Anybody else meet Anne Hathaway today?

[NSpan]

I agree.

[Buscemi]

I wonder how Megan Fox would be like had she remained a poor girl from Tennessee actually trying something that she's good at.

[KeyserSoze]

Mateo - Your stories reminded of two other "Brush with greatness" stories. A few years ago, Christina and I were in NYC to see a few shows, and we were out having breakfast at one of our favorite eateries (called The Eatery ironically). Christina looks up and sees Josh Lucas sitting at another table. She says, look over there, that's Josh Lucas. My response as usual was "Who?" She tries saying, ummm, Sweet Home Alabama. I still got nothing. Then she says, "Incredible Hulk" to which I reply, "Oh, that guy" because everything should relate to comic books in my universe. Then, she hits me with, "The guy whose in the play we're going to see this afternoon" D'oh!!! (We were going to see Glass Menagerie with Josh, Christian Slater and Jessica Lange). Christina says, I'm going to ask him for his autograph. I said, you will not. That's rude. The guy's eating his breakfast. As usually happens in these situations, she doesn't listen to me and proceeds to ask him. He looks up from his food, and says, "You know this is kind of rude, I'm trying to eat here" Her response could not have been more priceless. She said to him, "That's exactly what my husband said" He got a huge kick out of that and then signed her ticket.

Another time a long time ago, back when Comic Con was still called the San Diego Comic Convention, I was going to be a party at which an artist whose work I had admired for years but never met before named Dave Stevens was going to be at. Dave was the creator of The Rocketeer (Don't blame the movie on him, he had nothing to do with it). I didn't want to come off sounding like every other fanboy and just spout out, "Wow, I really like your stuff". No, I had to think of something witty. Something that would be different and engaging and would keep the conversation going. So, that night, Dave comes walking in, and someone introduces us, and the first thing out of my mouth was, "Wow, I'm a huge fan and really love your stuff.". He, of course, replied "Thanks" because really what else could he say? And really, what else could I have said. It's not like I knew him or really knew anything about him, and he certainly didn't know me.

It just goes to show when we actually meet a celebrity in person that as much as we like to think that we'd be best friends or hit it off great or sit around and have long talks over drinks that we really don't have much to say to them and they have even less to say to us because neither of us really knows any common ground on which to have a conversation unless we decide to talk about them.

Post script to the Dave Stevens' story (May he rest in peace - Dave passed away earlier this year), a few years later, I ended up seated next to him at an industry awards function, and it turned out that we both had a great appreciation for Swing/Rockabilly music and we ended up talking about it all night. At some point in the conversation, I told him about our first encounter, and he had a big laugh over that saying that it happened all the time.