Saturday Night Live recently had a sketch with Casey Affleck playing the stereotypical New England Dunkin Donuts customer. It jogged my memory of a celebrity meeting that happened over a decade ago.
I’ve had the chance to meet or talk to a few famous people over the years. There are concert and record signing meetings; Wilco and Gillian Welch come to mind. I once met the artists Christo and Jeanne Claude in a secretive appearance at my alma mater. Then there were the times I walked by Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips and Henry Rollins in separate incidents on Congress Street in Portland, Maine. I talked to Henry (we’re on a first name basis, clearly) about how much I liked him on Sons of Anarchy. He looked at me kind of funny when I said it. He was playing a neo-Nazi and I just told him how much I liked the character. Oops.
My family and I met then-Vice President George H. W. Bush at his house in Kennebunkport, Maine when I was 6 or 7 years old. My father was a cop and he’d invited various people from law enforcement to his house as a thank you. I played Atari and horseshoes and swam in his salt water pool. We had some Coke together, too. Pretty sure it was Coke Classic, not the new formula released around that time.
So why mention all of this? The Dunkin Donuts sketch reminded me of a time I went to Anna’s Taqueria in the Boston area. I was visiting some friends and we decided to grab a bite to eat. As we made our way in, a man and women were headed out. He was tall, broad shouldered, scruffy, and wearing a dark hat and some Carhartt gear. He bumped into my friend and quietly apologized. The woman was in head-to-toe pink winter outwear and appeared to have a shaven head (though we debated this fact). While it didn’t click for my friends, I realized immediately it was Ben Affleck. He was dressed and groomed almost identically to his brother in the Dunkin Donuts video. I guess you can take the man out of Boston, but not the Boston out of the man.
What celebrities have you met or seen in person?
Stephen Quirk 