April Winchell

Your Almost Celebrity Sightings

Yesterday I mentioned that fake celebrity sightings might actually be more interesting than real ones. By that I mean people who almost look like someone famous, not just completely fabricated sightings. Let me give you an example:

GOOD: "Yesterday I saw someone who could have been Jack Klugman, buying a quarter chicken at Boston Market",

BAD: "Last Tuesday, Paris Hilton blew me for a bus token at the corner of Lankershim and Ventura".

The first example is good, because it most likely wasn't even him. The second example is bad, because it's probably true.

In any case, I asked you to send in your own sightings, including the pecentage of certainty that it was actually the star in question. Here's what we have so far:

I'm 80 percent sure I saw Lina Wertmuller on Fairfax and 6th picking up a poo her Pomeranian just laid using a Vons plastic shopping bag wrapped around her hand. I'm pretty sure. 80 percent. Yeah…80. Maybe 75.

There was a girl who was almost a dead ringer for Kirsten Dunst at the Harry Potter party in my town a few weekends ago. Likelihood it was really her: 0%, because I live in the suburbs of Northern California.

I was almost certain I saw Burt Bacharach examining Japanese eggplants at the Palisades farmer's market.

One of my little games is to pretend to have a star sighting.  "Don't look now, but I think Bill Cosby is sitting on the bench outside the Texaco across the street," and it will actually be Roscoe Lee Browne. Or "Look, William Daniels!" and it's actually the produce guy.  Which it could be that William Daniels IS the produce guy these days, but that's certainly none of my concern.

I was recently at Pavillions in Costa Mesa, and noticed a champagne colored Jaguar pulling into the parking lot. A pudgy white man emerged, decked out in a pair of white cotton dress pants and a pink striped dressed shirt with a large open collar, complete with gold chain necklace. I turned to my friend and said, "Doesn't that look like one of those old washed up rock stars from the late seventies"? Then I took a closer look, and realized it was Jeff Fenholt, formerly of Black Sabbath. He came out of the store pretty soon after he went in, and carried a plastic bag which contained what appeared to be a canned ham. I am 92% sure it was him.

I think I might have quite possibly seen Elaine Joyce! Yes, Elaine Joyce! Most notable performances include, Match Game '74, and — are you sitting down? An episode of QUINCY (she played,"stewardess"). Ms. Joyce was buying shoes at Neiman Marcus with her residuals from Quincy (maybe not. Probably just browsing). 92% sure it was her. She looked puffy and older, skinny and lollypop-like. No noticeable collagen lip injections though, which disappointed me.

About 5 years ago, my friend Lauren was at the Albertsons on Santa Monica and Lincoln.  She was standing at the check out and reading a celebrity magazine.  There was a photo of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck with a caption that read "the flavors of the month discover that the month is over." Lauren thought this was so funny that she had to share it with the woman in line behind her.  This caused them to get the attention of another man in line. He got annoyed and left the 12 items or less line. That man looked a lot like Ben Affleck. Lauren isn’t sure, but I like to think it was him.

It's an old one, April, but in 1979 — I was a mere child — I was in a Duane Reed Drugstore in NYC and a woman with shocking carrot colored hair shoved up inside a paisley kerchief came in and asked the counterperson if they carried  "Lee Press-on Nails". She had on huge black sunglasses, and sounded like Selma Diamond after an all-night Marlboro Red orgy. I am 95% sure it was Lucille Ball (or Harvey Fierstein, in the twilight of puberty).