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3 x 15 Minutes
Andy Warhol Promised Everyone
15 Minutes of World Fame
by Hal Higdon
Three Warholian moments: It happened to me. Andy Warhol, of course, was the artist who once opined: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Warhol believed the Media could convert anyone to a paparazzi target, at least briefly. But some of us are blessed--or cursed--with more than the normal allotment of fame, as I learned last week.
I realized this after I received an
email message from a college classmate, who claimed I was the answer in a New
York Times crossword puzzle: "Wrote running book, nine letters." That clue
came toward the end of the week, when Times puzzles get tougher, so she
was relieved to fill in the boxes: H-A-L-H-I-G-D-O-N.
About the same time, I learned that
John Roberts had been nominated as the next Supreme Court Justice. Within hours
of the nomination, I received a call from a newspaper reporter asking if I knew
Judge Roberts. Well, not really, although he grew up only two blocks from our
home in Long Beach, Indiana. His youngest sister Barbara was a close friend
of our daughter Laura. Another sister, Peggy, once had been our babysitter.
Our son Kevin confesses now that when he was walking to school in 2nd grade,
he once swung his Batman lunchpail at Peggy because she was teasing him.
Then in the same week, I heard from the producers of an Off Broadway play titled Thrill Me!, a musical based on the Leopold & Loeb case, if you can believe that. One of my books was titled The Crime of the Century about that same murder case from 1924. The producers wondered if I could come to New York and do a "Talkback" after one of the performances?
How
to handle celebrity
Humbly, I agreed, but how does one
handle the celebrity that comes with three Warholian moments? I wondered: Do I
serve my three periods of world fame simultaneously or concurrently? Do the 3 x
15 minutes count merely as one infamous 15-minute segment, or do I claim a total
of 45 minutes of near immortality? Would Judge Roberts please offer an opinion?
No, he probably doesn't want the Senate to know too much about his
views.
Perhaps I shouldn't agonize too much, since when I checked with the New York Times crossword puzzle editor, he claimed that my name never had been used in one of their crossword puzzles. Rather huffily, I might add. My classmate later admitted that maybe it was a puzzle in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, lower on the feeding chain, but is anyone going to really check my resume after my 3 x 15 minutes pass? And how credible is the Times these days since one of its reporters just got sent to jail?
The connection with John Roberts is
real, since his sister Barbara did stop by my booth several years ago at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon Expo to
say hello and ask about our daughter. I'm not sure whether Barbara was running
the marathon or supporting a friend, maybe even her more-famous-than-me brother.
About Sister Peggy: did we file W2 forms in her name? Is there something about
her babysitting past that Ted Kennedy might like to know?
The appearance in New York at
Thrill Me! was fun, because unlike my usual appearances, I got to talk to
a near capacity audience of non-runners about a subject sadly more popular than
running: crime and violence. Nobody asked about their knee injuries, nobody
asked how much Gatorade to drink per mile, and I learned after my Off Broadway
stint that the show had been extended an extra two weeks.
Unfortunately, while Thrill Me! continues to play to the public and while John Roberts moves inexorably toward his confirmation, my three Warholian moments have passed. Will I ever be a nine-letter answer to a crossword puzzle again?
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After
the performance:Hal Higdon with
actor Doug Kreeger (Loeb) |
Hal Higdon, a Contributing Editor for Runner's World, serves as a consultant to his wife when she does crossword puzzles.
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