Celebrity Encounters of the Gas Pump Kind

So I was walking my dog Archie (the best, smartest, handsomest dog in the world) down the street near my home in Sherman Oaks, California the other day (April 25, to be exact). Seeing filming going on in my neighborhood is nothing new; there's a house up the street where the guy must be paying his mortgage with the money earned from renting it out to movie and TV crews.

Anyway, so I'm walking Archie down Ventura Blvd. and what do I happen to come upon but Ellen DeGeneres and a small army of paparazzi, all gathered around some flustered woman in a Mercedes S500 parked at the pump. Ellen does this kind of thing on a fairly regular basis, not at gas stations, but all sorts of places, beauty parlors, supermarkets, etc. If you film a couple hour's worth of stuff, no doubt you can edit together a funny couple of minutes for a segment for the show. She had a little area set up between the pumps with white terrycloth towels to wash the windshield, various kinds of refreshments and even eggs and a hotplate so she - apparently - could make someone an omlette while they waited for their fill-up.

I can see how this could be turned into some funny stuff, and I'll be watching the show for the next couple of days waiting for the segment to come on and see what they were able to make out of what I saw them shoot. It actually gave me an interesting idea for a big national charity event, but more on that later.

By way of background, Ellen hardly needs to be pumping gas to make ends meet; in 2007, Forbes ranked her personal net worth to be US$65 million. Her show is a huge hit that has won multiple Emmy Awards and she has not only appeared in movies and sitcoms, but also hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys.

I Googled around to try and find out if Ellen has any other sort of 'car connection,' and came up with the fact that, on September 1, 2006, at just before 4 pm PT, DeGeneres was mildly injured in a three-car road accident as a 2002 Porsche Carrera rear-ended a 2002 Buick Le Sabre, which subsequently rear-ended DeGeneres' 2006 Porsche Carrera as she was driving on Sunset Boulevard with girlfriend Portia de Rossi. DeGeneres was able to walk away from the scene. Two men in their twenties, later identified as paparazzi, were in the Buick, and the other vehicle was being driven by a drunk 52-year-old woman.

The video below is more than you'll ever want to know about what happens when a celebrity gets into a car crash. But its clear that she and Portia were driving around in a Porsche Carrera, which is one damn fine driving machine.

More about Ellen

Ellen Lee DeGeneres (born January 26, 1958) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and currently the Emmy Award-winning host of the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show (http://ellen.warnerbros.com)

DeGeneres was born in 1958, in Metairie, Louisiana to Elliot DeGeneres, a salesman, and Elizabeth (Betty) Jane Pfeffer. She is of French, English, German and Irish descent. Along with her brother Vance DeGeneres, actor and guitarist for the rock band Cowboy Mouth, Ellen was raised as a Christian Scientist until the age of 13. DeGeneres graduated from Atlanta High School on May 21, 1976, after completing her first years of high school at Grace King High School in Metairie, Louisiana. She moved back to New Orleans to attend the University of New Orleans, where she majored in communications. After one semester, she left school to do clerical work in a law firm along with cousin Laura Gillen. She also held a job selling clothes at the chainstore the Merry-Go-Round at the Lakeside Shopping Center in New Orleans. Other working experiences included being a waitress at TGI Friday's and another restaurant, a house painter, a hostess, a bartender.