Uncommon celebrity

It was the best time of my life, I think.  Summer school at the University of Colorado in Boulder.  My sorority house was nearly empty, so the handful of “sisters” who stayed for summer classes had the run of the mansion.  Summer school was an academic necessity for me as the atmosphere in fall and spring semesters at one of the top party schools in the nation always landed me on academic probation. Not even a conservative, highly respected national sorority could shield its members from the hippie culture that was pervasive in Boulder in the mid 1970s.  It was here that I met Lydia.  Our adjoining rooms were strategically chosen for the access to the rooftop patio where we could sunbathe with our tops off.  (OMG, this is starting to sound like a letter to Penthouse Forum.)  I’m pretty foggy on details here because every day was a party.  Lydia was gorgeous and she had dates every day.  But to me, her best characteristic was her sense of humor; she had the best laugh.  We kept our friendship through the following school year and the next summer, we moved into a house with two other girls, and the constant partying continued.  On the rare occasion that both of us were home by midnight, we would go out in our pajamas to Taco Bell or Dunkin Donuts.  (Of course this is a common attire these days, but in the 1970s, we were quite bold – trendsetters as it turns out.)  My college education was low on my priority list and I just assumed Lydia was an underachiever like me since neither of us ever studied or crawled out of bed with hangovers to get to classes. Little did I know she was highly intelligent.  In fact, I think she hid that fact from everyone, as a woman with her good looks and brains too would be very intimidating, especially to the jocks who chased her relentlessly.

In the 1970s, the great rock band Chicago had a recording studio called Caribou Ranch in the mountains just west up Boulder Canyon.  All the greatest rock groups of that great musical era loved to record there.  It was rumored that Elton John was there.  So one day, Lydia told us, her housemates, that she was going to go to the ranch and she said she wanted to marry Elton John.  It was a pretty funny notion then and even funnier now.  Much to our surprise, she was instantly hired at the recording studio.  We didn’t see much of Lydia after that.  One day, she came home and wanted us to go with her to a Boulder bar to hear a new artist, Billy Joel. He had just released his first big hit, Piano Man, and the concert was pretty good.  But someone had neglected to arrange for transportation for the band back to the studio, so Billy Joel, with Lydia on his lap, and two other band members and our roommate all piled into my cheap little beat-up compact car and drove back to our house.  Honestly, I thought Billy Joel was kind of an arrogant unattractive jerk, so I didn’t stick around that evening, but Lydia and Pam entertained the band.  I didn’t see Lydia again until later that week and she told me how things were going at the studio.  If I had known that would be the last time I would ever see her in person, I would have tried to talk her out of her dream of marrying a rock star.  As it turned out, her dreams were much bigger than that.

A few years later, one of my male friends who had an unfulfilled crush on Lydia called and told me to go out and buy a TV Guide.  Lydia was on the cover, with Ted Knight, in her new TV sitcom.  She played the role of a ditsy blonde college student, living with her sister (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) in an apartment below their parents.  She went on to many more acting roles, including HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.   But her immense talent also includes books, plays, and a radio talk show host.  Her notoriety grew after she made a harmless comment about Ann Coulter, followed by threats from Coulter fans (I didn’t know there were any…).  Head to head, in a mental or physical showdown, my money is on Lydia.

Fast forward (at last) to the present decade.  My male classmate from CU told me about Lydia’s website.  So I wrote her, thinking she wouldn’t even remember me after all her success and legions of fans, but she wrote back right away and continues to keep in touch for several years now. 

Lydia recently hosted the live stream for Variety’s Power of Comedy honoring Russell Brand benefitting the Noreen Fraser Foundation, which raises funds for women's cancer research    www.noreenfraserfoundation.org/  This was a live stream on Kelsey Grammer's network.  She also is featured in the Kelsey Grammer-Bill Zucker Comedy Show.

Which brings me (finally) to the point of this long history of my friendship with Lydia Cornell:  Lydia’s comedic talent will not be her greatest legacy.  She is a very progressive thinker and she enlightens her friends and fans on a regular basis with quotes of her own and others like her.  Her recurring theme is positive energy – that our physical well being is directly related to our mental/spiritual thoughts – lose the fear and keep your thoughts positive and positive physical results will follow.  There is so much negative energy around us and I’m confident that so many people could be helped by this simple truth.  Please check out Lydia’s website, blogspot and twitter:

http://lydiacornell.com/

http://politicallyhot.blogspot.com/

https://twitter.com/LydiaCornell 

http://www.lydiafanclub.blogspot.com/2011/09/charity-triumph-over-tragedy.html

There is one final editorial footnote to this story.  Isn’t it remarkable to hear stories of celebrities using their fame to help others?  There are far more stories in the media every day about celebrities behaving badly.  Cheers to you, Lydia.  Keep up the good work.