One of my favorite remedies to the soul sucking repetition of life is to watch and rewatch the 2004 AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Meryl Streep. If you haven't seen it I suggest checking it out. I have an old VHS taping of it when it aired on Trio….is that channel even out there anymore??
It ignites my joy and reminds me that everyone starts somewhere. Everyone wears glasses and is insecure about one thing or another, but in the end you can become Meryl Streep. Not actually Meryl Streep but the idea of her, to capture exactly who you are in a moment, to refine yourself and become more than the sum of your parts. Better, smarter, faster and all for less than a million dollars. It also proves that greatness, on occasion, can come forth from New Jersey.
One of my life markers to "know" when I was famous enough was to be drawn by the late great Al Hirschfeld. Well, Albert held on as long as he could, nearly 100 years to ribbon my image across the pages of the New York Times; however we lost the master of line in 2003. Now in his stead I have figured out that making Meryl Streep laugh will be marker enough, perhaps over a bottle of wine as I reenact meeting her for the first time in the basement of the Powerhouse Theatre at Vassar.
Who can say when or where it will happen, but it will and then I will know what it's like to touch greatness without raising a finger.
These are two of favorite moments from the special...
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