Ross Mathews - Name drop: The Really Good Celebrity Stories I Usually Only Tell at Happy Hour

ALSO BY ROSS MATHEWS

Man Up!: Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence

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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Interior illustrations copyright 2019 by Brad Gibson

Jacket design by Donna Cheng

Jacket and author Photographs by Albert Sanchez

Glowing Lights image by Shutterstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-1648-4

ISBN 978-1-9821-1650-7 (ebook)

Dedicated to everyone who never got to sit at the cool kids table in the cafeteria.

You can sit at my table anytime. But you have to share your tater tots.

Name-Drop defined:

(verb) The habit of mentioning names of famous people that you know in order to make yourself seem more fabulous by association.

Name-Drop used in a sentence:

I, Ross Mathews, would never name-drop. Its tacky. My best friend Gwyneth Paltrow taught me that.

Name-dropping runs rampant in Hollywood, like high-speed car chases, gluten intolerance, and syphilis. And much like syphilis, name-dropping is super-grody and spreads quickly. You cant walk five feet down Sunset Boulevard without overhearing some Real Housewife of Whatever telling a former Disney tween about how her new trainer is the guy who got Chris Pratts body into batshit-crazy shape for that comic book movie. No, not that comic book movie. The other one. No, not that one. The other one.

Side note, Chris, if youre reading thisand I just assume you areI love your body of work. Honey, Id Guard your Galaxy any day! (Side note: Id like to point out that I made a conscious choice to not make a cheap, tasteless Uranus joke here. Why? Because Im trying to be bigger than that. Well see how long that lasts.)

As someone who has interviewed just about every celebrity you can imagine on every red carpet you can imagine for nearly the past two decades, I have some pretty amazing stories. And, trust methe red carpet stories are the boring ones! The stories where I actually get invited into celebrities secret livestheir natural habitats, if you willare the real gold. Their private tables in restaurants, their magnificent movie trailers, their hilariously humongous housesthats where the really good stuff happens.

From time to time, Ive managed to sneak beyond the velvet rope that separates them from us mere mortals and see what few ever get to see.

The following Hollywood stories are wholeseome and hilarious. No celebrity was harmed in the making of this book. But dont worry, honeywere still gonna go there. I mean, dont you wanna know what Kanye piled onto his plate at the buffet when I was in line behind him at the Kardashian Christmas party? And who would it hurt if I told you? Ham. It was ham. Seenow you know and nobody died. Well, the pig did, but you cant blame me for that.

No one ever specifically told me not to tell these stories, but I never do Unless you take me to happy hour and ply me with cheap two-for-one cocktails and appetizers. What can I say? Im a total whore for a hors doeuvre!

The idea for this book hit me as I was hanging out with a fun group of friendssome old friends, some new friends, some old friends who, thanks to Botox, look new. After about four Skinny Margaritas (I was going to have only three, but hello, theyre two-for-one!), I told one of these exceptionally juicy stories and noticed my friends, their mouths agape, hanging on my every word. When I finished narrating, one of them said, You have to put that in a book! to which I indignantly replied, I could never!

And then I asked myself the same question I did when I was offered Skinny Margaritas number five and six: Why not?

You should also know that, in true Ross Mathews spirit, Ive taken the liberty of creating a corresponding cocktail and a related recipeor Rossipe, as I call themfor each chapter (why should Martha Stewart have all the fun?). What other book has done that for you, huh? Go open up Moby-Dick! Theres not a single recipe in therenot even for fish sticks! I knowI was shocked, too! No wonder nobody ever read it!

So here we go. Lets get this soon-to-be-classic piece of literature started! Pretend its happy hour and you and I are sitting at the bar. I look amazing and, I agree with you, much thinner in person. You look good, too. Maybe its the candlelight, maybe its the boozeeither way, lets just go with it. Just lean in, keep this all between you and me, and do me a favor? Dont judge me if I name-drop just a little. Thanks. I promise this book will be out of this world. Just like Uranus. Dammit!

COCKTAIL

A Star Fruit Martini Is Born