I bet celebrities make good money at the average store opening. Cut a ribbon. Nibble on some cheese. Shake a hand or two. Smile for the camera. Smile for the camera. Then, I assume, they get a big, fat car-sized novelty check before being whisked off to, again I’m only running off conjecture here, a golf tournament, rehab clinic or dude ranch. If I had to guess, Daniel Craig and Kevin Spacey’s recent Alibaba appearance probably netted them each a novelty check sized more like an Escalade.
Of course, not every store is Alibaba and not every celebrity is Kevin Spacey (thank heavens). I imagine, like Dante’s Rings of Hell, many intricate levels of celebrity store opening appearances. The smaller the store, the more generic the cheese, the smaller the novelty check and the less notable the celebrity.
Saks on Rodeo Drive?
Artisan burrata delivered by helicopter by the very water buffalo whose milk brought forth the cheese; Lamborghini-sized check; and say, Jennifer Lawrence.
Radio Shack on 6th Ave?
Velveeta; 1993 Ford Taurus-sized check; and, I don’t know, Kid Rock.
Then, well-beneath all the Radio Shacks, El Pollo Locos and Midas Car Cares openings in the world, there was, perhaps at the very bottom of celebrity hell, the Ames in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania.
There was no car-sized novelty check.
There was no cheese.
But there was the dog from Frasier.
And I met him.
It was the late 90’s and the world was a strange, confusing place. The Budweiser frogs hadn’t yet been replaced by the Whassup guys. No one I knew had ever heard of, never mind eaten, a quesadilla. Tom Green was at the top of his game.
In Brodheadsville, though, bigger things were happening. The Jamesway, not just a department store but still little more than a department store, was evolving into an Ames. Though there must have been some corporate intrigue, some off-stage wizardry, the only apparent change to most of us was the name on the outside of the strip mall and a change in color scheme from viridian to teal. Or was it teal to turquoise? Oh, they also moved the bike section to make room for tires, got rid of the fish tanks and repaired the water fountains so that just a dribble of boot-flavored liquid could be sipped when you plunged down the button.
In order to herald their entry into the West End of Pennsylvania’s 21st richest county, the folks at Ames planned big things. This, after all, wasn’t like the time the Aaron’s Rent to Own in Marshall’s Creek celebrated their grand opening by handing out stale sour cream and onion chips from 1:00PM-3:00PM, while supplies lasted.
Ames planned a whole week of celebration. There were pony rides in the parking lot. There were no fewer than two DJs performing on non-consecutive weekdays. There was even a Supermarket Sweep style contest where one lucky contest winner got to take home as many compact discs as she could get into her cart in fifteen seconds.
How many copies of Tragic Kingdom does one person need, anyway?
In the midst of all the hoopla and revelry sat Moose, or as you might have known him, Eddie Crane, the undisputed star of NBC’s Frasier. Technically speaking, Moose wasn’t actually in the middle of the hoopla. He was actually more to the left of it, on a Tuesday afternoon, next to the men’s jeans section, and only for as long as his owner still had doggie headshots to hand out.
Other places, with loftier airs and haughtier dispositions, probably garnered Moose’s hominid costars. David Hyde Pierce was probably off in Cherry Hill shilling for a Lenscrafter. Kelsey Grammer might have been in West Hollywood opening a Planet Hollywood.
But, and this may be the nine or ten year old in me talking, who needs a bipedal when you’ve got a Jack Russell Terrier?
Let me level with you: Moose sat on a stool in front of a dusty black curtain and, for the most part, acted like a dog. He wagged his tail. He licked his butt. That is to say, for a few hours, he acted a lot like Kelsey Grammer.
I kid. I kid.
Moose was undeniably, spectacularly mundane. He was a dog. And we, the small people of Brodheadsville, were agog. Our single-file line of giddy adults and children alike snaked around the store and out the door. There was buzz in the air. There was excitement. There was the dog from Frasier.
America is a sea roiling with Brodheadsvilles, unremarkable places with average people leading humdrum lives. We shuffle from our vinyl-sided split-levels in the morning to our jobs at the Piercing Pagoda in the mall. We shop at strip malls where coin-operated horse rides line the automatic doors like tipsy, technicolor Buckingham Palace guards. We fall asleep to the local weather, dreaming of a mostly sunny forecast. And, every now and then, a TV show dog drops by to open a department store and makes us feel alive again.
Like Ames itself, there’s little left of Moose’s visit. The store went into a slow, uncomfortable decline before shuttering its doors. For a long time, it collected dust and cobwebs. Then, it was a bowling alley, which, laser tag notwithstanding, was probably worse than an empty storefront.
Any pictures I had with Moose, either ones snapped furiously by my mother on her Minolta or those headshots forked over by his retinue, were lost in one spring cleaning frenzy or another. What I lack in physical evidence of Moose’s visit to our humble town, though, I make up for in memories — the very kind a call-in radio psychologist would love to hear about.
