Celebrity sightings don't seem to count if you're paying to see the celebrity in question. So getting a ticket to watch Vanessa Redgrave in A Long Day's Journey Into Night is less exciting than spotting her, at a distance, at Bloomingdale's. I see celebrities fairly frequently now that I'm a New Yorker, but the "real life" encounters are fairly banal: the time I spotted Robin Williams shopping for video games at the CompUSA on 57th Street; the time I spotted John Turturro walking down 7th Avenue (Park Slope); the time I saw Bill Bratton (Bill Bratton!?!?) at a street fair on 7th Avenue (Midtown Manhattan). My celebrity sighting of Condoleezza Rice happened in 1999, during a layover at the Columbus airport. I was flying from Boston to San Francisco on America West, which has Columbus as its midwest hub (a marriage of mediocrities - is there any city more appropriate for this particular airline?). My Condi sighting obviously occurred before the 2000 election cycle, but still, I found it somewhat surprising to see her riding... America West! I mean, it's a fairly ghetto airline. (I recognized her, incidentally, due to the Stanford connection: the flight occurred sometime around the time she was provost.) For me, it was the airline of last resort (today, that would be ATA): they had a good student rate, which is the best I can say for them, but the planes aren't in good condition, and they have a ridiculous amount of layovers. And - oh yes: Columbus. I didn't say anything to her - the words "excuse me, but aren't you Condoleezza Rice?" don't have the ring of cool about them - and the lack of a personal touch is no real loss, because no one I told about this brush with stardom seemed terribly excited by it. Today, no one really believes me when I say that I saw Robin Williams at CompUSA. I guess that the celebrity that one spots must be neither too obscure nor too famous in order for your spotting-narrative to be believed. (A friend who visits from time to time has made a habit of crafting mock celebrity sightings. Wow: Catherine Keener sitting in that cheap seats at the opera! And isn't that Gillian Anderson riding with us on the Q Train? As if.) My brush with Condi does nothing to change my views about her politics, but I still wonder why the heck she was flying America West. Somehow, the mystery of it makes her seem more human.
Posted by gminter at March 25, 2004 06:59 PMDenial ain't a river in Egypt.
Posted by: gminter at April 25, 2004 07:55 PMI happened upon this web log entry for reasons I will shortly make clear and, though I suspect otherwise, I hope it is true what Mr. Jeric Marler described about spotting four Kirsten Dunsts. Did he see anyone with them or were they, the four Dunsts, alone? Were they behaving normally or somehow oddly? Stiff perhaps? Or with an overprecise "naturalness" that came across instead as peculiar and awkward? Did they consume anything of the dinner they had ordered or did they merely shove the food around on their plates? What did Jeric observe? It is important for me to find out. I have an important story to relate on the matter. In fact, for the past five years, since my uncle Finkel's death, when I came into possession of certain astounding facts, I have been trying without luck to find someone who will believe me. Anyone. I spend a great deal of time filtering the dross of the internet looking for people who can lend some substance to what I was told and saw. I am going CRAZY. Please contact me at the above address Jeric so I can relate to you the particulars and find out if, just possibly, I have found someone else who can corroborate what I was told and later experienced first-hand. I AM NOT CRAZY and THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Posted by: Faivish Falk at October 17, 2004 11:32 PM