March 5: Gary Cooper, Alec Baldwin, Joan of Arc, Saint Colette

...The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little.  So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.

"Where?" she asked me--excited as hell.  "Where?"

"Aw, you just missed him.  He just went out.  Why didn't you look when I told you?"

Holden is being a dick here.  He's met a group of girls in a hotel ballroom, and the girls are more interested in celebrity-gawking than dancing with him.  So, Holden, as usual, starts lying to them, claiming that Gary Cooper (not Elvis) is in the building.

I understand about being a starstruck.  The two times I've visited New York City, I spent a good deal of my time gazing at the crowds, waiting for Madonna or Sarah Jessica Parker to walk by me.  I did go to a taping of Live With Regis and Kelly.  I saw some member of the Temptation Island cast, a girl who dressed like a Vegas lap dancer.  I believe Bob Costas and Martin Short were also guests.  I went to Rockefeller Plaza to get on camera for the Today show.  Al Roker actually interviewed me on air two days in a row because I was holding my three-month-old daughter.  Al's a sucker for babies.  At Today, my wife and I got pictures with Martin Yan from the cooking show Yan Can Cook.  The highlight was running into Alec Baldwin at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Yes, my encounters with stars ran the gamut, from trashy reality TV star to A-list movie actor.  I would have irritated the hell out of Holden.  I'm not sure what it is about celebrities that excites me and the rest of the human race.  It doesn't matter who it is, either.  I could see Dan Rather or Meryl Streep walking down the street and get equally geeked for either of them.  (Clare Danes is a whole other issue and blog post.)  Fame is fascinating.

Tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Colette.  Colette interests me for one reason.  It's not because she joined the Franciscan Third Order when she was 17.  It's not because she established or renewed 17 convents and several friaries during her lifetime.  It's not because she miraculously received a relic from the cross during a Friday meditation.  Or because she was a visionary, once seeing "souls falling from grace in great numbers, like flakes in a snowstorm."  All that's interesting, I suppose.  However, in several accounts I've read of Colette's life, one detail stands out:  she may have been friends with Joan of Arc.  At the very least, Joan of Arc once passed through Moulins, France, and the convent where Collette lived.  Colette is famous by association.

Not that I think Colette rushed up to Joan's horse and begged her for an autograph.  Saints have this annoying habit of being unimpressed by things like celebrity.  They're more impressed with unimportant things like prayer and compassion and charity and good works.  Things that will never end up in the pages of People Magazine.

Rest assured, if Saint Marty had seen Joan of Arc passing by his house, he would at least have taken a picture with his iPad.

Joan of Arc's actual autograph