Celebrity Sightings

I met Merl Saunders. He was staring at the wall of the Western Addition rec center last week, looking at himself. His assistant, Deborah, pointed to his picture on the new mural. She told me Merl was a keyboardist from the old Fillmore days, who had kicked it with greats like John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix, and performed with Miles Davis, B. B. King and Jerry Garcia.

I'd never heard of him until then, but I figured I should act as if I was in the presence of greatness, just in case I was. I shook his hand, and congratulated him, and asked if he still played. His right hand was paralyzed from a stroke, so he gripped my hand with his left index finger and mumbled at me incoherently.

"Merl used to play 250 shows a year," Deborah said. "Before he slowed down..."

"...to just 200 shows a year, right?" I said. Deborah chuckled in hearty agreement.

"Well, it was nice meeting you," Deborah said to me. She steadied him by the arm as he hobbled next to her. "Come on, Merl, let's go back to the van."

********************

"I never run into famous people," I complained. We were on the 22 Fillmore.

"Don't look now," Scott said, "but that's Matt Gonzales at the front of the bus."

"Bullshit!" I said. I looked, and there was a shaggy-haired man talking on a cell phone, wearing a navy pinstripe suit. He looked really out of place on the bus, and his face looked really out of place in that suit. It was Matt all right.

"He's known to be cool like that," Scott said. "He doesn't have to take the damn bus, but there he is."

"Well, shit," I said. "Next time I'll say, 'I never run into Jacob Dylan anywhere.'"