Pilots & Porridge with Chelsea and George

Making stuff up is one of my favorite things to do.  Especially to people that you know you'll never see again.  Unless you're me, and you DO see those people again.  

The year was 2010. My friend and I were enjoying dinner at Marlow’s Tavern.  The bartender overheard us at just the right time.  We were talking about seeing Chelsea Handler's stand up show at the Fox Theater earlier in the year, and the key words that stuck out to him were show, hilarious, and Chelsea Handler. 

He walked over and said, "Hey, ladies, so sorry, not trying to eavesdrop, but did I hear you say that you work for Chelsea Handler?"

"Actually, yes we do," she replied, not missing a beat (Whenever one of us starts a BS story with someone that we do or do not know, the understood rule is that the other person immediately goes along with it, no matter the level of ridiculous).

"That's awesome!  What do you guys do?"

She continued, “Gosh, where do I even begin?”

I couldn’t wait to find out.

“The two of us are, well, we are Chelsea’s East Coast Sidekicks. She calls us her ‘EC'..um, she calls us her…” 

“Her SK’s,” I chimed in.

“We are here scouting locations for our pilot.”

"Really?  That is awesome!  What is the new show about?" he asked.

“Can’t get into that now. Too soon.”

He looked awed. “Wow! Can I get a picture with you guys?”

“What’s even more amazing is how this all developed.” My friend looked over at me and continued, “Did you want to tell the rest of the story?”

I looked at her and squinted.

“This opportunity presented itself to us as we were strolling down the beach in Malibu after a cookout at Courteney Cox’s beautiful home,” I leaned in and grabbed his arm as if sharing a massive secret, “...we have mutual friends. Anyway, Chelsea was there...and...we started talking. We were just...trading jokes and dating advice! The next thing we knew we were surrounded by her friends who were laughing at our jokes, and she offered us this job on the spot. In fact, Courteney started clapping slowly, then Vince, then Brangelina, and before we knew it, the entire group burst into applause. It was magical. Looking over the Malibu beach…”

She interrupted, “With a signing bonus. We got a signing bonus.”

Grabbing my arm she whispered, “That’s enough.”

I squinted at her, “Is it?”

“Anyway, it was really cool to look around and see all of these hilarious celebrities laughing at our dumb stories.”

Several other people had gathered ‘round the bar to listen.

“So no teasers for us?” 

“Teasers?”

A lady with no volume control and a fluid, active glass of Chardonnay got right up in my space and inquired, “WHAT IS YOUR SHOW ABOUT?!”

"We are just trying to be as creative as possible.  It's going to be a sitcom, and the plot and characters are being developed as we speak."

No one realized how literal that sentence was. 

He immediately flagged down the manager and unleashed this information and asked if “we” could film at Marlow’s. The manager gave me the owner's email address so that I could write him to ask permission.

By now everyone around us was super excited to meet someone “in the biz” and began brainstorming for our show.  They were throwing out ideas left and right.

A lady dining solo in a bright red dress leaned in, knocked her red wine over, and said, “I think you should have a “switched at birth” episode. And have the real Dad show up five years later and announce the kid was the result of an affair!”

A younger guy with his collar popped dragged his chair in between Audrey and me and put his arms around us. Real tight. He had apparently been marinating in Drakkar Noir for seven full days. 

“Have you ever thought about casting a strapping, debt-free college guy as like, the tutor who everyone wants to sleep with? More specifically, all the MILFs?”

Audrey smiled and replied, “Actually, yes we have. His name would be Blaze.”

I wanted to ask everyone if they thought we were creating a bad MTV series that would never get picked up.

A man across the bar (that I did not realize was in on this conversation) in a Tommy Bahama shirt, shorts, and black socks yelled, “You need someone named Norm!” and pounded a beer can on his forehead.

Everyone wanted tickets to the premier and/or to be an extra. Tommy Bahama began asking all kinds of questions. 

“So what are your names?”

"Do you watch E!?" Audrey asked.

He replied, "No, but my wife does."

"Awesome, you probably wouldn’t like it. Either way, my name is Kourtney, and this is Khloe," said Audrey, while pointing her finger at me.  

I could not wait for him to get home and google Kourtney and Khloe and realize we were full of shit. We didn't have to wait, because he pulled out his phone and googled it.

"Hmm...that's not them...." He gave up on google, shrugged his shoulders, and shotgunned another beer. We had now taken it to the next level with these people.

No less than a week later, we went back, and John asked if we had heard anything about filming our show there. A man down the bar overheard this and asked what we were filming. We pitched the same story, except this time it was being submitted to be a regular segment on The Tonight Show.

Our new friend got super excited and asked who all we had met.  He said he had been a fan of Johnny Carson for years.  Then he wanted to know what he looked like in person.

"Well, the studio is not as big as it looks on television."

He started quoting all of these facts about Johnny and asking how many times per day we got to see him at work. I was very confused because Johnny hadn’t hosted since 2005 as far as I knew.

He also told us that he had met many celebrities, one being George Clooney.  Audrey piped right in with this one.

"Oh, yes -- Georgy Porgy.  Love him!"

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Gosh, the last time we ate dinner with him was here in the South.  Kari, where were we? Oh, yeah.  That place with the really good Southern cooking.  He ordered those grits," she threw her head back and laughed to herself, "and they looked like porridge! It was those cheese grits, Kari, remember how good they were? Anyway, he tried to exclaim, 'Is this porridge?' except he got tongue-tied and said ‘porgy.’  And everyone laughed.  We had to explain to him that those were cheese grits.  From that point on we called him 'Georgy Porgy!'"

We all (mainly me) stared at Audrey in disbelief. Moments of silence passed, and then he realized that this story may possibly somehow be true and he loved every second of it. He told us that his story did not even compare, and that he thought we were the funniest celebrities he had ever met. 

He asked to be in a picture with us so his friends at work would believe him. He left us his business card and made us promise to call him if we ever needed anything. We all walked outside together to say our goodbyes, and he sped off in his Maserati. Maybe we should call him for actual funding.