Drew Magary at Deadspin suggested everyone keep a running tally of celebrities they have seen outside of usual celebrity settings. Bobby Big Wheel followed suit, and since there’s not much to do but whine about the weather this morning, here’s what I’ve got. Obviously this doesn’t include concerts and stuff, and I’m excluding athletes because I see a lot of them in this job.

– Julianne Moore in a Starbucks in Chelsea.

– Heather Graham in a restaurant across the street from that Starbucks in Chelsea.

– Ludacris, walking right past my cubicle at MLB.com. I still have no idea why.

– Method Man, going into my favorite wing place in Brooklyn.

– Dan Patrick (does he count?), at a bar in Murray Hill.

– Carver from The Wire — at least I’m pretty sure — at Citi Field.

– Ralph Nader, walking alone down K St. in DC.

– Maggie Gyllenhaal in Gorilla Coffee in Brooklyn.

– Blair Underwood, on 5th Ave.

– Mike Myers, three different times, every time walking around the village alone with his iPod on.

– Matt Walsh from the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and small parts in like a billion movies and TV shows, when we both auditioned for the same Burger King commercial, and then again in the Ranch 1 across the street from the casting agency immediately thereafter.

– Rudy Giuliani, getting out of a livery car on 53rd St.

– George Pataki, in the lobby of my current office building.

– Eliot Spitzer, on 5th Ave.

– Philip Seymour Hoffman, across from the Brooklyn Museum.

– John Turturro, twice, once with a funny story: My girlfriend (now wife) and I were walking down Union St. in Brooklyn and Turturro walked right past us. I got all excited. “That was John Turturro!” And it turned out she had heard his name but had no idea who that was — she’s not so tapped in to pop-culture stuff. So I started listing like everything he did to try to jog her memory. He was Jesus in Big Lebowski, one of the dudes in Do the Right Thing. He was Barton Fink in Barton Fink, and he was one of the two not-George Clooney guys in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Nothing. She had seen a bunch of those movies but couldn’t identify Turturro in any of them. Later, we were in the bodega across the street from my apartment looking for Swiss Miss. The guy at the counter pointed us in the general direction but we couldn’t find it. While we were searching, the little 10-year-old son of the family that owned the place popped up behind us (holding the Swiss Miss) and scared the crap out of us.

As we were leaving, she says — I swear on my life — “He just snuck up on me, like the butler from Mr. Deeds!”

– The other funny celebrity sighting story: My friend Matt is one of the most conservative people I know (not politically necessarily, I just mean in terms of dress, behavior, everything else). He lived on my floor freshman year of college, and for the first several weeks I thought he was the dorm chaplain. Really nice guy, and just perpetually polite and respectful and dignified, like way moreso than anyone else I ever hang out with.

Anyway, we’re leaving a movie at the Sunshine down on Houston St. about five years ago, and he stops in his tracks, points at a woman crossing Houston about 15 yards in front of us, and quite nearly yells, “OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT GIRL’S ASS!”

It was so unlike him in every way that I had to muster up the strength to heed his command, and indeed, the backside was a sight to behold. “She has to be famous,” he said. “She has to be.” This was not the ass of a civilian.

Since we were behind her and walking north anyway, we followed her up 1st Ave. until she got into the back of an SUV and drove off. Jessica Simpson.

I saw Prince last night at the Garden. There’s a lengthier recap here, but here’s what you need to know:

Prince is awesome. He dances like Michael Jackson with the showmanship of James Brown and the guitar playing ability of, I don’t know, Slash maybe. It’s crazy. If you have an opportunity to see Prince, see Prince.

This reached a nadir when Ms. Young, some 85 minutes into the show, failed to defecate on cue, despite having given an advance interview advertising her ability to do so. She invited audience members to help her find ways of achieving her goal, and most obliged. They gave her cigarettes, Coca-Cola and practical advice about manipulation. They loosened her frock; she was wearing a full-length hooped dress with petticoat. They offered manual assistance. They encouraged her when she relocated to a chair after squatting over a bowl.

This went on for more than 10 minutes. Finally Ms. Young — claiming she must be nervous and admitting the show was running considerably over time — departed to complete her defecation in a restroom nearby. I was one of several (but too few) people who left at this point. I left partly because of the show’s sheer inefficiency. Principally, however, I felt that to remain would indicate that I shared the audience’s far-from-tacit consensus that Ms. Young deserved encouragement, and that this was fun or rewarding.

– Alastair Macauley, N.Y. Times.

Excuse me for waxing scatalogical, but what if the intention of Ann Liv Young’s performance-art piece (here reviewed by Macauley in hilarious fashion) was not to poop in front of a live audience, but to try and fail to poop in front of an audience? Maybe it was a massive failure, or maybe it was a bold meditation on performance anxiety, unmet expectations, and constipation.

I really need to get into performance art. It’s a great way to get people to praise you for behaving bizarrely.

I may have mentioned this here before (though I can’t find it if I have), but I launched a fake student-government campaign for my TV show in college that culminated in me and some friends unleashing thousands of bouncy balls in a crowded campus square while I shouted “Balls!” into a megaphone.

While we were doing it, a couple of grad-student types walked by and I heard one woman say, “must be some sort of performance art.”

Well, it wasn’t intended to be, ma’am. But if you want to call it that, I won’t disagree.