I’ve always wanted to be mildly famous. Not like big-time Tom Cruise famous where the paparazzi follows you everywhere, because that seems like a huge pain in the ass. Just like about as famous as James Rebhorn, the guy who played the secretary of defense in Independence Day, because I feel like being that amount of famous makes everything you do exponentially funnier.

Think about it: If you popped a tire and Tom Cruise helped you jack up your car, you’d be like, “that was weird… what a freak, he obviously wants his ego stroked or something, that’s creepy.” But if James Rebhorn pulled over and bailed you over, you’d be all, “Sweet, Rebhorn! This guy plays a sniveling bureaucrat in like a billion different movies,” and you’ve have a hilarious and random story to tell your friends for the rest of your life.

And it doesn’t even have to be James Rebhorn being a good samaritan. It’d be just as funny if James Rebhorn cut you off on the parkway or if you pulled up next to James Rebhorn at a red light and saw him pick his nose. Pretty much any vehicular interaction you could have with noted character actor James Rebhorn would be a funny one.

I know this for a fact because the younger brother of one of my friends once got into a fender-bender with the actor David Paymer, and I still find that funny.

I listed two character actors but any other means of minor fame is fine by me too. Character actors just the most identifiable random not-quite-famous people, for whatever reason.

Anyway, part of the fallout from this job is that on rare occasion people actually do recognize me from the video stuff I do on SNY.tv, which I enjoy, in part because I’m tremendously vain and in part because it feels like a very small step toward that Rebhorn stature I so desperately desire.

By “on rare occasion,” by the way, I mean “almost never.” Sometimes at Citi Field, but only three times when I’m not walking around the place where the Mets play with a credential around my neck that says my name on it.

One time was some guy in a bar who saw my stuff on MetsBlog. Not a particularly notable interaction.

Another time I was in a parking garage waiting for the attendant to bring my car around. A businessman was sitting in his car, nearly ready to pull out, and rolled down his window.

“Hey, are you Ted Berg?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, excitedly.

“I’ve seen your stuff,” he said, almost in disgust, as he rolled up the window.

The third time was last night outside MCU Park in Brooklyn.

I didn’t stay for the Cyclones’ last night. I wanted to because I love that park and I wanted to see some of the Wallyball everyone has such strong opinions about, but for a variety of reasons I also wanted to get home and I feared the hours worth of traffic I faced.

But before I left Coney Island, obviously, I stopped to get a cheese dog at Nathan’s.

Look: I’ve never been what you’d call a skinny dude. I played offensive line in high school football, and even then I carried a few extra pounds around my midsection. I like food a lot. I’m cool with it. I realize I could be healthier, eat better, work out more, all that, but that would mean not eating cheese dogs when I’m in Coney Island, and that’s inconceivable to me.

And though I’m hardly neurotic, it’s hard not to feel a little bit self-conscious when you’re walking down the street punishing a cheese dog, trying to keep all the excess cheese, ketchup and mustard from spilling all over your clothes, licking one hand clean while carrying a huge soda in the other.

It was the perfect time for some guy to drive by and, from a moving car, yell, “Ted Berg — Sandwich of the week!”

My first thought was, “oh Ted, you disgusting beast, what have you become?”

My second, a few moments later, was that this was a pretty hilarious way for someone to recognize me.

I mean, anyone familiar with the “Sandwich of the Week” series must be a TedQuarters reader, not just someone who sees the Baseball Show videos on MetsBlog or whatever, and so obviously a hero. I very much appreciate that. If you’re reading this, guy, feel free to identify yourself.

Second, it’s funny to think of how it must have been for that guy, who knows me as some sandwich-loving Mets fan, to spot me outside a Mets’ Minor League facility destroying a hot dog, cheese everywhere.

I don’t know if he saw me from far away or what, but I like to think he was all, “hey, that guy kind of looks like that Ted Berg fellow, but I’m not sure… oh, he’s eating a cheese dog, yeah, that means it’s definitely him.”

And I’m fine with that.

From a 1986 test of a Tomahawk missile. Why is it the coolest thing you’ll see today? Because the plane is on fire already but you can see the explosion clearly hasn’t reached it yet. Find out why here:

Mass transit menace Darius McCollum racked up his 27th arrest in three decades Tuesday by taking a Trailways coach on a cross-state joyride.

The 45-year-old transportation-obsessed oddball went from the driver’s seat to a holding cell after cops caught him with the hot wheels in Queens.

“I’ll bet they won’t leave the keys in the ignition,” McCollum told the arresting officer. “I’ll bet they’ll be more careful now.”…

No one was hurt and the bus was in tiptop condition. That’s how it’s been in every McCollum escapade since he commandeered an E train and drove to the World Trade Center in 1981 when he was just 15.

- New York Daily News.

This guy pops up every few years and every time it’s something like this: He impersonates a mass-transit employee, gets on some mode of mass transportation (or, once, in a control tower), operates some piece of machinery safely and effectively for a while until someone finds him out, then cooperates with the arresting officers. It’s a whimsical story, but he’s hardly a menace.

McCollum has Asperger Syndrome, which explains the fixation with mass transit — not that trains aren’t sweet and all. I worked with a few kids with the disorder when I was TAing in the high school. I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I think it’s a hard one for even the experts to figure out.

Anyway, if I ever make a ton of money, I’d like to start a charity called the Awesome Fund. Basically, it would raise money to benefit people who do awesome things then need money to cover their legal fees because their awesome actions were illegal, like the JetBlue flight attendant beer bailout guy for example. Plus it would benefit other awesome people who hadn’t done anything illegal but were down on their luck. Also, it would work to raise awareness of general awesomeness.

I’m not sure that Darius McCollum needs money, but I think the ability to effectively impersonate mass-transit employees and safely operate complicated 15-ton machinery for no other reason than that you like trains and buses and you think it seems like fun is pretty damn awesome. And you know what? I don’t even think that makes you an “oddball,” just a guy with a dream and a series of well-thought-out plans.

The discoverers reported on Monday that the dinosaur, the size of a gigantic turkey, was a meat-eating creature that lived more than 65 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period. They named it Balaur bondoc, which means “stocky dragon.”

Romanian scientists and other experts said that Balaur is the first reasonably complete skeleton of a predatory dinosaur from Europe at that time. Of perhaps surpassing importance, they said, the discovery may provide insights into the development of dinosaurs and other animals in a long-ago European ecosystem much different from that of today.

- John Noble Wilford, New York Times.

OK first of all, it’s funny to say something is “about the size of a gigantic turkey.” Why not say it’s the size of a small rhea or a tiny ostrich or a freakishly large chicken?

Second, it’s described as something of “a kickboxer” later in the article, so it’s good to know there was European precedent for Jean Claude Van Damme.

The dinosaur scientists maintain that this is a new breed of predator, different from any they have previously identified, but then they’re probably reserving the right to do a complete 180 and announce that this is discovery is complete B.S. and the Balaur bondoc is exactly the same as some other dinosaur we’ve already known about for years, because that’s something dinosaur scientists do sometimes.

They’re also using the discovery to make reasonably interesting extrapolations about dinosaur evolution in isolation, but those seem like pretty bold claims considering how much we all know about how little we really know about dinosaurs.

And I mean no disrespect, dinosaur scientists. Seriously. But make with the cloning or stop acting like you’ve got dinosaurs all figured out.

I’m wiped out today for a variety of reasons, nothing terribly serious, and took a sick day. I’ll probably end up writing something a bit later when I get bored of watching The Price is Right. Plus I’ve got a couple of image posts scheduled courtesy of reader Glenn featuring some recent ex-Mets and Hollywood lookalikes, both great calls that I hadn’t noticed before.

A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him uphappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms, that it was idle to suppose that she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart. and benevolent wishes for the success of theexiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance money when she went down in mid=ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? surely this. that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his believe not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.

- William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief.

Hat tip to Carl Sagan.