July 25, 2003
Checked into the prestigious Westin Hotel yesterday at two. We are staying in the Bob Boze Bell suite and it’s really a thrill to see four rooms totally dedicated to someone I’m just crazy about. The last time we stayed they hadn’t put up the BBB bio, so this time I stood in the foyer, by the front door, next to a giant photograph of myself (it’s a blowup of the photo at the top of this page) and read some of the juicier paragraphs aloud to Kathy. I finally had to say, “Man, this guy is so groovy. I wish I knew him.” Kathy laughed like someone who knows the truth, and she does. The only fly in the ointment is they mangled a “fact” off of my web-site bio at bobbozebell.com. In it, I state with some tongue-in-cheek pride that “I graduated with the valedictorian of my class.” A modest joke and self-effacing to boot. Unfortunately, the copy writer (who is quite talented I might add) evidently misread the bio and it ends up saying, on the wall, “In spite of his clowning around, Bob Boze Bell was the valedictorian of his class.” Now this is horribly wrong (as any teacher I ever had will attest) and it’s not fair to our worthy valedictorian Ellen Hollenstein (who really never cared for me anyway). I will try to have this corrected, but I can imagine future critics complaining, “in a pathetic attempt at revisionist history, Boze often tried to pass himself off as the valedictorian of his class when he barely managed to graduate with a C- average.”

In a related story, I had a similar problem when I was a freshman at the University of Arizona. There was another Robert Bell in my class and he made the Dean’s List (once again, I was barely holding a C average). The university sent a press release to the first Robert Bell’s hometown (that would be me) and The Mohave County Miner published this glowing article on my academic achievements. My art teacher at Mohave County Union High School (nicknamed Mucous) claimed much of the honor and remembered how great I was as a student. My mother allowed the myth to be perpetuated, “Oh, Bobbie, you must be so proud of your Robert.” “Yes, he studies very hard.” I finally had to confront my mother: “It’s not true, mom. Quit saying it, or tell them the truth.” “Well, you could make the Dean’s List,” was her reply. “Yes,” I told her, “and I could be a murderer too, but I don’t think you’d allow that typo to persist.” Somehow my mom never saw the logic in that.

"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."
—Cary Grant