Okay, I don’t know if he actually cruised me. But it sort of seemed like he did, and anyway, it makes a good title for a blog post.

Matt Bomer is the star of White Collar, a new TV series that premieres on the USA network this Friday night. Bomer has had a recurring role on Chuck and was on a short-lived TV show called Traveler, among other things. He was also almost the new Superman in the movie remake, but Bryan Singer took over as director and hired Brandon Routh instead.

Anyway, a couple of months ago White Collar was filming at a church on our block. I had no idea what it was — I just saw the signs on the lampposts that said the name of the project was White Collar. But in the early evening (it was still light out), I was walking to the subway station near our building when I saw this tall, handsome, well-dressed man walking in the opposite direction. As he approached me, I did the thing where you quickly look at someone’s eyes, then quickly look away, and then quickly look back. Well, I looked at him, and he looked at me, and when I shifted my eyes away and then looked at him again, he was still looking at me. We continued walking our separate ways.

I thought, Wait a minute. That guy looked so familiar. Who is he? Is he in the show they’re filming? I racked my brain to try to figure it out, and then I finally remembered. Later, when I got home, I went to IMDB and saw that sure enough, Matt Bomer was in White Collar.

Now, I don’t know his sexual orientation, and I don’t consider myself cruiseworthy material for a nearly 6-foot-tall gorgeous TV star. There are any number of reasons his eyes might have lingered on me. Maybe he saw me looking at him and was enjoying the attention. Maybe he was in actor mode, since he was heading back to the set. Maybe I had a booger hanging out of my nose. (I didn’t.) Maybe he thought I looked familiar. Maybe he thought there was something interesting about my face.

But it’s fun to say that Matt Bomer cruised me. So that’s my story.

And we’re going to watch White Collar this weekend to see if they show the church.

This morning I finished reading Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, by Peter Watson. It’s an intellectual history of humanity from the earliest humans to the beginning of the 20th century. It’s a big, long, sprawling book, and I learned a lot from it (much of which I have promptly forgotten).

In the introduction, Watson puts forth his candidates for the three most important “ideas” in human history: the soul, the idea of Europe, and the experiment. He doesn’t really explain why until the book’s conclusion, about 700 pages later. In short, the non-Western world — specifically, Islam, India, and China — were on the rise until about 1000 A.D.; Asia was dominant politically, technologically, and intellectually. But the period from 1050 to 1200 was a “hinge” during which Europe started rising. This time period — the era of the university, of Thomas Aquinas, of the spread of learning and the concepts of measurement and accuracy — was more consequential than the Renaissance. He contrasts Plato — who focused on the spiritual, incorporeal world, and on the idea of looking inward — with Aristotle — who focused on the real world, and preferred to look outward. The 11th and 12th centuries were the rise of Aristotelian thinking in the West, whereas the Renaissance is one of many inward-turnings throughout history, in the mode of Plato. Scientific discovery is cumulative — discoveries lead to other discoveries — whereas artistic accomplishments are not, and it is science that has led us to where we are today.

Toward the end of the book, Watson lashes out at Freud. Watson seems to hate him. He cites several authors to argue that Freud lied about much of his work and pulled his ideas out of nowhere. Watson says the idea of the unconscious is bunk, as is psychoanalysis, and that science is the only way we will eventually discover where consciousness and the concept of the “self” come from.

He is pro-science, anti-introspection. Read this very short interview to get a taste of his ideas. He seems kind of nutty — daydreaming and introspection don’t get you anywhere? Really?

But it’s a fascinating book.