Good artists borrow; great artists steal. Something like that. My cousin Delphine has a quote about art and stealing as part of the signature in her e-mail messages; it's Walt Whitman, or e. e. cummings, or someone. I think it actually says "great POETS steal," but at any rate, I'm stealing an idea from my friend Jacques, who wrote a lovely and evocative piece about unusual encounters he's had, here.

Jacques lives in Paris, where as I imagine it, you can see international stars of greatness flocking in throngs at all hours of the day, and I live in Southern California, where you can see, like, the guy from "The Last American Virgin" at the video store. As a result, you might notice that my own list of encounters lacks a certain "je ne fwa fwah," but please try to sense the magic, because I do the best with what I'm given.

Inauspicious Encounters.

• When I was seventeen, Ray Davies, lead singer of the Kinks, kissed me, causing me to faint into the arms of the security guards rushing up to haul me away


• I met a multimillionaire radio network mogul in LAX and he changed my seat to one next to him in first class, then offered me an apartment in either New York or LA, with the caveat that I couldn't date anyone else, even though he was married. Years later, I saw a Vanity Fair spread on his enormous mansion, and experienced a momentary twinge of regret. I shook it right off, though, because hey: Violet don't need no clinging vines.


• I met Jonathan Richman at Slim's in San Francisco after a concert, while wearing the pajamas I had inexplicably chosen as my attire for the evening. His friendly, enthusiastic greeting was abruptly halted by his girlfriend, who interrupted us to call, "Jonathan, look! It's Buster!" and draw his attention to a homely little dog standing nearby.


• Willie "Loco" Alexander played a show with my theatre group in Boston, and my friends encouraged me to go talk to him, which I did for maybe five seconds, cutting short the exchange out of self-conscious nerves. My friend Winston looked at me and shook his head with disappointment. "That was so lame," he said, still shaking his head.


• The Keelhauler and I attended a dinner with a musician from a huge '80s arena rock band and his wife. The whole time, he told stories from his days on the road, and gossiped about other musicians. When he stepped away for a moment, his wife confided in me that when she'd married him, she thought she'd start riding in limos with fabulous celebrities, but instead, he just wanted to hang around with "nobodies" so he'd be the most famous person in the room. "Yeah," she sighed, "he's like the king of the losers."

Star of the day. . .Jeff Koons