How how how could I resist you?

Let me begin by saying that I think people who claim never to be starstuck are lying. Granted, this is coming from a person who gets really excited about "stars". I don't even like Julia Roberts, but I still followed her around like a crazy person when I saw her at Whole Foods a few years ago. (So did everyone else in the store) My freshman year of college, as my friends and I were waiting in line to hear Tom Hanks speak, I made a "Tom Hanks is here!" fortune teller/cootie catcher. I know, I'm pretty cool. But at least I'm willing to admit when I am starstuck. Yes, it's kind of lame to get all excited about famous people, but I never ask for autographs or anything like that. (OK, well, one time I did, but it was for my sister, and I made a complete fool of myself telling Lisa Kudrow that we named our dog after her-- a moment of mortification never to be repeated.) We live in celebrity-obsessed times, and um, yeah, I get a little thrill when I walk by Gene Hackman's pillow store in Santa Fe. It may be frivolous, but I take my fun where I can get it.

While I get excited about all manner of celebrities I've happened to encounter (Ted Danson, Michael Chabon, Obama before he was "Obama") there is a certain level of golly-gee excitement reserved for famous people I actually really like. Yesterday, as I literally dragged K to go see "Mamma Mia!" with me, three of them came to mind: Meryl Streep, Toni Collette, and Estelle Getty.

I don't like Abba practically at all. Except for "Dancing Queen" which we used to listen to at camp dances between rounds of the macarena. I don't know anyone who does like Abba, except for this guy I was friends with, and after he revealed to me his sincere enjoyment of the band, I decided he was kind of pathetic. Still, though, I saw Mamma Mia on stage when I was fourteen, and boy what a lot of fun. You can only imagine my unbridled excitement at seeing the movie adaptation starring Meryl Streep. Like half the planet, I worship ol' Meryl, probably to an unhealthy degree. As I tell anyone who will listen, one time she touched my shoulder, said my name, and told me she liked my buttons. (She and my cousin were co-board members at the time, and I wheedled an introduction out of her) Yeah, that was a high point of age nineteen.

Mamma Mia the movie did not disappoint, or at least it didn't disappoint me. K checked his cell-phone for the time on six occasions throughout the film, but he gallantly escorted me. Moreover, he tolerated my renditions of "Waterloo" and skipping and dancing through the grocery store after the movie was over. To be clear, it's a ridiculous film, full of cheese, fluff and bullshit. But (I'm pretty much stealing NYT critic AO Scott's review here) Meryl (and Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski et al) knows that the film is as silly as it is, and she has a great time with it. They all do-- and if I can suspend my disbelief to see Christian Bale leap off of buildings and drive a monster-truck motorcycle in "The Dark Knight", well, then, I can suspend it in the other direction and watch Meryl and Pierce sing "SOS" to each other and then engage in bikini-clad conga lines up and down the Greek isles. (By the way, I want to move to Greece. Preferably to my own private island with clean whitewashed buildings, cobblestoned walkways, chalky cliffs and tall pines.)

No less absurd, equally entertaining and a good deal more poignant is the 1994 film "Muriel's Wedding." My beloved AO Scott (another one I'd go crazy to meet) put up the following lovely little montage about Muriel's Wedding, because like Mamma Mia, it's also structured around the songs of Abba. Muriel (Toni Collette) lives with her lazy, mean family in Porpoise Spit, a small town in Australia. Her friends are mean to her too, they're bitchy cheerleader types and it's not clear why they're friends with Muriel in the first place. Muriel has two obsessions: the music of Abba, and getting married.



In the video, Scott clips a scene from Muriel's Wedding that could have been taken straight from Mamma Mia. Muriel and her new pal Rhonda (played by Rachel Griffiths) do a really awesome feather-boa wearing lyp-synch to Waterloo. Similarly, the cast of Mamma Mia breaks into song and strictly choreographed dance at the drop of a hat, but of course, they do this in the "musical theater is real" world. Muriel and Rhonda are clearly performing, but they may as well not be. To them, Abba's song and dance routines are as natural as real life, and more fun than most of what their lives are actually about. It's escapism, and watching Muriel in her room in the early scenes of the film listening to Abba and looking at brides magazines initially makes one pity her. Later though, Muriel starts to get a life and kick ass, and the pity slowly evaporates. It's like being starstruck-- we all have our personal Abbas and stacks of bridal magazines. Or, erm, "I met Meryl Streep" stories, and Tom Hanks themed fortune tellers.

On an unrelated note, other than the fact she's a celebrity I adore, Estelle Getty died yesterday. All hail the late great Golden Girl!