I met Neil Patrick Harris at a Halloween party, several years ago. I was like 17 and my friend and I were experiencing Halloween in San Francisco's Castro District (it's the historic gay village in San Francisco, so it's pretty much Gay Mecca). It was insane: thousands and thousands of people, thugs from Oakland and drag queens and music and people drinking in public. They've since shut down the Castro Halloween since people kept getting stabbed, so that tells you what kind of party it was.

Somehow, my friend and I found ourselves at a house party, mostly older guys but a few ladies and stuff. It was markedly fancier than drinking out of some random person's vodka bottle on the street, so we stayed. I was slightly worried I'd get chained up in the basement by a sex dwarf, or something, but the party was actually just a bunch of friendly working professionals drinking cocktails out of plastic skull goblets and talking about Sex and the City or something. There was a growing level of excitement: apparently "Doogie Howser" was going to be there. I frown at my friend. "What?"

"Doogie Howser. He was a teenage doctor on TV in the eighties."

This was obviously before How I Met Your Mother or Harold and Kumar, and I didn't really watch a lot of TV, so I wouldn't have caught reruns of the show, and thus didn't really share in everyone else's excitement.

Sure enough, Neil Patrick Harris showed up, and I got to talk to him for a good while. He was there with some guy, who I think is his current partner, and they were really, really nice - despite the fact that I was a drunk teenager without much interesting to say, who had never heard of him.

They were both wearing pirate costumes that year, and they were the best fucking pirate costumes I had EVER seen.

TL;DR: Neil Patrick Harris is a swell guy, NPH's Halloween costumes are awesome, and Halloween in the Castro was the best thing ever and totally worth all the stabbings.