My Forrest Gump Life

Not actually.

After tonight though, I can recall two intersections between me and (relatively) well-known folks.

After a day at work tabulating, checking, coding, debugging etc in the sports-statistics-computer software industry (an oft-recanted tongue twister of the summer past), I went to one of my most frequent haunts, Northwestern's 10,000,000$ gym overlooking Lake Michigan, SPAC (as opposed to NU's two broke gym's on Sheridan Patten and Blomquist, orUIC's 10,000,000$ gym overlooking 1-90), for a pre-dinner workout. Culminating my work-out with a shower, I realize after looking at the stall across from me, that I was showering with a professional (probably) swimmer. The shower, I decided was no place for two naked men to be introducing themselves. While drying ourselves off, the better sculpted of the two of us takes out a Team USA swimming bag with the name GREVERS embroidered on it. I then quickly realize I'm in the precense of NU's own recent swimming gold-medalist back-stroker, Matt Grevers. Diagologue ensues:
Wow! It's great to meet you! What are you doing in Evanston?

Some Marketing (??).

We were all so proud of you!!!!!!

Thanks....

Heres the minor historical figure:
Episode #2 occurred tonight. Four friends and I went to a concert tonight in Wicker Park featuring, K'naan, a Somalian rapper/poet who illustrates his own violent childhood in Mogadischu with hip-hop, reggae and rock in the background.

The show was scheduled to start at 7:00pm, and like most concerts did not begin until an hour after the scheduled start time.

Around 7:40, my friend Kyle and I go out for some fresh air. Without realizing it, a tour bus was parked across the street. Out of the bus comes a posse, with an obvious K'naan (he was dressed as he is on the cover of his new CD and his prevoius one (below):amongst them. Immediately, I alert Kyle and fumble for my camera.

As with Grevers, I also stammered out some well-intentioned words:

K'naan! Welcome to Chicago!!

and attempted to give high fives to him and his whole crew. He made the awkward move to answer my high-five with a 'rock'. We then are implicated into an unwanted RPS post-match where I envelope his rock, with my paper....

Here are my two photo attempts. The first is K'naan through a cloud of smoke and the second, a very dark shot of K'naan walking into the Subterranean:
and
.

But seriously, how significant are Matt Grevers and K'naan. I'd rate them 1s out of 10, considering Forrest Gump. But then in the end, we are all humans; Grevers has to shower in the same showers I do, K'naan has to dress for the same Chicago weather (surprisingly serendipitously mild this weekend) that I do too. To what end do celebrities deserve to be glorified for their sake and our own?