Alex Chilton Is My Nerd Boyfriend

Celebrity Sightings

sarahb:

awpeeps:

I wish I were someone who could draw from memory. The other day during my lunch break, I saw this guy at the local branch of the public library that I go to, and he looked really familiar. But I couldn’t tell if he looked familiar because he was a famous person, or because he’s just someone I’ve seen before. Does that ever happen to you? Maybe you have to live somewhere like New York or LA where celebrity sightings happen fairly frequently. Like, one time I was walking to the subway after work with my co-worker, and we passed this guy walking in front of the business school. I turned to my co-worker and asked, “Was that one of my scholars? He looked really familiar. Did I process his visa documents?” And she was like, “Dude. That was Gabriel Byrne.”

So, yeah, this guy at the library. He could have been that guy from that show, or he could have just been the maintenance guy in my office building. If I could draw from memory, I could put together a little police sketch, post it to the Internet, and you could all tell me if he famous. Problem solved.

Some sort of crazy future-technology eyeball camera thing would work, too. Like, in the future, we’ll all be able to recall any image that we’ve ever seen, screen cap it in our brains, and upload it to Flickr or whatever through brainwave Bluetooth wireless technology. Eventually, we’ll probably be able to upload video, too.

One time I encouraged my friend keep flirting back with the guy at the bar who was flirting with her, because I was convinced he was some minor New York level of famous, like a Brooklyn comedian or some person from one of those I Love the ___ shows. Thirty minutes later I realized why he looked so familiar: he was the other bartender at my local bar. She quit flirting with him after that.

We need Face Google.*

*Just kidding: please do not invent Face Google.

A few years ago, we went to a wedding and were introduced to some friends of friends called Rob and Kim. They seemed familiar, but I just assumed it was because we were getting along with them so well. Then we got to talking about bands, and Kim said that Rob used to be in a band called Lotion.

“Lotion? No way. I think I may have met you once. Years ago.”

“Really? Where?”

“I was working with a radio station at an outdoor show where you guys played in Cincinnati. I remember talking with some of the guys in your band while you were breaking down equipment. Maybe I was even talking with you!”

And then we didn’t really think about it for a while, until I was home digging through some pictures from high school, and found this:

That’s me in the middle, and Rob on the right. And I was completely blown away. We tried to recreate the picture at my birthday party last year:

If we’d had Face Google, I would have missed out on the awesomely mind-blowing experience of finding that photo.

(Also, can we talk about my center-parted wavy bob and XXL t-shirt in that first picture? Or, better, can we not talk about it?)

UPDATE: I realize my concept of Face Google is slightly different from what Tracie wants. The brain image recorder indeed would be useful. To quote Marilynne Robinson’s narrator in Gilead: I wish that I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am.