the week, but I would be getting the amazing Yovany Cabanas to do it, and at a price I could afford.

I knew that my tattoo was going to be going across some sensitive areas of my body, under the arm and along the torso. I am ticklish in these areas, and where I am ticklish, I also feel pain more keenly. Yovany reassured me, as he had done Sabrina before me, that he was known for having a “magic touch” with tattooing—I probably wouldn’t feel much pain at all if I could just focus.

Um…yeah. Right.

At the first touch of the needle, I found myself hissing, “Faaaaaacccckkkk!” He sounded genuinely surprised as he asked me, “What? Does that hurt already?” And I was like, “What do you think?” Yovany is a spiritual guy, big into Yogic tradition, and it is part of what makes him a great artist. He’s very focused and has an incredibly steady hand. But when he started telling me that I could overcome the pain if I just started to concentrate on my centre, I was like, dude. It’s not that I don’t believe in the power of the mind; it’s just that I am not exactly trained in transcendental meditation and I doubt somehow that the tattoo table is the best place to test out my skills in that department.

That red welting is my body’s way of demonstrating its mastery over my mind.

By the time he had made it through the outline, I was beginning to formulate some reasoning in my mind as to why it might be cool just to leave the design that way, without filling it in. I half-jokingly expressed that sentiment, but Yovany nixed it immediately, saying that although the lines were pretty clean, they weren’t up to his standards for an outline-only tat. He would have used a different sort of needle for that. I appreciate his perfectionism, really I do. So I sighed and put myself back into position for part two of the torture.

My hands are not clenched in ecstasy.

Yovany continued to wonder at my pain response. He told a story about a woman he had tattooed at another studio who rather enjoyed the pain of tattoos. More than most people, even. In fact, from all appearances, this woman was having an orgasmic experience, writhing and moaning, touching herself, and generally stirring the interest of everyone in the waiting room. And he just kept working, calmly reminding her to try to keep still. Now that’s professionalism.

I certainly wasn’t experiencing anything nearing ecstasy. I would love to be one of those people who experienced pain as a way of reinvigorating my spirit of living, and hell, I wouldn’t throw an orgasm out of bed, either, but I am, quite simply, a big wimp. I go through the pain only as a necessary consequence of the process by which I can achieve the end product. In short, I suffer for my art. And although I hissed and winced and clenched my fists and eyelids throughout the entire experience, that end product was worth every torturous second.

It’s everything I wanted, and in about five years, when I have forgotten the pain enough to want to repeat the process, I will most certainly be returning to Yovany for his magic touch.

Remember how I had a supposedly brief brief brush with fame as a superstar radio host? Well after the experience, my Programming Director at The Little Queer Station That Could came over to my desk to have a little chat. It went something like this:

Programming Director: So I was listening to you on Friday’s show and you sounded really good.

Me: Um… Thanks!

Programming Director: So… What would you think about maybe doing that more often? Like…for money?

Me: Well, I don’t want my own show.

Programming Director: No, well, you’re kind of boring to listen to, so I don’t want you to have your own show.

Me: Oh.

Programming Director: I’m kidding.

Me: Oh.

Programming Director: But really, you know, if someone goes on vacation or something, maybe you could fill in sometimes? Because I think you sound great on air.

Me: Yeah, okay, I could do that.

Programming Director: Awesome.

So that is how it started. My transformation into a fame whore, that is. The next thing that happened is that one of my best friends at work, a producer and weekend announcer, decided to move on, leaving a weekend slot free. It still didn’t make me want my own show. As I have said before, I am a writer, not an announcer. I mostly prefer to be behind the scenes helping the shiny people to shine rather than to have to shine myself. I’m part of the entourage.

But then the third thing happened. I went to a bank machine over the weekend following that conversation. It was a week since I had been paid, and I took out a bit of cash, only to find that I was already in the hole with a week to spare before I could expect another paycheque. I felt defeated. I know I like to joke about being a no-account girl, but the truth behind the joke was revealed in depressing colour on my bank statement.

So I texted my Programming Director the following: “Hey, remember how I said I didn’t want a show? Well, I think I just changed my mind.”

And he texted back: “I have created a monster. Let’s talk on Monday.”

So that is how I began my glamorous new life as a weekend announcer on The Little Queer Radio Station That Could. Listen live on Sundays from 1 to 5 EST.

I’m a writer. I like to have time to think about what I am going to say. So when the Programming Director at The Little Queer Radio Station That Could asked me to go out on a chase interview with someone who can only be described as a legend in both the Canadian music industry and in the LGBTQ community, I was quite literally shaking in my boots. This is not what I do—I write commercials, I write events listings, media releases, lifestyle segments. I voice things, but aside from a once-a-week segment on the morning show about what dykey things are going on in the city, I don’t really do live announcer work.

That said, I’m an Accidental VIP. I am not about to turn down the chance to interview the one and only k.d. lang.

Oh. Mah. Gah. I remember when k.d. lang was that crazy country punk that simultaneously wooed the Alberta country lovers with her intense voice and repelled them with her insane fashion sense. When she showed up at the 1985 Junos in a wedding dress and cowboy boots, nobody knew quite what to make of the Most Promising Female Vocalist of the year.

But the voice won out, of course. There was no fighting it when she joined Roy Orbison in duet on “Cryin’.” There is no defense against that song. It just kills you.

So although people made a bit of fun, asked questions and made assumptions about her sexuality, they still bought her music. Even when the Alberta farming industry and the government decided to disavow her many awards and accolades because of their thinly veiled homophobia her participation in PETA’s “Meat Stinks” campaign, she rose to the top of her career. And when she showed up on the cover of Vanity Fair to usher in the era of Lesbian Chic, well… *swoon*.

So anyway, as you may be able to tell, I have followed her career for some time, having shared at least some of that prairie queergirl upbringing myself. I went to this interview pretty well prepared even before doing any research on her new album. And it’s been 20-plus years since I first became aware of the existence of k.d. lang, so when she walked into the room at her Secret Toronto Hideout—yes, she has one, and I got to visit her there—she looked so familiar to me that I fairly blurted, “Well, hello, k.d. lang!”

She kind of laughed and shook my hand. She was so personable I could have cried with pleasure. I had been nervously asking other media-field friends of mine for tips on how to handle this mind-blowing event, and had been warned by more than one of them that Ms. lang could be…prickly. Not mean, but not someone to put up with amateurs, either. They could not have been more wrong. She was a total pro all the way. Thank heavens! I didn’t want to have another Carole Pope experience.

She sat down with me and chatted a bit, and we headed into the interview. I had been listening to her new album, Sing it Loud, non-stop for about a week, so I was really interested in hearing what she had to say about working with a band for the first time in twenty years. And the Alberta girl in me wanted to hear what her thoughts were on the concept of home.

When she talks about her music, her eyes just light up. It’s disarmingly gorgeous. I have to say, I have always thought k.d. lang was beautiful, but I had no idea how much more so she would be face to face. I had to concentrate on not swooning or floating away to Cloud 9—I was clenching that microphone like it was my anchor to the earth. At one point I tried to rest my elbow on the table between us and found that my arm was then shaking so noticeably that I was better off just suspending it in midair.

I had come up with some scripted questions and a plan to go off-script if the conversation took us there. However, I found myself so nervous that when I tried to take a thread of conversation and just expand on it, I would up babbling a bit too much and decided to return to the prepared questions for fear of annoying her. She was eloquent and sure in her answers, and I had to restrain myself from fangirling her too much. I think I did kind of gush a little bit at one point, but hey, that’s what editing is for. So you won’t hear it on the podcast—but trust me, it happened. In the end, I felt like it was a fairly successful interview, for a first-timer.

You can listen to my interview with k.d. lang here.

On Friday afternoon, I ended up co-hosting with my best boyfriend Mike Chalut because his co-host and show producer Acey Rowe had gone out of town. It was another first for me, but as Mike and I have such a great rapport together and I had that interview to air, we figured it would work out. Earlier this year I had tried to learn some of the technical operations that Acey undertakes when co-hosting, and decided fairly quickly that I would never want to do her job—there’s just too much to think about with editing interviews on the fly, running the sound board, and being generally personable on air. However, Mike’s job is great! We had another operator on the board for the afternoon and Mike and I just got to be generally funny and friendly on air. It’s a party!

All of that said, I am content to welcome Ms. Rowe back to her job, and to return to my desk and my writing and the precious time I have to think about my words before speaking them. It’s a lot of pressure to be that famous all of the time. And I’m just a no-account girl.

In a turn of events quite pleasantly to the contrast of my experience with Carole Pope, I was afforded the blessing of meeting Ms. Tré Armstrong of CTV’s So You Think You Can Dance Canada this afternoon. I am just going to state it outright: this woman is nothing short of a treasure.

Let me be the first to admit that I already had a crush on Ms. Armstrong, having developed something of an addiction to crack TV dance competitions over the last few years. Tré glides across that stage with all of the sensuality of the seven veils personified, and when she sees something she likes, she makes all kinds of noises that are nearly unfit for prime time. Oh, my heart.

So I was prepared to like her before she arrived. The fact that Mikey calls her one of his best friends was another vote in her favour. But after the whole Pope experience, I was more reserved in my approach when she arrived. I needn’t have been.

She was immediately friendly, thanking me and everyone at the station for having her, treating our Little Queer Station That Could as she would the biggest ticket media outlet in town. She invited me to join the interview, and I was so happy to accept!

The interview was great. It was more like having drinks with friends than hosting an interview, partly because Tré and Mike already had such a great rapport, but also because she is just so cool. Like, a really cool person, like the person you met at that party the night before where you really didn’t know anyone but you were glad she was there because wasn’t she really down-to-earth? That kind of cool.

We hit it off right away. She is working on a fantastic project called A New Daei, helping young women and queer youth in Parkdale, where she grew up, to connect with the dance industry. She’s very involved in opening up the dance world to underprivileged voices, and she is very passionate about breaking barriers that hold people back from the entertainment industry.

Here’s the interview audio.

In short, she’s awesome.

Off-air, we talked about the specific barriers that queer-identified dancers face in a homophobic dance world. And when I thanked her for being so outspoken in favour of breaking down that homophobia, she totally touched my hand.

Yes, I am twelve years old. I totally swooned. I think I am still swooning.

One of my heroes came into the radio station today. Well, hero is a strong word. A minor celebrity who I had always believed deserved bigger celebrity than she had received, let’s say. Mike and Acey invited me to stay after work and sit in on the interview, not in small part because I was the only one of the three of us who had ever heard of Carole Pope. Beyond that, I was actually something of a fan.

I respected a woman who was singing about creaming her jeans over a girl back when even Joan Jett was in the closet. When Pope’s book Anti Diva came out in the 90s, I bought it and ate up every last shamelessly dropped name. So Mike and Acey figured I would be a good addition to the interview—I could ask her about something more than what I had Googled for the afternoon show prep.

So when she arrived, I met her at the door, which was locked for the after-hours, offered to get her a glass of water, and introduced myself. She was entirely non-plussed. Fine, woman’s busy; I understood.

However, when I returned with the water, I asked whether it would be alright if I sat in on the interview, because I had followed her career and was interested in what she had to say.

Ms. Pope gave me a long once-over with a curl to her lip and said, “I….suppose so,” in a way that clearly meant, “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

So I left. And when I got home in the evening, my copy of Anti Diva went to the curb.

Sometimes an afternoon offers up some special delight that reminds me that despite my complaints, I am pretty lucky to work where I do. Take, for example, this afternoon, when I walked into the studio during the afternoon show, which is hosted by my new best boyfriend, Mike Chalut.

Mikey had been foraging around the creative pit earlier for something to eat, so I was going over to the studio to share some of my chocolate-covered almonds with him. When I arrived, he and Jonathan Rosa (the cute boy next door and another boyfriend of mine), who was filling in for the usual afternoon producer, Acey, were about to launch the Wednesday show segment known as the Wednesday Slap & Tickle. The theme was flogging. Fun!

So instead of retreating to the creative pit, I decided to stick around and assist. Mikey’s a bit shy about the bdsm stuff, but I’m no stranger to it and Jonathan likes to think of himself as something of an expert. What followed was one of the high points in my radio career thus far. You can listen to the segment here (you won’t hear me speak, because I am nowhere near the mic, but I was the one wielding the whips—and yes, Jonathan really did drop trou for me):

The Mike Chalut Show with Acey Rowe – Slap & Tickle Wednesday, August 18, 2010

It occurred to me afterward that we’re probably the only commercial radio station in North America that gets away with flogging people on the air. Possibly the only one in the world, but then again, possibly not. So when I look at it that way, I like to say that I just made history there, people.

So yeah, the pay is low and I am probably the only person in the station who is not eligible for free swag that isn’t donated to me from the regift pile in the sales pit, but from time to time I get to strip fellas down and whip them before an audience of thousands—okay, more like hundreds—of listeners. That’s worth something.