Make Mine Mike

Anyone catch the premiere of that #1 Single show with Lisa Loeb last night?

Here's the premise -- she leaves LA to find the perfect date back in New York. I tell ya, if I had known this thing was in the works, I coulda been Lisa Loeb's love in Los Angeles, and more importantly, prevent another celeb-reality dating show from polluting our airwaves.

See, couple of months ago, I was at one of my coffee-house hangouts, working on the laptop, composing a brilliant piece of fiction. Weird thing: an earlier section I had written featured a guy hooking up with this girl he really liked, but he thought to himself that she'd be even sexier -- if that was possible -- if she wore glasses. Cat's-eye ones, like Lisa Loeb wears.

I was typing away several pages past that part, when I noticed the cutie herself enter the joint. Damn, she still was as adorable as when she first appeared on the folksie indie rock scene. And she still wore those glasses.

I also noticed outside there was another somewhat famous person with glasses. Sunglasses. I wasn't sure, but I think it was Jon Favreau. It wasn't the shades that threw me off, it was that he was huge. Favreau's a big guy, at least 6 feet, with a large frame, but, well, they say the camera adds ten pounds from real life. Maybe in his case the reverse was true, five-fold.

When the heavyset dude entered the cafe and took off his Ray-Bans, I knew -- yep, it was him. He and Lisa made eye contact and expressed a mutual surprised delight to see each other. He clearly wasn't there to meet her, but I couldn't help but feel some jealousy when he hugged the little pixie. How did those two know each other? He's an actor; she's a musician.

I did a Kevin Bacon association game in my head. Lisa Loeb's video for "Stay" was directed by Ethan friggin' Hawke, who appeared in Reality Bites with Ben Stiller, who's part of what Entertainment Weekly dubbed the "Frat Pack" with such actors as Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Luke and Owen Wilson, and Vince Vaughn, who of course was in Swingers with Jon Favreau. Should I assume that's it? Should I be proud of myself for making the connection? As they said in Swingers, "Mikey, you're so money and you don't even know it."

I spent so much time watching, making sure Favreau left, that the battery on my laptop ran out. As I was packing up my computer, Lisa Loeb came over to me.

"Are you leaving?"

I had the good seat by the window. I considered inviting her to sit down with her chamomile and join me.

Or sing her hit song: "And you say... stay." I admit it -- I know all the words: "And you said that I was naive / And I thought that I was strong / I thought, hey I can leave, I can leave / But now I know that I was wrong cause I missed you. Yeah, missed you."

Nah, I wouldn't've done that. One of the dorks she dated on the show karaoked that tune and butchered it. Poor schmuck made a fool of himself.

Instead I coulda recited another quote: Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses. And then tell her that Dorothy Parker simply hadn't met me. But Lisa Loeb did.

Yeah, I coulda been a smooth smoothie.

But as it turned out, I was meeting a girl there any minute now, so I simply told her, no, sorry, I wasn't leaving, and she smiled and sat at another table.

And now Lisa Loeb is going off cross-country to find happiness, when it was right there at the window table at the coffee shop on Olympic Boulevard.

Incidentally, the girl I met -- that didn't go anywhere.

Coincidentally, that girl was wearing contact lenses.