Being out of work gives you time to reflect, to ponder, to –as former Bulls coach Phil Jackson once said of himself — think deep thoughts, such as why Mr. Spock got such a raw deal with the bad haircut.I was outnumbered this weekend on a trip to the movies and so I found myself at Star Trek.  A boy movie. And a geek movie, at the risk of offending all geeks who might possibly stumble across my blog on their way to a Trekkie website or convention or something. As someone who is neither a stereotypical female moviegoer nor a stereotypical female, for that matter — i.e., I include Diner, Caddyshack, Dirty Harry, Scarface, Goodfellas, Stripes, Cool Hand Luke, The Longest Yard, and pretty much every other prison movie among my favorites – I was not pre-disposed to disliking this movie.And I did like it, on some level, which I will share in a moment. I would promise that I won’t ruin the plot of Star Trek, but frankly, I am not capable as I don’t really know what happened except there were more explosions at the end and more beaming up of people, and Spock still had his bad Vulcan haircut.I do not in any way want to suggest that I, nor any other woman, lacks the intellectual capacity to understand a typical guy movie such as this one.  This one was easy compared to others of its ilk. Star Wars? My daughter Amanda and I somehow thought we could stomach that one with her father and brother. But we bolted out of the theater about 10 minutes in, and ended up sitting through the final hour of a movie in which we did not recognize a single actor, couldn’t tell you the title or the plot line. But it was infinitely more enjoyable because – and this I do remember – it a) had humans in it and b) took place within a time period of 10 billion years from today.In the interest of societal and cultural significance, I believe it is important to delve into why men and women differ so dramatically when it comes to movies. Perhaps I should disqualify myself because as I previously disclosed, I am not your typical woman. Also, as I perused a list of “top 10 chick flicks,” according to “O” Magazine, I found myself instantly annoyed with the clichéd “chick flick,” expression and I discovered that I couldn’t stand most of the movies on the list.I mean, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The English Patient, and four others made before 1947? I was bored just reading the list. Where was Pretty Woman, Terms of Endearment, When Harry Met Sally . . ., Steel Magnolias, Dirty Dancing,  A League of Their Own, Titanic?But once again, I digress.I think about why a man – and for the sake of a specific example, my husband Rick – could not sit through, say, Terms of Endearment, without audibly groaning,  but he could and has, sat through Legally Blonde. Many times.And why did I literally sprint out of Star Wars but I sort of liked Star Trek?Could it possibly be because my husband has a not-so-secret crush on Reese Witherspoon (after once catching him pausing just a little too long while flipping past Legally Blonde 2, it wasn’t that hard to figure out) and I thought the guy who played “Captain Kirk” in Star Trek resembled a young Brad Pitt?I have no real aversion to explosions or your typical movie gore. I mean, Scarface is so bloody, it becomes humorous. Maybe I like it because I resent being pigeonholed or left out in the same way I resented not being allowed to play Little League as a child. But in the same way my husband watches the end of Titanic and yells angrily — each and every time — for Leonardo DiCaprio to grab the piece of wood that Kate Winslet is using as a floation device while I weep over the tragedy of it all; I watched Star Trek and all I could think of was why Spock’s mother, being human and everything, allowed him to have that haircut.In the end, we accept our differences, embrace them.Men focus on the superficial. Women have feelings.And we both like to look at the beautiful.There, that was easy.

Pedaling away in spin class this morning, and when I wasn’t thinking about possibly hurling, I was considering how fame can ruin people.
 

I’m not sure how exactly I made this jump from queasiness to Kris Allen and “Jon & Kate, Plus 8.” But oddly, I have been feeling sorry for the whole bunch of them.
 

Maybe it is because I have seen fame relatively close up. And I have observed how, in this country, the more famous someone becomes, the harder, seemingly, they must eventually be brought down. In a broad sense, the profession in which I have made my living has been largely responsible for this.
 

I’m not referring to athletes so much. Other than the really big names/steroid users, most athletes can live fairly normal lives without worrying about showing up on the cover of the National Enquirer.
 

Sure, they have to deal with being interrupted at dinner with their families, and I’m sure that can get tiresome.
 

But frankly, that seems a pretty small price to pay for the salaries most of them earn. And after their careers are over, most can retreat back to living even more normal lives paying for their own meals, making reservations for dinner and no doubt craving the attention they may have complained about before.
 

I remember when the Chicago Bulls were winning championships in the early 90s, their young reserve center Will Perdue told me he used to enjoy going to one place in particular for lunch because afterward, the waitress would not merely give him and his teammates leftovers in a goody bag. She would bring several shopping bags to their table loaded with bags of bagels and desserts.
 

At 25, 26, I’m sure he thought this was not that unusual, and that he would walk out of restaurants with giant bags of extra food forever. Maybe he even thought we all walked out with enough stuff to stock a small food pantry, though I think he was smarter than that.
 

He’s also lucky because he got out unscathed.
 

After Kris Allen was named the winner of American Idol earlier this week, one of my friends remarked casually that his marriage was over. Here was this adorable 23-year-old man with his adorable wife, who were hugging each other minutes after the biggest moment of their lives, and all across America, people were shaking their heads and lamenting that their marriage would soon be in trouble.
 

OK, well maybe not all across America, but at least in all the cynical sections like the one where I apparently reside.
 

It’s not that the pessimistic among us assume this apparently upstanding guy will suddenly become unfaithful. It’s just that the sheer volume of attention and scrutiny and yes, guaranteed aggressiveness from female fans, is sure to put added pressure on the marriage.
 

He went from a college kid to a celebrity of huge proportion in a matter of months, arguably even weeks. And his life is no longer his own. While that will undoubtedly bring with it more money than he could have imagined making a few months ago, as well as a career he apparently dreamed of having, you know it will also come at a cost because it’s not just about plying your craft. And you wonder if it will all be worth it for him in the long run.
 

Same thing with Jon and Kate. When my daughter and I first stumbled across TLC and a show called “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” four years ago, it was like our own private discovery. No one was watching the network, much less this little reality show about a Pennsylvania couple who had twin girls and infant sextuplets.
 

In a matter of a few weeks, my daughter Amanda could differentiate between all the kids by name. In a few months, I was considering writing to Kate and telling her that if she needed a babysitter or summer girl, I had the perfect one.
 

I loved Kate. She was totally together and organized and smart and funny, even when she was losing her mind and her husband was annoying her and her life was out of her control. Her husband Jon was cute and funny also, sweet but no pushover, took as well as gave back to his wife during the daily little sniping that all couples without eight children do.
 

And then you hear that Kate is being savaged in the Internet for being so bossy and nasty to her husband. And Jon is photographed at a college party with female co-eds and again, with a younger woman with whom he has been accused of having an affair, all of which he has downplayed and denied.
 

When the show started, Kate said she allowed cameras to invade their lives because she loved the idea of having this amazing video diary of her children since she clearly no longer had time to do it herself. And yes, you knew they were being paid, though you never thought it was enough to radically change their lifestyle given their modest home and the way they lived.
 

You surely didn’t resent them.
 

But then they moved into a huge new house on 30-plus acres of land, Jon quit his job, Kate’s sniping seemed a little harsher as her little life expanded more with books and speaking engagements and yes, fame. 
 

When I saw her on the cover of People Magazine with scandalous headlines last week, I had to blink a few times, like I was seeing my sister or my neighbor. Such is the nature and attraction of reality TV that we are drawn to it by the very intimacy I felt with perfect strangers. It’s goofy. Now the two are splattered across dozens of magazines and tabloids, not to mention the entertainment shows, their marital status up for grabs, and with the first episode of Season 5 upon us, it’s enough to consider actually watching it live.
 

OK, I think I’ve been out of work long enough.
 

But seriously, I actually just went to the TLC website to see what’s up – telling myself it was all in the interest of good, solid reporting – and they had a little preview of what’s to come. 
 

“It’s the best thing and it’s the hardest thing that’s ever happened,” Kate said of the show and her newfound celebrity.
 

“We have to live in the public now,” said Jon. “I’m happy our show is popular but it’s hard being on this side of the camera. We don’t have any privacy at all. . . . That’s tough for me. I can’t be Jon. I have to be Jon and Kate plus eight.”
 

I was riveted. Again, I am not proud of this. But when Kate said, “We can now never go back,” I felt for the woman.
 

I wanted her new kitchen. But I felt for the woman.

Sometimes I feel like I am getting this unemployment thing all wrong.
 
For three weeks now (or is it two? Or maybe four?), I have been all charged up (aside from just a few intermittent bouts of crying and that was early on) and excited about the adventure of exploring all the new and wonderful possibilities for the future.
 
In fact, I have filled up almost an entire spiral notebook with all of these new and wonderful possibilities. And I have spoken with scores of people to gets ideas on even more new and wonderful possibilities.
 
Up until now, I have not, as I thought I might, retreated to the Double Stuf Oreos (one “f,” I checked, as this was important to me both as a reporter and consumer) or any number of TLC marathons (“Little People, Small World” and  “Half Man, Half Tree,” being particular favorites).
 
But then yesterday, it hit me. Somewhere between being rejected as a ghostwriter; told I needed to “inform, impart ideals and move minds” if I wanted to be a successful speaker; and finding out that an eight-year-old would soon be covering hockey for the major daily for whom I used to work, I became, well, a little down.
 

This morning, I got frantic phone calls from my sister and my mother-in-law asking if I was OK. No blog entry for more than 24 hours and I must be dead. This actually brought back warm memories of my father calling and checking if I was dead when I missed a day in the paper shortly after I began working for the Tribune.
 

I’m not sure he would have always noticed, except that my Uncle Dan would call him first thing in the morning telling him my byline was missing and asking what happened to me, causing my father to immediately call me and ask if I had been fired or any number of other catastrophes had occurred.
 

This was not unusual in my family. My mother rarely began a phone conversation without the words, “Hi honey, it’s mom. There’s nothing wrong. Are you OK?”
 

But I digress.
 

I didn’t know they still used the word “ghostwriter,” but apparently they do and I was referred to a large, out-of-town corporation that wanted me to “ghostwrite” a white paper for one of their executives. This all sounded very exciting, even though I did not know what a white paper was and still really don’t, which may provide some clue as to why I was rejected.
 

The speaker thing was another slight setback. For years, I have spoken to virtually whomever has asked. When we’d get to the part where they asked for my fee, I’d go into my standard negotiator mode and immediately stutter, maybe laugh and say I didn’t really have one. This typically resulted in many speaking engagements for which I would receive a thank-you, a pen and once in a while, a Starbuck’s certificate.
 

Not that I didn’t appreciate all of the above. But without a paycheck, Starbuck’s is going to have to come up with more options if I’m going to do my future food shopping there.
 

And so I decided to get some advice (and perhaps some high-paying jobs) from the highly respected head of a highly respected speakers bureau, who first yelled at me for taking free gigs.
 

“You need to tell people, ‘I’m a journalist, so I believe in free speech but not in free speeches,’ ”  he told me.
 

I told him this sounded a bit off-putting to me. But clearly I have been setting a bad precedent in the speaking world, running around and taking pens as payment, so I told him I would try to do better.
 

But then he told me that in today’s climate, people hire speakers “to help them achieve their business objectives.” I took that to mean that my story about B.J. Armstrong and Ron Harper and I simulating birth in the Bulls’ lockerroom wasn’t going to do that.
 

I asked him if entertaining was good enough, and wasn’t Dave Barry a highly successful speaker, and wasn’t he entertaining? And he said, essentially, “You’re no Dave Barry.”
 

I would have been really depressed at this point, except that I actually know Dave Barry, have been friends with his wife Michelle, a sportswriter, forever. So, borrowing a scene from “Annie Hall,” with Dave playing Marshall McLuhan, I called and asked him about the art of speaking.
 

“I have no message,” Dave said. “Nothing useful, whatsoever.”
 

Which is why I love Dave Barry.
 

Still, short of stealing his speeches, I understood the speaking guy’s point. So maybe I’ll stick to writing. I was a respected sportswriter for many years, wasn’t I? I’m confident in my craft, aren’t I?
 

Then a friend e-mailed and asked if I heard about the eight-year-old from Batavia who was going to write hockey in the paper.
 

I said I hadn’t.
 

And then I headed for the Oreos.

I’m not sure when I stopped being nervous and excited meeting famous athletes.

I know I used to think it was pretty cool interviewing Iowa football coach Hayden Fry and basketball coach Lute Olsen while still a student reporter for the Daily Iowan.

I remember being in awe of Sandy Koufax when I met him at the Dodgers’ spring training compound in Vero Beach, Fla., in my early years with Florida Today newspaper.

And I remember feeling extremely nervous the first time I ventured into the Bears visiting lockerroom at Tampa Stadium as the Tampa Bay Bucs beat reporter, also very early in my professional career.

I recall getting teased by a player for being in there, nothing out of the ordinary in those days, and I also remember Walter Payton coming to my defense. It was 1984, the year before the Bears would win the Super Bowl, and Payton followed me outside of the tiny dressing room and invited me onto the team bus to interview whomever I wanted.

Now I was young and I might have been every so slightly naïve. But I wasn’t that young and naïve. I knew Payton was a joker and I was not going to bound up the steps and onto the Bears team bus – the BEARS, for crying out loud, my beloved hometown team – like some gullible rookie only to have some colossal embarrassment befall me.

I was going to walk very slowly onto the Bears team bus and just see what happened.

I actually talked to a few players, though I have no memory or who they were or what they said or how I got off the bus.

From then on, I was, I wouldn’t say jaded but certainly a little numb. I’m sure the first time I ever interviewed Michael Jordan, I was impressed. But I was 30 years old by then, had interviewed hundreds of athletes and coaches; many had burst my bubble in terms of my expectations for them; and I had been into too many smelly, sweaty lockerrooms under the pressure of an impending deadline to think it was all that mystical anymore.

All that said, put me within drooling distance of anyone in the entertainment industry, and I become a goofy, star struck fan.

This weekend, my mother-in-law took the girls in the family to see the play “Legally Blonde” and after we left, another friend steered us toward the stage door. I had never waited outside a stage door and just seeing the words “Stage Door” was very exciting.

I grabbed my niece Erica’s camera, and as soon as the first actor emerged, pushed her and my daughter Amanda toward him, urging them to pose. Who was I? As the others filed out, I tried some witty, nervous repartee, just to show what a regular person I thought they were and what a really cool, casual person I was.

“So, are you in a really bad mood whenever you’re off-stage?” I blurted out to the star of the play, the actress who plays Elle Woods, I meant because she was so incurably perky and energetic on-stage. But it didn’t really come out that way, I heard nervous laughter around me and the actress was kind enough to actually pretend as though she understood what I meant and I was not some psychotic stalker.

“My face does hurt from smiling so much,” she said kindly.    I’m sure if I covered the entertainment industry, it would be different. I would be writing about cocaine rather than steroid addiction and I’d probably end up identifying even more with celebrities the first time I discovered up close that at 5-foot-2, I was taller than most Hollywood actors.

But I think I would enjoy writing those women’s magazine features. You know, the ones that start, “Reese Witherspoon swept into the Polo Lounge with a flurry of air kisses and apologies for being late.

“I’m so sorry,” the dynamic young actress told me exclusively as she bit into her tuna fish sandwich.

I could do that.

But I would definitely not like the part where you have to dress up to cover the Oscars,  like anyone cares what reporters are wearing in the press room. Plus, I’d rather not sweat in a full-length gown, thank you very much, nor accidentally bump into Halle Berry on the way to the bathroom in her haute couture and me in my ensemble from Macy’s.

I have enough issues.  

Eventually, I am sure I would become one of the gang, stop sweating, maybe upgrade my wardrobe and learn to air kiss complete strangers. I might even be able to bump into, say, a Tom Hanks, and act as if I do it all the time. 

But George Clooney? Not a chance. Unless I was taller than him, of course.

Television can be a scary thing for the uninitiated. The red light goes on, I play with my hair just a second too long. The camera hones in, I look at the wrong one.
 

I trace it back to the first time I ever appeared on TV. It was on WGN. The year was 1965. And OK, I was not the featured guest on Bozo’s Circus that day, but I had air time. And it was not pretty.
 

I went to the show with my mother and my sister, tickets courtesy of my Uncle Norman, who I think had some unsavory connections. My older brothers got to come home from school during lunch hour to watch as TiVo had not quite been perfected yet. I think my dad even came home. All the makings of a future Brady Bunch episode.
 

Considering that at age 4 I was deathly afraid of clowns in any form, the idea to go to the show was probably ill-conceived. The fact that Bozo wore your typical size-24 clown shoes and had your typical fire-engine red clown hair, did not help.
 

I’m told I trembled as we walked into the big top.
 

At home, my brothers gathered closer to the set in anticipation of the show’s big moment – choosing contestants for the Bozo Buckets with the magic arrow. The magic arrow, seen only by the television audience – hence the magic – zipped through the grandstand, landing on the lucky head of a little girl or boy. If it landed on an adult, Ringmaster Ned or Bozo or Oliver O. Oliver would yell disappointedly, “Oh, it’s a mom,” and then the magic arrow search would commence once again.
 

Try to imagine, if you will, two boys, ages 11 and 13, watching from home as the arrow landed on their 16-year-old sister, only to hear Bozo yell, “Oh, it’s a mom.” And then, just as that humiliation began to die down, to see the arrow settle on their younger sister, who could have come down and at least hit two buckets given that they had practiced all week, but instead burst into tears. On television.
 

Ringmaster Ned and Bozo and.Oliver did not have anything to say for kids bawling, other than to once more set the magic arrow in motion and move on. Needless to say, we slinked home in disgrace – after I cried through the Grand Prize March, of course.
 

I have been back to the WGN studios since then and I still get the shakes.
 

Thursday night at WTTW was considerably easier, I must say. For starters, there were no clowns. Also, I am getting much better at TV. And in the hands of an interviewer such as John Callaway, whose “Chicago Tonight” show I taped Thursday night for airing on Channel 11 Friday night, I would have had to be legally mute to fail completely.
 

Of course, if I had been someone with something to hide, like a politician, for example, Callaway would have eaten me for lunch and then flossed whatever remained. Callaway is to the interview what Sir Georg Solti was to conducting; what Emeril Lagasse is to the kitchen knife. And in his hands, I was butter. Or to continue this really fun game of never-ending analogies, he was the Lion King (complete with the James Earl Jones’ voice) and I was little Simba, knowing I could be crushed at any moment and yet feeling safe and secure as I tried to trot after him.
 

We talked about my book “Sweet Lou,” and about my website and about being fired, rather laid off, in the prime of your career. It was about this point that I tried to remember exactly what the non-disparagement clause said in my Tribune severance agreement. 
 

As a journalist, just hearing John Callaway introduce you by name must be what it feels like for a baseball player to have Bob Costas do it. I left his set Thursday night feeling exhilarated and extremely fortunate, even without remembering a single word I had said.  
 

It was not the first time I had been interviewed by the master. I hope it will not be the last.
 

The Bozo demons, I can confidently say, are nearly behind me.

Watch Melissa on WTTW-Ch. 11 Chicago — Chicago Tonight with John Callaway.