My Date With Donnie (Pt I)

Recently I caught parts of the movie “My Date With Drew”. If you’ve never had the opportunity, the movie is kind of a documentary – closer to a home movie, frankly – about a guy who gets semi-obsessed with Drew Barrymore and spends the whole movie trying to find someone who knows someone who knows Drew who will return his calls. My wife caught a few minutes and almost immediately said, “Why is this a movie? Why should we care about this guy stalking her?”

I’m sure the only reason the movie wound up being released was that at the end, Drew gets wind of the project, checks out his website, and the next thing you know they are in fact having a date. It’s not necessarily a blockbuster film (actually, I believe it is a BlockbusterTM film) but it’s pretty charming, and the ending does make you feel like you want to cheer.

It had a little extra resonance for me because I have a little bit of an obsessive streak in me too. For instance, I’m really not a neat freak; I would probably say I’m more comfortable with a certain low level of chaos than most. Certainly more so than most, if not all, of the people I’m married to. But sometimes out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of something that’s crooked – a magazine left open, a picture slightly askew – and it’s like something tunnels inside my head. I’ll try to do something else: read a book, have a conversation; but I can’t rest until I fix that thing. Not the mess in the rest of the house, mind you, and certainly not my infamous To-Do Pile, but I’m on edge till that one glaring anomaly is put right.

I experienced a musical version of this as well. I don’t mean one of my obsessions was produced on Broadway, although it wouldn’t seem that out of place from what I read about the Legitimate Theater these days. I mean I got stuck on a song.

I may be the all-time champion of getting a song stuck in my head, particularly at about 4 AM, but what I really mean is that this song stayed with me for years. You see, as all right-thinking Americans agree, the music of my youth is the best music there ever was. And although Billy Joel, Styx, Barry Manilow and the like are not considered cool, I’ll put them up against anyone today. In fact, they’ll put themselves there – they still tour, very successfully. You may not be as familiar with Donnie Iris.

Donnie was the ultimate One-Hit Wonder, and if you remember his smash, “Ah, Leah”, you’re probably exactly the same age as I am, so perhaps I should pause while you rinse out the Grecian Formula. In fact, you're probably a bit fatigued -- so I will take a break and resume this story next time....