Friday, 07 March 2003 | VUP

Wednesday night: I was standing at a small round table filled with scattered brochures and magazines, there to answer any questions asked about NRDC. I had spotted Sigourney Weaver right away; I knew she was going to be there (she was hosting the event), but I didn't expect for her to look so familiar and pleasant, as if I know her because she's one of my parents' good friends, someone who's hung out in my living room with us on the other side of the TV. And I didn't expect her to come up to my table while I was standing there alone and watch the looping footage of rainforest animals in Belize, which was playing on the small screen right beside my head.

Rather than saying "hi," as any normal person would've said (or as I would've said to any normal person), I looked around at everything else—everything but her—as if she weren't even standing there. I wasn't trying to be rude, but just the opposite. The five minutes that she stood there, I kept reminding myself, "That's Ripley/the Gatekeeper/Dian Fossey/Janey, all crammed into one real person," and I kept hoping she'd have a question for me to break the awkward silence. Instead, my partner at the table walked up and said hello to her, and of course she said hello back and was very kind and I felt stupid for being so awkward and for not treating her like anyone else.

It's strange, the effect the famous have on the unfamous, and the feeling you (as the unfamous) drag around with you after hanging out in a room speckled with Very Important Persons for an evening. It's easy to swing back and forth between feeling like a VUP and reminding yourself that there's really no inherent difference between VIPs and VUPs. Except that maybe one of the VUPs was wearing a $6 necklace, hair dye that was administered in her kitchen, chipped black fingernail polish, and that she really cares about an $105 parking $105 parking ticket.

During the course of the evening, we ate and drank and wandered around and watched the event while hovering in doorways.

...

Today I'm leaving for Austin, for SxSW. Back on Tuesday.