my top celebrity sightings
Incidentally, Joe Pantoliano and I used to have the same agency representation. Every year around the holidays, Joe would get every single person in the agency – from the 22 year olds in the mailroom hoping to become the next super agent to the partner in charge of the agency – a small gift, like a pen or a paper weight or something. And on this gift was inscribed the same thing, to every employee in the agency, every year: “What have you done for Joey Pants today?”
For this reason, Joe Pantoliano is one of my favorite celebrities.
9) Lisa Loeb: When I lived in NYC, my friend Nicole and I would go out once a month to a fancy-pants dinner. All told, we covered probably two dozen of NYC’s finest restaurants on these “dates.”
At one restaurant (I forget which), Nicole and I were standing at the bar, having drinks and waiting to be seated, when I saw a woman who looked exactly like a girl that was a pseudo-ex of mine. I tapped Nicole and said, “That woman over your left shoulder looks exactly like [pseudo-ex] in about ten years.”
Nicole turned around, looked at her, looked back at me and said, “Um, that’s Lisa Loeb.”
Turns out, we walked by when we were seated and it was indeed Lisa Loeb. I don’t know…I know it’s trite, but something about the librarian-type glasses really gets me (which would probably explain why I’m a paying subscriber to cumonmyglasses.net.)
(I really wish that was a joke.)
8 ) Boyz II Men: In 1991 or 1992, I was walking outside the Gallery, the downtown mall in Philly, when, stopped at a red light, I saw a giant white SUV-type vehicle. In the front seats were two guys from Boyz II Men. I think it was Wanya and Shawn, but I may be remembering incorrectly because those two are the most distinct-looking of the group. Of course, I could be wrong entirely – in 1991, my experience with black people consisted of the Cosby Show and New Edition, so it could have been two black guys who only looked like the guys in Boyz II Men.
Whatever. It was Boyz II Men. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
7) Method Man: In late 2003, my roommate Brian and I were drinking heavily. Just as later I would develop my “Friday Night Special” – two sugar free red bulls (to be mixed with vodka) and six Bud bombers purchased every Friday evening on my walk home from work – back then we would buy and drink two bottles of vodka per weekend, splitting each between us on Friday and Saturday nights before going out. In a related story, I think that if you combined our sexual experiences from those months, we had sex a total of .15 times.
(With others, I mean, not with each other).
(Well, maybe .04 of that .15 was with each other, but now is not the time for that discussion.)
Because Brian was (and somewhat still is) a deadbeat, it fell to me each weekend to go to KGB Liquor on Essex Street, right around the corner from our apartment, to buy the vodka. There, I struck up a kind of friendship with the two Russian guys who worked in the store. In truth, I sort of admired them; they spent all day around booze, they were always drunk, and they were always happy. These were three things that I aspired to at the time, and these gentlemen were a big part of the reason that I decided to take Russian a few months later.
On day around this time, Brian and I were sitting in Rosario’s, our local pizza place, having a slice with our buddy Mike, visiting that weekend. I looked at the line and saw a familiar face, though it took me a second to place him. When I did, I said, “Hey Brian, look – it’s our Russian vodka buddy!”
Brian and Mike both looked at the line, and Brian said, “Yeah, and there’s Method Man standing right behind him.”
Whoops. In fairness, I was much more familiar with the mysteries of Absolut than with the 36 Chambers, but still, whoops.
6) Christina Ricci: I saw Christina Ricci a few times around NYC: in bars, at concerts, on the street, etc. So often, in fact, that I joked we were “dating”, which sounds mildly creepy, but even more so when I’d say it to a picture of her which I laid down on my bathroom floor and hovered above, doing the one armed push-up, masturbating furiously and angrily. That makes it a little more creepy.
An ex-girlfriend of mine actually grew up with Christina in the suburbs of North Jersey. However, in junior high, they had some sort of “major falling out” (her words) and stopped speaking to each other. One night the ex and I walked into a bar (Sweet & Vicious) and lo and behold, there was Christina Ricci, sitting right there with a guy. Before I even saw her, my ex grabbed my arm and said, “Ohmygod – don’t look over there. We have to go somewhere else.” Apparently, the falling out was so major that my ex did not even want to run into Christina, who she had not seen in years.
I wanted to say, “Honey, with all due respect, I don’t think this girl even remembers you. I think we can have a drink.”
Of course, we didn’t. Love is a series of bargains.
5) Tina Fey: Before she was super famous, outside an Elvis Costello concert. Very tiny. Cute. Absolutely nothing else to say about this one.
4) Zach Braff and Mandy Moore: My agency used to throw a party for the Up Fronts, which occur every year in May in NYC, at Marquee. I’m not exactly sure what the Up Fronts are – I think it’s something about how the fall lineups for networks are announced, and this affects advertising, or something like that. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention every time this was explained to me, including about three minutes ago when I called my agent to ask “What’s the deal with the Up Fronts again?”
This party was a yearly occasion for me to douche-up and get into a club that I would never otherwise get into, based on my overweightness, homeliness and IQ over 110. I would usually bring an equally unappealing friend or two and we’d hit the club, enjoy the open bar, and gawk at the celebrities.
My buddy Bill, who was on Average Joe 2: Hawaii for a few episodes before being cast off, and I went one year and were standing meekly at the bar, sucking back Grey Goose orange and tonics (his call; don’t ask), when two people, madly making out, abruptly bumped into us. We were standing right near the entrance of the bar, and these two, who were both very tall, had just entered with a group of people and literally fell into us. It was, as you may have guessed from the #4 and their names in bold a few paragraphs up, Zach Braff and Mandy Moore. Zach apologized to by buddy Bill and my elbow touched Mandy’s back, which was sweet.
Hours later, I cried in the cab ride home.
3) Drew Barrymore: Also spotted several times in NYC, mostly with the hippie drummer from the Strokes, most notably in one of those lighting stores on the Bowery when I was determined to get better lighting in my apartment, until I saw how much said better lighting would cost. Cute girl. Also very tiny.
2) Ben Stiller: At Pastis, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, with his wife and some friends. I have no recollection why I was at Pastis, which I generally think is very overrated, on a Tuesday afternoon. They have good french fries. Ben’s wife is very pretty. Also tiny, but commanding, for whatever it’s worth.
1) Bono: As recently recounted, I was flying from LAX to JFK and because I fly Delta all the time, I got bumped up to first class. One of the benefits of getting bumped is getting to go through first class security – you don’t have to wait in line and you can look down at the hapless hoi polloi, trudging their way through regular-people security.
Alas, this was in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, so the airport was rather empty. As I stood in line, waiting for my items to go along the conveyor and biding my time until I walked through the metal detector, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the gentleman behind me, a tiny man wearing pink sunglasses.
Being judgmental and awesome, my first thought was, “What kind of douchebag wears pink sunglasses in the middle of the airport?” When his phone rang, I detected an accent and turned slightly to get a better look at him. The d-bag was Bono.
Whoops.
