Buffalo has a local celebrity lounge singer, Lance Diamond.
The thing about Lance Diamond is that he has had a lounge act forever, just about. I mean, he’s really a good lounge singer. I remember my parents going to see his act when I was a little kid. At some point in the 1990s (as best as I can tell), the whole retro thing re-discovered him – he performs with the Goo-goo Dolls (another Buffalo act), and he gets that his current appeal is camp and definitely plays up that aspect of it. I sort of miss the pre-camp Lance.
Well I live in the Los Feliz area of Hollywood, just south of the Hollywood Hills. I have no doubt that celebrities frequent my laundramat, various bars and restaurants, the supermarket and such right by my house. Unfortunately I doubt I would recognize them if they came up to me with a copy of US magazine and their picture on the cover.
Erskine Caldwell was born here. So was Lewis Grizzard (homespun author) and Andrew ‘Drew’ Hill (former WR for the LA Rams). I went to school with country music stars Alan Jackson and Doug Stone (whose real last name was Brooks).
But my favorite local celebrity was Bohannon. Ten pounds of funk in a five-pound sack. (If you’re a Motown fan, you know him, even if you don’t know it.)
“While the other candidate pledged to limit spending to $1,000,000 US, Fred pledged to limit his spending to $16. Tuttle pulled an upset victory in the Sept. 1998 primary” He won partly by confounding the flatlander with questions such as how many teats does a cow have.
Bush 41 lives here in Houston, about 3 miles down the road from me.
But our local celebrity is none other than Marvin Zindler , who rose to fame by getting The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas closed down. This, of course, was the (in)famous Chicken Ranch in La Grange, Texas. The story is what served as the basis for the play and later movie.
Marvin manages to do some good here in Houston as a consumer activist. But he’s most noted for reading health reports on restaraunts and looking for one line, which he bellows out: 'SSSLLLLIIIMMMEEEE IN THE ICE MACHINE!".
Where I live now, there are a number of well-known national political and showbiz faces, including the nephew and daughter of a national heroine, but their names would probably not resonate with Dopers (well, maybe with one or two of them).
In Gibraltar in the late 80s, I rubbed shoulders with a handful of people who had become household names (in the UK at least) as a result of them having given controversial testimony about the 1988 IRA shooting.
But the best local celeb had to be Peter Cushing in the early eighties when I lived in the Kentish seaside town of Whitstable. You’d cross paths with him at the greengrocers, spot him across the tea room and glimpse him riding his bicycle down the High Street.
Celeste Holm has a farm in my town. Whitney Houston’s NJ home that was until recently on the foreclosure block is two towns over in Mendham. Jim Breuer (Goat Boy from SNL) lives in the next town over - Chester.
I would see him at the local market (not the Giant Eagle but the other one in Shadyside- can’t remember) and his wife was a pianist in town.
My good friend lived accross from the PBS station (gads, no memory- WQED?). One wintery day she was crossing the street, slipped and then heard a melodic voice from behind “are you all my dear?”
Huh…I’m surprised that no one from St. Louis has popped in to mention Beatle Bob. I went to college at Washington University in St. Louis, and worked at the radio station, so I got to know him pretty well at assorted shows around town. He’s a nice guy, but an odd duck. The weirdest part was running into him at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. How he managed to make it from St. Louis to Austin with no car and no discernible income, I’ll never know.
