Celebspotting

Nearly everyone I know (there are only a couple of exceptions) gets really fired up when they spot a celebrity, and I'm no different. The more jaded among us only get excited about the right celebrities, but for most people, literally anyone famous will do. You can really see the depth of our devotion to the celebrity world when people recount tales of seeing celebrities. I think you'd agree we're all insane.
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"Hey - yo you'll never guess who I saw at lunch - Scott Bakula!"
"Oh wow - I used to love Growing Pains! I used to go to Tina's house to watch, cause she had this big thing for Kirk Cameron, but I never liked him that much"
"Wait...what?"
"Isn't Scott Bakula the dad on Growing Pains?"
"No, I don't think so - Scott Bakula is the guy from Quantum Leap"
"Hm, I'm not sure if I ever watched that show - what channel was that on?"
"I think it was on USA"
"Oh yeah - I didn't really watch those shows"
"Oh - well he was the dude on Quantum Leap"
"Ah, okay - so who is the dad on Growing Pains?"
"I think that guy's name is Alan Thicke"
"Huh...wow those names aren't alike at all"
"Nope, not too similar"
"Anyways what was this Scott Bakula guy doing?"
"Looked like he was just getting lunch with his wife and kids - his wife was pretty hot actually, I was impressed. Plus he did that thing where he just orders what he wants, off the menu - like he didn't even really look at the menu, he just started explaining what he wanted"
"Oh wow that's cool - man you're so lucky - I never get to see anyone famous!"
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I bet you've probably had some kind of conversation along these lines. We're insane, we really are.
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As an aside, in trying to create the above fictionalized conversation, I struggled to think of someone who sounds like you should know them, but you actually don't. I settled on Scott Bakula - I think he's a pretty good choice. He's got an interesting-sounding, memorable name, but he's not quite successful enough where you would assume everyone would know the guy. In trying to think of who might be appropriate, I asked Vish and Dan if they ever got actors confused with one another. Vish said he sort of had a problem with Edie Falco and Felicity Huffman briefly - that's a hard one for me to understand, but I guess this is a pretty individual thing. Dan said his problem was Matt Dillon and Luke Perry, which for some reason I found hilarious, I guess because 1) I can kind of see it and 2) Luke Perry pretty much sucks now, so that's a shame for Matt Dillon.
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One of my favorite celebrity sightings was the time I "saw" Harvey Keitel. He lives in TriBeCa, and apparently has decided that it's cool not to shower. Or wear clean clothes. Or sleep indoors. He was at the table next to us, and I remember thinking, "Wow that's awfully nice of those people to let a homeless guy join them for lunch, I wonder if that's safe..." Then Shawn said, "Hey it's Harvey Keitel" and it seriously took me about 45 seconds to figure out who he meant, even though the other table was the homeless bum who turned out to be Harvey Keitel and three women.
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My all-time favorite celebrity sighting story comes from Ali. Apparently one time his dad was eating dinner at a suburban Benihana with his younger sister. Ali's sister noticed that the second oldest guy (excluding the dad) on the TV show "Step by Step" was eating at another table with his friends. (If you remember the show, he played "J.T.", who in the opening credits at the carnival hits that hammer thing really hard and gets the bell to ring at the top, while a bunch of reasonably cute chicks look impressed and giggle.)
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So Ali's sister is freaking out in excitement, going on and on about how hot this guy is. Then she gets it in her head that she wants an autograph, but she's too scared to approach this guy to ask. So she makes her dad do it. So Ali's dad, this like 50+ year old Iranian guy walks up to their table, looks at the guy and goes:
"Excuse me, my daughter is a huge fan of yours and was wondering if you'd be willing to sign an autograph for her."
"Um, I'm happy to sign anything, but I'm pretty sure she wants this guy's autograph over here" [points to the actual actor]
"Oh okay, sure"
Apparently this guy's friends just crack up and start busting on the guy. His real name is Brandon Call - you can see his resume here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0130085/
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You'll notice he never worked again after "Step by Step". He doesn't even have a photo on IMDB. Hard not to think that the Benihana autograph incident didn't play a part in his deciding to quit acting altogether.