Editor’s note: Once I was with another journalist who had come upon a press-weary Bill Gates backstage at a tech trade show in Atlanta. I figured she could help me ask him some tough questions about Microsoft’s antitrust trial, a big deal at the time.
Instead, my fellow journalist whipped out a camera and asked Gates if he’d pose in a picture with her. It was a journalistic disaster, at least for me.
I’ve never come across this, however:
“Will Smith is in the middle of a press tour for “Men in Black 3″ and got more than he bargained for while in Moscow this week,” according to the Huffington Post.
“Smith was walking a press line when a reporter stopped him to give him a hug and attempted to kiss him.
“According to TMZ, the man involved in the incident is a TV reporter who likes to kiss celebrities.
The rest is here.
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I know Will is famous and the cameras were rolling, but the cheek kissing thing is as Russian as the Volga. Go with the flow, Will, my friend. When I was in the Georgian SSR in 1972, one part of the USSR where Stalin was still quite popular–his photograph could still be seen adorning many an otherwise bleak wall. And for the week we were there, I was drunk most of the time. A submission by me to the culture of the locals, whom upon discovering we were Americans in an eatery, even for breakfast, would join us with grins often a glitter with gold capped teeth and order a pitcher of vodka. I’d make sure it was Stoly–and we’d toast for the end of the Cold War, the victory at Stalingrad, Brezhnev and Nixon and maybe even the return of the Monguls. Of course, bear hugs and multiple kisses to both cheeks followed most downing of shots. But that Stolichnaya was such a delight–not available then in the U.S., the deal with Pepsi still a year or two in the future.
It was in Georgia, in a finer restaurant for lunch, before I entered the realm of Stalintoxication, that our table was suddenly surrounded by four grim faced, plainly but ill-fittingly clothed, thuggish looking men who ordered us to “Please come with them.” KGB, they were, investigating the theft of a passport, I learned from my Russian speaking friends. While waiting my turn to be questioned, feeling no pain, I carried on a rather demeaning one-way dialogue with my immediate Sgt. Schultz. All’s well that ends well, for none of us had our thumbs broken and were free to uncap another bottle of Stoly.
Can’t say I was sorry to say dasvidanya to the constant, culturally inspired, hangovers from a vast supply of vodka which through blurry eyes seemed to dwarf the mighty Black Sea.