I’m still on a bit of a high after meeting Rob Lowe on Friday. Meeting someone famous is such a surreal experience (I can hear my Dad saying, “but nice”!). You get this odd feeling of lowliness, standing in front of another human being, and yet there is also a reminder of common humanity: here you are, standing face to face with this person you have stared at for hours in pixels fed through wires and all of a sudden they are flesh and blood and they have an arm around you while you stare into a camera (or, in my case, close your eyes while a camera flashes).

I’ve met a handful of famous people (the most notable three being, of course, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, and Rob Lowe. John Hannah and Metallica were really quite accidental). I remember being my younger self, standing beside Celine, posing for innumerable photos, her arm around me and my hand on her shoulder. The smell of her perfume was the strangest thing. Perhaps it was because I knew her voice and her image was a constant in my life at that point, but to be suddenly standing beside her with her hair under my hand and her perfume in the air was a reminder of the reality that was ironically even more surreal than the distance had ever been.

And why is it I always turn into such an idiot in these situations? Famous people probably can be excused for thinking their fans are a bunch of silly, nervous adolescents if everyone gets as weak kneed as I do when I meet someone famous.

“I’m fine. How are you?” “The show was great” “How are you doing?”

Isn’t there anything more interesting to say??

Fame is such a strange phenomenon. To be a fan is really just a socially acceptable form of obsession. It’s one of those artificial products of technology and mass media – a bit like online relationships – where you can make believe you know someone without ever having met them. Take the scene in Notting Hill, for instance, where Honey meets Anna at her birthday party and makes a fool of herself while gushing about how she has always imagined that they’d be perfect best friends. We are meant to laugh, but doesn’t it hit home? (Although perhaps most of us wouldn’t go quite so far as to follow the movie star into the bathroom!) Of course, there's a shameful element to fanship, too: the bit where you have to admit to going to a Boyzone concert when you were younger (less embarrassing, since I was very young), or to stalking Celine Dion in London (I was still much younger, but it still sounds a bit odd). Tastes certainly change, but these are experiences that stay with you -- make you who you are.

Anna Nalick has a song called In My Head about the way we project ideal illusions onto the famous people we idolize:

Under the weight of your wings
You are a god and whatever I want you to be
And I wonder if truly you are
Nearly as beautiful as I believe

In my head
Your voice
You've got all that I need
And this make believe will get me through
Another lonely night

Under the weight of your wings
Should ever we meet on your side of your stereo
I will pretend I know not of your thoughts
And even the way that they mirror my own
I'll take you away in the way that you take me and go where I go

But, of course, all that said and done, this particular actor was certainly quite beautiful up close (beautiful is by far the appropriate word). We had third row seats at the theatre (without an orchestra, so we were within spitting distance… quite literally...) The play was actually excellent. Rob’s sons were in the audience too. They’re such beautiful little boys (figures). After the show, we saw someone giving one of the boys a birthday present. He’s probably only about eight or nine, and he was so incredibly polite and polished in his acceptance.

Going to a show and getting caught up in the excitement and electricity of it all always involves a little bit of a melancholy aftermath. I wonder why, and I wonder whether famous people ever feel that way. You imagine that they never would: they have everything. But it’s all just illusions, really. You just have to read Jann Arden's journal to realise this...

Anyway, this blog serves the perfect purpose of being a blank wall for me to gloat to about having met Rob Lowe, since I don’t have anyone to gloat to, really. Lori had fun telling Rebecca. But none of my family really know who he is, and besides, Mum & Dad are busy living it up in California right now (lucky for some!)



For more photos of meeting Rob, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluelikethat/sets/1318251/