the trinity

We’ve been bad bad bloggers. 

Sorry lovers, but the holidays took a toll on all of us, not to mention New York City is officially an arctic tundra, thus keeping the celeb sightings at bay.

Fortunately, the NBR Awards continued as scheduled in a warm & toasty locale in midtown Manhattan on January 12th, 2010. For a more rounded list of who was there (and who snuck out the backdoor), check out Lauren’s write-up over at Examiner.com. You might want to subscribe to that baby as well…just sayin!

As our personal twitter followers may already know, we had the pleasure of meeting Ben Foster and Anna Kendrick, as well as Meredith Viera, Ellen Burstyn, Wes Anderson, Jason Reitman, Vera Farmiga, and the one and only George Clooney. We were only able to get photographs with Ben and Anna (you can see Lauren’s here). However, almost everyone we asked was very gracious and signed for us/thanked us for even waiting.

I, personally, was incredibly impressed by Ellen Burstyn, Wes Anderson, and Jason Reitman. A short barricade was set up with autograph hounds stationed tightly along the front. We were behind them, but against the side barricade, facing the street. Ellen, Wes, and Jason signed for a few in the front and went to leave, but saw us standing behind the hounds and came back for us. Very, very cool.

Gabourey Sidibe was also told not to sign anything, but against the word of her handler, she came over anyway. She was adorable! Vera Farmiga and Carey Mulligan were also kind enough to make a stop our way. Vera is beautiful. Carey is a doll.

George Clooney was gracious as always and signed for as many pages as he could get his hands on. In the short clip above, you can even hear him playing around with the autograph hounds and calling one of them a “fucker”. I fell in love with him after that.

However, the gold stars for best celebrity contacts last night go to Ben Foster and Anna Kendrick. We saw Ben in the calm between the arrivals and departures as he came out for a cigarette. (*Side Note: Guy smokes like a chimney.) I was super excited because I’ve been watching Ben since I was 10 in Disney’s “Flash Forward”. (Tucker James, I heart you!) In fact, he may have been where my love for awkward boys started. Anyway, there were a few hounds at the time, and they called him over. He looked somewhat peeved, but he came over, asked, “What the hell are you guys doing here?”, and started signing stuff anyway. I peeked over, and asked if I could take a picture with him. He looked up and said, “Absolutely.” A few of the hounds jumped in between Ben and me, and then some other guy jumped in for a picture, too. Afraid he was going to run away, I scooched closer, and he turned to me.

Ben: Hi, what’s your name? (holds out his hand)
Me: June (takes his hand)
Ben: June? It’s very nice to meet you. (squeezes my hand)

It was a golden 2 seconds. We took the picture, and I hid the next 4 times he came out to smoke.

But, the coup de gras of the evening was most definitely Miss Anna Kendrick. As many of you know, Lauren aka @aliceinnyc has been trying to meet Anna for months. She is Lauren’s female equivalent of Taylor Lautner. There have been many unsuccessful attempts, but none so prominent as the David Letterman debacle. Still, Anna was sincere enough to message Lauren to apologize for not stopping on her way out (after not getting to Lauren on her way in). For the time being, it was sufficient contact.

After long months of freezing her butt off waiting for a chance encounter with Miss Kendrick, last night, Lauren accomplished her goal. Anna didn’t appear to have any intention of stopping, but this being the umpteenth time Lauren had come for her (and the fact that a few more minutes and both of us would’ve had to have our toes amputated), there was no holding back. Lauren mustered up a yell to her resembling something like “Anna! Letterman!” Immediately, Anna looked up and came straight to Lauren. It was kismet. ;P Signing for us, Anna was wonderfully sweet and kind. She continued signing all the photographs that the hounds were shoving in her face, at one point announcing “I don’t know what I’m signing! I don’t know how I’m signing! Just so you know!” When we asked to take pictures with her, she graciously replied “Of course!” As she walked back to her car, Lauren said “Good luck on Sunday!” Anna turned around to smile and yell “Thank you!” Mission complete.