11 years ago
I got a glimpse of Sissy Spacek at the Albemarle Mall in Charlottesville ,Virginia- no makeup, hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing a beige raincoat, and pushing a stroller- it was a Tuesday afternoon- I stopped at the makeup counter and asked the SA if that was just Sissy Spacek who walked by, and she said "yeah, she comes here all the time, and no one ever bothers her".
In 2007, while living in Germany, I went with a friend to Altotting in Bavaria because she wanted to see Pope Benedict, who was expected to visit- I fully expected that we wouldn't get even a glimpse of him, but she begged me to go, and I went along with her. We were standing outside behind a cordon, playing the waiting game- when all of a sudden, a bunch of buses arrived, and scads of nuns and priests poured out of them- before we knew it, we were in a crush of people, and got rushed into the church- and had the lovely experience of attending at Vespers, which was led by Pope Benedict- we were just about 14 rows from the front of the altar. I kept expecting someone to throw us out, since we clearly weren't clergy or nuns, but it didn't happen!
In 2010, I was working at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm- I ran a small gift/snack shop there, and one of my more humble tasks was to fill up the soda machines in the waiting room in the consulate. While doing this, I noticed that a can had exploded inside the machine, so I called the housekeeping staff to come and clean it up. After the housekeepers arrived, one of them said- "did you see who was in the waiting room?". It turns out that it was Benny Andersson from Abba, probably getting his passport stamped for a trip to the U.S., since Abba had just been inaugurated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I said "Let's go and introduce ourselves to him" and she said "sure"- well, I did just that- I just said "Hi, I'm a fan"- and he junmped up amd shook my hand- he was thinner than I remembered, and rather tall, but then I noticed that he was wearing platform shoes (very -70s, eh?) I thought that the housekeepers were with me, but they stood behind the door, snickering at me-
I got a glimpse of REM guitarist Peter Buck and Peter Holsapple, who also played guitar with them on tour, at the airport in Atlanta- he looked about 7 feet tall, walking down the middle of the aisle, looking like he owned the place-