Celebreality, Continued

If you missed #10-#6, start here first. If you enjoyed those, here’s the rest of the list, but first...

The Hottest Celeb I’ve Seen: Christy Turlington. I was never a big fan of hers until I saw her, pretty much without makeup, in a Tribeca restaurant. Then I had some trouble forming words for about 5 minutes.
Biggest Douchebag: Rod Stewart. He was wearing this ridiculous shiny silver suit and had a mediocre blond slut on each arm. If they were hotter, I would be impressed. But they were mediocre, so, tacky.
Looks Most Like He Does On TV: Ben Stein. Saw him in DC, or “Hollywood for ugly people”. I recently found out he is hardcore about intelligent design, and hates evolutionists. Don’t really know what to make of that.
Favorite Celebrity Encounters By Friends: Sara seeing Kevin Connolly on the subway (Way to save your money, Kevin Connolly. Also note how affectionately Sara is holding his shoulder, I think Sara thinks he's really hot. Also note the really creepy look of that Yankees fan on the left - that is actually Kevin Connolly's friend. He might want to stick to hanging out with Jeremy Piven.), Justin’s rendezvous with Zhang Ziyi, Min-Taik getting in the edge of a paparazzi picture of Eva Mendes, then later finding it online, and of course, Ali’s dad trying to get an autograph from “JT” on “Step by Step”.

5. The Homeless Man
I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, but I was at lunch with Shawn, Ido and Amy outside Bubby’s one day, and was surprised to see that the table next to us had 3 “ladies who lunch” and one homeless man. Even weirder, it was like the women knew the homeless man, and everyone was getting along just fine. The homeless guy was wearing a ragged gray t-shirt and gray sweatpants, was in desperate need of both a haircut and shave, and didn’t look like he had showered in months.

Then Shawn suddenly lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Hey, that’s Harvey Keitel over there.”
Me: “Over where?”
Shawn: “At the table next to us.”
Me: “Dude, that’s 3 moms and a homeless guy.”
Shawn: “That’s Wolf from ‘Pulp Fiction’!”

I spent another 45 seconds or so struggling to comprehend, and also see the guy’s face through all the facial hair. Finally, I concluded it was Harvey Keitel, and was either (1) actually homeless, (2) incredibly disgusting, or (3) method acting for a role as a homeless guy.

A lot of people I know don’t seem to know who he is, but that’s only because they watch crappy movies. If you watch good movies, you no doubt have seen him in his illustrious film career, highlighted by his roles in The Piano, Reservoir Dogs (Mr. White) and Pulp Fiction (Wolf). He was also in National Treasure, which I refuse to watch, even though people keep insisting to me is a good movie. There’s a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence!

4. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg
Bonus points here because it was a 2-for-1. I went to lunch with Amy and there was an empty table an awkwardly close 2 feet from us. Soon after, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg sat down at that table. First, let me say that Sarah Michelle Gellar is extremely attractive in person, much more so than I would have anticipated. Michelle Trachtenberg, well, no. But she was awesome as Nona F. Mecklenberg on The Adventures of Pete & Pete, so I can’t be too critical. It was also kind of nice to see that Buffy and her sister are friends in real life.

Of course, being friends in real life means talking about things friends talk about. For women, that means relationships. Amy and I honestly weren’t trying to eavesdrop, and actually talked about other things the entire lunch, but it was impossible not to hear them, since they were practically spitting on me. (Also, they have nasally voices which are always hard to block out). Sarah Michelle Gellar was dispensing wisdom left and right, trying to explain to young Michelle how difficult relationships really are. She spoke plainly about all the effort needed to keep the romance alive in her marriage to Freddie Prinze, Jr., and how difficult that’s become since his career has become a total train wreck. (She didn’t really say that last part, I just wanted to see how that would look in print).

My favorite exchange of the lunch:
MT: “I want to call him, I think I should just call him.”
SMG: “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
MT: “Really??”
SMG: “Trust me. You don’t call him. Wait for him to call you. That way you’re in control.”
MT: “Okay, I trust you.”

Oh, Sarah Michelle. You sly fox. You play the game so well.

3. Jim Cramer
If you don’t know the story, read about it here.

2. Foxy Brown
A few years ago, I went on a recruiting dinner (yes, improbably, people were trying to recruit me) at Mr. Chow, which if you don’t already know, is a comically ridiculous upscale Chinese restaurant with branches in Los Angeles, New York, London, etc. You don’t get menus there – the waiters just bring you whatever they feel like, and the restaurant charges whatever it feels like. As a lifetime eater of Chinese food, I feel qualified to say that the food was only marginally better than what you would get in a good Chinatown for $16. Our meal (which did include a few rounds of vodka shots) was well over $200 per person. Of course, you’re there for the scene, not the food. And while celebrities of every ilk flock there, Mr. Chow has reached stratospheric levels of popularity with the hip hop community. On our way to the dinner, I was treated to breathless excitement from 40-year old investment bankers.

“Last time I was here, I saw Ludacris!”
“That’s nothing, my last time there I saw Nelly!”
“Please, I went last week and DIDDY came in.” A awed hush fell over the car. That’s because Diddy is really the only hip-hop personality that 40-year old investment bankers can recognize on sight. They love to tell stories of times they saw rappers (even bankers want street cred), but almost always someone else has to explain to them who they’re seeing. Not Diddy, though. When it comes to middle-aged bankers, he needs no introduction.

So as we’re eating, we notice two black guys come in and start talking to the maître d’. The table gets excited – surely a rapper is on the way! About 10 minutes later, those two men come back with another guy and a woman, and the foursome is seated at the table next to us. I recognize the woman faster than I do some of my own friends – it’s Foxy Brown. A hip-hop star right next to us. The bankers are all excited and our table is abuzz. With just one small teensy minor inconsequential caveat.

They can’t figure out which person is the famous rapper.

But they’re excited nonetheless! I suppose there are few thrills in life that compare to seeing a group of people, one of whom you infer must be famous because you’re in a very expensive restaurant and all the people you’re looking at are wearing Phat Farm. After I sufficiently swallowed my laughter, I (and another guy who knew who Foxy Brown was) explained to the rest of the table that the woman was the famous rapper, not the guy she was sitting next to. Then people spent a few minutes debating if she was hot, and eventually our table made some dorky conversation with Foxy Brown that my mind seems to have blocked out.

I learned later that Foxy Brown probably doesn’t think the prices are egregious at Mr. Chow, not because she’s so rich, but because she’s a master of the old dine-and-dash.

As a final note, Lizzie Grubman (unattractive publicist to the stars) was also in the restaurant that night. She’s not really famous in the traditional sense, but you might know her if you (1) have no life and read Page Six all the time, (2) have no life and saw her MTV publicist reality show "PoweR Girls", or (3) are familiar with when she got wasted in the Hamptons and ran over 16 people in an SUV. I accidentally kinda bumped into her ass on the way out, causing her to spill some of her drink on herself. She thought it was some other guy, though, and started yelling at him. Good times.

1. The Chuckster
By a wide margin, my favorite celebrity sighting ever is Charles Barkley, who I saw in the Bellagio in 2006. He was in a designer suit, and he was pissed off. He looked about as angry as the Chuckster can look, and was storming through the hallway very, very quickly. Everyone says his real height is less than 6’5”, but with that look on his face, he sure seemed a lot bigger than 6’5”. I assume he must have just lost millions of dollars. My love for the Chuckster, combined with seeing him in his natural element (losing a ton of money in Vegas) would alone have made it a top-3 celebrity sighting for me. But what really put it over the top was that as he stormed down the hallway, he was being chased by two of the hottest, most scantily clad women I’ve ever seen. I started laughing out loud as I watched the two women chasing Barkley, struggling to stay balanced on their 4-inch heels. I should stress again, though – they were not just run-of-the-mill Vegas sluts. These women were extraordinary. Victoria's Secret model-esque, but minus whatever modicum of class a Victoria’s Secret model possesses.

A valet pulled Barkley’s Hummer up to a special side exit, and Barkley burst through the door, the ladies right on his heels. I could see Barkley mulling over just how he intended to blow off some steam after his night of gambling losses. Then he looked up, and saw the two sluts he had no doubt been with the last several hours. The two women hopped into the car, and it's hard to say for sure, but I think I saw Barkley's anger dissipate, and he smiled ever so faintly.

I love Chuck. He is my hero.

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!

In Case You Were Wondering

Just an FYI, because I've gotten a bunch of questions about it. I don't delete any comments - when it says "this comment was removed by the author", that means by the author of the comment itself, not me. The only things I censor are pure spam, and sometimes I don't even censor that.

On another note, Google AdSense has placed some interesting ad banners and text ads that you've no doubt noticed due to the content of some of the recent posts. A sampling of the fun, below. In an indirect way, Jessie, this is all your fault.

The Rich Genius Society

Last month Justin sent me an article about Samir Patel, the “Dan Marino of spelling”, who never won the National Spelling Bee despite coming close on a number of occasions. Now Samir is 14, and he appears to be moderately interested in what life has to offer beyond reading the dictionary. This is a humdrum article, but what caught Justin’s eye, and mine, was this passage at the end.

The first few weeks of the spring semester, his government professor, Lou Bradizza, didn't know Samir was so young until he saw the boy walking out of class one day…If Samir were 18, he'd stand among the brightest in the school, Bradizza says, and the fact that he's 14 gives him "potential to be a real star."

"He told me he wanted to get into the [technical] field, but I'm hoping to change his mind. I think a really bright kid like that should be steered into the humanities. If you look around the country, you'll notice our planes are well maintained and fly and don't normally crash, our doctors are competent and we've made big strides in computer technology. But my view is when you have an extremely talented person, the last thing we need is one more computer programmer. The fact that I am thinking this way about him is an indication of how much promise I see in him."

Although it bothers me, I’ll choose to ignore the mildly racist overtones of “Professor” Bradizza thinking so highly of Samir that he might be able to succeed as something other than a computer programmer. What bothers me more is this ridiculous (and sadly, all-too-common) disregard for science.

We all think and say dumb things sometimes, but I can hardly imagine saying something more fucking stupid than the above quote. Has the good professor has ever stopped to wonder how the hell we were able to make planes that don’t crash, or why his “computer technology” improves in capability and accessibility every year? While this guy might be perfectly happy with his current ability to fly without dying and then stream porn on his laptop after landing, it’s assuredly not the right long-term view for the rest of us. America no longer has a natural resource advantage. We certainly don’t have a low-cost labor advantage. Our only potential advantage is technological innovation, and, as such, it needs to be pursued full force.

I say this without an ounce of self-propaganda. I work in finance, after all. I am useless. And I also have no idea if Samir Patel will be able to make a meaningful contribution to technological innovation. I’m unconvinced that being able to spell words nobody ever uses translates into “talented medical researcher”. But if Samir is indeed a talented medical researcher, but also a superb scholar of Matisse, suffice it to say we’re probably a little bit better off if he gets into medical research. And please don’t be offended if you did a 500-page thesis on Matisse. Even though you're not multiplying the GDP, I still think you’re a swell person.

Now, how do we actually pursue innovation “full force”? Well, I’m glad I asked myself that question. The ideal situation would be something like the space race of the 1960s, which used large federal investments to dramatically increase the science and engineering workforce, and ultimately contributed to major innovations in the subsequent decades. Unfortunately, nobody seems too interested anymore in using fluid dynamics to defeat commies and then indirectly boost our GDP. So I thought of something else, an elegant, low-cost solution to the American brain drain. I call it the “Rich Genius Society”.

The “Rich Genius Society” will consist of 500 of the world’s most talented scientists, research doctors, engineers, physicists, etc. It’s a misconception that people in those fields are just pure dorks who love textbooks and only need a little money to support their Dungeons and Dragons and LARP habits. They want a LOT of money to support those habits. That’s why this isn’t going to be the Genius Society. It’s going to be the Rich Genius Society. They’ll all be on 3-year contracts at a minimum guaranteed salary of $5 million per year, tax free. That’s right kids – tax free.

A member of the Rich Genius Society can pick any university, research lab or corporation in the country to be headquartered out of. Actually they can work out of their own basements if they want. If you’re international (as most of the society will be), we give you 10 green cards to bring over your family and loved ones. If no one loves you, you can sell those green cards on the black market to a non-terrorist, and make a killing.

The whole goal here is to create a lottery system, sort of like drug dealing. Only a select few people become wealthy as drug dealers, yet lots of people deal drugs. That’s in part due to lack of other viable job opportunities, but it’s also because of the visibility and massive cash generation of the select people at the top. My mission is to reconstruct science in the mold of drug dealing. What that means, then, is that we need to fire up the national propaganda machine to make these people stars as well. We’ll have a massive ad campaign showing Rich Geniuses with hot female and male models, swimming through a giant pool of $100 bills. We’ll get them access to the high life, exclusive parties, courtside seats, private jets, plastic surgery. Maybe they don’t want that. Maybe they want to orbit the Earth or have a one-on-one dinner with George Lucas. Frankly, I don’t know what these people want. Neither do you. But we’ll ask, and then make that happen. And then, more importantly, tell everyone we made that happen. Science can be something aspirational for materialistic people; we have to stop thinking of it as something for nut jobs who don’t value money, status or perks.

My plan is relatively cheap, I estimate this can be accomplished on a budget of about $5 billion a year, peanuts to the American government. Obviously I have high expectations of the 500 Rich Geniuses, but the real value is in the effect it has on future generations. In 15-20 years, we should really start seeing the impact, as more and more people enter the American scientific community, whether they’re born here or abroad. In 40 years, we will have asserted ourselves as the world leader in basic science, engineering, medicine and alternative energy. GDP will be up massively, we’ll be politically stronger, safer and richer.

This is gonna work. I only need like 200 billion dollars and 40 years to make it happen. But it’s gonna work, trust me.