STARDUST.(The Talk of the Town)(Rod Stewart, Hollywood Walk of Fame)

In October, when Rod Stewart made an appearance on Hollywood Boulevard to unveil his star on the Walk of Fame, perhaps no one was prouder than Marcy Braunstein, a fifty-two-year-old woman from Pittsburgh. Braunstein is the ultimate Rod Stewart fan. This becomes evident to anyone who visits her house and stumbles upon her Rod Room--a cramped space that contains more memorabilia than one might find in a modest Presidential library. These mementos include a framed dress shirt that Rod once wore and a water glass that Rod sipped from on the set of "Oprah."

"I like to joke that if my husband and I ever had kids my Rod Room would be a nursery," Braunstein said recently. "But it's not. It's a Rod Room instead."

Braunstein is proud of her obsession. "I will chat online with other Rod fans, and we will often say that we are going through 'Rod withdrawal' or we need a 'Rod fix,' " she said. Braunstein typically satisfies this need by following Stewart on tour and dragging her husband, David Jones, along. Jones is not a Rod fan. "I'm going to be honest," he said. "There is no way I could put my foot down. If I tried, it would be, like, 'You can go, because Rod is staying.' "

Several years ago, on one of these road trips, Braunstein and Jones passed through Hollywood and discovered that Rod Stewart did not have a star on the Walk of Fame. Braunstein called the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and demanded an explanation. The explanation was simple: no one had ever nominated Rod. So Braunstein filled out a nomination form and began raising money for the fifteen-thousand-dollar fee that would be required if and when Rod's star was approved.

Getting a star on the Walk of Fame is an arduous process that involves procuring approval from the (honorary) mayor of Hollywood, who is an eighty-two-year-old former talk-show host named Johnny Grant. According to Grant, he is constantly being buttonholed by would-be inductees. "I was at a funeral the other day and someone was pitching me to be on the Walk of Fame!" he said. Grant says that the process can be contentious, with officials ...