Three Encounters of the Celebrity Kind

If you have ever lived in the Los Angeles area, you've got to have at least one celebrity encounter story. After living here for seventeen years, you would think Loretta and I would have a score of them. In fact, we only have three—all of which are fairly pathetic.

The first encounter was shortly after we moved here, when we were still living in an apartment in Agoura Hills. I was getting something from the storage facility that held all of the stuff that wouldn't fit in our apartment. When I had retrieved what I came for, I went looking for the manager to let her know I was finished. I found her in the parking lot, talking to a guy that looked a lot like David McCallum.

"Hey," I thought. "This guy looks a lot like David McCallum."

I looked at him, trying very hard not to look as if I was looking at him. He looked at me as if he expected me to say something, which I didn't. He said a few more words to the manager ("Hey," I thought. "This guys sounds a lot like David McCallum."), and he left. When he was gone, I said to the manager, "You know, that guy looked and sounded a lot like David McCallum."

"That's because it was David McCallum," she said. "He stores his golf clubs here."

There I was, not three feet away from Illya Kuryakin, and I never spoke to him. Clearly, he expected me to, but I said nothing. He must have thought I was an idiot.

As sad as that story is, it's not as pitiful as Loretta's. One evening, she came home from having dinner in Malibu with some of her co-workers. "You'll never guess who was sitting in the booth next to ours!" she said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Wink Martindale!"

"Not the Wink Martindale?"

"Yes!"

"Famous host of numerous television game shows, including Gambit, High Rollers, and Tic-Tac-Dough?"

"Yes!"

It turned out she didn't actually see him, she just recognized his voice, so I don't know how she could be so sure it was Wink Martindale. I wouldn't have known if it was Wink Martindale, Bob Barker, or Chuck Woolery. All game show hosts sound alike to me.

Speaking of game show hosts, I now come to our third encounter.

Nine years ago, our friends invited us to accompany them on a limousine wine tour of the Santa Ynez Valley. At lunch time, we picked up sandwiches from a restaurant in Los Olivos and ate them at tables on the front porch of the next winery we stopped at. As soon as we sat down to eat, we were joined by a dog. Don't ask me to describe him—we visited a lot of wineries that day. All I can tell you is that in size he was somewhere between a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard, and, as I recall, he wore a stylish red bandana around his neck. Also, he was very friendly—especially when we shared some of our food with him. We asked the owner of the winery about him.

"Oh, he's not our dog," he said. "He belongs to our neighbor, Bob Eubanks."

That's right. We had lunch with Bob Eubanks' dog.

Top that.