Celebrity Sightings from One Who Is Culturally Challenged:



  • The awkwardly misnomered band Barenaked Ladies was in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but I didn't recognize them until later when my new friend Fred told me. I also saw Santa. Does he count?

  • Howard Dean was a special guest at NBC's live Election Night broadcast from Rockefeller Center, in whose televised studio audience I might have appeared briefly. I was about 20 feet away from him.

  • Placido Domingo, one of the "Three Tenors" of opera, played the role of Siegmund in Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera. I witnessed this show on 10/9. It was grand but long, and Domingo was stellar.

  • I saw Jamie Lee Curtis, of Trading Places fame, in Washington Square on 10/2. She read aloud one of her six children's books (who knew?) to a delighted audience of schoolchildren, their parents, and me. She seemed like a nice person, though I didn't actually speak with her.

  • I stood five feet away from Art Spiegelman as he signed autographs on Gould Plaza in front of Tisch Hall, the NYU-Stern building. I couldn't get his autograph myself because I didn't own his book.

  • On September 12, while strolling down Union Square East, I saw whichever Olsen twin did not dye her hair brown.

  • I saw the Shins and the Firey Furnaces in concert on 9/9 -- they're sort of famous.

  • Joey McIntyre was in Wicked, but I never listened to his band anyway.