Celebrity Sighting

Sometimes while walking around NYC, I imagine myself to be one of those oblivious humans in the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." In the movie, the body snatchers walk among us, and we don't know it. Here in NYC, because of the sheer number of celebrities working and living here, I suspect they are walking by me all the time and I just don't recognize them. It might be some form of prosopagnosia. Or just general obliviousness. On the other hand, if you put someone in front of me and tell me I should recognize him/her, I usually do.

To wit: Yesterday, Cathy and I took one of the Tenement Museum tours (my second!). About a dozen of us traipsed around the tenement, listening to the guide and discussing immigration. The group was definitely engaged and almost everyone was participating. At one point I noticed Cathy giving me subtle signals. I was wondering if she had to go to the bathroom or something. She didn't seem to be frantic, but she was making a lot of eye contact. As we moved out of one room and into another, she whispered "I think that guy over there is a movie star." I looked at him again (after all, we had now been together for over an hour) and whispered back, "Yeah, he looks just like Dennis Franz." "That's him!" she squealed. Ok, she didn't really squeal, but in a few minutes, she sidled up to him and said quietly, "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Dennis Franz?" And he said, "I *am* Dennis Franz."

In truth, I'm amazed that I recognized him because it's been a very very long time since I watched one of his shows. However, one of the few memories I have of NYPD Blue is the huge build up to the episode where Franz bares his butt...on national TV. I'm thinking I would have recognized his butt without any prompting from Cathy.