Random Celebrity Memories! Vol. Seven: Tai Babilonia & Randy Gardner

With the debut of "Skating With Celebrities" comes another useless celebrity memory from yours truly.

A few years back I was in Chicago working a corporate event as a Blues Brother. I did my singing, signed a few photos, posed for pictures, and mingled with the crowd as always. This was a bigger event and there were several rooms of activity to entertain the people.

One room was boasting a sports theme and even had figure skating legends, Tai Babilonia & Randy Gardner signing autographs. April's grandmother is a HUGE ice skating fan and watches figure skating & ice dancing any chance she gets. She even has videos to watch when no skating in on TV somewhere. Hearing that these two were at the event I simply HAD to try and get an autographed photo for her.

Tai & Randy wee extremely friendly, nice people. They are both very "pretty" people, as you would expect. I'm not talking about just being physically attractive (but Tai is quite babelicious!), there's more of a grace and beauty about them. I suppose being professional figure skaters has that kind of side benefit for otherwise good looking people.

They were laughing at the prospect of the Blues Brothers coming to see them and they were actually showing humble surprise to hear that April's grandmother would remember them and want their photo. I guess they still can't quite accept that they have fans. It is kind of cool when you think about it. Are they the most famous skaters of them all? No. Are they names you should know with a reputation for excellence? Definitely.

While we were talking to them, some people came up to me & my partner to ask for our autographs. I'm always amused by this because we make absolutely no bones about the fact that we are NOT the real Blues Brothers. Something about not being Dan Akroyd & the late John Belushi that should be the give away there. Nevertheless, we always oblige.

The photo we use doesn't feature me as Jake. Another guy, who used to do more of the bookings as Jake is in the picture. Jim has thousands of these photos so we just use them, regardless of how many more Blues Brothers gigs I do than the other guy. To cover up the fact that I'm even more of a fake Jake than the fake Jake in the picture, I always draw a moustache and beard on the photo, which makes the whole experience that much more amusing. Basically everybody has done this to a photo of their own or some other pic in a magazine at one point or another.

As I was doing this, Tai & Randy were laughing at me defacing the photo. It became something of a fun moment for us as I explained why I did this little bit of photo graffiti. As we were enjoying a laugh, Randy started doodling over Tai's face on their picture. Tai saw this and started defacing Randy's image. Teeth were being blacked out, hair was being drawn under armpits, it was most excellent.

I enjoyed this because not only were they genuine and humble people, but it seemed to me that after so many years of working together this was something that they'd never done before. They were really enjoying a considerably less formal moment in public than they'd been used to and they were liking the fun at the expense of their very beautiful selves.

I BEGGED them to sign the photo and let me have it for my wall. They were VERY hesitant about giving it to me as they didn't want to risk having this photo end up on eBay. I assured them that this was my own personal treasure and will remaining my possession until the day I die. I'm notoriously bad at organizing my memories and photos, but this one has a place of prominence in my house. I will not break their trust and post the image here, nor will I ever sell the photo, no matter how broke I get. The best you can get is the story, which is certainly cool, and I can recreate the photo they scribbled on.

Available at the Tai & Randy website are several photos of the pair. The one on my wall is actually a combination of two excellent photos. These two were a real treat to watch on the ice and were genuinely wonderful people to meet. I am hopeful that neither one would mind my sharing the story.