It was Saturday, March 24th at 10:50 p.m. Ken Derry, an aspiring writer and head of publications for the Yankees, was surrounded by a group of teenagers. They attacked him, twice! Derry's assailants punched his face in and even pushed his girlfriend. But it wasn't that bad a night, in the end. For one thing, as he writes, he got a published story out of it!

They had left me with a chipped tooth, bruised ribs and a concussion, and they had snatched my cellphone — enough to support a charge of second-degree robbery. I subsequently discovered that my girlfriend had been pushed to the ground and took a fist to the cheek while trying to break up Round 2. Still, I consider us all very lucky.

Then a curious thing happened. A wave of fashion broke through the sea of blue uniforms and twirling lights.

"Is that Sarah Jessica Parker?" one of the women asked. It was. Seemingly oblivious to the mayhem swirling around them, the "Sex and the City" star and two female friends made their way through the throng of officers and down the street.

Ha! Later the police arrested the 16-year-old responsible for the attack. "We celebrated my attacker's arrest with lamb shank, couscous and Chianti by candlelight." Mmm.

The attacker was arrested even though Derry's girlfriend couldn't ID the attackers. Derry goes on to posit that they could recognize ol' SJP but not the kids because we're used to staring at famous faces. Hmm. Though we don't know the race of anyone involved—although we just heard Derry's answering machine message and he sure "sounded" "white" to us, and he does work for the Yankees—we do know that, 1. they were walking by those projects between 9th and 10th Avenue, which are pretty much all-black and 2. to white people, all non-white people look the same and 3. as mentioned, Duffy's girlfriend couldn't ID the suspect in a lineup but no one had any problems identifying a white one-time guest star from "Square Pegs." (No one returned calls, including the police.) Double-hmm! And yes, there was another sighting of a white and famous face in store for them!

My girlfriend and I held hands as we left the precinct house, struggling to make sense of the entire ordeal. As we walked, we saw Lance Bass, the former 'N Sync singer, who had just crossed the street in front of us. I was dumbfounded at how quickly we could recognize him and had recognized Ms. Parker, people familiar to us only from television shows and gossip columns, despite the fact that we were unable to identify someone with whom we shared a physical connection....

[W]hen Mr. Bass walked in front of us, he brought with him an opportunity to close the unique celebrity angle. My girlfriend, who knows all too well of my struggles to be a writer, acknowledged that fact when she said, "That was your literary gift from heaven."

Bumps on His Head, Stars in His Eyes [NYT]