Spotted...

How could I have forgotten!? I had a great brush with fame this weekend. As I arrived at Extra Virgin in the West Village for my friend Julie's birthday dinner, I saw, the one, the only... DEAN WINTERS!!!!1 Who the fuck is Dean Winters??? Good question. I did not know him by name until Friday night when I saw him and immediately imdb-ed him on my phone. Most recently, Dean Winter's is best known for his role on 30 Rock as Dennis Duffy - Liz Lemon(Tina Fey)'s ex-boyfriend who refers to her as "dummy", fucked her best friend, diagnosed himself via webMD with a sex addiction, and whose latest investment venture is a coffee vending machine in a basement of a Wal-Mart. I'm sorry, that's just genius.


And here's a side note for everyone/anyone who has ever said a bad thing about 30 Rock and/or Tina Fey - Telling me you don't like Tina Fey is like telling me you think George Bush was a good President. A. You're just wrong. B. I like you significantly less than I did the second before you said that to me, regardless of how much i liked or disliked you before. and C. Get a life and/or sense of humor.

But back to Dean Winters. The mental scavenger hunt I had to go on to find Dean Winter's name on imdb was a good time. The first thing I remembered him from when I saw him was Sex and the City. I said that to the group of people I was with, who responded with blank stares. That's like one of the worst feelings ever. Not really the worst feeling as much as just the exact opposite of the feeling of extreme joy I get when someone else knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I clarified to the group by saying, "He plays Carrie's fuck buddy in the episode he's in...?" (the "...?" denotes my voice going up at the end of the sentence and my brows raising in hope that someone is going to catch on here!) More blank stares and also one fake gasp regarding my using the word "fuck" in front of Julie's parents. Trust me, I know which parents I can swear in front of and which ones I can't. I was fine with Marty and Joan.

First I thought my poor description was the reason no one else knew who he was -- no one else had seen him walk by because they were all faced towards me to greet me as I approached them on the street and he was walking towards me, so their backs were to him (all eyes on me in the center of a ring just like a ciirrrrcus?). But after I imdb-ed Sex and the City and realized (more like re-realized, since this has happened to me at least 4 times in the history of my life) that finding a random man that was a love-interest of one of the ladies on Sex an the City is WAY harder than finding a needle in a hay stack. There are just too many. Even if you know the title of the episode, which in this case, was in fact, "The Fuck Buddy", it's not easy enough to navigate imdb on a blackberry. And getting an iphone is certainly not an option, so on went the scavenger hunt...

I switched over to the next show I recognized him from: Law and Order: SVU (it should have been 30 Rock but I was thinking in terms of older shows and I didn't even remember he has been on 30 Rock multiple times until I read it on imdb). We're not talking about Benson and Stabler here people (although everyone everywhere should ALWAYS be talking about Benson and Stabler because they're the best detective tag-team-duo EVERRRRRR) we're talking the second-rate actors who played second-rate detectives that are in older eps. (Like a poor-man's Munch and Finn- a reference for the avid SVU watchers) Dean Winters was "Detective Cassidy" on SVU in the 1999-2000 season, which I believe was the inaugural season of SVU. Obviously finding the name "Dean Winters" only confused the people I was with even more, because they still had no clue who I was talking about and putting a name to the face when the name doesn't ring a bell was just a step backwards on this journey.

I then scrolled through Dean Winter's filmography on imdb, saying "Oh my god, I'm so stupid. You guys watch 30 Rock right?" More. Blank. Stares. He's also in "P.S. I Love You" which I didn't bring up to them because I still can't really remember who he was in that movie, maybe that's because when I saw that movie in theaters I spent it curled up in a ball in my movie chair, rocking back and forth and hysterically crying. What? Don't act like you've never done it. Very therapeutic and far less expensive than a therapist. The thing about crying in a movie is that once you're done, you cant just look back and be like, oh it's just a movie. I love crying in movies because of that and always prefer crying at the fake awful events of someone else's life as opposed to the hideous ones in my own. It would be too depressing. And even though the movie people's lives aren't real, the stuff that happens in them is usually way worse than what's gone down in mine so far. But it is a good reminder to be thankful for what you have because it could be worse... WHOA. TOOOOO SERIOUS!

Back to Dean Winters. At this point I had showed Julie, her sister, her boyfriend, her mom and her dad the picture of Dean Winters on my phone and still no one knew who he was. I had given up on them and decided I needed to share this with someone who would appreciate it as much as I did A-SAP. Step 1: bbm my roommate even though at this point I'm sitting at a dinner table (I'm rude). It took her a little while, I said "Detective Cassidy from old school SVU" to which she responded "The girl?" Easy mistake, she was obviously thinking of Detective Jefferies, the black female detective who was also a second rate back-up detective in old school SVU and was only on for the first two seasons. I responded "NO! The guy!!!!!!!!" and then she knew what I was talking about.

But then Saturday, when I was taking a leisurely walk with my good friend Dickie, I said "OMG! Did I tell you who I saw last night? Detective Cassidy from old school SVU... Tina Fey's ex-boyfriend on 30 Rock..." her response: "Oh! The guy from Sex and the City?" YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So THAT'S why we're best friends??!!