Saturday, February 05, 2005

Celebrity pitchman redux

Interesting day, today. I received a phone call last night from the Freebirds marketing people, desperate to get ahold of me. Seems they'd taken down my phone number wrong and had been trying--unsuccessfully--to reach me for several days. They were filming their "Freebirds Fanatics" commercials in Austin today, and wanted to know if I could make myself available.

Hey, there were free burritos involved. Of course I could make myself available.

Traffic was somewhat lighter than expected, so I rolled into the Hancock Center around 10:30 a.m., plenty early for my 11 a.m. reporting time. The film crew was just setting up as I arrived, and right away I learned they had me down for 11:30 rather than 11. Okay, a little communication difficulty is to be expected, so I grabbed a drink and watched as they started filming the guys scheduled ahead of me. The first was a fellow who'd dressed up as a Freebirds burrito for Halloween, complete with the backwards "F" logo on his chest. Watching the guy wearing a roll of aluminum foil go through the line ordering his burrito was surreal, to say the least. The next guy was a fellow who, as a starving college student, donated plasma twice a week to get enough money to eat at Freebirds every day for two years. Or something like that. Man. I know I love Freebirds, but something about that is just downright creepy!

It's not like I have room to talk, though. Back in 1992, in my senior year at A&M, the Aggies swept Texas in baseball for the first time ever. The brooms came out, and the fans in the stands at Olsen Field leapt onto the diamond to celebrate with the team. We're talking about 5,000 fans for a college baseball game. From the lower deck of Olsen to the playing surface is a sheer drop of 10-12 feet. I'm not the most agile of people, and when I landed pain shot up my right leg. We're talking 57 kinds of hurt. Something was broken, I knew, so after the singing and cheering and celebrations waned, I swiped a broom from someone to use as a crutch. I limped my way back to my truck, and started for the hospital. But you have to realize, this was a late game. It was close to 10 p.m., and I hadn't had dinner. I was hungry. Really hungry. From my past experience with hospitals, I knew they wouldn't let you eat or drink anything while awaiting diagnosis, and maybe not even after that. So I turned around and drove over to the original College Station Freebirds location at Northgate. Using my broom as a crutch again, I limped across the street and ordered a monster chicken on whole wheat, with pico, cilantro and guacamole. And every hot sauce they had in the place. When I was finished, maybe around 11 or so, then I headed over to the hospital.

My leg still hurt, but I wasn't hungry anymore.

Turns out I broke my heel. Managed to give myself a circular fracture running around the ball of the heel, which didn't show up on X-rays, so they ended up pumping me full of radioactive gunk and imaging my foot that way. I don't recommend it. Was on crutches for a month. But man, was that burrito good.

Today in Austin, I brought a broom along, and they had me re-enact my limping across the parking lot to get to Freebirds. They gave me a free Monster burrito for lunch, enough gift certificates to feed my family a bunch of burritos and then some, plus a nifty black Freebirds shirt which is just the right size for me now, but will shrink to Lisa's size after the first washing. Yeah, not a lot of compensation, but I love Freebirds and didn't expect much more. I'm not a professional actor, after all. The Freebirds staff and the film crew thought my tale of woe hilarious, and thought the broom a suitably pathetic prop. They assured me I gave them some good material, even if I tended to ramble on rather than get to the point (Me? Ramble on at length?)

All in all, it was a fun trip. If they make the commercials available online, I'll post the link here so everyone can see how much of a nincompoop I look when I'm expounding about breaking my leg for a burrito.

Now Playing: The Georgia Satellites In the Land of Salvation and Sin

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