It's time for...Embarassing Brushes with Fame!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I worked for a few years in Sun Valley, a ski resort that thrived on having celebrities hang around. I’ve always been, well, unimpressed by fame in and of itself, and would probably actually do no more than nod at anyone who REALLY impressed me.

So…

The height of mortification came when a co-worker, who was EASILY impressed by ANYone with money/fame/shiny teeth/whatever, convinced me to stand in line for her for a celebrity’s autograph.

Not just any celebrity, but a celebrity whose fame was only bestowed upon him by himself being a fame-chaser.

So there I am, head of the line, asking Robin Leach to please sign this <whatever it was> for my friend, Linda. NOT for me, but for my friend, who was stuck working.

He got my real name, wrote out the whole ‘champagne dreams’ thing, and patted me on the head like I was a little kid too embarassed to admit I liked him or something.

I was PISSED!!

So was Linda.
But to balance that out, I got to <not> make a joke with Tom Hanks, when he and his then-girlfriend <now wife> wanted to go bowling after the lanes were closed. They kind of hung there for a minute trying to figure out where else to go, after I had to refuse them, and he said 'Hey, can you call me a cab?"

Smirk.
Smirk.
Smirk.
Smirk.

FWIW, I was skating at the same time he and his now-wife <cannot remember her name> were tooling around the rink, and I thought at the time that they made a very cute couple. Glad it worked out.

22

It was the very first night I worked as an usher in a legit theater in LA.
The show was about to begin and one guy came in just as the lights were dimming, and he had a seat way up front. I took my flashlight and led him to the seat and someone was sitting in it! I was so flustered, I took the guy back to the back of the theater and said, “I have to wait and go back down and move them after ten minutes…we’re not allowed to be in the aisle during the first ten minutes of the show.”
He was nice about it and said he would wait in the back until then - he was here to see his son in the show.
His son was Chris Lemmon…it was dark and I hadn’t noticed the guy I had just not seated was Jack Lemmon.

23

FTW!! Great post/username combo too.

24

Oh come on, admit it - you’ve got that <whatever it was> framed & prominently displayed on your mantel. :wink:

25

These are great, keep 'em coming!

It occurred to me to give a disclaimer of sorts - I’m not always a huge tool in the presence of celebrities. I know several authors/musicians/illustrators/artists of some prominence and manage to be quite cool & calm when introduced to noted figures.

That said, somehow it all goes out the window when it’s someone I don’t know and think is so f-ing awesome!!1 OMG!!1 Embarassing!!

Remembered another incident involving a culinary hero.
This was no chance encounter; Jacques Pepin was doing a book signing at AR Julia in Middletown and I actually took time off work to go to it. I had been cooking professionally for 15+ years at that time and he was (and still is) one of my top 3.

Anyway I got to the front of the line, grinning like an idiot, he graciously greeted me and asked my name & started to sign my copy of his latest book. Right about then I developed TOTAL verbal diarrhea/tmi and started blabbering about a dream I’d had where Chef Pepin figured prominently as my boss and was complimenting me on a rack of hundreds of mini cheesecakes I’d prepared. In the dream I was glowing with ecstasy, basking in the radiant approval of my hero.

He smiled faintly at me as one might to an unhinged stalker, gave a brief chuckle, handed me my book and turned to the next person in line.

“Way to go, idiot.” I thought. I’m sure he thought I was a total gonad

26

She lived in Santa Barbara and frequented the B. Dalton Bookseller I worked at when I was in college 25 years ago. The first time she came to my register, there she was, all 6’2" and Julia Child voice and everything.

When she went to pay with a credit card, I asked her for ID.

:wink:

She smiled at the joke, since I was already processing the credit card…

27

So who is this guy? A famous shepard?

28

My wife and I played poker in Tahoe most of one night with Linda Evangelista at a $2 table. She was their with her boyfriend Kyle MacLachlin while filming showgirls. We didn’t know who she was but *suspected *she was a supermodel. At one point she won a small box of chocolate for not busting with 6 cards or something like that. One guy said “that makes a good present” and I chimed in with “ya, you can always give it to your mom.” (Yes, I was being a smartass but not sure who I was being a smartass with.)

After she left the table, we asked some of the other players “who dat?” and a few were on the Showgirls crew and explained.

We ran into Linda and Kyle in the elevator a couple of days later. They kept staring at my wife and I because we were speaking Chinese. We got to the checkout line at the same time and Linda told us to “go ahead.”

29

Picture it… Detroit Airport, late '90’s…

I had to fly for some Sybase training from Syracuse to Dallas. When given the flight itinerary I noticed the stopover in Detroit was… short. There was very little room for error.

Sure enough, the flight from Syracuse to Detroit was delayed and I ran from the arrival gate in Detroit to the departure gate with carry-on and laptop bag in tow. I was the last one on my connection to Dallas; therefore, there was no overhead bin room. “Fabulous,” I thought to myself, “I guess I’ll have to shove them under the seat in front of me.”

So I found my seat. I had the window seat. The well-built gentleman in the aisle seat courteously let me in. Fortunately, there was no one in the center seat. Flustered, pissed, and stressed about nearly missing the connection, I slung the carry-on under the seat in front of me and stuffed the laptop bag as best that I could as well.

The man from the aisle seat noticed the laptop bag sticking out and said politely, “Ya know, they prolly won’t let you keep that there. It doesn’t fit all the way under the seat.”

I, being the dick that I am (or at least was on that day), replied somewhat icily, “Then where do you suggest it go? The bins are filled.”

He blinked at me, shrugged and turned to whatever it was that he was doing.

As the flight progressed, I noticed he was being given exquisite attention from the crew. For example, during the climb to cruising altitude, the flight attendant brought him a couple of bottles of water and some orange juice, which he poured it into a water bottle of, what I later figured to be, protein powder. This was not in and of itself unusual, but uncommon enough that it made me give him a better look-see.

He was in a running suit. He was a well-built, decent-looking guy who looked like he could take care of himself, but the face didn’t give any sign of familiarity.

We spent the rest of the flight in silence with me giving the fuck-off vibe. Throughout people would come up here and there asking for an autograph. I still had no recognition factor. The flight ended, I went off on my way and he on his.

A few weeks later, I was at home watching the Top Five on one of those pseudo education channels. That night was the Top Five Most Dangerous… I sat the through dangerous snake, dangerous spider, etc. The next segment came on as “The Most Dangerous Man”… and sure enough there was my flight buddy. It wasn’t instant recognition. I had been extremely rude to Ken Shamrock professional wrestler and MMA fighter, who goes by the moniker “World’s Most Dangerous Man”. I’m an idiot.

Once, I realized who the guy was, I fired off an email from the WWF website and wrote a nice letter about how this guy would have been perfectly within his right to completely kick my ass for how I reacted to him but was nothing but extremely decent about it.

BTW, this also happens to be my brush with death story too.

One thing that was odd though was that he was flying coach. Do pro wrestlers and athletes fly coach?

30

All but the most well-paid wrestling main-eventers pretty much make squat considering how often they’re on the road, and have to pay for all expenses, so yeah, their travel accommodations are usually coach flights and three or four people splitting a rental car.

I assume it’s the same for other pro athletes.

31

If there was no one sitting in the middle seat, then there was no one who needed to shove their stuff under the middle seat of the row ahead. Stuff your carry-on there, and put the laptop under the seat in front of you.

If I’m next to an empty seat, I’ll put my stuff in front of that seat and have a little more room for my feet.

32

Yeah, and if the attendant points it out as something that needs to be taken care of, you can simply say, “I’ll tell him when he’s come back from the bathroom” or something. :wink:

33

Taken care of how? I don’t think it’s against the rules, and I can’t think of any reason it would be. If someone else can stuff their crap into my overhead bin, I should be able to put something in a space that no one is going to use.

34

Okay, not that famous, but…

I was a reporter, and I went to a party for press people. My boss introduced me to a guy, and I could have sworn I knew him, and said so. A couple of times. He sort of nodded and smiled, and edged away.

Press…includes people on television, apparently. He was a local sportscaster (I think), who was on TV every night, not that I watched, and whose mug appeared on billboards all over Denver. Sure he looked familiar.

When my husband was a cab driver he was always coming home and saying things like, “Have you ever heard of Aerosmith?” OH MY GOD, he had AEROSMITH in his cab and not only did he not drive them by the house, he didn’t even know who they were!

“Have you ever heard of Tom Waits?” OMG, etc.

But one day he had some members of a baseball team–this was back in the AAA days–and was driving them to Bears Stadium. Just making conversation, he mentioned that he’d been listening to the game the night before, and how come their manager didn’t take out that pitcher?

Silence. Then one of them said, “I was that pitcher. I don’t know.”

There is also being embarrassed to be with a celebrity. When I was a movie reviewer a guy I worked with had set up entertainment for some visiting celebs and said I should come clubbing with a bunch of them, including a couple of hot stars who were in Denver for some damn reason, and who really liked to party. So I went along, expecting a great time with these fun movies stars, and boy was it embarrassing. Their idea of fun–particularly one of them–was to get drunk, insult the waiters, insult the bartenders, act like the other patrons should just be thrown out of the place if they objected to all the noise, and just in general be assholes–particularly one of them.

I thought we were going to go wreck his hotel room or something. Boy was I disappointed.

35

That’s where both of mine were. My brother lived in Ketchum and worked at Sun Valley and I would spend alot of time there. When I was 11 he let me out in front of the main Lodge and I went running in to find the bathroom. Rounded a corner and knocked Nancy Sinatra flat on her butt. She was nice about it and let me watch her filming a show.
The year after I was ice skating and slid into and knocked down Peggy Fleming. She was nice too and showed me a few tricks.

36

As a young lad, I shook Richard Nixon’s hand while he was on the campaign trail for the 1968 presidential election. My mitten came off in his hand and I gave him a dressing down for stealing from me. Dad, a little red-faced, apologized for his son’s brashness, retrieved my mitten from the next President of the United States and nudged me along.

My mom endured a rather long line at a local book signing event for Burt Reynolds to sign her copy of his book, My Way. They were only letting one person at a time past the turnstile at the head of the line, and then it was about a 10 yard walk to Burt’s table. Mom doesn’t usually go in for this type of garish celebrity event, being prim, proper and somewhat reserved, in an Old School sort of way—but, she did have a thing for Mr. Reynolds. Finally, it was her turn to make the walk and she started off, perhaps a little too quickly for a lady dressed to the nines in dress and heels. About half way to her destination, she tripped (over what she claimed was a protruding seam in the carpet, but was more likely just her feet), and fell to the ground. Actually, it was more like an exaggerated pratfall, sprawling hard to the ground, arms and legs akimbo, pages of her copy of My Way flapping through the air. (Not exactly the walk of poise and grace she was shooting for, I can assure you).

Burt shot up from his chair, ran to mom, picked her up gingerly, made sure nothing besides her pride was bruised, wrapped his arms around her, gave her a big kiss, told her what a lovely lady she was and gave her an especially sweet book signage. Burt Reynolds is a class act in our family. A photo of the kiss made the next edition of our local newspaper. Now 89, mom still covets that book, she has no plans to attend another celebrity event, however.

37

Sort of the opposite of a gooning out story…

I was working as a cashier at a movie theatre that night. We were busy. As in selling out busy. The Killing Fields had just opened a few days earlier, and every Vietnamese person, as well as every other person, within a 100 mile radius had to show up. It was chaos.

I was pumping out tickets like I was a printing machine and raking in cash like I had won the lottery. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t keep up. And then the phone rang. Again. Great, another “What’s playing? What’s it about? Who’s in it?” call. I didn’t have the time.

The voice on the other end said “This is captain Fairchild of the Boston Police. Ray Flynn is going to see the movie tonight. Make sure he gets in for free, OK?” Yeah, whatever. Who? I don’t have time to give a free pass to some friend of a cop.

Ten or fifteen minures later, as the movie was about to start, a charismatic gentleman and what I assumed to be his sons showed up and asked for three tickets. Sure, that’ll be twelve bucks. He graciously paid.

“Dude, that was Ray Flynn! You charged him?!?”

Who?

“Ray Flynn! The mayor of Boston!”

Oh shit. Oh well.

As it turned out, I had oversold the theatre. There were no seats left. The manager and several corporate big wigs nearly pissed themselves trying to find three chairs so that Mayor Flynn and his sons could sit uncomfortably in the aisle.

38

A couple more:

Years ago, the late Danny Joe Brown was a patient of mine. He and his family certainly didn’t fit my image of hard partying southern rockers; in fact they were quite pleasant, accommodating and somewhat soft spoken. No, the embarrassing thing wasn’t that I had anything to do with his passing (I did not)…it was that I knew next to nothing about contemporary rock & roll bands since the Beatles disbanded and I drifted almost completely into the realm of Classical music. He was too kind to bring it to my attention, but I’m sure he was somewhat piqued whenever I—frequently, for some strange brain lapse reason—referred to his group Molly Hatchet, as Mötley Crüe.

Then there was the time more recently that I “ah-hemmed” and shook my head at a customer in front of me at the checkout line of a local retail establishment, after he engaged in a short burst of what appeared to be behavior not befitting a public venue, where kiddies and grandmas may be close at hand.

I felt bad when he turned and I saw the look of hurt on a kind face, and a bit perplexed when I saw the cashier grimace in my direction. But, I didn’t feel like a complete tool until after the customer was on his way through the door and the cashier asked me, “didn’t you recognize him?” after shaking my head, she continued, “That’s Calvin Peete, he’s a regular here.”

Damn. :smack:

Calvin Peete; Mr. Accuracy; world-class former professional golfer and thorough gentleman; retired too early from Pro golf, due in large part from great embarrassment over his Tourette’s Syndrome.

I was effusively nice to Mr. Peete when I bumped into him again.

39

Not really embarrassing, but…

An acquaintance said he had gone to a party at a friends house, and when he rang the doorbell Tom Hanks answered. Apparently he happened to be there because he was a friend of a friend of a friend or something. He said Hanks spent the entire evening amusing himself by answering the door to see peoples’ reactions.

40

:smack: Where were you then? Put my life at risk for a simple fix. In all this time that has NEVER occurred to me. Thus proving… I am an idiot.