you’re never lonely when brad pitt’s around.

this is comforting 

When you live in Los Angeles if you see someone that you think might be famous they probably are.  It took me about two and a half years for me to get used to that.  When you live in Seattle if you think you see someone famous, they’re not, unless that person is a TV news anchor.  It has been an adjustment period to suddenly find yourself in the middle of a room full of strangers with whom you have no connection.

Every time I would meet someone who was visiting Los Angeles they would lean in to me and say some along the lines of “I’ve been here for 5 days and I still haven’t seen any celebrities yet.”  They would stagger up and down the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt Damon standing right next to his star, they would hang out near the entrance to the Chateau Marmot or the lobby of Capital Records or front gates of Paramount studios without spotting even a single celebrity not even Andy Dick.  The trick if you really want to see a celebrity in Los Angeles is to think mundane.  In three years I never saw a celebrity in an obvious place, they all caught me by surprise because of how normal the situations were.  Lawrence Fishburne standing next to me a the used bookstore, John Hamm driving his car past my street corner, Patton Oswald pushing a stroller on my sidewalk, Judd Apatow asking me for assistance at Borders Bookstore.

The minute you stop thinking about them they magically appear.  My wife and I once saw Lindsey Lohan at a Gelson’s grocery store across the street from our apartment, Michael Cera while we were walking home from Albertsons, one of the hobbits at that same Albertsons.  None of these were star studded events, never did I imagine that while I was looking for Orange Juice Buster from Arrested Development also be looking for Orange Juice as well or even that I would walk in front of Harrison Ford in his car at a stop sign.  It’s not just knowing that anytime you go anywhere in Los Angeles you could cross paths with someone famous, they also had this effect on me where once I found myself in their presence I started to feel truly alive.  I’m not sure if I can completely explain their powers but I could feel the blood flowing through my veins.

Of all my celebrity sightings the one which seemed most surreal was the time my wife and I saw Brad Pitt at a well known restaurant in West Hollywood.  The best way to describe this place was well... it’s on Santa Monica boulevard in West Hollywood, the ambiance is dark, the chair cushions and couches were the color of dried blood and I’m sure this floor had seen the vomit of more than a hand full of OD(ing) rockstars.  It was a Thursday evening and we were with our softball team, it was the last game of the season and we were celebrating our second glorious win.  The restaurant had a private room just off from the entrance where we all gathered in our sweaty dirt covered shorts and softball shirts.  I’d fallen into third base and had a terrific raspberry on my left arm.  We were enjoying some drinks that cost enough to feed an entire village in Ethiopia when a small entourage of people walked in and then shuffled into our room, they stood around for about a minute before Jaime looked up and without taking a breath blurted out “Oh shit! It’s Brad Pitt.”  It was loud enough he definitely heard us and a moment later he and his entourage shuffled back out of our room and into a secluded booth at the far end of the restaurant.

What?  Maybe you were expecting that he sat down with our team and bought us all a round of beers to congratulate us on our victory.  He slapped me playfully on the back laughing hysterically at my jokes and made a toast every time a new round was brought out.  No.  “Oh shit!  It’s Brad Pitt.”  That’s it and he was gone but I felt like Jesus was nearby.  I was now in a kind of  celebrity sphere where I was protected and nothing bad could happen.  Even though I knew non of that was true.

I’m embarrassed to admit this because I’m no celebrity whore.  I never went looking for them, in fact most the time Jaime would notice them first or would have to point them out to me.  “That was Emma Roberts” she would whisper to me as we passed by Little Dom’s (which by the way if you are looking for your Los Angeles celebrity sighting, Little Dom’s Italian restaurant on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz always has a celebrity sitting outside.)  But there is something, a feeling that I can’t fully explain or completely identify that when in the presence of a celebrity of any kind I suddenly felt less lonely more like I was in the presence of a family member or an old friend.  Had Sarah Palin walked into my favorite restaurant and taken a table next to me all the supreme hatred I have for that woman would have melted away like an ice sculpture and left me only with a feeling of familiar comfort.  Once she was safely away from our vicinity I would carry on loathing her pathetic celebrity.

Now that I am back in Seattle there is a noticeable element of surprise missing in my life.  I stroll up and down the aisles of Trader Joe’s, wander out to the street to retrieve my mail or sit at a table in a restaurant with my wife and I can look at all the faces around me and no one is familiar in a famous celebrity way no one will enter the frame of my personal movie and place the bubble around me.  For now I will simply have to find the company of compete strangers satisfying and surprising enough to keep making me feel alive.