We all like famous people don’t we?  They’re fun, because they’re, you know, famous.  So I have decided to extol you with a list of all the famous people I have met.  For the sake of fairness, I have only included people who I have chanced upon through my own specialness, not because I bought a concert ticket or stalked them outside a theater stage door.  That doesn’t really count.  Nor is it very interesting, except that you can say things like “Tony Bennett is shorter than you’d think.”  Nope, these things are the real deal - people I came across because of being in a special place at a special time.  You know, because I’m special.

Timothy Busfield:

When I was in High School, Timothy Busfield (you know, that redheaded guy from thirtysomething and the West Wing?  No?  Oh well) was running a theater workshop at the state college down the road.  Apparently he had attended the college before making it big in movies such as Striking Distance and the Skateboard Kid. 

He was clearly there for the money and my main memory is him regaling us with stories about the nude scenes in Revenge of the Nerds.  (I did say it was a state college).

James Van Der Beek

James Van Der Beek attended college with me for a couple of years before he became a teen heart throb on Dawson’s Creek.  We sang in opposing accapella groups (see, I’m just as big a dork as James Van Der Beek) so I didn’t know him real well, but I knew him.  Wouldn’t have guessed he would become a star, though.  I always thought his head was a little big, maybe that plays well on TV and looks more proportional after you add on the 10 pounds the camera gives you.

Chris Wallace

We’re now into the exciting DC portion of celeb sightings, which ,of course, just means that all the celebs are politicians and boring people.  Chris Wallace is a fox news anchor.  I saw him eating an early lunch at Cactus Cantina one afternoon.  I was with a friend of mine and we spent the whole meal ignoring our children and whispering about him.  He seemed familiar, but neither of us had any idea who he was.

“Do you think he’s a congressman?”  “I don’t know maybe.  I think he seems like a reporter.”  “Nah, I don’t think so.”

I went home and spent an hour on the web trying to figure out who it was. 

I was kind of disappointed when I found out.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski

I was driving in Annapolis and saw a tiny woman walking with normal sized people in a cross walk.  I realized it was Senator Mikulski and thought about rolling down the window and yelling “Go get ‘em Mikulski!”  But I didn’t.  I was afraid her Amazonian entourage would attack me.

Sen.  Joe Lieberman

I took my parents to Ford’s Theater one year for Christmas and we sat a few rows behind Lieberman.  This was back when Lieberman was still kind of cool.  I thought about going up and saying something, but some poor 18 year old schlub from the balcony came down and started telling the senartor all about how he had got completely caught up in the Joementum and blah blah blah.  Anyway, Hadassah Lieberman was there and had an expression of “why won’t you people just leave us alone?  Can’t I even go to the damn theater without people harassing us?”  So I decided not to harass them.  In deference to Hadassah.

Newt Gingrich

I saw Newt Gingrich walking down the street once on Capital Hill.  I was having coffee with a friend and (I just sort of realized that all of these stories make me seem like the laziest guy in the world.  All I do is attend plays, and sit around eating Mexican food and drinking coffee.  Oh well, the truth had to come out some day) I saw Newt walking down the sidewalk intently tapping away on his blackberry.  I poked my friend and said “I think that’s Newt Gingrich.”  “Really?”  “yeah”  and then some frat boy behind us who looked like some kind of Republican office assistant yelled out.  “Hey Newt!  Nice Tie.”  Newt, nodded at him, walked on and then began to cry because he, for the first time, realized he had the stupidest first name on the planet.

DC Mayors

Up to now, I have just been whetting your appetite for the biggest stories of all.  I have met both of the last two DC mayors.  I know that this puts me into a select group of several tens of thousands of people, but truly, this is all I have in life.

My wife and I were at a late showing of a move in Chinatown one Thursday night and after the movie, I went to the restroom.  The theater was practically deserted.  I was standing at the urinal and someone came up beside me.  He looked vaguely familiar and I thought to myself, “Is that Mayor Tony Williams?”  I finished up and then went to the sink.  As I got to the sink I noticed a hulking body guard in the doorway who kind of freaked me out a little. 

So I took a good long time washing my hands, trying to look in the mirror and see if it really was the mayor and hoping he would come over and wash his hands beside me.  But he apparently had one of those conditions that those sad little cartoon balls on the prescription medicine commercials are always frowning about and he was taking a long time.  I didn’t want the bodyguard to question my handwashing, so I just left.  It would have been kind of awkward to shake hands anyway. 

When I got outside.  My wife said, “Hey I think the mayor just went into the bathroom.” 

“I know!” I said.  “I just peed next to him!”  How many people can say that?  (again, thousands)

My other story is less exciting.  One of my best friends is principal at a DC Public School (a lovely school that the Obamas could send their kid to if they weren’t suck stuck up liberal “do as I say, not as I do” elitists) and I was at a fundraiser the school was holding. 

During the fundraiser Mayor Fenty popped in to auction off breakfast with himself (he’s another one that could stand to send his kids to the schools he is personally overhauling).  On his way out the door, he stopped to shake hands with my friend the principal and then,  awkwardly, looked at me with an expression that said:

“I am so very tired, but I need to look energetic, so I’m going to open my eyes as wide as possible.  I wonder if this guy wants me to shake his hand?  He’s not really reaching out or anything, but I don’t want to offend him by not taking the time to shake his hand, so maybe I’ll just reach out and… oh good, he took my hand, otherwise I would have looked like an idiot.  Oh for crying out loud.  How many more people do I need to greet before I can climb into my SUV and down a Heineken?”

So, I shook his hand.  I thought about following him into the bathroom so that I could say that I had urinated beside two DC Mayors, but I was afraid that might come off as creepy. 

Go figure.

So that’s it, my brushes with fame.  I know it’s not much, but I’m a young man.  There are still lots of other famous people that I can spot while enjoying my, apparently, wildly decadent lifestyle.  And of course, there’s that bigger dream.  The dream that one day I’ll hear some young fresh faced kid run out, eyes full of wonder, and whisper to his father. 

“Daddy!  Daddy!  I just peed beside a famous blogger!”