"Guess That Celebrity" Revealed!

Ok, a few things...
I am a little disappointed with you, blog readers.  I know that many of you read my last post, because a bunch of you have asked me about the celebrity in the picture.  And yet, not one comment?  Not one of you wanted to venture a guess?  Not cool, guys.  It's no fun to write a blog when no one leaves comments.  It's also no fun to spend money on a cool prize and have no one to give it to.  I actually wasn't going to even give you the answer, but I had already written like 3/4 of the blog and I figured I would be nice. :-)  But next time I'm going to need some more participation.  I still have this awesome prize to give away!

Posting this blog also has the OCD side of me freaking out, because it will throw things off chronologically (I haven't finished my baseball game posts from a couple of weeks ago).  But a lot of you were really bugging me, so here goes...

The celebrity in the picture was none other than...

Cory Monteith, star of the hit TV show, Glee!!

Now, let me give you the back story on this.  Most of you know that I am a huge pop culture nerd.  I am not one of those people that idolizes celebrities or really even envies them.  I am just very intrigued by and interested in them.  I love to know all the Hollywood gossip and can school just about anyone in TV/Movie/Celebrity trivia.  And, as referenced in an earlier post, I am also pretty notorious for running into celebrities.  This does not count as one of those celebrity encounters because I planned it in advance, but I still got to see some of the biggest names in Hollywood yesterday.

I don't watch a ton of TV (especially now that I have no cable), but I am actually a HUGE Glee fan.  I think the show is really clever and original, and being a big Broadway lover, the musical aspect of it is fantastic.  Now if you watch the show, you'll know that the McKinley High glee club has recently won regionals and is on their way to nationals in, yes that's right, New York City.  So the cast of Glee has been in town all week filming.  I knew this of course, but with the crappy weather and lots to do, I hadn't ventured out to try and find them. 

**Side note: when I went to the Stop N Shop on Wednesday, I noticed that the street right next to us was lined with cast trailers, so I got super excited that it was Glee that was shooting essentially in my own backyard. (Well if there was such thing as a backyard in New York)  Turns out they were shooting for a show called Damages, which I found out later is actually a Golden-Globe and Emmy winning show starring people like Glenn Close, Ted Danson, and Tate Donovan.  So still kind of cool, but not worth staking out the trailers or anything.**

But I digress.  Anyway, I knew Friday was my last weekday of freedom before I start my job next week.  It was also supposed to be an absolutely gorgeous day, highs in the seventies, sunny, and perfect.  Thursday night, I thought about what I wanted to do the next day, and I honestly just wanted to go check out a Glee shoot.  I had heard that they would be at Washington Square Park, so I got up early and went to check out the situation.  Nothing out of the ordinary was going on, other than an unusual amount of people hanging out because of the awesome weather.  So I got on my phone and looked up the shooting locations for the day.  There were 3 or 4 in the West Village/Greenwich area which was not far from the park, so I set out to see if I could track them down.  To no avail.  I walked by all of the places, and while it was clear that they had either just shot there or were getting ready to shoot, there was no sign of any celebrities.  So, finally, around 11:30, I decided I just needed to camp out and wait for them to show up.  I knew they were scheduled to film scenes in the park and they hadn't been there yet.  So I found a little bookshop, bought a book, went to Whole Foods and bought some lunch, and went back to Washington Square Park.  I staked out a bench and proceeded to eat my lunch.  I also struck up a conversation with a middle-aged guy who was sitting next to me.  He asked me how I managed to have such a beautiful day off from work and I filled him in on my life and move from Texas.  Luckily, I didn't fill him in on what I was doing in the park at that moment because after I had been sitting there talking to him for like 15 minutes, the two-way radio he is wearing starts to go off.  And I hear voices talking about lighting and production and call times and all that Hollywood mumbo-jumbo.  Then he gets up and starts setting up barricades right in front of where we were sitting.  Yes, folks, he was a Glee crew member.  He later came back by with some other crew member and said I would have to move from the bench I was sitting because they were going to need to shoot there.  He said, "We're filming for a show called Glee.  If you want to stay and watch, you can stand over there behind the barricades."  I totally played dumb, thanked him, and said I might stick around.  Haha.

Anyway, I took my place behind the big silver rails they had set up, along with about a million teenage girls who had started to gather around.  I felt a little stupid but after a morning of wandering the West Village, I knew that I wasn't going to give up without seeing these Glee kids.  Long story short, I ended up there for the next four hours, watching them film and contemplating whether or not I could punch some of the teenage girls around me and get out of the crowd before the cops could catch me.  Seriously, the producers gave us two rules - 1) Turn off the flash on your cameras, and 2) Don't scream.  And yet every time one the stars got anywhere near us, these kids started screaming. And calling them by their characters' names..."Finn, will you marry me?," "Puck,  you are SO HOT!!!," "Please come talk to us!!!"  And then they would get ticked if they wouldn't respond and yell mean things to them.  And I will say this, the cast was super nice and friendly, and waved to us sometimes between takes.  But they are doing their job.  They didn't have time to come chat with all the screaming teenagers (and me and this one guy next to me that was taking pictures for his 8-year old daughter) in the crowd.  If someone was screaming at me during my job, I wouldn't be half as nice as these guys were.  That picture I posted yesterday was of Cory having a little fun with us.  He took one of the paparazzi's cameras and started snapping pictures of us taking pictures of him.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  I got to see all of the actors that play the glee club members. The only big cast members that weren't there were Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch.  It was a huge production, as you'll see in the pictures. It was actually hard to get great pictures because there were so many crew members and so much equipment everywhere. But I did my best.  The rest of the post will just be my pictures.  I blew some of them up so you can see the actors better.  Enjoy!

Heather Morris (Brittany)



Cory Monteith (Finn) sitting on the bench where I had just been sitting.  Also, the guy in the red is clearly Chord Overstreet(Sam)'s stand-in



Group walking into the park (and singing).  You can kind of see Mark Salling (Puck), Chris Colfer (Kurt), and Heather  behind that guy in the black, Dianna Agron (Quinn), Ashley Fink (Lauren), Naya Rivera (Santana)



Mark, Chris, Heather, Cory, Naya, Chord Overstreet (Sam), and Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina)



Chord, Cory, Mark

Mark getting his makeup touched up

Heather, Ashley, Lea Michele (Rachel), Dianna, Corey

There's those Finn dance moves!  Haha.
Chord, Jenna, Heather, Cory, Mark

Harry Shum, Jr. (Mike), Lea, Chord, Jenna, Heather, Mark, Cory



Naya, Ashley, Lea, Kevin McHale (Artie), Harry, Heather, Jenna, Cory (and you can actually see Amber Riley, who plays Mercedes, under Jenna's arm)

Artie can walk!!  Well, no, but Kevin McHale can.



Dianna



Lea

 

Chris (thanks for posing!)



Amber Riley (Mercedes)
The guy facing us in the plaid is Dianna's brother

Naya (who is one of the most stunning people I have ever seen), Lea, and Harry in the background

Glee creator Ryan Murphy

The stand-ins for the actors, getting the marks set and whatnot

Dianna, Chord, and Ashley