I’ve talked a few times with Rose McGowan via Instagram, mostly about the Harvey Weinstein situation.
I’ve also chatted via Instagram private messaging with Rivkah Reyes, who used to be known as Rebecca Brown, probably best known as Katie the bass player in the underrated School of Rock.
I’ve interacted indirectly and directly with a few famous people when I was more active at Wikipedia. I used to be one of the most prominent conflict of interest folks over there, so I would often help famous people out with their articles.
Probably the coolest person I interacted with was Cindy Morgan, known for both Caddyshack and Tron. I helped her 8 years ago when someone posted a picture to her article that was taken without her permission during an interview, and helped make sure it stayed out of the article. I still have her thank you to me in my talk archives at Wikipedia.
I worked with Newt Gingrich’s campaign manager on Newt’s page for a while, but never interacted with Newt directly. I also worked with Deepak Chopra’s publicist (as “Chopra Media”) and while I never interacted directly with Chopra, he did record videos to talk to those involved in the article. It was odd.
Those were interesting times. I am mostly retired from there now.
Some years ago, I was writing for an Atlanta Convention and Visitor’s Bureau blog on local attractions. Since I was the newbie, I usually got the events no one else wanted - the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Altanta Opera, the Atlanta Ballet.
I wrote enough posts on the ballet that I was asked to interview and write a post on principle dancer John Welker. Not a huge celebrity, but definitely a name in the Atlanta dance community. The “interview” was simply a list of questions I emailed and he responded to.
Got a chance to meet him a couple of times afterwards. Nice guy, and a fantastic dancer.
Way back in the early 2000s, I was freelancing for the woman who wrote a corporate newsletter for a developer. They had just recently rebuilt and modernized East Lake Golf Club (which now hosts the PGA Championship every year). I was told to interview Stewart Cink, the club’s pro. So I called him one evening, while he was in Seattle on the PGA tour. After the interview, I asked him what tournament he was playing? Slight pause, then deadpan: “The U.S. Open.”
Oh.
The PGA Championship is a major tournament that is held at a different course every year. The Tour Championship is at East Lake.
As the rest of that anecdote demonstrated, I’m pretty pig-ignorant about golf. Thanks for correcting my error!
I know (or in some cases knew) personally many of the Nobel Laureates in Economics. In particular I know Robert Merton and Myron Scholes who won the prize for the Option pricing model. I knew Fisher Black as well but he had passed away before the award.
Was it that long ago? In 2015 the U.S. Open was at Chambers Bay, near Tacoma. I grew up about a half-mile from there.
Not sure if this counts but its in the same spirit…
I was watching Letterman when Harvey Pekar made his first appearance. The guy is kooky. A film adaptation of his comic American Splendor was released in 2003, directed by Robert Pulcini It starred Paul Giamatti as Pekar. He became moderatly famous.
He gave his name and the city where he lived so one night when I had few in me I called information and they gave me his number. I called him up. He was home and we had an interesting conversation. I called him many times through the years. I wouldn’t say we became friends, but he knew who I was and took my calls.
I have most of his American Splendor comics. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to experience the Trump presidency. He would have reached new highs in his rants.
Chelsea Peretti had a fun back and forth during one of the Lakers playoff runs. She was a fan and I was a hater. 
Cool, I once sent a bug report to Linus Torvald about some software he wrote (maybe you’ve heard of it), and corresponded with him a bit tracking down the problem. Turned out to be with the boot loader, not the kernel.
Chambers Bay is in the city of University Place. I worked for the the city as they were getting ready to host it. My boss at the time was directly involved with the event and making sure everything was ready; among other things she was in charge of communications for the city.
(Fun fact about University Place; it is the home town of Gary Larson who created The Far Side, he was born and raised there.)
By the way, if you ever watched the show Parks and Recreation, it was eerily accurate about what it’s like working for a small municipality. Little problems were a big deal and always blown out of proportion. We even had multiple meetings about a particular raccoon who was constantly causing problems at one of the parks (I can’t remember what name they had given him) which was the plot of an episode of the show. I didn’t work for the Parks department, but I was IT for the city as a whole and supported all of the groups, including them. The meetings the city had were pretty damn entertaining, again it was like living on that show.
Oh, some people mentioned working with famous people. I guess I did for a while, sort of. I worked for years with James Chatters, the archaeologist who involved with identifying the Kennewick Man as one of the oldest remains ever found in North America. He ran the archaeology department at an engineering firm I worked for for more than 5 years so I knew him well. I later saw him on an episode of America Unearthed. My wife studied geology in college so she likes that show, and one day she was watching an episode that Jim was on, and I told her I knew him really well, and worked with both him and his daughter.
No, it was well before 2015; I was still single. I might be misremembering the details, but I think it was somewhere in the PNW.
I grew up in Oakbrook; it’s within a mile of Chambers Bay as the crow flies, but on the other side of Chambers Creek. When my mom was sick, I was back home for several months helping take care of her. That was 2010 or so; the golf course was in place but some of the details weren’t finished yet. I volunteered for a day to help build the playground equipment just north of the course.
At least two pro wrestling websites–The Wrestling Observer and PWInsider-- have podcasts where they answer listeners’ questions. I sent questions to both and have had them answered. I doubt any outside of hardcore wrestling fans would know who the people behind them are though. (It’s Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez for the first and Dave Scherer and Mike Johnson for the second.)
On Twitter, Neil Gaiman and I had a discussion about the term “British Isles.” Several other people got involved. He was very diplomatic and it all ended well with everyone understanding what the other person had meant.
He is a good bloke who does pretty well with the topics he talks about and encourages everyone to engage.
OTOH, I once commented on something Zachari Levi from Chuck had said about atheism. I disagreed with him saying that non-religious people couldn’t do… something or other, probably think the world had value? Just something really basic that everyone does. He requoted me dozens of times.
I barely use Twitter. Next time I went on there I was was surprising by a storm of people saying fucking awful things. They’d read every tweet I’d ever posted (which was about 12) and made up a very strange person from them - they thought I had several children, not one (because I’d referred to “having children” among other weirdnesses). Levi liked every single one of them, reposted a lot of them and replied to some of them. He worked on that post about atheism being OK. Solved that by unfollowing him.
He is a total fucking asshole who used his brief fame to try to attack someone he didn’t know.
The other people I’d interacted with on social media are either too British or too friendly to mention, except that Mary Beard once retweeted me. And she’s not my friend. Boo.
Since he’s the star of Shazam a successful DC movie and it’s upcoming sequel, his fame wasn’t brief it’s ongoing.
That’s not the first time I’ve heard that about him. I have no idea what he’s like in real life but he can be a real dick to people he doesn’t agree with on Twitter.
Jordan Rudess. It was in '93 or '94, before he joined the Dixie Dregs; nobody knew who he was at the time. I did, though, because I had his most recent album. He popped into rec.music.progressive and asked if anyone had heard this album, and invited people to write him and share their thoughts. So I did. We went back and forth a few times, and the conversation petered out.
Not long after this, the buzz about him started in progressive rock circles. He joined the Dregs, and ultimately wound up in Dream Theater.
I’m still working on that. Seriously.
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I’ve had written exchanges with Penn Jillette, author Charles de Lint, Al Yankovich, Isaac Asimov, Garrett Lisi… I’m not shy about reaching out.
Okay, I’m jealous now. I’m a huge Ben Folds fan.