Don't Postpone Joy

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The Alison Brie Phone Call

I like to think I know a lot of people. I also like to think I’m a pretty good friend and I do my best to keep in contact with everybody. But every so often, that friend of yours goes above and beyond for you, and makes your day.

I’ve known Brendan since my freshman year of college. We met during orientation, and following the path of my high school friend Taylor, I ended up in his room. I was fairly meek and quiet, and this water polo player who offered my something to drink (something I didn’t do at this point yet) before a random freshman dorm party, seemed nice enough. As my roommate and I went home, laughing about the weird and overcrowded dorm basement party, I didn’t know I’d be seeing Brendan a few days later. And then, a day or two after that. Brendan and I remained friends because we were both so ridiculous, so over the top, and loved our respective nerdiness and truly random friendship.

I’ve given Brendan a fair amount of a hard time in our late junior and senior years, as he’s often been busy and blown me off at random times. I, in turn, will often make him buy a pitcher of beer and run away, or bitch and grumble about little things. We spent the last few weekends running all over Orange County shooting a viral video thing. The topic of our video, about the best pictures of the year, kept bringing us back to the Sundance film festival, going on this week in Park City, Utah. We talked about which movie he’s going to see, he began listing them off

“…and Celeste and Jesse forever”

“You bastard. Did you get tickets for the Mike Birbiglia one?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind”

“Oh, and I’ve got tickets for Save the Date”

“No way. Isn’t that the one with Alison Brie?”

“Uh…maybe? I’ll have to look her up”

“Brendan, look at me. If you meet Alison Brie, for the love of God, have her call me.”

(For anyone with their head buried in the sand, Alison Brie is the wonderful actress whose in Mad Men and Community, as well as in Five Year Engagement and a host of other projects. And along with Anna Kendrick and Sara Bareilles, she is my celebrity crush.)

That was three weeks ago. I was sitting through a philosophy class today, my phone on silent but out on my desk for text messages, when Brendan calls. We had been texting a little bit, and I knew today was the day he was seeing Save the Date. But, it was an afternoon movie, not even the premiere. There’s no way…. I pick up and run to the hallway

“Cliff! CLIFF! Do you have a line ready?”

Now I’m the one speechless. “What?”

“A line! A good line! Here we….here you go.”

There’s a pause, and some shuffling. The silence is killing me. I don’t know wha—

“Hi, Cliff?” says the most angelic voice to ever say that phrase.

“Hi…Alison Brie?”

“Haha, yup, it’s Alison Brie.” I’m officially dying, at this point. It’s not that she’s famous, or that she’s extremely pretty. I’ve dealt with all that before meeting people through stand-up. It’s that same feeling I got when I sat next to a girl named Kelsey in my sixth grade class. She’s just, simply, my nerdy celebrity crush. Except you never expect your celebrity crush to call in the middle of class.

The rest of the conversation was pleasant. She was in the middle of meet and greets, but sat on the phone with me for a minute and a half talking about Sundance, about her time, about Brendan, about a bunch of little things. She authentically told me I made her day, which i thought was very sweet, but when Brendan gave me back the phone, he simply said “No, dude, that seriously made her day. She got a huge smile and got all excited”.

I went a million miles for hour talking to Brendan about it, relaying my excitement and gratitude. As i’ve mentioned before, I’m 21 years old and should not be as excited as I was for this shit at thirteen. Yet in the same respect, why not? I love being excited about these kind of things (of course, significantly more contained now as other stories will suggest), and I love when my friends and I do this kind of stuff for each other. Everyone’s sent a picture or a call regarding something important to someone they care about, why not take it a step further and get that person on the line?

I’m really grateful to Alison, for taking time out to make my day because I missed out on a trip I could no way afford (left that part out of the phone convo, not very sexy). And I’m thankful for Brendan, for doing the job I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts to. I mean, have you seen her Christmas baby dance in Community? Game over.

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