Last week, I blogged about my friend’s awkward interchange with infomercial legend Ron Popeil.
I invited blog readers to come up with clever things to say to Mr. Popeil, offering a prize to the best answer.
Having now slogged through hundreds of blog comments on the subject, I’m left with two general conclusions:
- A surprising number of blog readers agreed with me that the right thing to do is just to leave the celebrities alone.
- Nobody (at least at this blog) has anything very interesting to say to a random celebrity.
I read through the blog comments and wasn’t particularly struck by any of them. So I asked some of the researchers who work for me to go through the comments and pick their five favorites. Whenever I’ve done this in the past on subjective Freakonomics quizzes, there has been substantial overlap in opinions about what the best answers are. In this case, however, there was no agreement on the good answers.
Nonetheless, I promised to give some prizes, and I’m going to throw them to my former student Salar Jahedi (commenter 31), who is now a professor at the University of Arkansas. Salar wrote his dissertation about bargains, allowing him the opportunity to walk up to Popeil, look him right in the eye, and truthfully say, “I wrote my PhD dissertation to rationalize your business model.”
I bet that is one greeting that Popeil has never heard before.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
FIX!
(For those that don’t know, I’m just kidding)
There is, by definition, no such thing as a random celebrity.
Although I did not see the rejects, I applaud your choice — it shows the greeter’s involvement and community with the celebrity; and, I believe, may give some pleasure to Mr. Popeil.
Paul Kostro is a good-hearted soul — he commends the winning selection on the basis that it “may give some pleasure to Mr. Popeil.” I was shocked by how many people came up with rude things to say to celebrities. The only viable explanation I can think of is envy.
I agree with the original approach. Recognize the celebrity, express your appreciation of their work, then return to what you were doing. Celebrities, like most people, enjoy being recognized and having their work appreciated. What they don’t want is to get button-holed by some major time suck when they are on their own time. When you approach the celebrity there will often be an awkward moment because they fear you will be that time suck but once that moment passes I think they appreciate the recognition.
The perfect response finally occurred to me!
“You ought to be on TV” (or the movies, etc.).
All Celebrities are NOT created equal. On the low end you have Ron Popeil and Balloon Boy. In the middle you have Paris Hilton, Mark Hamill and Greg Kinear. At the higher end you have the Pope, Obama, Lebron James and Lady Gaga.
Even mid level celebrities have access problems meeting Obama, Michael Jackson(RIP) and Lady Gaga. At the high end there is retinue, security and scheduling problems. You will not just bump into the Pope at the ATM line.
So you are consigned to the low level celebs like the candidates for American Idol or the Castaways from Gilligan’s Island. Some of the long forgotten would be pleased just to be recognized. Many have large Egos. Buy them a cup at Starbucks and chat–Celebs tend to like Mochachinos with soy milk.
I try to come up with the most obscure reference I can think of. Say for Michael Richards, I’d reference UHF rather than the more obvious Seinfeld. As in, “Hey, kids, look! It’s the guy from Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse! We loved that bit!”
Once I waited in line after a concert to get a word with a musician who was hanging with the crowd. People were taking pictures with him, but when I (with my friends) got up to him in line, I asked him vaguely but excitedly, “Would you mind taking a picture?” He agreed thinking that we were like all the other fans until I handed him my camera and posed with my friends so he could snap a shot of us (he intentionally took it of our knees as a return joke).