Viggo Mortenson is a Mets fan.

If I have any skills what so ever I would say that I could recognize any celebrity no matter how minor they are.  I’ve even been recognizing reality show celebrities lately, isn’t that ludicrous?  However, one hung-over Sunday morning at B&N music department, one celebrity was browsing and it did not dawn to me who he was until he was right in front of my register.  Viggo Mortenson came in casually wearing a Mets T-Shirt and jeans.  He bought some crap and I was mentally screaming “Holy shit! Its Aragorn II, son of Aragorn I.”  Yes.  Nerd Alerts should be going off right now.

Viggo as Aragorn

I happened to be wearing my Italia zip-up.  And as Viggo was surely disgusted by my star shock, he asked me in Italian, “Do you speak Italian?”  And I said in Italian, “Yeah a bit.”  Viggo then asked, again in Italian, “Are you Italian?” And replied, “No, I was born in Peru, but my heritage is Italian.”  I guess Viggo was feeling chatty this morning, because he then switched boats and asked me “Hablas español?”  And I for some dumb reason replied, “Si, y tu?”  I quickly realized that I am an idiot and immediately asked, in Spanish, “Where did you learn to speak Spanish?”  And I think at this moment, Viggo realized that I was challenged either mentally or maybe he figured that it was Sunday morning and perhaps I was still recuperating from previous evenings engagements; either way, he quickly grabbed his stuff and started running away, but did kindly reply, “I lived in Argentina until I was 11.”  I was left confused and star shocked for the rest of the day, and impressed by Viggo Mortenson.  Not only does he speak English, Italian, and Spanish, but he is also a poet, painter, musician, and photographer.  All around amazing and interesting person, but I’m most impressed by his brief stint as a truck driver in Denmark.

- MRP