One of the things I miss most about not working in Manhattan is the serendipity of coming across a celebrity on the street. Or in the airport while traveling. I’ve written before about running into and saying hello to celebrities as diverse as Neil Simon, Steve Allen and Audrey Meadows, Alan King, Richard Lewis, Johnny Damon, Joe Torre, David Wells, and Gilda’s all time favorite encounter, Al Pacino.
When she lived in Greenwich Village, Ellie kept up the mystique of running into notables. She once trailed Sarah Jessica Parker for blocks along the Hudson River promenade. The Village is a great place to see stars mingling with the masses. One time after dropping her off, I said hello to Jason Jones of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as he was pushing a baby stroller.
Meeting VIPs seems to run in the Forseter blood. My sister Lee has an avocation of selling jewelry and other knickknacks at flea markets around Los Angeles. Sunday she and her partner Sherry were at the Rose Bowl. Sherry had brought along some chocolates to entice buyers when Dustin Hoffman passed by with two friends. Though she was reluctant to push the chocolates on him, she screwed up her courage later in the day when he returned as they were packing up. He not only took the tasty treat but he also posed for not one but two pictures.
Lee said, “He was soooo recognizable.” I agree. About 10 years ago I crossed paths with him on East 57th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. He was walking rather briskly so there wasn’t time to even say a quick “hello, I like your work.” I don’t think he’d remember me. I always knew he was short and from our encounter, and now his picture with my 5’5” sister really confirmed it.
Now that the pope is retiring, is Queen Elizabeth II’s voluntary departure from the throne in the cards? Gilda doesn’t think so. I’m not that sure. We’ll see who’s more prophetic.
As startling as the headline about Pope Benedict XVI retiring was, it was hardly as eye-popping as the one a regional British newspaper ran about 40 years ago. In large letters it blared, “Pope Weds.”
It was all a scam by my friend Dave Banks, then an editor on the small paper, and his buddies, a prank they wanted to play on one of their colleagues in charge of newspaper distribution. They had all had a rather liquid dinner. After returning to their work stations, the editors created a fake broadsheet to wrap bundled newspapers trucked to newstands across the country.
They thought their friend in the distribution area would get a chuckle from seeing the fake headline, but he was too tanked from dinner and fell asleep. By the time he woke up the papers had been shipped with the provocative headline. They scurried to contact all the drivers to retrieve all the broadsheets. As the pope’s marital status has never been in question, they must have been successful.
