Okay, I admit all that is written below is a little sick. However, I feel that it should remain there, as a tribute to my past. So just bear with the silliness and insanity of my words. Maybe, someday, I will remove this section of the page due to sheer embarassment. But that day has not yet arrived...
Ben Lee was playing at a radio station sponsored festival concert on Memorial Day, Monday, May 31, 1999 in Hartford, CT.
His name was added like Saturday or Sunday. All of the commercials and advertisements didn't
include his name. But I sit down, and turn on the tv at 11 am Monday, and Claire Danes's November 1997 appearance
on SNL is being shown on Comedy Central. I open up the newspaper from Sunday, and as I am
fingering through it, I see a list of the acts. It lists Ben Lee as a last minute addition. And I am
psyched. I think that it is odd that I see this as Claire is on TV. I know it can easily be written
off as coincidence, but I think it was fate or something. Read on.
You are never going to believe this. I did see Ben Lee that day. But that's not the half of it. The band that played before Ben was called "Joydrop". I was really grooving with them. For some reason, I turned to the side at this one moment. And who do I see walking by? None other than Claire Danes. I tell my friend Renata something like "Gotta go, she's there." So, I catch up to her. She's walking towards the bathroom with some guy. I didn't recognize him. But he was way cuter than Ben. I politely ask for her autograph. I say nothing more. She obliges, and signs one of those cards from the MSCL boxed set. I went prepared, I had my suspicions. Thank God. My friend finally catches up to me, in just enough time to see Claire. I talked to her. She didn't say anything back. No one else seemed to recognize her. No one else approached her. She wasn't rude. She could have just walked away.
Then we went back to wait for Ben to play. I watched his half an hour set. It was really great. I really came to the conclusion that Ben Lee is definitely a live musician. His albums don't do him justice. His set was short, but definitely worthwhile. The whole time, Claire was on the side of the stage, dancing, mouthing words, even biting her fingernails. For a while, she was like dancing with gestures from the funky chicken. For the whole show, I had a perfect view of Claire between two sets of speakers. I saw one girl go up and get her autograph while she was onstage. I don't know how she did it, because there was tons of security. Other than that, I don't think if anyone else even recognized her. She was with the same guy that walked with her to the bathroom. He wasn't a body guard. He looked about Claire's age, so I figure he's a friend. It was definitely a sight to be seen. She was in her element, and I know now that she is completely in love with Ben. So, that's my story. Are you drooling? Can you believe it? If I hadn't turned at that moment, I wouldn't have this autograph to prove it. It was fate.
Okay, maybe I am a little nuts. But I didn't go psycho on her or anything. And by the way, she was wearing this beige suit-like sleeveless dress. There is a picture of a similar outfit below. The dress fell straight down, so I couldn't tell if she was like paper thin. But she didn't look that skinny. She was wearing really dark sunglasses, and she looked just like she usually does in pictures. It was amazing!
To the left is the autograph that I got from Claire Danes on May 31, 1999! Isn't it cool?
Renata, it was not PINK!!!
With all this talk about Ben Lee, I think I should mentioned a bit about him here. Actually, I am going to post a link to a track by Ben Lee, which happens to be a cover of the Weezer song Butterfly written by Connecticut native Rivers Cuomo. Listen at ben-lee.com.