When I last checked in with my friend Jimmy Snyder about six years back, he was a struggling actor and I was the president of a music publishing company.  What a difference a few years makes: Snyder is now “Jimmy Jimmy Coco,” spray tanner to the stars and the owner of a hot line of spray tanning products, and I am a struggling actor who prays each night that my career gets traction before I get solicited to join AARP!

Jimmy’s ascent began a few years when he was a frustrated bartender at the Abbey coffee shop in West Hollywood, saw an ad on TV late one night for a spray tanner, and decided to buy it on impulse.  When the product arrived, he found he enjoyed spraying himself and had the inspired idea to create a mobile tanning service.  When I asked him if he had any special skills that positively pre-disposed him to the physical act of spray tanning, Jimmy confided that he was once told that he excelled at buttering bread and that his meticulous attention to dragging the pat of butter to the perimeter of the bread set him apart from other bread butterers.  A serendipitous meeting with pale Lara Flynn Boyle at a pool party led to her becoming his first celebrity client and now Jimmy’s bread is buttered regularly by a veritable who’s who of tan Hollywood: Heidi Klum, Kim Kardashian, A.J. McLean from the Backstreet Boys and Victoria Beckham, to name just a few.  A real rags to riches Hollywood story!

By the way, if you notice that my usual crypt-kicker pallor seems less ghoulish than usual, let’s just say Jimmy gave me just a touch of somethin’ somethin’ and, “Voila!” I no longer glow in the dark!