Celebrities and Aliens

I've met my share of celebrities. (Mr. Belding and Edwin McCain, for example, are two of my favorites). Most of them look like normal people when you talk to them up close, and a few (unnamed) female country singers have looked pretty rough in person.

So, I don't normally get very flustered when meeting people.

But two celebrity encounters have weirded me out. One was with Joshua Jackson, and the other was with Nicole Kidman.

When I encountered Joshua Jackson, I had just been interacting with a country singer or two, and had thought it fairly normal. But when he walked into the room, it was like he was still on-screen in a movie. He was walking behind an invisible pane of glass, as if his life was one giant film, and everywhere he went, everyone was pulled into it with him. It was like we all went from normal to black and white, to Technicolor, and then to high-definition 3D all in an instant.

It was weird.

This morning I was sitting in Starbucks, hard at work, when I saw Keith Urban walk in the door. Hmmm, I thought - curious. He was walking quickly across the room, like I imagine police do when they're about to clear a drug house, and want to minimize their exposure to the open air. I barely noticed the frail creature he had with him, her back towards me.

And then they ordered, and went to get cream for their coffee, and at that moment, her face turned upwards, her hair fell back, and Nicole Kidman's eyes locked onto mine.

In horror movies they have that look, the moment something truly evil sees you, and it chills you to the depths of your being. In ancient myths, they had Medusa, whose face could turn a man to stone. And then, of course, the sirens. Just their sound would rip your mind apart, and pull you into their reality.

If there's a version of that, that's not evil, this was it. It was like I was being burned, and I had to look away.

Forget the accent for a moment, but Keith Urban seemed to be from the same country as me. She seemed to be from a different planet.

And so I've decided. There are aliens among us.

Well, not among us, exactly. Among movie stars.