Celebreality

Just for fun, my favorite celebrity sightings and encounters. Part 1 of 2. (Another two-parter, I’m writing so much longer these days.)

Honorable Mention - The Guy Who Won Season Two Of “The Apprentice”
You likely have no idea who this guy is; by definition then, he’s not really a celebrity, so I had to relegate him to honorable mention status. His name is Kelly Perdew, and he was at Princeton shortly after winning season 2 of “The Apprentice” for some entrepreneurship session. I happened to be in the right building at the time, and decided to wander around, assuming (correctly, I might add), that there would be free cookies at this thing. As I was eating my cookies, I noticed Mr. Perdew just standing there, hoping someone would talk to him. He looked kind of sad and lonely. I hope someone eventually noticed him.


10. Jamie Lynn Sigler
In the summer of 2002, I was reading a magazine at Barnes and Noble in the Century City mall. As I’m reading, a bookstore employee approached me.

“Sir, are you in line to meet Ms. Sigler?"
I look around. No one is within 8 feet of us. “What? What line?”
“The line for Ms. Sigler’s book signing. If you’re not here for the book signing, you’ll need to step out of the line.”
Total confusion. “But there’s no line.”
“This is where the line forms.”
So…am I the line? If so, I can’t really leave the line. You can’t win a battle of semantics with a Barnes and Noble employee, so I just concede. “Okay, where can I stand?”
“You’re welcome to stand right over there.” She points to a spot 3 feet away from where I’m currently standing.

At that point, a fairly cute brunette walks in and takes a seat behind a folding table. It finally occurs to me who she is. “Oh, you mean Meadow Soprano! Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Sir, you’re going to need to step out of line.” There are still no other people anywhere.
“Can I just stay ‘in line’ and meet her?”
“You have to buy the book to do that.”
“Oh. How much is the book?”
“$24.95, sir.”
"Oh." Not that cute.

9. The Time I Did Not See Justin Timberlake
In 2004, long before the success of Futuresex/Lovesounds, I was out with some friends in New York. Cyrena knew about a party through her boss that supposedly Justin Timberlake and Tyra Banks might show up at. Sounded like we could get in, especially if we went early, but we decided not to bother. Later, on our cab ride home, her boss called to say we should have gone to the party, and that Mr. Timberlake (as well as Ms. Banks) did in fact make an appearance. Everyone in the cab went “huh, interesting” and we resumed talking about other things.

Back at my friend’s apartment, her roommate (who hadn’t gone out that night) inquired as to how our night went. “Oh, nothing much. Although we could have gone to this party that apparently Justin Timberlake and Tyra Banks showed up at. But we didn’t go.”
“What? WHAT? WHAT?!?!?” Her roommate was incredulous, red in the face, and totally overcome with emotions.
“Uhhh…”
“YOU HAD A CHANCE TO SEE JUSTIN, AND YOU DIDN’T TELL ME?!?!?”
“Oh I would have if we went, but we didn’t go to the party.”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU GO??? AND WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!?!? DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE MEANS TO ME?!?!? YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE MEANS TO ME!!!!”

At this point she was literally in tears and left the room crying. And yes, before you even ask, this is a true story. If Justin Timberlake were a stock, I would have bought a bunch of his shares immediately.

8. Mike Tyson
This one just happened a few months back at the Bellagio. We passed a crowd, and Weili turns to me and says, “Was that Mike Tyson? I think that was Mike Tyson.”
Couldn’t have been Mike Tyson, so I decided to use the opportunity to make fun of Weili.
“Look, not all black guys are ‘Mike Tyson’, okay?”
“I really think it was though. And he had some kind of tattoo on his face.”

Oh shit! It probably was Mike Tyson! Steph and I immediately turned around and I dialed up to my maximum walking speed (which really is quite fast, so I blew by Steph) to walk past him, turn around, and walk back the other way to get a look. Sure enough, Iron Mike. He looked a bit out of shape and strangely subdued. The face tattoo is seriously insane, but it’s not intimidating. In fact, I was generally struck by how unintimidating he was, relative to my expectations. Anyways, my bad on that one. Sometimes a black guy is Mike Tyson.

7. Lil’ Wayne
For Game 5 of the 2004 NBA finals, Jin, Inhwa, Rich and I decided to watch the game at ESPNZone in New York. Jin wanted to get a table, but during a night with a major sporting event, everyone at your table has to spend like $60 or something. But I was only 20 years old at the time, and let me tell you – spending $60 at ESPNZone without alcohol is almost impossible. “I’ll start with the chicken fingers with fries, then the full rack of ribs, then a chocolate sundae, then nachos, spinach and artichoke dip, the chicken fettuccine, with extra fettuccine…”

As I attempted to consume 12,000 calories, a large posse comes in to fill up two booths that have been reserved the whole night. In one booth is Lil’ Wayne, another guy, and 4 women. The other booth had 5 guys and no women. It was a lot of fun watching the social dynamics of an entourage, like how only one guy got to partake in the ladies with Lil’ Wayne. You could see the all-dude booth also had a de facto head, because he was able to sprawl out and take up a lot of space, while the other 4 guys had to sit a little too close to one another. Fascinating.

6. The Kid From Jerry Maguire With The Giant Head

I was at UCLA with Emilio and John, and we decided to go get burritos. Unbeknown st to us, the street had been blocked off for the premiere of the Lil’ Bow Wow (I think he still had the Lil’ back then) basketball/magic movie, “Like Mike”. Lil’ Bow Wow’s co-star in the movie? Jonathan Lipnicki of “Jerry Maguire” fame. He had this ridiculous spiked-hair, sunglasses, and a general aura of “I’m famous, I’m cool, chicks love me”. He was a little too old for that to be cute, plus his demeanor suggested he really did think he was badass, which, let's face it, is plainly preposterous. I wish you could see how ridiculous he looked. Oh wait, I found a picture! You can see too, look! He's ridiculous!

Part 2 of 2 (Numbers 5-1) here!