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Seriously.

I'm not new to this L.A. thing.  I've been out here for well over ten years.  I have dealt credibly with celebrities before.  I've taken dictation from Lily Tomlin.  I've sat across from Bill Cosby and Madeline Kahn as they read words I wrote.  I've had long, involved conversations with Dave Goelz (who plays Gonzo) about the early days of the Muppets.  I write .  And, as I've posted on this blog, .

But there's a short list of celebrities that REALLY make me lose my cool and become a blithering idiot.

Near the top of the list?

William Shatner.

OF COURSE William Shatner!  He's William Shatner!  The master of Starships and ill-advised songs!  There is nothing about William Shatner that isn't over-the-top genius incarnate!  He's William Shatner!!!

And I was only ten minutes into dinner last night when he walked in the door.

I saw him out the corner of my eye first.  It was a weird night anyway.  My family had all kinds of mishegoss keeping us from our usual annual seder, so my husband, daughter, grandmother and I had opted for an early restaurant meal.  We were seated close to the entrance, by a glass wall that opened on the upstairs walkway.

As I took a sip of tea (Earl Grey � hot!  Yes, I know that's Picard and not Kirk, but still, it really was!), I saw a peach-shirted blur move across the walkway.

A William Shatner shaped peach-shirted blur.

No.

It couldn't be.

Then he walked in, and I swear I did a spit take.  In the one second before he moved past our booth, I thought of all the possible conversation-openers I could use, from the basic, "Mr. Shatner, I'm a huge fan!" to the forced-casual, "Hey!  We have a friend in common!  I know someone who wrote on S**T My Dad Says!", to the truly lame, "Um, rememberâ€� um about eight years agoâ€� um, when you came in for a casting session for a movieâ€� and um, the session was in the same offices as ±«²Ô»å°ù±ð²õ²õ±ð»åâ€� and all the writers came in to drool over you?  I was one of those writers!"

I went with none of them.  I let him pass.  I did, however, answer my daughter's query of "Mommy, why do you look so weird?" with the way too loud response, "I'm kind of freaking out because William Shatner just walked by!"

I guess my suddenly-mushy brain thought he'd hear that and be amused and/or flattered enough to come say hi.

Not so much.

I immediately whipped out my phone and Tweeted about how starstruck I was.  Then I called my husband, who was still on his way to the restaurant.  He expressly forbid me from making an ass out of myself, but when he walked in he had two questions for me: which way was the bathroom� and which way was Shatner?  The two were in opposite directions, but my husband's no slouch.  He grew up here, and made it look perfectly natural to scope out one on the way to the other.

In the end, I was very well behaved.  I didn't interrupt the man's dinner.  I probably would have considered it, but he was wise enough to sit on the inside of his booth, so it's not like I could scrape and smile and apologize as I sweetly asked to lean in for an easy picture with him.

The waitress did say he goes there often though…maybe next time?