Paparazzi

This afternoon, Gregorio and I went to a shopping area in Sebastián de los Reyes, in the north outskirts of the city.  He was looking for a television and a scanner, and I was looking for a voice recorder.  We first went into the Media Markt, which was right next to an Ikea.

Media Markt: The equivalence of our Best Buy, plus books.

Neither of us had any luck, so Gregorio wanted to check at the Worten to compare TV prices.  

We just had to walk past Ikea to get to Worten.  So we're walking past Ikea's revolving doors, and there's a camera man taking pictures of people leaving the store.  I thought they were doing it for an advertisement or something, but it was a little weird that the camera man started running urgently all over for different angles.

I just kept walking, but Gregorio stopped to watch a bit more.  When I realized he was still stopped, I turned around to see what was going on.  Gregorio told me that they were taking pictures of Carlos Baute, a Venezuelan singer and television host.

Carlos Baute

Once I took a closer look, I saw that there were at least five or six different men with cameras, flashing away at Carlos and the woman he was out shopping with.  The two slowly walked through the parking lot, surrounded by the paparazzi.  It was a funny scene to watch, because Carlos wasn't driving away in his car, he wasn't in a hurry, he was just calmly walking around the parking lot looking for his car.  Yet the paparazzi continued snapping away, as if he were some extraterrestrial never before seen on Earth.

Once Carlos finally found his car, he was sure to open the passenger door for the woman - while smiling at the cameras.  

Gregorio talked to one of Ikea's security guards, and he told us that those men had been waiting outside of Ikea for four hours while Carlos and his woman friend were inside shopping.   

People's obsession with celebrities is silly.  We're all just people.

So although I left our shopping trip empty handed, it was neat that we had left Media Markt just seconds before the celebrity left Ikea, and were able to watch the paparazzi show.

I'll leave you with some Carlos Baute (the second one's for you, Vickie!):

Amarte bien

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