I meet interesting people. I meet interesting people primarily because I like to meet people in general, and the law of averages being what it is, some of them end up being interesting.
By interesting I don't particularly mean that these people necessarily do extraordinary things or have led fantastic lives - fact is, most of the people I quantify as interesting live ordinary, somewhat pedestrian lives. However, they do something, or have a particular quirk about them, that makes them interesting, at least to me.
For example; Tuesday last I met a young man who looked pretty much like a younger, much heavier (meaning, fatter) version of Phil Donahue. I met him by sitting down at a barstool next to him, looking his way when I was trying to get the attention of the distractedly attractive woman working behind the bar, and saying to him, "Wow, you're probably too young to know who he is, but you look a lot like a talk show host from the '80's named Phil Donahue."
The young man (I'm thinking he was maybe 25, 28) looked at me and replied, "Yeah, I know who he is, my Mom used to call me her 'little Phil' when I was a kid."
The distractedly attractive barkeep came up to me when he said that (Wearing a distractedly low-cut top that had the words "I love Halloweenie" printed pretty much across where her breasts would usually be covered, except the shirt had been modified to reveal more of her adequate cleavage, so the words actually read "I love Haloeenie" with a small part of the "w" in weenie still preceding the first "e" - not that I stared intensely enough to notice).
After placing my order for a Guinness, I introduced myself to the young man and he in turn introduced himself as Mark, and we started talking about what it's like to have a face that resembles someone famous. (I don't have a face that resembles someone famous myself - in fact, I have a generic middle-aged-bald-white-guy-with-a-goatee face, which gets me mistaken for a lot of middle-aged-bald-white-guys-with-goatees a lot - "Hey, you look just like my sister's ex-boyfriend's brother Ted" sorta thing).
Mark told me it had actually become a nuisance once he started college, as most of his instructors all seemed to think it was clever to call him Phil instead of his actual name, and I laughed to myself a little at that as it occurred to me that most of his instructors probably were old enough to have idolized Phil Donahue when he was the talk show king, and were somewhat delighted to have a kid in their classrooms who resembled one of their heroes.
Mark's resemblance to Phil Donahue however, was not what made him interesting to me. What made him interesting to me was that he had a photo album at the bar with him, and it was open to pages that had photos of him at the Getty museum (the one at the Getty Villa, not the one in Brentwood). I've been to that particular museum (and so should you, if you like incredible museums), so I asked him if the pictures were from before or after the renovation.
Which led to a conversation about visiting museums, and it turned out he was a museum junkie much like I was, and we talked about various museums we had both visited, and recommended museums that one of us had visited but the other hadn't, etc.
Then I asked him why he had brought a photo album with him to a bar, and he explained he had just gotten it back from his ex-wife, who had agreed to met him at the bar with the photo album as he had forgot it when he had packed up all his stuff and moved out, which led to a whole 'nother conversation about ex-wives...
I had to get home after a half hour into the conversation about ex-wives, and, after shaking hands with Mark, told him I hoped to run into him again someday. I didn't exchange phone numbers with the guy though, as, while he was interesting, I really don't need young divorced dudes calling me up to see if I want to hang out - I've learned those guys are always kinda sad and lonely, and always want me to set them up with single women I know - I've annoyed a few of my women friends a bit because of that (the Luann & Gregory incident immediately springs to mind).
But yeah, I met some interesting people...
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