Map of the Star / by Courtney Mehlhaff

I'd like to think I'm not overly impressed by anyone's "celebrity" status, but I haven't really met any famous people.

I did see Stevie Wonder at a hotel once. And no, just to head this next joke off at the pass, he did not see me.

The one time I found myself in a room with a movie star, I was out for dinner with a large group of friends at a Thai place in Minneapolis. Shortly after we arrived, someone pointed out that Josh Hartnett was sitting at a table at the far end of the restaurant. He was in a chunky sweater and a baseball cap, trying his best to be inconspicuous. Bear in mind, this was around 2003.

Now I don't know if, for the native Minneapolis dwellers, the idea that somebody the caliber of Prince could literally pop up anywhere at any time had desensitized them to being starstruck . . . but nobody in my group batted an eye at this discovery.

What we did instead was simple -- we used him as a navigational tool. For the rest of the evening, whenever anyone asked where the bathroom was, we replied, "Down the hall, and hang a right at Josh Hartnett."

While his performance as signpost earned him no major awards, it was definitely powerful. And effective.