Admittedly I am one of those people who alwalys thinks she sees people she knows everywhere she goes. So the odds are quite poor that I actually did just see my old classmate/Massey-mate Chris Jones on E!'s "Tipped to Success" talking about Colin Farrel.
The odds are even worse given that I have already had a random run-in with Chris: while on a vacation Toronto in 2001, almost three years since I had last been there, sitting in a restaurant on College Street in Little Italy, I saw another Massey friend walk by. After a hurried round of "Beth? What in the world are you doing here?" and "What are you up to?", he said "You'll never guess where I'm headed: a book launch for Chris Jones!", after which I scarfed my meal, ran to the site of the book launch, pushed my way through a group of publishing in-crowdies, and surprised the crap out of Chris.
But I did just see him! I swear! And with a little help from Google, it makes sense. Last I had heard, Chris was writing about sports for the National Post in Canada, so why was he slumming it on E!? Now it seems he writes for Esquire, and he has in fact interviewed Colin Farrel. Last time I read that magazine, Chris is too smart for it. But hey, in addition to writing what I'm sure was a genius thesis about baseball stadiums, this is the person who dressed up for Halloween as chewing gum stuck under a chair (wearing pink long johns, a pink towel wrapped around his head, and a chair balanced on top), could be counted on to end up on the floor after parties, and licked a friend at our Christmas ball. But he's also the person who turned me on to historic preservation, a subject that has honestly changed my life, and lent me his copy of what became my favorite book, James Marston Fitch's Curatorial Management of the Built World, until I could afford one at Toronto's fancy architecture bookstore. For talking with me about ideas that burned in me as brightly as our desklamps across the quadrangle, for encouraging me, for understanding why I thought this was important, I will always remember him with respect and real fondness.
Well, that and the licking. Who can forget that?
