I've been jealous of my friends' brushes with DC fame -- Kriston got to tell off Bob Novak! Yglesias knows Wonkette! Catherine's spotted Stephanopolous! The best I've managed so far is peering at Condi Rice's birthday party on my way to the bathroom at Galileo. That's okay... I guess.

Last night I came a little closer to evening the score. On my way home from the Y, stopping at Whole Foods to buy some organic cruelty-free skim milk (lactated in the presence of soothing quartz crystals, no doubt) I saw Dennis Kucinich. Well, okay, I didn't see him. The guy ahead of me in line saw him as I stupidly fiddled with my phone. The exchange went something like this:

Guy (sarcastically): Looks like it'd be a blast to work for him (points).
Me: Huh?
Guy: Over there. Kucinich.
Me: (thinking: what is he trying to say? "goose and finch"? "kaja goo goo"?)
Guy: Dennis Kucinich. He ran for president.
Me: That's like, uh, king, right?

At last I gathered my wits and snapped a cameraphone picture, which I seem to have immediately deleted on my way out of the store. But trust me: the three or four pixels you're missing out on would have been indisputably Kucinichesque. Other fascinating bits of Kucinichiania:

• even shorter than you'd think


• hair is made of plastic


• was giving the people at the bread counter a hard time vis a vis loaf selection, apparently