I was pretty good friends with Crispin Glover from the ages of 14 to 17. I haven’t seen him in over 20 years but if you mentioned my (real life) name to him he would certainly know who I was.
I worked at the campus radio station when I was a student. One day this obnoxious lady came in to see us. She was the agent for a guitar player who she had in tow. She practically physically forced us to interview him and then wouldn’t leave until we played the interview on the air. His style was kind of metal but this was the 80’s and we were way too cool for that. He was a running joke for a couple of years. The joke was on us though because he had a fair amount of success. His name is Steve Vai.
We need to compare notes, Kalhoun - sounds like we may know some of the same people, or at least must have grown up in the same area. Does the name “Thirsty Whale” mean anything to you?
In the six-degrees-department: My husband occasionally does business with a guy whose brother was one of Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels. All I know about the guy is that his last name is Castalde.
Come to think of it, it was maybe 1979 or early 1980. I was a teenager at the time.
Yes, I remember that he was an “older” guy.
Perhaps. But a lot of these cons were so popular that all the hotels were booked up. It seemed to me that this may have been one of those times. And, he may have decided so late in the evening that he didn’t feel like driving home after all, so he figured he’d see if he could find a place to crash at the con.
Eh. A lot of us could have commuted to the con, but it was a big hassle. For one thing, the Disneyland Hotel is a long drive for many of us in the S. California area, (it was an hour from where I lived) and sometimes it’s just not worth the effort (and fighting traffic, finding parking, blah blah blah). Especially if you stay up late at the con, attending parties and having a grand time—the last thing you want to do is drive an hour or two to get home, only to try to drag yourself up early in the morning, drive an hour or two back, fight to find a parking space, and hope that you don’t miss some event you wanted to see that was being held earlier in the day.
Sampiro’s story reminds me of one I’d forgotten: About 12 years ago I went to see one of the abbreviated Shakespeare plays they were putting on at the Renaissance Faire in the S. Calif. area, and I thought that the guy playing the lead (Taming of the Shrew) was a damned good actor, and also looked a lot like Bill Campbell. After the performance I got a closer look, and by damn, it was Bill Campbell! This was when he was relatively unknown (before any of his television successes). Pretty cool.
Author, historian and policital gadfly Niall Ferguson (recently named “one of the world’s 100 most influential thinkers”) was my college advisor at Jesus College, Oxford, between 1996 and 1999. An extremely intelligent man, who does hold rather divisive views. I always enjoyed talking to him, even if I didn’t get to talk to him as much as I would have liked, what with him writing three major books during that period.
I must have been at school with Darius Danesh who didn’t win Pop Idol in the UK… because, y’know, apparently he went to my school. He’d have been a couple of years below me, but still, he must have been around. Who knows, I probably gave him an essay for looking at me funny.
Nonetheless, I have no memory of his presence. It’s as if he has simply been erased from my memory. To this day I have no idea of what he sings like. I have only the faintest conception of what he LOOKS like.
Nevertheless, Darius, if you’re reading this… I’m sure you remember your old pal Ross. Remember? Ross who you said you’d share your money with if ever you made any?
Jenny McCarthy used to work at a local grocery store called 7-9-11 here in Chicago on Archer Avenue. My friends and I were two years younger than Jenny and would always stop by the store after our usual pick-up games of baseball during the summer. My friends were convinced she was smoking hot, but I never had a thing for big-breasted blondes, so I had to be the lone voice of dissent in our group. You know, the “settle down, settle down, oh, she’s not all that” guy.
When she became Miss October in '93 and then Playmate of the Year, I had to concede that perhaps I was wrong. Incidentally, she was a pretty typical sweet, South Side Irish lass who just happened to make it big.
Not much to contribute here, as mine is a very very minor celebrity, but a friend’s brother is Drake McElroy who is a professional motocross guy. I’ve seen him on ESPN a few times.
I don’t know if he counts as famous and this wasn’t my experience, but an elderly Jewish co-worker used to attend a synagogue in a small town in North Carolina where the rabbi was Jackie Mason.
Oh, and when my uncle managed an NCO club on a US military base in England, one of the hack-performers he used to hire was a local singer named Dickie (now Richard) Dawson. He says he was a total horndog who shagged every waitress and the wives of half the men on the base.
Bruce Willis worked as a bartender in our place in the early '80’s. My husband taught him how to tend bar. We had live music 2-3 nights a week and, if he liked the band, he would run around the corner to his apartment and bring back his harmonicas so he could jam with them.
He would frequently have 2 or three ladies staying until closing in hopes of going home with him. He would have to figure out a way to get rid of the ones he wasn’t interested in. Every now and then he would lament to me about how lonely he was and wonder why he never felt close to people. I think that was a line he used with the ladies. We were not surprised when he made it big. He had that aura and knew how to get introduced to people who could help his career.
My son (known here as VarlosZ) accompanied him in a rendition of Great Balls of Fire by banging on the piano at the appropriate times. He was just a tot though and can’t remember it. Bruce was great with him.
Nah. It was Kate (Shane on the show). Fun girl. Great taste in music. She knew as much as, if not more, about hip-hop as I ever did. We used to get fucked up and go to the Met (a wonderful museum here in NYC) for fun. I don’t really talk to her any more. This was like 6 or 7 years ago and she has since moved to LA.
