YOU CAN STOP IGNORING THIS

Bet you can't figure out who's who in the picture: Agency senior vice president, agency vice president, creative director, video director, props, former football player, make up, teleprompter, grip, sound, camera operator, Mrs. Linklater

Answer:  Troy Aikman. And, there was no way I was going to ask him to call me Mrs. Linklater. Question:  Who's the tall guy in the middle of all those simpering sycophants?

Well, guess the picture gives Mrs. L some proof she spent the day with Troy. 

* yawn * 

Exciting details to follow.

Guess now Mrs. Linklater has to make this exciting.  Oh, the pressure. 

Let's see. Troy showed up early, came prepared, did almost everything in one take and was finished an hour earlier than we dreamed possible.

What a travesty!! Nothing for the tabloids. The day was wasted!!!

Keep in mind most shoots take all day. And then some. It's just the nature of the beast. Especially when you're trying to do a celebrity print shoot and a video shoot together. The day was ripe for difficulty.  Nothing.  Not a hair out of place. Or sweaty pits. Amazing considering the studio had no air conditioning!!!!!

[Okay, we panicked and brought in a portable AC machine, but it turns out Santa Barbara is like San Diego. A cool breeze comes off the ocean and keeps everything comfortable -- even under hot lights.]

What was wrong with Troy?  Things were going way too smoothly. No special requests. No foot stomping. Often in Mrs. Linklater's experience, celebrities are disgustingly cooperative and easy to work with. What a drag.

Mrs. Linklater tried to liven things up a bit by telling the director that whoever did the props made the set look like the bathroom in a gay bar. She couldn't have been a bigger hit.

Troy was done in three and a half hours. Print and video. An Olympic record. He was easy as pie. What could be worse?   No tantrums.  No sneaking off the set to smoke.  No grist for the mill.  No stories to embellish as the years go by.

Mrs Linklater was gettng annoyed by all this. To alleviate her stress, she noticed that Troy looked taller than 6'4". More like 6'5" or 6'6". She felt much better. 

When Troy finished so effortlessly an hour early everyone was frightened. What was wrong? Was the teleprompter working properly? Did we forget part of the script?

When things go good that's bad.

One of the reasons everyone expected -- counted on -- running over was because Troy had to do forty different "customizations" for the video, which meant repeating the same lines with different names again and again and again. 

It's so boring that your tongue starts bleeding and you can't help but screw up. Imagine our disappointment when Troy made just one mistake. Just one? We only have to re-shoot one take? What a crock!! Couldn't he mispronounce a few names. Or something? 

Imagne the headline of the Enquirer after something like that: 

 Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

The director killed time for an extra half hour having Troy do stunt work -- eating product, holding up the boxes and smiling. That'll usually break down a celebrity.  Not Troy. He didn't even ask for a stand-in. He actually ate the product, too. 

To sum up the dreadful day -- Troy is clean cut. He's polite. He has a good sense of humor. He also takes direction well. And doesn't expect star treatment.  He was also willing to stand under the lights while cameras were re-set. We practically begged him to sit down while the crew was futzing around.  He declined.  

Don't you just want to kill people like that?

He also signed a whole bunch of footballs for clients. No begging off because of carpel tunnel or writer's cramp. He even signed stuff for the crew. 

For Mrs. Linklater he signed a coffee table book he wrote. She had purchased it as part of the research she did to write the script. [And he believed her, too]. "I haven't seen one of these in awhile." It weighed a ton. She had lugged it to LA from Chicago just to get it signed. Hey, it cost $50.  

She plans to sell the book to her adopted nephew, a 23 year-old-former quarterback who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins in economics and now works as a consultant.  In his heart of hearts he'd really like to take a year or ten and try to make the pro golf tour. So Troy signed the book: "To Brandon.  Play Golf.  Troy Aikman."

Mrs. Linklater thinks Brandon should pay for that autograph.And help her recoup some of her investment.

P.S -- In the six degrees of Troy Aikman department: On Sunday, three days after returning from LA, Mrs. Linklater was contacted by a high school girlfriend visiting for the weekend.  They got together for some good old fashioned sandwich loaf and a large glass of lemonade with a little orange juice in it. 

Asked what Mrs Linklater had been doing in LA, she said, shooting a video with Troy Aikman.  Oh, said her friend, my daughter, Dawn [a tall, lovely model who has been in Victoria's Secret and on David Letterman] dated Troy -- if you see him again say, hello for her. NOTE TO INTERESTED MEN: Sit down. Dawn just married a tennis player who plays on the pro tour.

Yo, Troy. I believe you dated the daughter of a friend of mine. Ah-ha!! I guess that means you can call me Mrs. Linklater, now.