Odd Celebrity Sightings

I went to a conference this weekend. It was the usual stuff: presenting some papers, gossiping about co-workers (we call them colleagues to sound smart), drink a few beers at the hotel bar (this time we got 2 free drink tickets per night), and networking.

So, I was standing with some of my colleagues at the entrace of the Pullman Hotel in Huntington, West Virginia, and we were trying to figure out where we were going to eat. We were also making some small talk with somebody who was walking by. There was a big group of us, and the doors to the hotel slide open and in walks Pauly Shore. I looked at the colleague next to me who also saw him. We had puzzled expressions on our face. Is Pauly Shore in Hungtington? Then somebody came in and said, "That guy sitting on the bench just got beat up and robbed! He's bleeding from the head!" I looked at Pauly, and he was checking into the hotel. He did have a bandana on his head.

It turned out that they were two separate things entirely, but for a moment I was confused. I was picturing Pauly passed out on a bench outside a hotel in Huntington and then getting beat up on top of that. I thought, boy, he's really having a rough go of it these days.

We later found out that Pauly was doing a comedy show in town that night, and I thought, well, it could be worse. He could be a drunk drifting from town to town and getting beat up outside hotels. Then we started to talk about odd celebrity sightings.

One of my colleagues told a story about being at a film festival (in some big city) with her husband. She said all weekend she kept seeing somebody watching her and then popping out of sight. Eventually, the mysterious man walked up to her, and it was Michael J. Pollard. If I recall the story correctly, he walked up and said something like, "I was in Bonnie and Clyde. Do you want to go back to my hotel room?" Or something really to the point like that.

Somebody else told me this weekend that Matthew McConaughey was in Huntington, crowds were following him around. I think it is so much better to see Pauly Shore or Michael J. Pollard than somebody like McConaughey.