I Touched Colin Farrell - I Need A Bath

 

There are times when even the most dedicated celebrity toucher can find themselves either too mentally exhausted (having just watched four season’s of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on DVD) or too physically exhausted (having just gone garage sale-ing with Angela Landsbury ) to actually react when a prime touching subject is near.  And, yes, dear reader, that has even happened to me.

 

The location was the Toronto Film Festival.  The would-be celebrity target was Hollywood’s equivalent to Bounty Paper Towels – the quicker picker upper, Colin Farrell.  Here’s the deal with Colin Farrell:  In person, you can take one look at him and know he is about as clean as a McDonald’s bathroom in New Orleans.  But he is a celebrity and even with his musty man parts, he is worthy of a touch when encountered.  The problem was: I was dead beat.

 

I ran into Colin as I was near comatose, getting on an elevator in the wee hours of the morning.  He was getting off said elevator, a cloud of Irish man scent mingling with the latest Walgreen’s female fragrance (perhaps Avril Lavine’s Body Mist) following closely behind.  He was just inches away.  No body guard.  No barriers.  And that is when it happened:  I let him walk right by.  The elevator doors closed, and that was it.

 

At this point, my trusted travel companion Elizabeth reached up with her good hand (the one that wasn’t injured in a BlueFly.com Accessory Wall scuffle on Project Runway) and slapped me across my good cheek (the one that wasn’t punched by Abigail Breslin in the incident forever known as “The Pound Puppy Massacre of 2003”).  Elizabeth was appalled that I had let such a prime celebrity touch escape my grasp. I explained that I was too tired to touch the man-whore that is Colin Farrell.  She slapped me again and said “Being tired is no excuse.  If great people would have stopped trying just because they were tired, do you think Diane Von Furstenburg would have invented the Wrap-Around Dress?  I think not!)

 

With that inspiration, I pushed the elevator button to head back down to the lobby.  Naturally, Colin was there when I arrived, surrounded by tramps of all sizes and shapes.  This posed a problem.  Because we were in Toronto, he wasn’t surrounded by the typical anorexic Hollywood star-f*ckers, which usually provide ample space to reach in between their exposed rib cages to get a quick celeb touch.  There was no entry point to easily reach Colin without being detected, unless I tried the often-unreliable “Andy Dick Drunken Stumble and Grope.” 

 

No, I decided that the only point of entry was from behind… behind the pillar he was leaning against.  The idea was that I would blindly reach around the pillar and gently graze whatever body part I came across.  This is always a danger, as it sometimes results in touching a groupie, or touching the buttocks region of the intended target, which is off-limits in celebrity touching for obvious reasons.  So, as I reached around the pillar, nervous about what I might accidently caress, I couldn’t have been more pleased to find my hand brushing ever-so gingerly against Colin’s lower back.  I knew it was him because whatever clothing I was touching felt surprisingly similar to the inside of an empty bucket of extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken.

 

As I walked away, squirting a healthy dose of Purel into my left hand, I vowed never again to let mere exhaustion get in the way of a good celebrity touch.

Celebrity Quick Touch - Lars Ulrich

 

Celebrity Touch Target: Lars Ulrich

 

Why: Because I thought the outspoken drummer for heavy metal rock band Metallica was actually nonagenarian Betty White

 

Where:  United Airlines flight from JFK to SFO

 

How:  It is a known fact that rock stars age about as well as a Jim Carrey RomCom.  So when you see a rock legend in person, you are as likely to mistake them for a sad, week-old Edible Arrangement, as you are a Grammy-award winning artist.  That is exactly why my faithful travel companion Elizabeth had to point out, on a recent flight from New York, that the shriveled thing sitting in First Class wasn’t a coworker’s half-hearted attempt to gain favors through skewered fruits and vegetables, but the perpetually angry little drummer for heavy metal band Metallica.  Complete with a buckwheat-filled neck pillow (Enter Sandman indeed!), Lars Ulrich and his wispy Crypt Keeper coiffure was unfortunately many, many rows away from my well-manicured Celebrity Touching fingers.  The closest thing to a celebrity near me was the caterwauling Russian infant across the row looking to replace Ann Wilson as the lead singer of Heart (not possible).  How was I going to touch Lars if I was way back here? Would I be denied this prime Celebrity Touch™?  As luck would have it, when we landed, the gods (and by gods, I mean Stevie Nicks, Pat Benatar and Debbie Harry) were with me, because Lars got up from his seat and just stood there… as if he was actually waiting for me… or maybe he thought I was Steven Tyler given the multitude of vibrant hemp scarves I was donning due to something called a “Polar Vortex.”  I shimmied up the aisle like Axl Rose in genital-restricting John Varvatos leather trousers and grazed Lars’ grandma clapper as I walked past.  Surprisingly, he didn’t disintegrate like so many Ark of the Covenant-gazing Nazis. Celebrity Touch secured!