Magic Johnson's brutha

After a couple of months on the job doing airport runs for dog food executives and associate producers, I got the call for my first celebrity pickup, Malcolm Jamal Warner, the son from the Cosby show. Didn't know what he was up to these days but I was mildly intrigued and relieved my first foray into the Show time would be a low maintenance seeming dude. He was so low he ended up canceling before I got there but now I had stepped up into the bigs, maybe just as a seldom used reliever and send me back down to the the minors or not, I was a player in the game. Sheeeet.

I can't remember who my first celeb actually was, probably a tv actor from some show I'd never watch and possibly had worked on as an extra. (Due to a financial and synaptic crisis, I dropped out of film school in Manhattan and presumed I could parlay my 16mm skills into a crew gig in LA. I had been forewarned that Hollywood was all about connections, "It's not who you know, it's who you blow", but figured I would finesse a path through all that pedestrian bullshit. Had I only better tits. Worse, I arrived under a serious cloud of charm depletion. As such, I took employment as a 'background artist' on some of the lamest films and sitcoms of the year, which is about anything produced in the biz lately, along with an endless supply of delusional misfits as co-workers and lunch companions.) But the first celeb I was really excited about was Magic Johnson, in fact the only other one who gave me such an unbridled thrill was Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Sadly, she was another canceli.
The Johnson residence sits inside a gated ghetto for African-American millionaires off Mulholland and when I pulled up he was standing next to his personal Rolls limousine and sharp looking chauffeur. I jumped out and ran up to him like a little kid and his enormous hand engulfed my own. He stopped me before I could blurt out Magic with a drawn out, "It's Earvin". Just a frickin giant; you wouldn't expect the Shaq to be any larger.
Then he and his slick driver start telling me over and over "He's coming out" in tones that turn my childlike expression to one belonging on some chump who finally realizes he's playing the sucker in a game of three-card Monte. I eye my driving comrade with a what's-this-about? expression and he just grins and jumps into the Rolls while he and the magic-man speed out of there before He could make it out of the house. I ended up driving Magic's jive-ass brother all over town in an old stretch the undersized brother managed to keep filled with bunches of aging, inebriated, sistas into the wee hours. And you know he stiffed me, right? Still, a pretty likable guy. Not an ego case like the usual studio prick for a change.