Happy Hogan

I've got a friend whose husband died a few years ago.  Her son is sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and a kid who has a lot of questions about life, women, and where he fits in the overall scheme of things.

I've taken him out a few times and we've played catch, gone looking for graffiti tags around Cleveland's rougher neighborhoods and tried to answer the questions that he's too embarrassed to ask his mother.

So, another friend of mine who interns at a local shock jock radio show texted me to tell me that the Hulkster was in town to tape a wrestling match to be aired on TNT later this year.

Hmmm.  Hulk Hogan?  I'm not a big wrestling fan but I thought that my friend's son might get a kick out of meeting a guy who has received a lot of love and admiration from kids all around the globe.

I called my friend and her son seemed eager to meet him.  They piled in their car, came to my place, and the three of us headed downtown.  I never asked Joey if he liked wrestling or had a specific affinity for a 1980s wrestler most famous (to me at least) for his appearance in "Rocky III," a movie made almost twenty years before my son's friend was even born.

Twenty minutes later we got to the Hyatt Regency, a hotel wedged into a historic shopping arcade in downtown Cleveland.  The Euclid Arcade was built in the late 1800s, a relic from Cleveland's glorious industrial past.  At about the same time "Rocky III" came out Cleveland was undergoing an architectural renaissance.  Many of the hotels, theaters and office buildings headed for the wrecking ball had been saved by committees, foundations and citizens concerned with saving Cleveland's past.  The Euclid Arcade was refitted and now is a cornerstone of both upscale shopping, trendy restaurants and a five story hotel that houses the Hyatt.  Oh yeah, it's pretty central to most of downtown's sites and amenities so a LOT of visiting celebrities use it as their hub when they come to Cleveland.

So my friend, whose mid-forties' bladder isn't what it used to be, excused herself to attend to its needs. Joey and I hung out in the lobby when I asked him how many of Hogan's wrestling matches he had seen over the years.

He sheepishly told me that he had never seen a single match and that, honestly, he had no idea who Hulk Hogan was.

I was a little surprised at first but then realized that when the WWF was popular his mom was still in high school.  I explained that you really couldn't mistake him upon seeing him; just keep your eye out for a tall balding guy with blond locks and a big ass handlebar mustache who had a fondness for brightly-colored clothes. I looked down to see my right shoelace untied; as I was about to bend over to tie it Joey yelled out, in a cavernous five-story, glass-roofed edifice, "THERE HE IS!!"

I think the entire hotel heard us.

A few heads turned our way.  My friend made her way back from the bathroom; she immediately recognized the Hulkster as he sat at the bar engaged in conversation with a man about half of his size.

I felt a little awkward interrupting his dinner.  He was gracious and signed my 8x10.  He posed for a picture with Joey, whose Cheshire Cat grin and wide eyes betrayed the notion that he was impressed by the man who, until ten minutes prior, had been a total stranger.

Hogan was a cool guy; very polite and the polar opposite of my last celeb encounter several weeks prior when meeting Kevin Costner.

We walked back to the car as Joey updated his Facebook page to let his peers know that he just met Hulk Hogan.

A declaration, I'm sure, that most of his friends responded with a hearty "Who the hell is that?" 

As we drove home, I glanced at my first autographed picture in its spiffy new folder.  It was to be the first of dozens that I would attain over the next few months.  For a brief moment I wasn't thinking about my son's absence. And, maybe, that's what this hobby would help do:  Keep my mind busy while I collected some interesting new stories and worried less and less about my son's well-being a few hundred miles away from both me and the almost-two-decades of ritual that we had both become accustomed.

The First Sighting

Late June had arrived quickly.  My son, now a high school graduate and heading off to college in a short and not-so-sweet eight weeks, was in Europe with the remains of his French Club.

I was pondering what to do in his absence and how to fill the time that would all too soon be a daily part of life.  Gone would be the weekends we had shared since the mid-1990s; my routine would be abruptly changed and I needed something to fill the Saturday morning Denny's coffee and conversation marathons that we had shared since right before 9/11 and his first grade Christmas. Or the every-other weekend visitation that was ingrained into my life since 1996.  My god! What was I going to do with myself?

I'm a professional photographer. I photograph senior pictures and weddings to fill my coffers.  I shoot landscapes and old abandoned buildings for fun.  Recently, I signed with an agency to start photographing the myriad of celebrities that have recently discovered Cleveland, Ohio to be anything but the so-called "Mistake-on-the-Lake."  Our restaurant scene is becoming world-famous; the cost of living is fantastic for such a big city; Hollywood has recently come calling after discovering an untapped wealth of virgin locations, eager crews, and tax incentives that make Lake Erie's South Shore a goldmine.

June 20th was a relatively cool evening.  The summer heat hadn't kicked in yet and my camera was poised to shoot a few movie stars that were in town to film "Draft Day," a movie about the Cleveland Browns and their manager's attempt to score a whale of his own on football's draft day.

Its star, Kevin Costner, was playing with his band Modern West at a west-side club called Brother's Lounge.  Of course, I wanted to shoot him for my agency.  I had known about this for well over a month and kept telling myself I had to dig out an old movie poster for the greatest of daddy-issue-related baseball movies, "Field of Dreams."

How cool would an autographed poster be hanging in the man cave next to my Meatloaf-signed Bat Out Of Hell album cover?

I got too busy with paying gigs and long days shooting the "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" set that was concurrently filming their opus all over downtown Cleveland to even think about finding that old poster.  Plus, I thought, the chances of meeting Costner were very slim.

Well, as the sun started to dunk itself below the near-solstice horizon, Costner marched right past me, signing whatever poster, DVD case, or 8x10 these overzealous autograph hounds stuck into his face.

Son of a bitch, I thought.  Don't be so unprepared next time.

He signed a few autographs and promised to make the rounds, once again, after his country-fried rock band finished up their gig.

While waiting for the end of the show I met a man named Steve.  He was 79 years old and had collected autographs since the Korean War. He was a 1951 Golden Gloves boxer and had been Jacob Javitz' personal bodyguard in the early 1960s.  We talked for a few hours as he told me about his fights and showed me his malformed knuckles and pointed out his misshapen nose, broken a few times during the Eisenhower years. He gave me his card and asked me to call him; we'd get together for coffee and he'd show me some of his more noteworthy autographs.

Three hours later Costner meandered out, beer in hand, and walked towards the tour bus.  After he boarded it the circle of autograph hounds got tight; they clamored around the bus' door awaiting Costner's return as the big diesel engines rumbled to life, spouting noxious fumes into the air all around this coterie.

After the tour manager laid out the ground rules Costner came out with a black Sharpie in hand.  He signed whatever someone shoved in front of his face.

I was surrounded by a litany of autograph seekers smiling into their ink-still-wet holy grails as they made their way back to the cars that sat, bumper to bumper, crowding the Arby's lot adjacent to the nightclub.

Well, I got my pictures; Costner was mildly drunk and somewhat annoyed by all the attention.  He never looked anyone in the eye nor did a single word slip from his lips, other than "That light is in my eyes," which was in reference to a woman's point and shoot Nikon with an annoying little flash that couldn't focus on its subject and kept sending a rat-a-tat beam of light in the little camera's attempt to rack focus on the annoyed actor.  He abruptly stopped signing and made his way back to a bodyguard and a red convertible, speeding off into the night.

It was a little surrealistic: A dozen or so overweight disciples, thrusting their merchandise into a movie star's face, praising him for his make-believe antics, and then quickly discarded as Costner decided he had signed enough, getting into the automobile without a single word coming from his mouth.

I was intrigued. 

Maybe I had found my new hobby?  I struck up a conversation with one of the autograph collectors who, serendipitously, was from my hometown.  We traded numbers and a promise to fill each other in when we heard about a new whale coming to town.

A week later, at a sneak screening of "World War Z," an acquaintance told me of a big star coming to town in a few months for her boyfriend's sister's wedding.  A recently-christened Oscar winner.  I had a scoop and a line that no other photographer or autograph collector knew about.  Her picture could be worth some big money.  Maybe if I could photograph her at the wedding she was attending multiple magazines or websites would pick it up.  If I caught her engaging in, ya know, everyday human behavior it could perhaps pay for my son's second-semester textbooks...

I had sold a few images to TMZ, People Magazine and E! Online, but this may be worth more.  If only I could keep it hush-hush until October's wedding date.

Cool.

The quest had started.

Just call me Ahab.