I’m pulling this conversation out of the comments from yesterday’s post, which has turned to minor (and major) celebrity encounters. Share your celebrity sighting (or, erm, stalking) stories here!
Margaret Atwood was mentioned in the last set of comments, and I have a story of my own to add – one that nicely straddles the line between sightings and stalking, in fact!
It was the late 1990s, maybe 1998 or so, and I was attending a Margaret Atwood reading at the National Library. I had a small collection of autographed Canadian literature, and I was clutching my hardcover copy of Alias Grace, hoping for a signature. I stopped off in the washroom about fifteen minutes before the reading was scheduled to begin and – gasp! – there she was! Margaret Atwood! In the bathroom!!
She stepped into a stall, and I froze. Would there be a public book signing after the reading, or would this be my only chance? If I slipped the book and a pen under the side of the stall, she’d be comfortably seated and able to sign at her leisure. In less than a second, the realm of possibilities played out in my head, and finished with me being escorted out of the library by security with neither my book nor my dignity. In the end, I decided to wait, and got my autograph by standing in line with the rest of the world. “The time I almost stalked Margaret Atwood in the ladies room” doesn’t play out for laughs quite to the extent that “The time I stalked Margaret Atwood in the ladies’ room,” but I didn’t know about blog fodder back then.
Do share! What’s your best brush-with-celebrity story? (And, only a couple of days left to vote to send me to Chicago. Just think of the potential for minor celebrity stalking at BlogHer!!)
I sat right behind Michael Ondaatje at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto just after “The English Patient” was published. I love that book and really wanted to tell him but I was too “Canadian” and wussed out. To this day I regret my cowardness.
Hey! I saw Margaret Atwood deliver a reading at the Archives too. It might have been the same one you went to.
I was so disappointed. She sounded like a drone.
But had you slid the book under the stall she would have bit your head off (after wiping and flushing, of course.)
I attended a reading of Michael Ondaatje at the Archives too. I brought a copy of the English Patient with me for signing. I waited in line for aaaaages – all the time rehersing what I was going to say.
When it was my turn I could only summon the two words :
“Great book.”
There was a little pub on College Street in Toronto that we used to go drinking at back in the 80s when I lived and worked in TO. It was quite near the bank where I nearly knocked Margaret Atwood over. One night, David Suzuki came in for a drink. We never went over, he seemed to want to be alone. And once, when a bunch of us from the office were on our way to a restaurant for lunch, we were walking past the Delta Chelsea when a limo drove up and the Ramones got out.
And I ran into author Alison Gordon in the ladies room of the main library here in Ottawa right before she gave a reading.
We were just in Disney World last week, and when I was walking along Animal Kingdom, two people yelled out “Good Luck this weekend” and “Good Luck at Daytona” … I hear a ‘Thanks’ right beside me, and sure enough it’s Jeff Gordon!! With me only knowing him from watching Live with Regis & Kelly (he sometimes is a co-host & guest), I figured I’d mention this too him! I said I only know him from Regis & Kelly, but that he’s good there too! He laughed and said Thanks! My sister called me a loser when I told her this!