Name-Dropper's Delight: A H/T to All of the Famous People in My Life

Only in my dreams could Debbie Deborah Gibson have turned out to be such an inspirational muse. Thank you!

I'm currently writing the next great American novel from my hovel. However, I can't seem to get past the acknowledgments section. If you're a writer, you understand how distracting it is to bang out the easy part — those 600-plus pages that will one day ensure your retirement to warmer climes — when you have legions of devotional messages to your famous friends hanging over your head.

Noreen Malone doesn't seem to appreciate acknowledgments pages, especially not the almost-eight-page gush of gratitude that thanks more than 140 people in Sheryl Sandberg's new tome, Lean In. Malone is obviously an ingrate who doesn't like to say thank you to anyone. I bet she can't accept a compliment, either.

I don't have nearly as many names to drop as Sandberg, but the ones I do have reveal much about me and are crucial to understanding what you are eventually going to spy on the NY Times bestseller list (my book, dummies). Let's just get the hard part out of the way so I can wrap this all up and you can prepare your Kindle for the best download of its short electronic life.

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Thank you to Julius Erving, who scared the bejesus out of my first-grade class at Locust Valley Elementary School because he had to hunch his hulking frame to navigate the classroom doorway. We thought he was some kind of giant, but his redeeming talk with our class mitigated his frightening stature. You let me know it's OK to be tall, Dr. J.

Sending oodles of gratitude out to another "J": LL Cool J, whom I encountered at a gift-wrapping kiosk in Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington Station in 1996. Because of your reluctant autograph and unflagging support for my lack of fine motor skills during the holiday season, I now know it's perfectly acceptable NOT to be better than 99 percent of you wrappers (and rappers) out there.

Lots of xoxoxoxoxoxo to Debbie Gibson. Our stint together in the alto section of the 1982 Nassau All-County Chorus concert, because we were placed next to each on the bleachers in alphabetical order (Gidman? Gibson? Yes!), meant a whole lot to me. This, followed by your subsequent fame and my subsequent descent into a bedroom prison to hear your songs regurgitated on some sick "Manchurian Candidate"-inspired loop on WBLI (now you know why I want to assassinate anyone who's near me whenever I hear "Foolish Beat"), made me realize that Long Island malls, even the ones named after humanist poets, served a purpose after all.

Without Bette Davis, my talented co-star in 1981's made-for-TV Family Reunion, I never would have realized how dorky I looked on camera and made the decision to Stay. Away. From. Hollywood.

I'd like to phone a friend (his name is Regis Philbin) and say "thanks!" for giving me my 15 minutes of fame on national TV (I didn't stay away from the limelight for long) by bombarding me with predetermined questions about my spouse when he appeared on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in 2001 and won $32,000 and no one is allowed to mention René Magritte ever again.

Christopher Walken, I'm eternally grateful for seeing you on the corner of 51st and Broadway with your hair died raven-black for a role on Broadway, because that clued me in that almost nobody should ever dye their hair raven-black for any reason whatsoever.

A special acknowldgment goes out to Ralph Fiennes for bumping into me in the streets of Midtown Manhattan while I was on my way to the lab to pee in a cup so I could be hired by Reader's Digest without the powers-that-be worrying I was going to go off on a coke bender during production week. This chance encounter with a hot British celebrity (in his Count Laszlo de Almásy stage, not his Voldemort stage) made me come to terms with the fact that I should not be abandoning the streets of Manhattan for Reader's Digest headquarters in Pleasantville, New York, because it's a weird place that's pretty much like a cult, where everyone trudges with a thousand-yard stare down to the on-site cafeteria AT THE SAME TIME every day (between 12:30 and 1:30) to eat lunch. OK, I did take the damn job after all, but to my credit, I could eat lunch at the same time for only about one month before I had to split.

Spike Lee, if it weren't for our group interview in the basement of Alumni Arena at the University at Buffalo in 1993, I probably wouldn't have ever figured out that I should always do the right thing. So thanks.

I'm indebted to Tim Zagat of Zagat Survey, who spared me countless embarrassing cocktail-party moments by schooling me on the proper way to say his last name.

What else can I say but danke schoen to Leif Manson, the little person on Survivor: One World, for taking time out of his busy post-reality-TV schedule to follow me on Twitter, as well as for totally contradicting the life lesson I gleaned from Dr. J: not being tall is OK, too. I'm so confused.

Finally, I'm much obliged to David Hasselhoff, another one of my devoted Twitter followers, for selflessly showing me that if people hate you in one part of the world, you can simply migrate across the globe and put out an inspirational album, and the appreciative locals will treat you like Kurtz in the Congo. Off to go pack: I've got a drum-and-bass EP to produce in Malta!

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[Ed.: I'd like to thank Tanqueray and Guinness for assisting me in the production of this piece.]

If you want more of me on Twitter, @WarriorHauswife is where you should go.