What is it with our obsession with celebrities? In the past, I’ve always played it too cool to act starstruck in the presence of a celebrity. I never liked playing the ‘”popularity game” and looking up to someone I didn’t even know. And I never liked the idea of bragging about which celebrities I’ve spotted, as if seeing someone somehow made me cooler. After all, these are just people. But this all changed last week when Hotel 57 hosted a supernova of a party to celebrate its opening, and a few times I caught myself staring just a little too long for people’s personal comfort. First, I spotted Chace Crawford from Gossip Girl. He came and left the room too quickly for me to point him out to Alex Young or my best friend, so I was accused of hallucinating. Chace isn’t a big enough celebrity to leave me that shocked, but for some reason I wanted to find him again and prove I wasn’t seeing things. On the roof terrace, Mr. Hudson performed a very entertaining show. However, my eyes kept drifting from the stage to see who else I could spot. My earlier Chace Crawford sighting was confirmed when I saw Penn Badgley, his costar, standing off to the side. I knew I wasn’t seeing things. Then came the BIG moment. I was having a conversation with Alex, when everyone’s attention seemed to focus on the middle of the audience. Ladies and gentleman, Brooke Shields was in the building. That was it for me. I left Alex standing alone and walked right up to Brooke Shields and said … nothing. I just stood there and stared. When I finally built up the courage to say something to her, I just skipped the hello and mumbled something along the lines of, “You look beautiful!”. She thanked me and started to look around the audience. I thought to myself, “She probably thinks I am a psycho.” I approached her again and asked her to take a picture with me. Of course, she agreed, and I shoved my camera in the hands of some other drooling fan and asked him to take our picture. My camera was out of battery, so it just flashed for several seconds without taking the picture. The man handed me my camera with no picture on it, and before I knew it, someone else was shoving a camera in my hand, asking me to take a picture of her and Brooke Shields. I thought to myself, I’m dead center in the middle of a popularity game, fighting strangers for Brooke Shield’s picture and attention. Defeated, I returned back to Alex, who had witnessed the whole thing and was laughing at me. So, I never got the picture and made myself look like a fool, but I was reminded that you can’t always keep your cool, and everyone gets a little starstruck now and then. –Courtney Centeno, account executive