doodledee

I was walking to breakfast at Hells Kitchen* the other morning when I passed a familiar looking girl on the sidewalk. I work at a lot of different places, and I'm horrible with names, so I figured it was an ex-client or something. I locked her gaze and kind of half smiled, hoping to reinforce whatever impression I had made in the past with a friendly and casual sidewalk encounter in the present. After maybe two seconds, I realized that I'd never met her before and that she was, in fact, the local girl who was on this season's Project Runway. Gah. Eyes to sidewalk. Whimper softly. I'm such a tool.

I've since been debating if I should formally score my sidewalk rendezvous as a local celebrity encounter and, after some thought, I've concluded that I will. The way I see it, it falls somewhere between running into Julie Nelson at the Galleria and being stopped at a light next to Troy Hudson and his posse in a pimped-up SUV with a massive custom T-HUD paint job. Both make your day, but you're kind of embarrassed to admit it. Especially if you rolled down your window and gave T-HUD and his posse a big thumbs up and they responded with a wave and cranked up the T-HUD tunes for us all to enjoy. Because that would be seriously embarrassing to admit. Or not.

In reality the encounter mostly reminded me of the time I ran into my doctor at Menard's. I was all "hey!" and smiley and stuff, right up until it hit me who he was. He was all Mr. Cool Doctor Guy and pretended he didn't know me, which in reality is probably because he honestly didn't know me, so I don't hold it against him. If I had had been wearing a hospital gown and booties – like I usually do at Mendard's – then he'd have some splainin' to do, but as it was, his blank stares and accelerated pace in the opposite direction was more or less justified.

In other fake celebrity sighting news: An anonymous reader (initials: K.C.) called recently to report a Diamond Don Shelby sighting at the Minnetonka Lunds. Don was seen driving a black Jeep (+1), but was parked at the yellow curb fire lane instead of the regular parking lot (-100). Why won't you park with us, Don? We're just like you. Simple, regular folk. Only with smaller pinstripes. It's just not right.

* - Hells Kitchen update: still overpriced and under-portioned, but oh man, those huevos rancheros. The best, Jerry, the best.

Project Runway - Katherine Gerdes [bravotv]
JoePa.JulieNelson.sighting recap from 2004 [doodledee]
Hells Kitchen [hellskitcheninc]