A funny man

In reading the Madison news online this morning I saw that a hometown boy is being remembered in Hollywood this week. Chris Farley, who grew up in Madison and died in 1997, was honored yesterday with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. What a funny man. I'll never forgot how lucky I was to meet him. It was in 1994, or maybe 1995, when I was working on Capitol Hill. My boss at the time, who was a Congressman from Wisconsin, recruited Chris Farley to come to Washington and perform a spoof of Newt Gingrich in front of all his colleagues. This was right in the midst of his Saturday Night Live days when he starred in hilarious skits like Chippendales and something about "living in a van down by the river". Anyway, he came into our office upon arrival in DC and we all got to chat with him. I'm sure I'll never meet anyone else like him in my lifetime. He had such a gift to make people laugh, even if all he said was "hi". I seem to remember one of my colleagues took a picture of all of us together (there were maybe only 10 people who worked in the office), but I don't recall ever seeing it. I think I'll have to do some investigating to find it. These brushes with fame must be remembered!