spotting a worthwhile celebrity is like finding a needle in a haystack, except that los angeles is full of celebrities, and you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one needle in a haystack.

that being said, the first secret to becoming a good celebrity spotter is to just say that everyone you see is a celebrity, without prejudice. eventually, you’re going to be right. a key point to make here is that you have to know how to back down gracefully:

“oh, my god, it’s rob schneider! wait, no… but it might be his brother. that’s probably who it is. i heard he lives around here. hey, schneider! see, he turned around when i said schneider.”

there you go: you were wrong, but you redeemed yourself. you were graceful and charming, and you were thinking on your feet (while other people would have been sitting down, staring blankly into space, and drooling all over themselves). no one is going to bother finding out if rob scheider has a brother or not!

another secret is to trick yourself into believing the lies that you tell. so what if that guy doesn’t really look like ray romano? who cares if humphrey bogart has been dead for over fifty years? if you can make yourself believe it, then it’s true. that’s a fact.

here’s a good “for instance”: yesterday, at the bob hope airport in burbank i “saw” heidi fleiss standing on the corner like a hooker. the only proof i had that this was the actual heidi fleiss of my sick, perverted fantasies was that someone else agreed that the woman i saw “looked terrible”. i quickly used this opportunity to convince myself that someone in heidi fleiss’ position would have to do a lot of travelling for various reasons. i convinced myself that, having been excommunicated from the hollywood community, she must be living a horribly lonely life that would require her to travel unaccompanied. “but why is the former hollywood madaam hanging around burbank?” you ask. well, don’t ask. these are the kinds of thoughts young children mustn’t think.

remember, when judging a celebrity sighting, treat it more like a civil case than a criminal case. what i mean by this is that no one is going to die if you’re wrong. usually.