I guess its cool to be recognized...?

During the day, I work as a book editor and I pick up lunch from a bodega/hot lunch counter/salad bar/deli counter place near my office. My company just moved offices, so I’ve only started visiting this one “amalgamation of foodstuffs” location recently. Last week I was in there and the cashier stares at me, then says, “Are you on TV?”

That COULD be cool, if my only TV “credit” weren’t that I was on an episode of “The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet” in which I was featured on screen with the label “Selena Coppock / Unlucky In Love.” Yeah, THAT is my only dalliance with television fame. Yikes. (Note: The episode was promoting a dating book written by a British author who talks about how you should date your “matched opposite” and note date a person like you. So they took some B roll footage of me walking in NYC and saying how much dating sucks, then he counseled me and basically told me to stop dating comedians. Perhaps someday I will take his advice.)

More recently, I was cast in a web commercial for a product called ShapeFX that competes with Spanx. They have Spanx-type products for a bunch of body troubles: thighs, tummy, arm flap, etc. Here is the commercial:

The 16 second version of my commercial was used preempt videos on PerezHilton.com for a week or so, so perhaps this lady had see it. It’s not inconceivable. So I said to her that I wasn’t on TV, but I had been on a web commercial, and perhaps she had seen that. She was like, “What for?” so I began explaining the product and the premise and that I was in the arm flap commercial. Pretty embarrassing to say that in a crowded bodega full of business men on their lunch breaks trying to get some grub. A light bulb went off in her head and she had seen it. OK. Fine. How about you ring up my Fresca and SmartFood and I get outta here, because this is a little bit embarrassing. We’re talking about arm flaps. Loudly.

Yesterday I went back into that same bodega and had her as a cashier. She greets me with “SPANX LADY!” and then starts flapping her arms around to expose the swinging arm flap of her untoned triceps, then points at me and I feel strangely obligated to swing my arm flaps, too. So I do.

I need to find a new lunch place.