2001-05-29 11:48 a.m.
My weekend with Dennis
Friday night's show was exhuasting. Radio can be boring and dull to do, but the first show on a new station was all activity. I was constantly checking to make sure I had everything in place for the next event and I was on my feet the entire night. I was worn out when midnight got there.
I went to the Iron Cactus (bar number 19 on my 42 bar weekend if you are keeping track) after my gig to see Mark at his gig. They were really loose and fun. It made me see how much fun live music must have been in clubs in New York before television. When you see the same live music over and over and see the changes the make and the different directions they go, it is better than any "concert" you might see of one performer one time.
My Friday plans all went to pieces with the airshift being thrown at me so I didn't get packed and ready to go to Dallas until Saturday morning. Man, when Saturday morning rolled around, Dallas was the last place I wanted to go. But, go I did and had a wonderful weekend.
Saturday night I went to my Mom and Dad's house in good ol' Krugerville, Texas. No, I'd never heard of it either before they moved there. It's not my home but I'm glad they live there instead of Amarillo now. Cousins came from Amarillo, Fort Worth, Fort Smith, AR, Enterprise, AL, Dallas, and more came for the night portion of the reunion. We ate and visited and had a great time. A new baby cousin was there and I loved making him smile, such a sweet baby boy. I have a thing for baby boys that goes way back, before my nephews.
Sunday the reunion was at my sister's house in Coppell. Even more cousins showed up. Barbeque and potato salads and desserts and more. Food is always the centerpiece of our reunions.
I left the reunion early in order to get back to Austin and my busy social life. A friend that works at my Baton Rouge radio station was in town and we wanted to get together. I dashed home in time to kiss Mark and send him off to his Sunday night gig at Speakeasy. I changed and then went to meet up with Rick.
Now is where things get exciting! Read on! Rick is old friends with Dennis Quaid's bodyguard and personal assistant. I'll call him BG for body-guard. Dennis was out of town this weekend, darn it, but that probably made it a lot easier for me to be IN HIS HOUSE. Dennis has been in town for a couple of months filming the movie "The Rookie." He has rented a fabulous mansion right on Town Lake. It rents for $16,000 a month if you are interested, but, of course, you have to pay for maids, pool boys and groundskeepers on top of that. The house is an older home that a couple from Dallas owns as their vacation house (can you imagine having that kind of money? I can't.).
The house was a bed and breakfast when they bought it and each bedroom has TV, microwave and refrigerator, but they redecorated the entire house and it is luxurious. Each bed in the house must have had $1000 worth of pillows. The bedroom Rick was staying in was the "jungle room" with leopard skin sheets and chaise lounge and fabulous curtains and carpets and furniture. Every bathroom (and each bedroom had its own) had beautiful colored tiles and fancy dressing tables.
And, the highlight of the tour, Dennis Quaid's bedroom. Big and dark with paneling and red accessories and a big bed with wrought iron canopy and a fireplace. Dennis' clothes were still there, his guitar on the floor, his cigarettes. I did not do anything unseemly in this room. I did have a picture taken of me perched on Dennis Quaid's bed holding his cigarettes. What a thrill.
Honestly, I'm not a groupie or anything, but it was pretty cool.
The house had a fabulous swimming pool and hot tub in the back with a waterfall and limestone steps and surroundings with multi-hundred-year-old oak trees arched over it and a view of downtown Austin across the river. I could have spent the summer here.
B-G (Body Guard) stays in the guest house, another fabulous bedroom suite above the garages so we sat up there and drank beer and I heard wild stories about Dennis and Richard Gere (BG's former employer) and BG and Rick's wild times back in Baton Rouge when they were friends there. From there we went to Speakeasy to hear Mark's band play.
It was a fun night at Speakeasy. The band was recording the show and they were really putting their all into it. I danced a couple of times with one of the few men that dance with me there and Seth's girlfriend from Dallas was there too.
I took Rick and BG back to the mansion and Mark came too when he got loaded up so he could see this place. I wish we had had more time and more energy to have been able to hang out and talk by the pool some more. It was such an unbelievably beautiful Austin place. But, Monday loomed as a very busy day so we went home.
Yesterday was Monday and I got Mark off on his tour with Seth to points East--North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia. I hadn't planned on seeing Rick from Baton Rouge again but HE had so I picked him up and took him to Cisco's for breakfast and then to my studios so he could see what I do on my end that shows up on his end. See the "mother ship" as he called it before it is all dismantled and discarded.
I had thought I needed to be at work, to do work, by noon in order to have my shows for Tuesday done before I went to see my acupuncturist. With breakfast and the tour and taking him back to the mansion and sending Rick off to Baton Rouge, I ended up at work at 1:30. I raced through five shows with the speed of summer to a kid and managed to get them all done.
Saw R. for acupuncture yesterday afternoon and it was very very nice and very comforting and relaxing. So relaxing that I came home and slept for hours. That is a great way to spend a holiday.
Last night I was lazy and watched TV and ate pizza and washed dishes as my one nod toward productivity. My life hobnobbing with the stars over for the weekend.
Amazing, isn't it, that I am jealous and fearful when my husband has lunch with a woman I don't like and yet I don't bat an eye and neither does he when I'm in a stranger's (to Mark anyway) bedroom, drinking beer? Yes, I guess I have a double standard. But, the bottom line is, I wouldn't have gone out with Rick and BG this weekend or been at their mansion drinking and having fun if Mark had had the slightest problem with it. I could just have easily asked them to meet me at the gig or not have seen them at all. It is something to ponder.