Et tu, Tucci?

When you think of the Lincoln Memorial, you think: historic craftsmanship, inspiring oratory, distinctively handsome features, a fine turn as the cantankerous airport manager in the Tom Hanks vehicle The Terminal.

Funnily enough, these same terms describe two time Golden Globe Award-winning actor Stanley Tucci, whom I saw at the Memorial the other day. I was leaning up against a pillar, reading the second inaugural address, and, after losing interest about halfway through, I looked over at the other pillar. Who should be leaning against it, squinting to maintain concentration long enough to honor the legacy of America but not having any more success than I, but Stanley Tucci. I said to my friend, "Hey, that's Stanley Tucci!"

To which my friend replied, "Who?"

I tried to explain under my breath that Tucci is the actor who (irony?) plays the spook in The Pelican Brief who assassinates a powerful man in a theater. Granted, it's a porno theater, and he strangles the dude with a piece of rope that he's wearing as a belt -- (then he feels himself up really creepily, in one of the first moments of pathological eroticism to ever freak me out as a child) -- instead of, say, leaping off a balcony and yelling "Thus ever to tyrants!" But it's hard to explain such things when time is of the essence. The Tuccis had had enough -- they were leaving! My friend badgered me to talk to him, to tell him hello, to ask for a picture in front of the statue, arms over shoulders like we knew each other from 'Nam or something. But I didn't want to confront him, because most of what I know of the man is that (1) he killed John Heard and then tried to trick Julia Roberts into thinking that he was John Heard by wearing a red ball cap and stuffing a pillow down his shirt, (2) that he tried to keep the Soviet Tom Hanks from achieving his dream of meeting every great jazz musician in a photo, and (3) that he ought to play Philip Roth in a straight-to-cable biopic.

Also, I know that I must have been really high when I watched Road to Perdition, because apparently he's in it. And what do you say to a guy like that?

I knew what I had to do. I beat a path to the entrance of the shrine, and, shrouded in shadow, I framed up the Tuccis in the least conspicuous manner -- bottom right, trying to signify that obviously all I wanted was a snapshot of the 13th President doing his memorial marble thang from a distance. I was sure it would be inconspicuous, that I would have a souvenir of the time I recognized a minor celebrity in the throng of a national landmark at sundown. But I was caught. I was caught by the burning eyes of Kate Tucci -- burning like the devil's own sulphur itself -- which radiated through my camera lens, through the viewfinder, and into my everliving soul where it burned a bubbling open-sore brand that will never heal over.

Eyes that scream but one thing, projecting as loudly and passionately as her husband must have projected in his Tony-nominated turn on Broadway in Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune. They scream, "Damn you Paparazzo!"

Or that was Mr. Burns. I forget.