I saw Jim Cuddy on The Hour a couple of nights ago. Jim Cuddy. Sigh. Beck wrote a funny post about the potential husband material of certain Canadian TV stars and while I was hard-pressed to come up with any of those – Mark Critch? Nah. George Stroumboulopoulus? Nah. – I sure do have opinions about Canadian music stars. Jim Cuddy. I like to refer to him as “my boyfriend”. My husband really likes that too.
I actually met Jim Cuddy one year ago. My husband phoned me from work and said, in complete seriousness, “You wouldn’t really be interested in a gala dinner tomorrow night, would you?”. Now, believe me, BELIEVE ME, I do not attend gala dinners with any sort of regularity. Or at all. So of course I wanted to go. Then he revealed that his boss’ girlfriend’s firm had extra tickets. And it was an Olympic fund-raiser. And we would be sitting at a table with Sale and Pelletier. I immediately phoned my mother, “CanyoubabysittomorrowbecauseIamgoingtobeatatablewithSaleandPelletier!”
I watched Sale and Pelletier win the silver medal – later to be the gold medal – at a bar in Houston. There was one other Canadian girl there, also a figure skating fan, and when the scores were tallied a man leaned over to us and drawled, “Well girls, ah don’t know much ah-bout figure skating, but I think you Canadians were robbed”. I love Texans.
Anyway, at the gala we were enjoying a glass of wine when Rob’s boss’ girlfriend leaned over to me and said, “Hey, there goes Jim Cuddy. We should follow him and get our picture taken with him.” She was laughing but I’ve never been more serious. I grabbed her arm and we followed him, walking as quickly as possible without looking like actual stalkers. We followed him into a section where he was talking with Kelly Hrudy, who was hosting the event. Someone agreed to take our picture and here it is:
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I love this picture. I am the absolute epitome of star-struck. You can almost see my thoughts, OMG, Jim Cuddy has his arm around me!!!! Meeeeeee!!!! The wine in my glass was vibrating like the puddle in Jurassic Park.
So that was a highlight. But truly the whole night was amazing. I enjoyed the delicious food and wine, alongside David Pelletier, who, it should be noted, is not the best tablemate as he is quiet to the point of surliness. I enjoyed the music (provided by JIM CUDDY). I looked around the room, and at least half of the people were working on their BlackBerries. Some were leaving to answer work-related phone calls. There I was, in the midst of a massively stressed-out crowd, a crowd which was there for duty but certainly not pleasure, and I was thrilled every second.
I thought about that the other night when I met up with some girlfriends, a couple of whom were former co-workers, and one of those was still at that firm. She talked to me a bit about my former workplace, and she was speaking a language which I recognized but hadn’t spoken in nearly six years. I was asked if I missed it, being at work. I thought about it, the ten hour days at a desk, the stress, the overtime, and at that gala dinner, the people who were so busy trying to juggle family and work that they couldn’t even enjoy food and wine and JIM CUDDY. I don’t miss it.
I was living in Texas at the time of the silver/gold fiasco and whenever people would realize that we were Canadian (our accents were a dead give-away) they would immediately express their outrage over the judging. We did not own a TV at the time, so the first time we were clueless as to what they were talking about, but most Texans were more riled up than we were.
You DO look star struck in that picture! Look at your eyes! Haw!
(And you are very pretty, too.)
My husband is HORRIBLE in big group situations like that. He’d probably seem quietly hostile too, but in reality? He is just shy.
Thank you, Beck. Also – good point about being shy. I mean, from his perspective it would be weird “Here, sit at a table with a bunch of strangers with whom you have nothing in common and chitchat.”
HG – every single time I would go to get my boarding pass at the Houston airport, the counter person would say “Canadian? I LOVE Celine Dion!” Every time. I really love Texans, they are warm and welcoming people.
You actually look like Jamie Salé! I know too much about the whole ‘robbed of the gold by the Russian judge’ because my eldest was born during the Salt Lake City Olympics so I watched A LOT of coverage while breast feeding.