Post-Tribune TV critic Jim Gordon is in Los Angeles attending the annual preview of new television shows.

It took me a minute to believe those words had come out of my mouth. Talking to a friend, and I began a sentence, "Last night at dinner, Sajak said ... "
I stopped in midsentence, aghast. Ten days in La-La Land, and I had become a name dropper.

The fact is, I did have dinner with Pat Sajak the other night. A lot of the events at this gathering of TV critics are arranged around meals. There's a press conference and then lunch or dinner and one of the people from the show sits at each table with a bunch of TV critics.

My guess is Sajak sat at our table because there were a couple of Canadian writers there. Sajak is a hockey nut and spent most of the meal trading hockey trivia.

This two-week event is fraught with peril for the star-struck. If luminaries turn your head, this thing is a two-week case of whiplash.

There are six days to go, and already we've been within spitting distance of Ringo Starr, Michael Deaver, Ray Starkey, Keith Carradine, Eric Idle, Fred Dryer, Stepfanie Kramer, Garrett Morris, Los Angles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Jim Henson, Gary Cole, Tom Bosley, Suzanne Pleshette, Lindsay Wagner, Bruce Boxleitner, Maria Shriver, David Morse, Dick Enberg, Merlin Olsen, Lee Grant and Gregory Peck.

Pierce Brosnan, Peter Ustinov, Jack Klugman, Roddy McDowall, Darren McGavin and James B. Sikking.

Marlee Matlin, Peter Coyote, Charles Kuralt, Delta Burke, Dixie Carter, Annie Potts, Jean Smart, Candice Bergen, Michael Tucker, Barnard Hughes and Cheryl Ladd.

Robert Duvall, Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder and Diane Lane.

During the ABC portion of the event, which began Saturday afternoon, we expected to meet Oprah Winfrey, Gary's Avery Brook, Catherine Mary Stewart, Mariette Hartley, Jamie Lee Curtis, Richard Lewis, John Ritter, Stephen Furst, Mike Farrell, Fred Savage and the entire cast of "thirtysomething."

The cable networks are bringing in Martin Sheen, wrestling champ Rick Flair, Dick Clark, Ruben Blades, Richard Thomas, Ellen Greene, Ben Kingsley, Jonathan Winters, Garry Shandling, Jean Simmons and Judy Collins.

That doesn't include the television executives and the satellite likenesses of such stars as Twiggy, Burt Reynolds and Lou Gossett Jr.

It's not surprising my conversation has begun to sound like the roll call at Central Casting.

Most of these people came to the Registry Hotel adjoining Universal Pictures studio, where the networks are staging the press conferences and most of us are staying.

But occasionally we board buses and travel to even more glitzy. The ''Designing Women" event was held in a huge tent pitched on the lawn of what used to be the David O. Selznick studios, a short trot from where Atlanta was put to the torch for "Gone with the Wind."

The show is set in Atlanta, so the dinner was organized around a theme of Southern aristocracy. There were mint juleps mixed for those who wished. Violinists played songs of Americana, while waiters circulated through the pavilion with trays of hush puppies, crab cakes and cornmeal encrusted oysters. Not a cocktail weenie to be found.

Dinner consisted of Cleoria's Southern Spiced Rack of Lamb, Twelve Oaks Filet of Beef and, of course, southern fried chicken.

They never had it so good at Tara.

For the "Lonesome Dove" press conference we trekked out to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. The museum houses a large collection of western art and memorabilia, including the dental instruments Doc Holliday used to yank teeth and an ingenious device which held an ace up the sleeve of the card cheat and then sprang it out when the pot was big enough.

The press asked its questions in Autry's theater, where they usually show western movies, and then the cast joined us for dinner, where former "Silver Spoons" star Ricky Schroder, a charming young man, talked about making the transition from child actor to adult actor.

That chat alone will make me a hero to my niece in Valparaiso, though she won't, I fear, understand why I didn't get her an autograph.

But you can't ask a news source for an autograph, no matter how many hugs it would get you when you get back to Indiana.

In fact, the fall of stars from the sky is so steady here that I have become completely numb. Put Jamie Lee Curtis in front of me, and my only physical reaction would be to reach for my notebook.

Except.

On Friday I was walking through the lobby of the hotel on my way to take the Universal Studios tour. And there, sitting in the lobby, was Robert Duvall. The guy who played Tom Hagen in "The Godfather," Bull Meacham in ''The Great Santini," Mack Sledge in "Tender Mercies," and, more recently, Augustus McCrae in the CBS mini-series "Lonesome Dove."

And there he was, just sitting in a chair.

I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to him at the dinner, though I had gotten in the questions I had for him at the press conference.

So I really didn't have anything to say to him in the line of duty.

But I did have a message for him from my wife, who thought "Lonesome Dove," which I watched at home, was the best mini-series she'd ever seen.

So I introduced myself, shook hands and told him what my wife had asked me to say to him. He smiled, asked me to thank her and asked me where I was from.

We chatted a while about the weather in Los Angeles and Chicago, and I went my way.

And for a brief moment, as I walked away, I thought to myself, "Wow, that was Robert Duvall."