MY BOOK CLUB is one of the true joys of my life, and these old gals are hardly your ordinary book club highbrows. No, these are sleaze-, scandal-, and celebrity-obsessed senior citizens (every one of them, incidentally, has a crush on Strib ombudsman Lou Gelfand). Our reading list is pure, glorious trash: Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, Harold Robbins’s The Carpetbaggers, Irwin Shaw’s Rich Man, Poor Man, Joe Soucheray’s Sooch, and Pat Booth’s Palm Beach cycle. This month, at my suggestion, we’ll be tackling Sammy Davis Jr.’s Yes, I Can. I can’t wait, even though I am fully aware that Sammy’s monument will fall well short of the salacious expectations of my fellow members.

I inherited my celebrity obsession from my mother. This lovely, courageous, and talented woman raised me alone in Falcon Heights (I would kill for a tear-jerking "Dimension Report" on my darling mother and her adoring son, Budd Rugg!), and she has spent most of her life trying unsuccessfully to break into community theater. Aside from a few privately-staged productions –you might remember reading notices in a few of the local community papers of her one-woman show at the Lauderdale Community Center some years ago, "Grace! The Sad and Tragic Life of Grace Metalious"—she has had to settle for singing in the church choir, where to this day she remains easily the showiest and most dramatic voice. How well I remember my mother toting me along to the nearby State Fairgrounds, there to ogle the media stars assembled yearly at their various booths. One day while we were standing in line to get Jim Klobuchar to sign one of his books, poor little Budd Rugg got so excited that he overheated and had to be taken to the first aid tent!

CALLING MR. BLACKWELL! Yours truly –Budd Rugg—ran into Jon Bream, the StarTribune’s cutting edge graybeard, one night recently, and I must say, admirer of the man though I am, I just wanted to drag him into the little boy’s room and give him a complete makeover. Good Lord! Excuse me, Jon, but Sam Kinnison’s estate would like his wardrobe back! Monsieur Bream looked exactly like a derelict Scottish curling groupie, right down to a ratty tam-o’-shanter with a ridiculous little puff of yarn on top. I just wanted to snatch that awful hat right off his head!

Come to think of it, I can’t think of anyone more in need of one of Budd Rugg’s frumpy to fabulous make-overs than our local gaggle of music critics. Every single night I go to bed and pray that I never have to see Tom Surowicz in a pair of shorts again! Have you seen this man? He looks like a survivor of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash –a survivor who didn’t wholly survive, if you know what I mean. There are looks that suggest individuality, Tom, and then there are looks that say ‘hippie-magician-down-on-his-luck.’ Michael Anthony, I’m afraid, would require a federal task force, but I think I could still work wonders with young Jim Meyer. At present Mr. Meyer favors a look I can only call "camp-counselor meets good-luck-in-the-state-debating-tournament," but give me a couple hundred bucks and a half hour in J. Crew, or even Ragstock, and I could change his life.

I RECENTLY VENTURED out to see my favorite local media dream band, The Ernies, at a watering hole over in St. Paul. Every appearance by the Ernies is so exciting that I have to rush to the bathroom practically every ten minutes to hyperventilate into a paper bag! If you haven’t seen them, the Ernies are four hunky local media heavyweights and a mortgage banker: MPR’s Chris Roberts (guitar, vocals) and Bill Catlin (guitar), KTCA’s Mike Mulcahey (bass and vocals), AP State Capital doll Bill Wareham (guitar, harmonica, vocals), and the banker, Mike Padilla (drums). I’m apparently going to have to visit a chiropractor after lurching around the floor all night doing Budd Rugg’s signature "Hunched Monkey" dance. I get so carried away! At one point a waitress tugged on my sleeve and hissed in my ear, "You’re scaring people!" C’est la vie!

THE OTHER NIGHT I couldn’t sleep and I found myself lying there in the dark trying to shoehorn the names of local media stars into Bob Seger songs. I was up half the night and I only managed to come up with two examples that work to my satisfaction:

"I woke last night to the sound of
          thunduh,
Stayed up dreamin’ of Jildra
            Unruh.
Started humming a song from 1962.
Ain’t it funny how the night moves?"

The only other one was called "KateyBoo," to the tune of "Katmandu."

TAKE IT FROM Budd Rugg, crashing charity events and galas is the easiest thing in the world, but it’s how you comport yourself once you get in that makes all the difference in the world. One of the more embarrassing and unseemly moments in my life as a media parasite came at last year’s Don Shelby fishing tournament, when I had an out-of-body experience and tried to scramble into Don’s boat, only to be dragged away in a headlock by security guards, at least one of whom, I’m almost certain, was a former member of the musical group, the Jets. If you can manage to behave yourself, however, it’s always possible to get face time with your media heroes, or, if push comes to shove, Pat Miles’s husband, who is perfectly harmless but will try to sell you things.

I JUST ABOUT fell over dead from a heart attack when I reached into my pantry the other day and pulled out a potato that looked exactly like Leonard Inskip! I happen to share Leonard’s obsession with private/public partnerships, but somehow I think my version of the concept is altogether different from Leonard’s….THEY CALL HIM the Barbecue Dog: Like the small town stray of legend, who shows up at every backyard barbecue looking for a handout, Strib features editor Graydon Royce has apparently earned quite a reputation for having a nose for newsroom spreads….HOW APPROPRIATE AND almost touching to see our own rampaging Martha Stewart, Donna Erickson, at a recent screening of "Titanic"….GO ASK DAD (To Please Be Quiet): I’m running out of room on my refrigerator door for all those Rick Shefchik columns! The recent number on watching the Grammies with his daughter was an absolute hoot!….DITTO FOR DEAR Peg Meier’s recent screamer on El Nino. I laughed so hard my upstairs neighbor was stomping on the floor!….MY DEAR FRIEND Stan sent me word that he saw Mark Rosen out and about recently, and expressed, well, horror, that Marky was looking, well, a little large. Stan is almost as media-obsessed as yours truly –we both showed up at a Halloween party last year dressed in almost identical Eric Eskola costumes, and it was a total coincidence!….FINALLY, MY DEAR friends, I am, as ever, your humble servant and beg you to invite me to your functions. Invite me! I will come! And please, if anyone out there knows of any interesting proclivities that Sue Zelickson might have, I am dying to hear of them. Send any and all media gossip, sightings, and privileged information to your dear friend, Budd Rugg, at: BuddRugg@Cursor.org.

The Budd Rugg Archives