Sunday, November 05, 2006

Celebrities

I am a pop culture junkie. There's no way of getting around it, and I am not ashamed to say that I read People, US Weekly, etc., in the line at the grocery store. The only reason I don't subscribe is that if I did get those magazines at home, I'd never read anything remotely good for my brain cells.

Having said that, I am not one of those people who just "runs into" celebrities everywhere, like some friends of mine, or who make it their mission to meet or talk to their favorite celebrities. My two celebrity sightings (until tonight) were having had Sean Connery tell me that I forgot to take my cheeseburger when I was studiously trying to seem indifferent to his presence and walked away from a restaurant's counter without my order, and having seen Leo DiCaprio in a London bookstore.

In tonight's chapter, I was eating at a local fast-food Chinese restaurant with my hooligan children, my parents, and my two friends visiting from Belgium. I was trying to prevent my kids from wreaking havoc, and largely not succeeding. Then one of my friends pointed out a woman in line with a man and two children. He was convinced that she was a famous actress, possibly from a soap opera. I tried not to stare too intently (she was about two feet away from us), and couldn't figure it out at first. She was dressed in thrashed old clothes, was wearing no makeup, and had long, grayish blond hair. I couldn't see her husband's face, but he was dressed in old jeans, a denim jacket, and a trashy polyester trucker-type hat that said "CIA" on it. Then I realized that the woman reminded me a lot of Robin Wright Penn. But there was no way that she'd be in the fast-food restaurant, and no way was that guy Sean Penn. Except they were! I quelched (barely) my desire to tell him how I admire him, and to tell her the same, while Callum dumped an almost full glass of water on my mom's lap. It was a disaster, but at least Sean Penn smiled at me as I attempted to deal with the mess.

So when is Matthew Macfadyen's family going to go to my local Ben and Jerry's?

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