Truth is that I’m bored and I crave a conversation with with entities other than my cat. This topic popped in my head, and I can’t think of any examples for myself.
Like, I never learned first-hand that Bill Murray was an asshole, I read about it. So, just keep to personal experiences you’ve had with the individual.
Wasn’t me, but I went to a prestigious theatre design school, and some students above me said Ming Cho Lee, a big wig in set design, walked through their presentations and just said “Crap, crap, crap.” No explanation of why it was “crap.” I don’t care who you are, that’s not how you treat people. Especially if you’re supposed to be a teacher.
Thank’s, Paintcharge, for indulging me. That’s interesting. Nothing constructive about that. What a tool.
As a very young lad - call it the mid 1980s - we used to go to a lot of the Pawtucket Red Sox (PawSox, the AAA farm team for Boston) games. They of course had a player, let’s call him Sam, who was far and above the star of the team. I feel like I’d be tooting his Horn to say how amazing of a ball player this guy was. I thought he was the best player ever, and this is the era where Boston was in the World Series. My absolute, hands down, baseball hero.
He was in the parking lot after a game with a small crowd of admirers. I tried to get him to sign a baseball (we all brought baseballs to the game, we’d lower them into the dugout before the game and fish for autographs). He scowled at me and said “I don’t do autographs for kids” and walked away. Seriously? The deafening applause you hear every time you get up to bat is kids like me, jackass.
I’ve been angry about that for, oh, 35 plus years now? He later went to Boston for season or two, then became a sportscaster. I refused to watch him when he was on.
Sam Horn?
I had a similar incident with Brooks Robinson, must’ve been in the early 60s. I asked for his autograph and he said “get lost kid.”
And everyone says what a great guy he was. I guess everyone has a bad day.
I think what he meant by that was “These young people have a great deal of talent, and I’m afraid that someday I will be seen as a gigantic fraud and a talentless pretender.”
That is so mean.
I’ve not had that happen, but I have always sent fan mail. 4 year old me sent a fan letter to Underdog and got a signed photo back. Yes, cartoon super heroes had that ability back then, I understand they use computers nowadays. I had a super crush on the boy (Billy Mummy) in the first Lost in Space and wrote him a fan letter and also got a signed photo back.
Nowadays I send fan email and rarely get what looks like an auto reply. I will agree that someone like Stephen King has people to answer his email, but the person he has appears to have read my letter and is replying to it thoughtfully.
I guess that’s because most of my heroes have been writers.
They’ve relocated to Worcester, now called the WorseSox. Not really, but they did move, and McCoy stadium in Pawtucket, named for the guy on Star Trek is going to be rebuilt. Ok, not named after ‘Bones’, I don’t know where the name comes from. They may have a few fans that will travel to Worcester to see them but I haven’t heard of any.
I didn’t exactly meet him, but when I was in college, Harry Chapin performed on campus and I was an usher at his show. This was probably '77-'78 timeframe. After his concert, he was going to come down to a table where he had merchandise that he was selling to benefit his pet cause - I think it was a hunger-related thing. The idea was you bought one of the items and he’d autograph it.
Well, most of the poor college students didn’t have money to spare, regardless of the worthiness of the cause, so they were trying to get autographs on their programs or ticket stubs or whatever. Ol’ Harry was rather pissed about this and expressed his dismay rather forcefully.
Maybe he was just having a bad day, maybe he was tired, or maybe he was really that much of a jerk that he expected all these kids to support his cause. I thought a little less of him that day.
Been to one WooSox game at Polar Park for a work-sponsored family evening. None of the charm of McCoy, but twice as expensive. No good parking nearby, either. And its a 75 minute drive (as opppsed to 20 mins for McCoy). Not that I frequented the PawSox in my adult years, but the jump to Worcester wasn’t a gain.
Harlan Ellison. Great author.
Terrible human being. 6 foot 6 of arrogance packed into a 5 foot 2 body.
I think the cause is an important factor, isn’t it? Is it common for the performers to do that? I mean, if the cause was to end world hunger, and not something silly, wouldn’t you want as much as you possibly can get?
Went there twice last summer. Great park and a fun day. And the stands were packed. Parking is about a 10 minute walk to the park.
Worcester is a dump but Pawtucket ain’t exactly Monte Carlo either.
I can understand why he’d have wanted as much as he could get for his cause, but did he think about his audience? I was older than most students there and I had a steady income, but I still thought the stuff he was selling was $$ - even as a charitable venture.
Hunter S. Thompson gave a disjointed presentation at my college. Afterward, I went up to the stage to ask him about a long-promised forthcoming work of his. Unfortunately, by then he had already become incoherent. Reading about his drug binges was more fun than encountering them in person.
“Hero” is much too strong of a word for the subject of this story, but I feel like typing.
Many years ago I was (very) junior faculty on a two-week course. The developer of one of the foundational methods in my field was also (very) senior faculty at the course. The paper where the method was published is almost certainly the highest cited paper in it’s journal. Kind-a-sort-a if you squint like if you were an apprentice bicycle mechanic, and you were helping Orville Wright teach a class on inventing the airplane.
To the never meet part:
The first night all of the faculty gather for dinner, and this senior person joins me and some other juniors at our table. He tells all kinds of stories about stuff he’s done, ideas he’s had, stuff other people have done with ideas he’s had, etc. He dominated the conversation, but it was reasonably interesting, and he was this big name come to talk to us no-name folks.
The second night, he comes back and joins the table I’m at again. He then proceeds to dominate the conversation, and tell the exact same stories.
The remaining nights us junior faculty get defensive, and make sure we can fill a table before he shows up.
TL;DR: senior and well respected academic, who has done legitimately important work, is also a boor.
His estate says the short story collection Ellison edited The Last Dangerous Visions will be published this year (2023).
What’s notable is that was supposed to be published in 1973. Ellison was critcized for his treatment of some writers (estimated 150 writers total) who contributed their stories for it .Many of the writers are now dead.
To anyone else reading this–Harlan Ellison is considered by many to one of the biggest A**HOLES in science fiction history.
And yet every single one of my interactions with Harlan was entertaining, edifying and fun. He was nothing less than a gentleman in behavior. A rather caustic gentleman, but a gentleman nonetheless.
On a more personal level and not about a celebrity —there was a counselor in high school who was really supportive of me and helped me from having complete mental breakdown and committing suicide. After I graduated high school–he left the state for another job.
25 years later my sister ran into him as he had moved back to our state. She gave him my number and I met up him again. In the time he was gone he had been married three time and become a born again Christian. All he wanted to do is share the gospel and convert me. (He also was diehard Trump supporter which he would NOT have been when I knew him in high school.)
I had no interest and blew off meet up with him again. He simply had changed to much and we no longer had any COMMON interests.