Mood:
lazyToday, our office had a St. Patrick's Day potluck lunch. Since there was no sign-up sheet to coordinate the meal, everyone brought more or less the same dish: potatoes. It was a vast sea of potatoes. Green potatoes. Green potatoes in every imaginable emerald hue and form: whipped, mashed, fried, au gratin, pureed, stewed, saladed. You'd think, given my Irish ancestry, that I would like potatoes, but I don't. I'm not even that fond of French fries or potato chips. Someday, when I dine in hell, the menu will feature huge, toothy, baked potatoes the size of footballs. (Okay, that might be more like the dining-in-heck menu. There are worse things than potatoes to eat.)
To round off the starch orgy, there were platters of green corn muffins, green Irish soda bread, green scones, and green pancakes. Anything that wasn't dyed was slathered in green frosting and studded with green m&m's. To wash it down, there was green punch with blobs of lime sherbet.
The office is strangely quiet and unproductive right now. I feel like the last survivor of some sort of carbohydrate holocaust.
Before I sink likewise into a green dye #2 coma, here's a little blog tidbit that mentions David indirectly:
Yesterday my son and I went shopping in our newish Westfield mall, where we once saw Sandra Bullock on a promotional visit. As we ducked into Borders she went whizzing by on the scary escalator up to the cinema complex. Also frequently see David Wenham with his family shopping and many other Aussie celebrities. We do not do anything except nod and look away as feel they are entitled to their lives with their families without interruption.
I must say, I'm 110% in agreement with that last sentiment (despite my squeamish feeling of hypocrisy about reposting it here and thereby calling EVEN MORE ATTENTION to the fact that David and his family sometimes go shopping). There is no reason, ever, to pester celebrities randomly or gawk at them as if they're a zoo exhibit. If you wouldn't go up to a stranger in a restaurant and interrupt their meal so you could get their name on a napkin, why would you do it to a celebrity?
On the other hand, it's probably socially acceptable to mention to them that their tie is on fire, or they accidentally dropped their Oscar while crossing the street.
Maybe I'm just not that brave. But I applaud the general restraint of people who recognize David, don't do anything more than quietly acknowledge it to themselves, and move on. In a similar situation, I would probably do the same. ("Oh look, there's that guy who's my favorite actor in the entire world and who I devote an entire website to. Ho hum. Now, where's Susie Lou's Shoe Igloo?")
Actually, my interior thought process wouldn't be quite that calm and coherent. It would be more like: "????......!!!!!!!!!!!.....//>@@@@** <loud, crackling static>". Autopilot would continue steering me in the direction of the shoe store, like those cartoon coyotes who continue to walk off the cliff and find themselves standing on thin air. Passerby would marvel at my calmness. And when they ask me how I do it, how I maintain such equanimity in the presence of golden ginger greatness, I'll show them my green tongue, and tell them about the half-ton of starch molecules coursing through my veins.
