CITY LIGHTS:

Years ago, when I was a creative writing student, one of my classmates wrote an amazing short story about a girl who has a chance encounter with Oscar Wilde when she’s 15. The girl then lives to be more than a century old and becomes hailed worldwide as “the last living link to Oscar Wilde,” telling and retelling the story of their meeting even after she’s completely lost interest.

Meeting celebrities is like that. They always sound larger than life to those who haven’t encountered them, but up close, they turn to flesh and blood pretty quickly. I know that after meeting a slew of famous people over the years, from John McCain and Donald Rumsfeld to Gillian Welch and Giada di Laurentiis. But we’re all allowed to retain some part of our wide-eyed youth, and so when an anonymous caller rang me last Wednesday to say that Dan Aykroyd was coming to the local Albertson’s, I considered my afternoon booked.

Aykroyd is nothing if not a versatile comedian — what can you say about a “Saturday Night Live” cast member who impersonated both Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter? — but when he stopped by the Albertson’s across the street from City Hall, he was there to trumpet his new line of Crystal Head Vodka, which comes in a glass container shaped like a human skull.

When I arrived at the supermarket shortly before 4 p.m., there was a line of more than 100 people winding around the produce section, many toting DVDs and other memorabilia.

As we waited for the man of the hour, I struck up a conversation with a woman at the front of the line who brought a “Blues Brothers” LP for signing. She and her husband were huge fans of the movie, she said, to the point where they had named their infant son “Jake” after John Belushi’s character.

She also planned to buy a bottle of the vodka to give her son on his 21st birthday.

All of a sudden, the crowd around the door burst into applause, and Aykroyd ducked inside wearing an outfit that would make Ellwood Blues proud — all black, plus a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses.

He groused to someone on his headset as he sat down, presumably over a business matter (“Everything’s registered here . . . We’ll talk to you later”), then ended the conversation and smiled at the first fan in line: “Thank God that’s out of the way. How you doing?”

From there on, he was in celebrity mode, shaking hands, posing for pictures and signing everything set in front of him, sometimes all at the same time. When he had a second of calm, I leaned over, flashed my press badge and introduced myself. “Ah, editor and writer!” he said, giving me a firm handshake. “Thanks for having us in.”

I’ve often wondered if it’s exhausting to be a celebrity. But when hundreds of people pack the local grocery store to get your signature, when 10-year-olds flock to have their picture taken with you, the attention has to be at least a little flattering.

Before I left, the woman with the “Blues Brothers” LP reached the front of the line, got her album signed, then asked Aykroyd to sign her son’s future bottle of birthday vodka.

He applied his signature on one side of the bottle, then added “Jake — Happy birthday” on the back.

Little Jake has a piece of history coming to him in 20 or so years. Someday, his mother may even be the last living link to Dan Aykroyd.

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].