Celebrity Sightings

Stan Lee

Normally, I'm not much of a fan of Hollywood. It seems to me that the film and TV industry is full of large egos, bad attitudes and crappy role models for youngsters. Now, I know that this is a generalization and that there are many stars who stand out as shining beacons of kindness and humility in a sea of condescension and callousness. This post, however isn't about my perception of Hollywood. It's about my short brushes with a few of the people that I've actually run into from this world during my project that was in Los Angeles.

I wanted to wait until that project was over to write this post, and so I have. The project ended, for me at least, a couple of weeks ago and I've moved on to a project based in Seattle. During my travels to LA, I've encountered five celebrities that I recognized. Oddly, though our project was in Woodland Hills (apparently where a lot of stars lived), all of my encounters were at the airport or on airplanes.

My first celebrity encounter was Stan Lee. I saw him when I was sitting at PDX for a layover. He got off of a plane and I was too stunned to even approach him. It was cool seeing such a geek icon up close. I've been a fan of his since I was a kid.

The next was about a month later. A coworker and I were heading home and we saw Henry Rollins (or a guy who looked EXACTLY like him) riding a plane back to MSP from LAX. Several others near us whispered about it, but no one ever spoke to him to ask him, that I heard anyway. My wife and I watched "The Chase" the other day and although he looked a lot older on the plane, I'm sure it was him.

A few months later I saw John Cho and his family get off of a flight from Detroit. No one else seemed to notice who he was. I was tempted to shout out "Sulu" or "Harold", but I refrained.

Then, a few months later several coworkers and I saw Danny Trejo on a flight from MSP to LAX. He must have been promoting one of his movies in Minneapolis as he was wearing a hat with the movie logo and had a bag with the logo as well. He's a lot shorter in person than I thought he would be, but still looks very intimidating.

The very next week I sat directly behind Wilmer Valderrama in first class going from MSP to LAX. The two of us actually spoke and all I remember about it was that I handed him his bag from the storage bin and told him that my daughter was a fan of Handy Manny. He smiled and said, "Thanks."

Henry Rollins

There are a few celebrities that, if I saw them, I would totally geek out and rush to say hi. If I'd had the presence of mind, I would have so done that when I saw Stan Lee. Otherwise, I think that they are just people too and unless they're purposely inviting people over to say hi, they have a right to being left alone just like everyone else.

A coworker of mine met John DeLancie on a flight from LAX to MSP and got his picture taken with him. I was jealous of that and definitely would have gotten my picture taken too if I'd been on that flight.


Have you ever met any celebrities? Were they cool with you coming up an saying hi?