I wonder if the editor for this week’s New York Times’ Metropolitan Diary recognized the name of one of the reader contributors, Keir Dullea.

Because I’m assuming that it’s the same Dullea that was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with several other notable roles in a 50-year acting career. I mean, there can’t be more than one “Keir Dullea” out there, right? No special notation by the Times, though, so who knows?

Anyway, here’s his published entry:

Some years ago, my wife and I would regularly take my parents to dinner at a restaurant they particularly liked on Madison Avenue in the upper 80s.

We usually came in from Connecticut by car. Most often, as I fed coins into the parking meter out front, a particular panhandler would ask me for a donation. He was a regular and I would often give him something. Once he even gave me a quarter when I was out of change.

One day around noon, I was walking along Madison in the 70s when I spotted my panhandler across the street. I shouted to him: “What are you doing way down here?”

His reply: “Oh, hey, man, this is my day job.”

Not exactly a Kubrick-quality script, but certainly an enlightening vignette, worthy of note.