Celebrity Sighting #1

1:30 p.m., Claremont and 118th: I'm hurrying to campus so I can get one of the good seats for my lecture class, on the phone with Mom ranting about class and what will be my crazy-busy weekend. Feeling a little pissy and antisocial and hating humanity, and I haven't managed to down even half of the large coffee in my hand. So when I see the crowd of people on the sidewalk near the Barnard entrance I just angrily plow on through.

As I'm plowing through, I notice that most of these people have on headsets or are moving sound booms or cameras. Looks like the setup or removal of a film set. It begins to occur to me that maybe I shouldn't be walking through here, but you know, I've already come too far to go back, so I skirt people as best as I can while keeping a tight grip on my coffee. Almost run into some guy moving a sound boom, mutter an "excuse me" and dodge to the left, and then pretty much almost collide with Jesse L. Martin (Detective Green on Law & Order for all you non-aficionados, I think he was also in one of my fave X-Files episodes--the one about baseball, not to mention Rent and Timon of Athens on Broadway) and come perilously close to spilling said coffee all over myself and/or Mr. Martin. Thank God I am apparently not that much of a klutz. It does take me a moment to register who I just ran into though, at which point I blush, look like a moron, half-smile and apologize and turn around to continue onwards, to class... and stop just short of walking into Dennis Farina (in this scenario, Law & Order's Detective Fontana, but also of Snatch, Get Shorty, Manhunter, and Saving Private Ryan fame).

I can't say I get much into movies or star-worship or anything like that, but I have to say, Law & Order being one of the few television shows I religiously follow... I'm a teensy bit star-struck and happy right now :-)