I got stage fright in front of Cam Neely. Kind of strange because I am on stage all the time you would say. And I rarely get stage fright. Yeah, it was a weird situation. It was one of those rare occasions that I got stage fright. But come on now people, we’re talking Cam Neely! Do you know who he is? The dominant Boston Bruins hockey player that was one of the baddest of the big bad Bruins. The guy is a bad ass. Certified. Probably has a certificate on his wall at his house that is signed by the Mayor of Boston and possibly the President of the United States and some sort of notary certifying that he is a bad ass. Cam Neely, number 8. I used to watch him absolutely wreck people on the ice. He was a skill player as well, great hands, good sense of the game, great skater. Definitely was the complete package. Neely was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2005 and is currently the President of the Bruins. Excuse me, yeah, he’s the man.

And have you ever seen the movie Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels? If you haven’t then rent it, watch it, it’s a classic. And guess who was in that movie? Yup, you got it, Cam Neely. He was Sea Bass, a hick trucker who got ripped off by Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels’ characters in a roadside diner. When Jeff Daniels superstitiously throws salt over his shoulder it hits Sea Bass and Cam stands up and loudly states, “Who’s the dead man who hit me with the salt shaker?!”. One of Sea Bass’s friends yells, “Kick his ass Sea Bass!”. What a ridiculous name, Sea Bass. Neely does a great job making the character come to life, I honestly had no idea it was him right away, and I am a big hockey fan. He does a great job acting the part. Anyway, in the movie Sea Bass hocks a huge spit wad right on Jeff Daniels’ (Harry is Daniel’s character) burger to get him back for getting hit with the salt shaker. Harry had originally thrown the salt shaker over his shoulder because it was bad luck when he spilled the salt as pointed out by Lloyd (Jim Carey’s character). As Lloyd and Harry leave the bar they play a trick on Sea Bass and his friends by claiming to buy them a round of beers. Instead, they go up to the counter and say that Sea Bass offered to pay for their meal. When the waitress motions to Sea Bass from across the diner, he gestures that things are okay because he is expecting to get a free round of beers. Instead, the gesture is taken by the waitress that Sea Bass is okay with paying for Lloyd and Harry’s meal. Sea Bass realizes that he was had too late and Lloyd and Harry drive away in their dog mobile, leaving an angry Sea Bass behind.

Sea Bass appears later on in the movie as Lloyd is peeing at a rest stop and sees a sign on the wall saying to be in that particular stall at 2:15 AM Sharp for some man loving. Lloyd notices it is exactly 2:15, hears footsteps, and Sea Bass busts into the stall. Lloyd is terrified and Sea Bass is about to kick his ass in the stall when Harry comes busting in and saves the day. Harry busts open the stall because he had lit his boots on fire in the gas station parking lot trying to hit on a woman out there. He offered her a light for a cigarette and used a match to light it, threw the match on the ground, and it lit his gas soaked boots because he had overfilled his tank earlier and splashed gas on his boots. He put out his flaming boots in the toilet that Sea Bass was about to beat up Lloyd near, and by busting open the stall door to put out the flames he hit Sea Bass in the head haphazardly and knocked him out. As Harry is splashing all the toilet water all over, Lloyd is huddled in the corner sucking his thumb and getting splashed by the toilet water. Finally, Harry realizes that he saved Lloyd and knocked out Sea Bass and they bolt the scene. A classic part of the scene is when Sea Bass is pushing Lloyd’s head down against the side of the stall to get Lloyd in good beating position and Lloyd is just repeating, “Go to a happy place, go to a happy place!”. These 2 scenes are seriously 2 of the funniest and clever scenes ever in my opinion. And yeah, Cam Neely was in them. Respect!

Back to the stage fright stuff. So I did meet Cam Neely in early 2006, right before I joined up with State Radio. I was working for this venture capital firm called General Catalyst. This was a swanky, cutting edge firm that had about a billion dollars under management. They only accepted high net worth or institutional investors, hence Cam Neely looking to invest in General Catalyst (he was a high net worth guy!). General Catalyst actually pioneered that site www.kayak.com. I remember them being really excited about that company in 2006. That site made those people some serious money, I have no doubt about that. Maybe it even made Cam Neely some money, if he ended up investing in and keeping his money with the firm. For those of you that don’t know what venture capitalists do, here is a quick rundown. Basically, for about a 50% share in your company, you can approach a venture capital firm and ask for funding for your project. If the venture capital firm sees potential in your company they may fund you and also use their highly skilled team of managers to help you manage your company. The partners from the venture capital firm are hands on and will most likely be on the Board of Directors of the companies they fund, as well as take leading roles in the financial decisions to supplement the managerial decisions. Basically it’s a one stop shop. The objective of the venture capitalist is to take the company public and then immediately sell their shares. So in effect they take a fledgling company, take it public, and then send it on its way. Most companies never make it public. But when a company does make it public, the venture capital firm makes a huge return, and these rare winners will hopefully more than compensate for the losers.

That is how the venture capital firm works, but how does the venture capital firm get the money to invest in these fledgling companies? Well, it gets the money from investors, like Cam Neely! So Cam was interested in General Catalyst in early 2006. He was looking to invest some money in the firm. And he had a meeting with the partners at the firm. And understandably there was a big buzz in the office that day. “Cam Neely is here man! He’s looking to invest, he’s in a meeting right over there in that conference room!” my co-worker Addison Marsh told me. So I took a stroll by and took a peek in the conference room. It looked like Cam in there. Must be true. Maybe I would get to meet him or at least walk by him at some point. Scope him out at close range. I had heard he was a pretty big dude, let’s see what this one man wrecking crew looked like in person. So I waited and the meeting seemed to drag on and on. And I got into my work for the day and almost forgot that Neely was in the building.

A little before noon, I got up to take a pee. As I was walking to the bathroom I noticed someone was walking pretty close behind me. Holy crap, was it, yes it was! It was Cam Neely. We were going to share a pee together! I held the door for him, he said thank you, and since there were only 2 urinals we were destined to pee right next to each other. I was looking forward to this pee anyway because I had been holding it for quite some time, but now the pee took on a new meaning. It would forever be my Cam Neely pee! I saddled up next to Cam and took my wiener out and tried to act cool. Should I try and sneak a peek at Cam’s one eyed snake? I decided against the idea out of respect and fear of getting my ass beaten. He was a big guy, about 6’1” or 6’2”, definitely over 200 pounds, quite broad and muscular looking. Not a dude I would want to mess with.

So back to the pee. Let the games begin. Cam broke his seal first and a healthy stream was heard about a foot to my right as Cam was ripping his pee. I wanted to look at his stream too but out of respect didn’t even try to get a glimpse of that. Now all I had to do was start my stream and we were piss pals. Come on stream, you can do it! 10 seconds, 15 seconds… no stream. Oh no! Think: waterfalls, gushing water, flowing streams, I had to pee so badly and I knew I did! Nothing. Stage fright. Neely and his healthy stream was in my head. I was done. My central nervous system was shutting down. I couldn’t pee in front of Neely, he psyched me out! Damn it, now what do I do? He knows I am not peeing. I mean there is no way he can’t tell that there isn’t a stream flowing about 12 inches from his stream. Also, since he is taller than me I start wondering if he is looking at my urinal, or by default he snuck a peek and saw that there was no stream going. There were so many variables that my head was about to explode. We were supposed to be piss pals and now I was just the kid who got stage fright. Bummer town USA dot org.

So as I am standing there listening to Neely rip this gargantuan pee, I start wondering how long I should pretend to be pissing alongside of him. You have to admit there is the off chance that Neely doesn’t notice that I have no stream going. He just came out of a meeting that pertained to General Catalyst’s investments and their investment opportunities and he was thinking of investing a large sum of his personal fortune in the company. This would require his undivided attention and it was not a short meeting. Maybe he was just standing there running figures in his head, going over the points of the meeting, and wasn’t too concerned with the peon next to him that had stage fright. He could have legitimately been lost in his thoughts and not noticed that there was no stream coming from my urinal. I mean the guy had to make a huge decision about a large sum of his hard earned money, which he gave his body and soul to the game of hockey for. He had more important things on his mind than my stage fright.

So I just stood there for what seemed to be an hour. I think it was something like 15 or 20 seconds. Neely was still peeing. The longer I stood there the more embarrassing it got. Neely really had to pee. His pee was fierce and it just kept coming. Eventually, I gave up. I became so embarrassed and upset at my bladder and myself that I just didn’t want to deal with the pressure of the situation anymore. When I was walking to the bathroom I had envisioned that we would pee together in a blaze of glory and then when we were washing our hands together I might say something like, “Hey Cam, hope the meeting went well!”. And he would say something back to me like, “Yeah it went great, it’s great to be around such smart, awesome, and good looking people like yourself”. But at this point I just wanted out. I zipped my fly up and made my way to the sink to wash my hands with haste. I washed real quick, dried, and was walking out of the bathroom just as Neely was walking to the sink. I think I made quick eye contact with him and nodded real quickly on my way out to acknowledge his presence, but there was no hand washing together, no interaction, no being piss pals. I had failed Bruins fans everywhere with this poor performance.

The walk back to my desk was a serious walk of shame. What had just happened?! I never get stage fright, how could this be? What are the chances I would be walking to the bathroom at the same time as Hall of Famer Cam Neely and have a chance to share a pee with him? I mean a pee is an intimate thing, it’s so primal and dates back thousands and thousands of years. Man, was I bummed. To make matters worse, right when I got back to my desk and sat down nature told me I had made a mistake. The uncontrollable urge to pee once again reared its ugly head. Oh yeah, I did have to pee really badly and I didn’t pee at all! Now I was stuck at my desk for at least another half an hour because I didn’t want my boss to see me taking 2 breaks right in a row. And what if Neely was roaming around the office and saw me enter the bathroom yet again! Then he would know I didn’t pee, or would he think I had to poop this time… Either way it was way too risky on so many levels to get up and go to the bathroom again. So I pinched and waited and it was brutal! Finally, after about half an hour to 45 minutes, I got up again and actually got to go pee this time. Ahhhh, that felt good. What a crazy day. What a crazy hour.

I told my co-worker Addison Marsh about the whole situation. He obviously thought it was hysterical. “Neely got you!” he said. Damn right he did, he got me good. That Cam Neely is one bad ass mofo. My bladder was star struck!