Biggest sighting I've ever had was Pete Townshend. It was back in '84 so his career was at one of it's nadirs. He was standing rather anonymously near a window in a thoughway in Heathrow airport, flanked by two rather hot women. I was 14, bepimpled and bespectacled, travelling with my parents. Although I was not a connoisseur of The Who or Townshend, I sure as hell knew who he was and broke from the herd and got him to sign a magazine I happened to be holding. He was nice , huge schnozz, bit shorter than I expected, no one else seemed to care.

Am I a great person? Hell no - by most metrics I'm pretty much an asshole. -TSlothrop

Went to Barbados in the early '90s and ran into Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at the baggage claim area of the airport. They were there by themselves - no entourage, no peeps, no nothin' - Mick seemed a little fidgety and was clearly irritated, no, make that downright surly, at having to dive in to the throng of people to retrieve his luggage.  Keith, on the other hand was having a grand old time posing for pictures and mugging at the cameras for and with folks. My wife asked both of 'em for a quick photo  - I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, to figure which one happily consented and which one basically told her to fuck off...

Somewhere in my soul, there's always Rock -n- Roll... Joe Strummer

A decade ago, I was in the Bahamas for a few weeks on a consulting job. As it happens, I was staying in the "old" part of the Atlantis resort. Most of the new areas were already open, but the official opening of the new tower, complete with celebrity party, was scheduled for the weekend after I left.

So. The next-to-last night I'm there, my boss and I were walking from a late dinner back to our rooms through the resort's casino. As we passed one of the open club/bar areas, I elbow my boss. "Check out the Leonardo DiCaprio clone trying to capitalize on his looks to score with that hottie."

About a month later, I see a special on E! about the opening weekend party. Guess who came down a few days early to scuba in the shark tank? It almost makes me wish I'd been louder; "I got in a fight with DiCaprio" would have been a better story.

I have seen Matthew Lesko twice.  He wears a suit covered with question marks everywhere he goes, so he's pretty easy to spot.

Best of all:  the first time I saw him, we were both in line at the airport waiting to clear security.  So, of course, I saw him take off his shoes.  His shoes matched his suit exactly; they were the same orange-brown color.  The socks?  Matched exactly as well.

For someone who lives in LA my celeb sitings are pretty random--probably because I really don't look. You get tons of people around here--and not even ones you'd expect it from--telling you their celeb sitings and I don't think there's anything more boring unless there's something extra that actually makes it a good story, like logan's. So I only report these because of their oddity.

The funny thing is, I keep only seeing the same ones. One day walking to my car in the drizzle I saw SNL weekend update's Kevin Nealon. I kinda gave him a sideways "is that you?" look, and he returned with a sort of "yeah, it's me but it's drizzling so can we just keep walking here" thing, which I was perfectly happy to do. Then, a few months later, I saw him again, this time carrying a large rug out of a store downtown in the garment district. Andy Dick I see virtually every time I go out, which I think everyone does really. I've seen him at swinger's diner, good luck bar, various clubs, most recently he walked into taiyo sushi on Franklin. He came in, downed a beer like it was a shot and walked back out. Except that he was walking with crutches and he wacked my foot with one of them. He was extremely apologetic. Oh, and Ron Jeremy also at Swinger's Diner on Beverly. It was 3am and he parked his beat up old white pick up truck pretty much sideways before stumbling in drunk off his ass.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I saw Cal Thomas in the Denver airport.  He caught the same plane I did to DC, so I saw him in baggage claim, too.  He was quite the asshole, standing around the waiting area with a sour look on his face, complaining into his cell phone, then pushing his way to the front of the crowd at baggage claim.

Of course, I'm prejudiced.

A few years ago, I got home from work late one night, packed my bags, sat down and watched some TV. Then I woke up at 2am to make the 2 hour drive to the airport. Blearly eyed, I went to my favorite airport bagelry.

Something looked familiar about the guys standing in front me in line. I couldn't place it because my mind doesn't work so well at 4:45am. Then it hit me. Oh that's right... I saw them on TV the night  before. It was the Sugar Hill Gang!.

And... holy cow, they boarded my plane! I was in row one, and they sat behind me. One of them had a real problem with the airplane (we were on one of these) because it was so small.  The flight was kind of windy and bumpy, which also didn't help.

I spent the one hour flight listening to a member of the Sugar Hill Gang get nauseous behind me.

Hey, I'm one up on everyone in this thread.  I just saw Elvis at the Wawa!

Illegitimi non carborundum.

My sister claims to have seen Kevin Heffernan (the guy who plays Farva from Super Troopers, one of the greatest films of all time) at a rock show once.

Ironically he was supposedly wearing all denim. Which is odd, because in the movie he is famous for castigating Captain O'Hagan for wearing a "Canadian Tuxedo."

    The only celeb sighting I've ever had may not even count, except in certain social circles-- and this might be one of them, come to think of it. I was working in the back at the bookstore in 2002, and was pretty much going to be away from customers the rest of the day, when one of my co-workers came in and announced, "you're probably the only one on the staff who will care, but Brian Lamb is in the store." It took me a minute, but I found him with a pal near the history section. He was gracious, well dressed (though the suit looked a bit cheap), and about 5' 4" tall. Can barely remember what we talked about, though he let me take up over half an hour of his time. He asked me how the trade in policy worked, I recall, and I think we talked about the weather.
    Not the biggest thing in the world, but I can't think of anyone on television I'd rather to talk to in person. It's an incredibly slim chance I'll get to talk to the guy again, but if it happens, next time I won't be so timid :)

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

Not to be a curmudgeon or anything, but why it matters, even a teeny tiny bit, that seeing a "celebrity" is somehow noteworthy is far beyond my comprehension.  

I spent 5 to 10 minutes chatting with him while we were both on the fringe of the humongous crowd at Powell's Books that were waiting on him to do a book reading. Later on, he signed some books for me: Flight (by Alexie) and After Dark (by Murakami). I figured, why not, he likes Murakami too. He was amused. :)

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson