PENNY: Obama moment for Mich. family

By Penny Parker, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, July 4, 2008

Susan Olsen, center, played Cindy Brady, left, in "The Brady Bunch" television show. At right, as she appeared Thursday.

Maybe the Secret Service can take a few tips from Snoop Dogg's people.

Tim and Karen Daniels were in the midst of a Colorado visit with their three kids when they decided to check out Red Rocks on Tuesday afternoon. When the Michigan family got there, crews were already setting up for the Snoop Dogg concert that night. The Daniels were allowed into the visitors center, but security kept them from even taking a quick peek at the amphitheater itself. After all, Snoop Dogg was in the house.

On Wednesday they did the Colorado Springs tour, including a visit to the Air Force Academy. Guards there did a quick search of their car, then let the family in to view the chapel.

Suddenly black Suburbans pulled up out of nowhere, Secret Service crews swarmed around, and son T.J. said "Look - there's Barack Obama!" The stunned family managed one blurry picture as the presidential candidate strode past them into the building for a private event. Now there's a tale to tell the folks back home.

BRADY BARFS: Grow up or throw up, Cindy Brady. Susan Olsen, who played the youngest Brady in the popular '70s sitcom, made a fool of herself during an interview on a Colorado Springs radio station Thursday morning.

Olsen, 46, in the Springs for a stand-up comedy set Friday, appeared on the early morning Darren & Coba show on KDZA- FM (107.9), but it didn't look good when she walked into a glass wall mistaking it for the building's front door.

"I was standing in the lobby . . . when I see this old car parked in a handicapped spot," said Rich Stevens, director of marketing and promotions. "I see this person dressed really sloppily get out with a little kid . . . and (walk) right into the glass."

That's never good.

"You could smell the alcohol (on her breath)," Stevens said, adding that he had met Olsen 10 years ago in Tampa, Fla., when the press fawned all over her. "This was a clear case of 'Oh my God what happened?' "

Stevens caught the whole train wreck radio interview on video (check it out at kdzafm.com). "I'm going to go throw up now," she said. "Anybody got a hat?"

Darren ended the interview amid a hurried effort to get Olsen out of the studio (she made it to the bathroom before upchucking), but she wouldn't leave the building. "She fell asleep on the couch in the lobby," Stevens said. "I told her I was going to call the police." She left.

The worst part? You can hear on the videotape her young son, Michael, saying, his mom was "drinking like a pig."

LA LA LAND: Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony's betrothed and MTV personality La La Vazquez celebrated her 29th birthday with pals at Poetry in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace on Saturday, according to an item in former Rocky gossip guy Norm Clarke's Las Vegas Review-Journal column.

Celebrating and nibbling on a birthday cake shaped like a Tiffany's box were Beyonce's sister, Solange; British soccer star Wayne Rooney and wife, Coleen; and NBA standout Gary Payton, according to Clarke.

EAVESDROPPING on a man at Ocean: "Can you still be an eligible bachelor when you're over 50?"

Penny Parker's column appears Tuesday through Saturday.