So I find myself backstage at the Patty Smyth and Scandal show at B.B. Kings in Times Square last weekend sitting next to John McEnroe. Which I don’t say in that pompous, I was sitting next to John McEnroe and you weren’t sort of way some people you may know behave after a celebrity sighting because, while I have plenty of respect for the achievements of Mr. McEnroe, Ms. Smyth and the misters that comprise Scandal, I’ve never really felt that twinge of crazy that drives people all Kathy-Bates-in-Misery around celebrities.

[Patty Smith & John McEnroe, photographed by Trilby Tener]

Still. There I am sitting back, as the friend who actually got me back stage is chatting with her old pal, Patty Smyth, when Patty’s husband and esteemed tennis personality, John McEnroe, sits down next to me to chat with someone I assume was an old friend on account of their also being backstage and not engaged in manual labor. So I nonchalantly ask one of the girls I’m with, who I’ll spare the embarrassment of calling out in this here blog post, hey, casually take a picture of me sitting next to John McEnroe, would you? She chuckles. No, I say, really. Take a picture of me and John McEnroe’s back. He’s not even looking this way. She chuckles again. It’s like I’ve lapsed into my native language of chimp squeaks and she finds my attempt to communicate amusing if not entirely understandable.

Anyway, I left without a picture of me and John McEnroe’s back, which was mildly disappointing. Disappointing enough, that I updated my Facebook status on my way out of the theatre:

[Moxx] asked [girl], “Hey, casually take a picture of me sitting next to John McEnroe” backstage at the Scandal concert. Seems she thought I was joking.

To which my brother responds:

You were Kinnearing?

At which point this post finally swerves onto a topic. The Art of Kinnearing. I have to admit I had no idea what the hell my brother was talking about, even with a link to Urban Dictionary’s definition:

1) To take a picture of someone/something without looking through the viewfinder; usually done on the sly.

2) To secretly take a photo of the unsuspecting in a sneaky manner.

3) A method of photography developed by the Yarn Harlot

As an etymology nut, that definition wasn’t good enough for me. There would seem to be a connection to famous guy about town Greg Kinnear, but his connection to low key stalking was conspicuously missing.

A little digging turned up the identity of this Yarn Harlot, one Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, who in addition to writing copiously on the topic of knitting, wrote a bit about seeing Greg Kinnear at the airport in 2007, and trying to photograph him with a camera casually held at about crotch level. And, I’m sorry to say, failing.

[photo link removed by an unforgiving Wordpress]

Incidentally, this is where it starts to get good. It seems yarnharlot.ca gets a ridiculous amount of readership. How much? I don’t know actual figures but my brother, who’s married to a knitter, describes it in terms of metric shitloads, i.e., squijillions of hits a day. The volume of readers that have enabled her to raise more than half a million dollars for Doctors Without Borders (as compared to the $400 we gave to charity last year following our marshmallow peep eating contest). So lots of readers. Readers enough that the term ‘kinnearing’ has not only entered the language by way of Urban Dictionary, but (according to the Wiki elves) Mr. Kinnear himself showed up on Conan O’Brien having kinneared his Flash of Genius costar Alan Alda (sorry, footage not available).

And the fad has caught on. Sort of.

A Google image search for ‘kinnearing’ responds with mostly shots of Greg Kinnear or Joe Kinnear, with a few others from yarn-related blogs.  A search for ‘kinnearing’ on Flickr turns up 73 images tagged with that term, a full third of which are pictures of girls surfing. another third shot by someone who should have been paying more attention to driving. About half of the remainder meet part of the definition (being shot from hip level without the viewfinbder) but aren’t of stalkable stock, so to speak. None of the stockhouses’ search engines had any idea what I was talking about.

Still. It’s out there. Be on the lookout. And if you find any well kinneared shots, post a link here, will you?