Lights! Camera! Resumes?

It seems showing off one’s resume is done differently these days. At least as it’s done by video and animation artists.

We spotted hundreds of these cyber- artistes roaming (of all places) the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda last week. The occasion was a massive party hosted by Industrial Light and Magic, which does special effects for movies.

What struck us as a trend-in-progress was the way computer artists brought their work. Some had book-size Hi-8 videocassette players in backpacks. As they met friends, out would come the machines, on would come a snippet of a music video special effect, and the small clusters of partisans would sympathetically ooh and aah at the 3-inch-square images of each other’s latest work.

The need to carry one’s work at all times was explained thus: “You never know who you’re going to run into.”

Give Them Elbow Room

There has been a recent swelling in the ranks of the crowds waiting outside celebrity-heavy events. These used to be composed primarily of free-lance photographers. The throng has been inflated by professional autograph seekers.

As with photographers, what fuels the autograph seekers’ patience is money. What interested us was what the market pays for autographs. And the answer is, not much.

According to mysterious laws of supply and demand, Sally Field, Andy Griffith, Nancy Sinatra, Doris Day and Valerie Bertinelli are lumped together at a bargain-basement $2. Sigourney Weaver, John McEnroe, Farrah Fawcett, Gregory Peck and Michael Douglas go for $5. Patrick Swayze, Sharon Stone, Winona Ryder and Ginger Rogers all fetch $20.

We do know why a top price of $150 was paid for a Marlon Brando signature. He hasn’t been seen at a Hollywood event since before Heidi Fleiss was born.

Elvis Puts Fans on the Map

Whether one believes Elvis Presley dead, alive or a potential god, he’s definitely a marketing phenomenon. So much so that a color-coded map of the United States has been created by American Demographics magazine to show on an exhaustive county-by-county basis “the propensity of U.S. households to purchase Elvis memorabilia.”

The map ranks residents on five levels from Elvis lovers to loathers. The highest proportion of fans are in the South, with a general decline in Elvis infatuation as the map moves north and west.

Though Elvis made his mark in Hollywood, Los Angeles County came up loathers.

What’s That Name Again?

We hear through the grapevine that this year’s Ronald Reagan Freedom Award will be presented to the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell.

This is a great honor for Gen. Powell. Especially in light of the way the former President remembered a past chairman, Gen. John Vessey. Vessey’s name is the one that slipped his former commander in chief’s mind during a 1990 deposition for the Iran-Contra trial of John Poindexter.

“Oh dear, I could ask for help here,” Reagan said when asked about a trip Vessey took to Central America. “The name I know is familiar.”