Hugga Bromstick at The Brooklyn Tea Party

From the Hammerstein Ballroom to the Sidewalk Cafe to Crash Mansion, there is always new and exciting music to be found in New York.  So where is the next hot location to find the freshest acts on the scene?  Could it be a Brooklyn living room?

The Brooklyn Tea Party (no relation to better known Tea Partiers across the country), a bi-monthly party and showcase  featuring a revolving cast of the best up-and-coming musicians from the four corners of New York, gives you a taste of the indie life by opening their performance space/loft to anyone looking to discover the newest music that New York has to offer .

The Brooklyn Tea Party is the brainchild of founders (and musical contributors) Brook Pridemore, Rachel Devlin, Michael David Campbell and Dan Costello.   The anti-folk musicians began sharing nightly jam sessions in 2007 with just a couple of instruments between them, later adding current hosters Brian Speaker and Scott Loving to the roster.  Before long, the Tea Party members realized they had an impressive musical showcase sitting in their living room and decided it was time to share it with the rest of the city.   Now in full swing, The Brooklyn Tea Party is  a full-fledged musical hootenanny offered up to any interested bands that wander in out of the cold, provided they are friendly, talented and ready to entertain a room full of amped-up fans.

The Brooklyn Tea Party gang is well on their way to redefining the meaning of an “open mic night.”  They’ve recently welcomed to their stage singer-songerwriters like Elizabeth Devlin and Erin Regan and indie-label bands like Hugga Bromstick, Ivan and the Terribles and Auld Lang Syne (check out a video from their set below).  It’s not unusual to see a random audience member jump onto the stage to join in an impromptu jam session.   The Party’s only request for new musicians?  Be ready for some fun.   Both audience members and players alike are expected to enter The Brooklyn Tea Party loft looking for a good party, good people and seriously good music.

Janeane Garofalo

As a tiny girl with a slightly sarcastic edge, I’ve often been compared to comedianne/actress Janeane Garofalo.  I’m not nearly as acerbic or as tattooed as she is, but especially in high school and college, when there really weren’t many other small, sarcastic girls wandering in Hollywood circles, there was certainly a comparison to be made.

When I first arrived at NYU, I lived in a relatively nice, relatively large dorm room at a to-die-for address on 10th St and 5th Ave.  One of the perks of my awesome new address was that the apartment building across the way supposedly housed many Hollywood elite.  We heard tales of Liv Tyler and Joaquin Phoenix (back when they were a couple), Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker and Janeane Garofalo inhabiting the building less than 100 feet away from where I slept.  Suffice it to say, I was psyched.

My first or second week in New York, I was wandering the streets of Greenwich Village, in particular, the streets right around Washington Square Park with one of my freshman roommates.  I was still in tourist mode, craning my neck to see all the sights that my new home had to offer.  And because I wasn’t looking, I didn’t notice there was a small person with an enormous dog headed in my direction.

Here’s a little known fact about New York living.  Once you step onto a city street, you are instantly entered into a game of chicken.  Every person thinks they have the right of way, and only the weak get out of their path.  Of course, I hadn’t been informed of this rule yet.  I probably would’ve swerved if I’d been watching where I was going.  But the small person headed for me was quite familiar with it.  And rather than get out of my way, she plowed right into my path.

The dog seemed much bigger up close

And down we went in a tangle of leash and dog fur.  I picked myself up and profusely apologized to the women also pulling herself off of the ground.  When I’d gathered my sense, I took a look at the “Chicken” victor.  It was Janeane Garofalo, of course.  She looked angry, but she always looks a little angry, so I thought I might be able to sneak in a comment about the fact that “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” had almost solved the problems of the universe for me.

Before I could open my mouth, she muttered, “F***in’ NYU kids.”

And stomped off with her dog in tow.

I was heartbroken for days, until I realized that I’d had my real and genuine literal run-in with a celebrity.  In fact, with my celebrity doppleganger!  It was like the universe was telling me I was where I was supposed to be.

And I’ve stuck with that fact for over 10 years now, choosing to believe that Garofalo was a universal message and not a grumpy star with a big dog.

Liev Schreiber

I first came across Liev Schreiber at The Public Theater.  Of course I’d seen him in movies for years before… as Cotton Weary in “Screams 1-3“  as sad cross-dresser Chris in “Mixed Nuts,” as the cuckolded husband who was much cuter than Viggo Mortensen in “A Walk On the Moon” and as one of my favorite indie messed-up dudes in “Walking and Talking,” “The Daytrippers” and “Party Girl.” I’d admired him from afar in these films and very much appreciated the way he spat a curse word on screen, but I don’t know if I would’ve singled him out as a  member of my “list.”

But that was before “Hamlet.” Right around 1999, Schreiber, already a well-respected actor in Shakespearean circles, decided to take on the Melancholy Prince and since I lived just down the street from the theater of his choosing and was in the middle of a serious “Hamlet” obssesion, I was first in line to buy a ticket to the show.

Liev Schreiber in Hamlet

From what I recall, it was not a great production.  There may have been puppets… And an annoyingly childlike Ophelia… And I seem to remember being very upset with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for some reason.  But regardless of the flawed production, the only thing I could focus on was Schreiber, who was about as magnetic an actor as I’ve ever seen on stage.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.  And it’s a three hour show.  That’s a lot of staring time.

I was hooked.  I dragged a friend of mine (who over time became far more obsessed with him than I ever was) to see the show twice more.  I rented his movies.  I wandered the neighborhood hoping for a random bumping.  In the middle of a talent show I was performing in, there was a rumor that he’d walked by the window.  I left in the middle of the show to chase him through Washington Square Park. My friend even wrote a screenplay about the meeting we’d planned to have with him.  (In retrospect, yeah, that doesn’t sound scary at all, does it?)  But other than a brief glimpse at the infamous Ethan Hawke party, I never did get my meeting with Mr. Schreiber.

Until.

I worked at The Public Theater during their 2000-2001 season, which included star-studded productions of “The Seagull,” “Top Dog/Underdog” (more on those later) and “Othello” starring none other than Mr. Liev Schreiber.

The stolen Hamlet poster

My co-workers were well aware of my little crush on the actor.  I’d stolen an autographed “Hamlet” poster from our storage collection and had bugged the PR department repeatedly for stories about him.   In fact, I’m pretty sure my co-workers would’ve liked nothing more than to never hear about Liev Schrieber again.

Right around the time “Othello” was about to take the stage, a little incident called September 11th happened.  Suddenly, the theatrical world was thrown into turmoil.  Shows were closing everywhere and even though there had been promises that no one’s job would be lost in the wake of the attacks, it was only a few weeks later that I was called into my boss’s office and was told that my services would no longer be required at The Public Theater.

I was a wreck.  I’d never lost a job before.  I didn’t know what to do.  Everyone was at lunch.  I wandered back to my lonely desk and pushed my belongings into a small cardboard box.   I was just turning to go when a member of the PR department came hurrying into the room.  She wasn’t paying close enough attention to see the tear stains on my face or the box in my hand.

She grabbed my arm and said, “You’re going to want to do this.”

Ignoring my protests, the PR woman dragged me through the backstage area of the Public, on an elevator and up to the rehearsal area where Schreiber and his co-star Keith David were practicing their stage fight.

Only seconds after we stepped onto the stage, someone hit the lights.  And from the other side of the room came a birthday cake.  And all of a sudden, I was singing Happy Birthday with a collection of about five other people.  To Liev Schreiber.  With a box of my belongings clutched in my arms and tears just on the verge of pouring.

I made it through the song, thanked the PR woman profusely and slunk out of the theater.  On one of the most terrible days of my life, I had a (minor) dream come true.  Doesn’t really get more New York than that.

Alan Cumming

I have a theory that everyone is cosmically connected to at least one celebrity. For me, strangely, that celebrity is Alan Cumming.

The first time I saw Alan Cumming was onstage in the 1998 production of “Cabaret” at its first location, the Kit Kat Club.

I had talked one of my college roommates into attending the show with me.  We parked ourselves on a street corner for four hours to get a coveted pair of standing room tickets (the only ones we could afford on our negative salaries).  But in the world of “Cabaret,” those tickets were priceless.

Standing room tickets at the Kit Kat Club meant standing at the back of the orchestra, right in front of the bar.  What we didn’t realize was that it also meant at certain points in the show, it meant standing next to the Emcee, AKA Cumming.  Imagine my surprise when I turned at the end of the first act to see not my friend, but a boa-wearing, shirtless Cumming sipping a drink and mouthing the words to the song Natasha Richardson was singing onstage (more on her later).

After that close encounter, both my roommate and I were sold.  We came back to the show two more times before either of us could get the nerve to even consider speaking to the man standing beside us.

Alan Cumming in Cabaret

After our third performance, we parked ourselves outside the theater to wait for Cumming to make his exit.  We waited.  And waited.  Waited while a security guard told us how lovely Mr. Cumming was in person.  Waited while everyone else exited the theater.  Waited some more.  My roommate, who was head over heels in love with him by this point, was on the verge of tears thinking we’d miss him.  But just as we were about to give up, he made his exit.  We got ready to approach, programs in hand.  And just as we took a step forward, he was joined by Victor the Chorus Boy.  Suddenly, our confessions of love seemed misplaced.  So, he drove away.  Struck down by my gaydar again.

I figured that would be the end of my run-ins with Cumming, but I swear, either he’s stalking me, I’m stalking him or we really are cosmically connected somehow.  It’s not just that I attend most of the shows he performs in around town, (including “Design for Living” and “Threepenny Opera”).

I’ve bumped into him walking down the street.  I attended a concert performance of “Reefer Madness” that he was performing in and suddenly, he was sitting next to me (turns out I’d parked myself next to his friends).  I went to an aerialist show that had absolutely no connection to him whatsoever and there was Cumming, sitting directly across from me.

I’m not sure why the universe has decided that my celebrity cosmic connection should be a sexually ambiguous Scottish man, but I’ll go with it.  Suppose I should buy my ticket to “Spiderman” now.

Sex and the City

During my freshman year of college, it was difficult to walk around the “campus” of NYU without running into a film crew shooting something that was sure to be the next big blockbuster.  Like when I watched Hugh Grant shoot a scene from “Mickey Blue Eyes.” That was the big time.

Towards the end of the year, posters started popping up on trees all over the my stomping grounds, announcing the filming of a new series called, “Sex and the City.” As I’d never heard of the show, I didn’t really think much of the signs.

But one day, as I was walking along 5th Avenue, I caught sight of some film cameras capturing a bunch of well-dressed actresses wearing party hats at a bus stop.  I got close enough to tap a crew member on the shoulder and asked what the deal was.  He told me to go away.  Which, of course, encouraged me to get closer.

And I stood on the street corner for the next hour, watching Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Kim Cattrall celebrate as the famous bus carrying a picture of Carrie Bradshaw on its’ side made its debut.  Quite the historic TV moment.

A few weeks later, I was exiting my favorite bagel place in the Village (Bagel Bob’s, for anyone who’s interested) and there was Sarah Jessica Parker and another camera crew.  She was with Willie Garson, A.K.A. Standford Blatch, filming a far-less important scene just outside my bagel place.  I watched for a few minutes, but the effect was not as momentous this time.  I did make sure to walk past Bagel Bob’s whenever possible for the next three years straight, hoping I might catch another filming, but I never did.

David Eigenberg at the red carpet where he dissed me

Many years later, I was working the red carpet premiere of “The Mist” (just months before the release of “Sex and the City: The Movie”) and who should come moseying down the line, but David Eigenberg, otherwise known as Steve or Mr. Miranda Dobbs.

Of course, I was giddy.  The show had been off the air long enough that anything related to “Sex and the City” was considered a buried treasure.  And here was a man who could give me real scoop… An exclusive, even!

Far down the line, he started making eye contact with me.  I attribute this entirely to a really good haircut I’d been given only a few days earlier.  And while many stars will bypass the part of the line where I stood, as I have no video camera to shove in their face.  But Eigenberg came right to me.  Planted himself in front of me.  Waited for a question.

But the perky gay man standing next to me was far more prepared to pounce than I.  He got up in Eigenberg’s grill and asked, “Can you give us any scoop on the Sex and the City movie?”

It was as if a storm cloud dropped directly over Eigenberg’s head.  His response went something like this.

“Why do you care?  It was only a TV show.  That went off the air two years ago.  Get over it.  You want a scoop.  Steve dies.  There’s your scoop.”

And he walked off.  Oh, David Eigenberg.  How very un-Steve-like of you.

Regardless of his cruel words, I was in my seat an hour early for my first screening of the SATC movie.  And I still cried when he cheated on Miranda.  Cause “Sex and the City” will always be important to me and the women of New York.  We know it wasn’t just a TV show.

Ethan Hawke

Not every star run-in can be full of meaning and importance.  Sometimes, these meetings with famous folks are just plain embarrassing.  As was the case in my brief encounter with Ethan Hawke.

I have a friend with as serious a celebrity fascination as I do, if not more so.  Except, she took hers a step further by actually becoming friends with a few of the famous folk.  And every once in a while, she’d let me tag along to one of their fabulous celebrity parties.

In college, this friend found out about a particularly star-studded event at a small club and decided to take a few friends and I along for the ride.

We showed up at the party and within minutes were playing spot-the-celebrity, among them Peter Dinklage (pre-Station Agent), Chris Noth (at the peak of Sex and the City), Liev Schrieber (more about him later), Sam Rockwell, Frank Whaley and Ethan Hawke.

Knowing I would never be brave enough to speak to any of these shiny people on my own, my friend took it upon herself to walk me around the room to get a better glimpse of all that glittered there.

Along the way, I barely avoided being smacked in the head by Liev Schrieber, had Sam Rockwell stick his armpit in my face and watched Chris Noth hit on a girl approximately 20 years his junior.

The room we were in had some raised platforms that were useful for climbing on when getting away from the jampacked main floor.  After several close calls, I clamored onto one of the platforms in an effort to avoid further bodily harm.  And that’s when my friend grabbed my arm.  And I heard her say, “Ethan, I’d like you to meet someone.”

I turned around too quickly.  One second, I was on a raised platform, looking Ethan Hawke straight in his stringy-haired, slightly dead face.  The next second, I was sprawled across the floor, having somehow lost my balance and toppled over while trying to shake his hand.

I pulled myself up with as much dignity as I could manage, but the damage had been done.  Hawke looked at me with an expression of such indescribable disgust that..well… I can’t describe it.  He managed a “Hey” before hustling over to the other side of the room where his then wife, Uma Thurman was waiting in all her stringy-haired 10 feet tall glory.

So, I’ll admit, when the majority of his movies bombed at the box office and The Hottest State was ripped to shreds by the world, I was okay with that.  Anyone who can’t find the humor in a celebrity-inspired pratfall needs to take a fall or two themselves.

Anthony Rapp

I’m sure for many, the first reaction to the name Anthony Rapp is “Who?”  Anthony Rapp is one of those actors that has been around forever, but whose name you may not know.  There’s a chance you know him as the kid with the Playboy from Adventures in Babysitting.  Or as the more pathetic cradlerobbing senior in Dazed and Confused.

But most likely, if you know Anthony Rapp, you know him as Mark Cohen from the groundbreaking musical, Rent. That’s certainly how I first knew him.

Anthony Rapp was partially responsible for my entire worldview of New York when I was still a high schooler singing along to the Rent cast album with my equally geeky drama club friends.  And I think maybe I had it in my head that when I moved to the Big Apple, I’d find a Mark Cohen to call my own.

One of my first goals when arriving as a young NYU student in New York was to make a beeline straight for the Nederlander Theater and get myself a ticket to the show.  But this was less than three months after Rent had won the Tony Award for Best Musical.  It took 3 months of tries before I got my front row lottery ticket to see Anthony Rapp and gang live on stage.

When I finally got my chance, it was with several of my high school friends, including my long suffering long-distance boyfriend.  We pulled up our front row seats and watched with mouths hanging open as the show we’d seen in our heads a thousand times unfolded before us.

Mark Cohen and Company

During the second-act opener, Seasons of Love, the actors take the stage in a now famous line and break the fourth wall to sing directly to the audience.  Miraculously, Mark  Cohen was placed right in front of me.  And I could swear, SWEAR that he was singing that song directly to me.  He was power-ballad flirting!  I somehow failed to notice that his Bambi-eyes may have actually been focused a little to my right.  Perhaps directly on my attractive boyfriend.

I finally made this connection a few years later when I saw Anthony Rapp walking down the street with the person I can only assume was his boyfriend.  In an instant, I realized that my Rent flirtation was actually a case of poor gaydar.

I had one more run-in with Anthony Rapp a few years later.  Only days after September 11, 2001, all of New York found themselves standing in Union Square, looking at the hundreds of Missing posters that had become a makeshift memorial to people that we didn’t yet know were lost in the towers.

It was my college friends and my first trip back into the city since we’d run trembling out of it only days earlier.  And we were taking our time looking at each one of these living, breathing people who were now only pictures on fliers.

The posters were set up in a maze situation at the front of the park and I lost myself a little wondering among them.  I rounded one corner and was suddenly face to face with Anthony Rapp, who was bigger and had a much larger head than I’d imagined while watching him on stage.  We nodded hello, because everyone was being very nice to each other in the weeks following 9/11 and then we crossed paths and went on to another picture.  And that was that.

There are many things I’ll remember about the week following 9/11.  But none has stuck with me more than the moment when I found Mark Cohen a.k.a Anthony Rapp a.k.a. a defining icon of New York for me, mourning our city.  It doesn’t get more full circle for me than that.

Keri Russell

I’ve been staging a war against Keri Russell for the past 17 years (give or take a few). The fact that she is 1) unaware of my land war with her or 2) completely innocent of any offenses against me is entirely beside the point.

You see, Keri Russell was the only real movie star (we can count Amy Adams now, too, but more about that later) to come out of my hometown.  Of course, when I was 14 years old, she wasn’t a movie star yet.  But she was a Mouseketeer and THAT’S where the fight started.

As a fifth-grader, my only real dream in life was to move to Florida and become a member of the new MMC.  It would be easy.  Auditions came through town every so often.  I’d go, I’d knock them dead.  I’d be in Florida before the new year.

When the folks from Disney rolled around again, my audition at the age of 14 was set up at the Looks Talent Agency with only a mild amount of begging my parents to make it happen.

Upon entering the agency, the first shot in my war with Russell was fired.  There, in the doorway, was a gigantic cardboard cutout of Keri Russell and, strangely, Lloyd Bridges.  I wanted a cardboard cutout with a fake grandfather figure!  Why didn’t I already have one of those?  This question bounced around my head as I entered my audition.

My audition lasted longer than probably any other first audition I will ever have.  I sang a full rendition of “Part of Your World”.  I danced a painfully long and bad routine to “Motown Philly” (yeah, I did).  I gave some silly monologue about singing the wrong words to “Silent Night”.  And I gritted my teeth as the auditioner gave me the spiel about how successful their star client, Keri Russell, was.  I ignored him because deep in my heart, I knew that I’d be the one he’d be talking about this time the next year.

Mickey Mouse That Should've Been

The agency didn’t call for months after.  I forgot all about them.  And then one day, I got home to find a 20 minute message on our answering machine (because someone at the agency had forgotten to put the phone on the hook), telling me they thought I had some Micky Mouse potential!

My parents called the agency and were informed that I should enroll in their commercial classes to reach my full potential.  And because they were loving parents who believed in their child, they signed me up.  And so, every weekend for several months, I learned to walk and talk and act like Keri Russell.  But I just wasn’t Russell enough.  And my dreams of MMC stardom died with the cancellation of the show.

The one thing that never died, however, was my dislike for Russell.  I followed her career closely.  Through Malibu Shores and The Babysitter’s Seduction and When Innocence is Lost and the Bon Jovi video, Always, where she splashed him with paint.  By the time I left for college, I was assured that Russell’s career would never amount to anything real and that made me happy.

But my freshman year of college, a little show called Felicity began to air on the WB.  Suddenly, she was the star of a show about a girl across the country to a New York University (my alma mater) clone and battling trouble with boys and career choices.  Minus the fabulous hair, Keri Russell was stealing my life again!  I would refuse to enter the room if any of my suitemates insisted on watching the show.  The curly-haired one was as unspeakable in my room as a certain evil wizard who should not be named.

My sophomore year, I popped out of my dorm on Washington Square Park one morning to discover a surprise.  Less than 20 feet from where I lived, the cast of Felicity was shooting exteriors for the second season of their show.  And there were Russell and Scott Speedman, having a dramatic argument in MY park.  I was about to enter the park to make an official declaration of war against her when I stopped, more out of shock than a change of morals.

Keri Russell's short hair

All of Russell’s hair was gone.  The second season of Felicity hadn’t premiered.  No one knew about the infamous cut yet.  But somehow, with one sneak preview, I knew that Russell had just murdered her career with friendly fire.  There was nothing else for me to do.  So I walked away. And sure enough, ratings dropped the second audiences got a whiff of snip, snip.

Since realizing I will never be a member of the MMC, I’ve managed to forgive Russell’s trespasses against me.  I eventually watched Felicity and grew to love the show.  I enjoyed Waitress.  And when her eye exploded in her head in Mission: Impossible. I’ve grown as a person.  But I will admit, while August Rush and realizing that Keri Russell still shoots herself in the foot every once in a while, the jealous little girl of my childhood laughs manaically in my head.

Gary Sinese

My first real run in with New York celebrity happened long before I made the move to the Big Apple.

Around 1996, I was a Broadway-obsessed high school junior whose world revolved primarily around musicals, dreams of New York and the boys I imagined would be awaiting me in both.

As part of our highly exceptional Colorado choir program, a trip to New York was planned – a trip I believed would be a glance into my future trodding the boards on many a Broadway stage.

Upon arriving in New York, most of my classmates went in search of the nearest shopping or food vendor or, in some cases, drug dealer.  A few of my equally geeky friends and I went in a different direction, aiming directly for the TKTS booth at the heart of 1996 Times Square.

My head swam with the titles of the shows whose brochures had already been collected in a  plan to line my bedroom walls – Beauty and the Beast, Sunset Boulevard, Tommy, etc. This detailed list, run down repeatedly in my head in an effort to make sure my priorities continued to be in order, kept me from making conversation or even appreciating the neon glory of the billboards, souvenir shops and overpriced theme restaurants surrounding me.

I have a unique brain with a talent for recognizing faces.  If I met you once at a conference at the age of 10, there’s a good chance that I’ll have no problem picking you out of a line-up now.  So despite my distractions, my internal radar had no problem beeping at the sight of a tall(ish) man who turned a corner and began walking just a few steps in front of my friends and I.

I turned to my high school best friend and squealed, “That’s Gary Sinese!”

With the releases of Forrest Gump only a few years behind us, a Gary Sinese sighting was on par with seeing Tom Hanks or, in our limited surbaban scope, John Elway times 6000.  Lieutenant Dan was only steps ahead of us.  We  could reach out and touch him (and don’t think the idea didn’t cross our minds).

All thoughts of TKTS flew from our minds.  There was an opportunity before us.  An opportunity to do what, I’m not exactly sure, but an opportunity nonetheless.   We became insta-stalkers and it’s a little spooky how easy it was to fall into the role.

We trailed Sinese halfway across Times Square, keeping just enough distance that we could pretend to be… I don’t know… birdwatching, should our superstar decide to call the cops on us.

I realized we were most likely following Sinese to the theater where he had directed Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, a show whose ad I had gazed at in the arts edition of the New York Times for weeks in advance of our trip.  This was my shot.  My chance to get in with the stars.  We’d arrive at the theater, tell Mr. Sinese our admiration of his work and surely he’d immediately invite us inside, offer me an audition for the Steppenwolf theater company and before long, my career would be made!  How easy it would be.

It was around this time that I noticed Mr. Sinese was not walking alone.  As we exited the always crowded middle of Times Square, it became clear that he was guiding two small children through throngs of tourists just like my friends and I.

I put out a hand and halted my friends and my progress.  “Guys,” I managed in my most adult tone, “he’s got his kids with him.  We should stop.”

As one we agreed that while it was totally justifiable to follow a total stranger for several blocks with less than stellar intentions, to follow his children would be unethical.  So we let Gary Sinese walk away – my dreams of Broadway stardom still walking several paces behind him.

Our sighting was enough to fuel conversation for days (and I gather, for some of my friends, years) after our trip.  For others, that day would come to be known as, “The day we saw Gary Sinese in New York.”  For me, it will live forever as, “The day Gary Sinese’s kids killed my career.”

As an (incredibly) minor player in the New York entertainment scene – theater, films, music AND television – I can’t say I’ve ever been on a one-on-one basis with anyone who holds even a modicum of fame or infamy.  But I’ve certainly had brushes with them.  And every time I come in contact with a famous person, I feel the same twitch of glee that I felt the very first time I recognized a face in the crowd.

So I may not know you.  And you may not know me.  But I’ll bet we’ve got some famous friends in common.   And nothing gives me more glee than to share the stories of my run-ins with the glitteratti of my adopted hometown.  I’ll tell you my stories and you tell me yours.  And maybe, together, a bit of that famous stardust will brush off on us.