Maybe he is, but I don’t blame him for not wanting to be surreptitiously photographed when he’s waiting in line at the airport.
In November of 1994, I saw Marc Maron at the very new Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
It was weird. I knew him from Short Attention Span Theater and wanted to talk to him…but we were at the Holocaust Museum and it was clearly the wrong place to have a celebrity encounter.
My friends and I ended up waiting at the end of the tour trying to see him come out. He didn’t. I stood right next to him, though, and sighed at the sadness of the images we saw. He sighed, too.
I didn’t talk to him, though.
I was at a book convention in Vegas in 1990. Mickey Hart, one of the Grateful Dead’s drummers, had written a book about spiritual drumming, and was throwing a concert with a bunch of drummers from all over the world.
There wer a bunch of Dead-type hangers-on in the crowd, including that basketball player. Also, Timothy Leary.
Tim goat up to take a leak, or go back to the bar, so I followed him. “Dr. Leary!” I said. “I think that, along with FDR and Louis Armstrong, you are one of the three great Americans of this century!”
He laughed and did a little shuffle-dance. And said “Doctor Spock. Don’t underestimate the influence of Benjamin Spock.”
Later we both showed up at the same party and sat around the kitchen table drinking whiskey with several other people. Tim insisted we all tell jokes. I told a rather lame lawyer joke, at which no one laughed. Tim nodded solemnly and said, “I heard that one. But with Trump.”
Later I shared a cab back to the hotel with John Barlow, who wrote the lyrics to all of Bob Weir’s Grateful Dead songs, and his hot punked-out girlfriend.
Wellllll…
Did you get the chicken sandwich?
In the mid-80s, Dan Aykroyd and his wife Donna Dixon attended a wedding rehearsal dinner for someone in the Dixon family at the restaurant where I worked (Donna Dixon was from my home town). Aykroyd was super nice, he signed autographs, took pictures with the staff and in general was way warmer and friendlier than was reasonable.
My friend was a school teacher in VA and one of his students was a special needs kid who had somehow met and befriended Ben Affleck when Affleck was making Good Will Hunting. Affleck had promised the student that if the kid finished high school Ben would speak at his graduation and he did. My friend said that Affleck and his wife at the time Jennifer Garner were very gracious and friendly with all the kids when they showed up for the graduation. I didn’t meet Affleck, but I always take a chance to tell that story because I think it’s worth telling.
Ive also met Dan Akroyd. Well, i (literally)walked into him in a bar. He’s very tall.
Ive also met Pete Townshend, as in he walked into the bar i was in and i said something stupid along the lines of, wow, you’re Pete Townshend.
I also served lunch to the members of the Barenaked Ladies. Didn’t know who they were until a workmate asked me to ask them if they were indeed the Barenaked Ladies.
At several sf/fantasy conventions we’ve run into Richard Hatch from the first Battlestar Galactica series. The first time Madame P. met him she asked him if he’d mind a picture. He smiled and said “sure”. She handed him the camera and posed with me and our daughter. He laughed out loud. After taking our picture, my daughter took a picture of him with Madame P., and shortly thereafter I tood a picture of him laying down across my wife’s and daughter’s laps.
Yeah, I ran into Bob Hope once, in the late '80s, outside the Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles. We were behind him at the valet service, and he had a hot young babe with him as he handed his keys over.
My girlfriend said “Hey, it’s Bob Hope,” and Hope started to turn to us with a big smile, when I added “Bob HOPE? Isn’t he dead yet?”
His jaw dropped and he hustled inside with his tootsie.
I’ve always really hated Bob Hope.
Maybe but my stepson’s story was at a film festival where one of Smith’s movies was playing. Mt stepson said, “Hey it’s Kevin Smith.” Smith’s reply was, “Outta my way kid.”
I had two sports celebrities at my job(s) who wanted special treatment, even though I didn’t recognize them. One was Lee Trevino, the golfer, at my caricature stand at Bush Gardens Williamsburg, and the other was whoever the head coach of Virginia Tech was in 1983, wanting to cash a check at a bank I briefly worked at without presenting ID. I wouldn’t do it until my boss, a Tech alum, intervened. (I wasn’t fired for that specifically, but I’m sure it contributed to their general displeasure with me.)
I lived in DC for many years and bumped into lots of the type of people who are famous there (Ralph Nader, Ted Kennedy, Monica Lewinsky, Karenna Gore, Charles Krauthammer, Larry King and Janet Reno). Never got the urge to ask for an autograph, though.
John Mellencamp kicked our ashtray. Milwaukee Hyatt hallway 1984-ish.
Denise Crosby once said she liked the dress I was wearing at a Trek convention dinner party. I was never a big fan of Tasha Yar, but I like Denise for saying that.
Yes indeed. Turns out he was right. Next to Jiffy corn muffins, the chicken sandwich was probably the best thing made in Chelsea.
Business trips to DC were always fun.
George McGovern and three friends got the table next to us one evening in the '90s.
He had TERRIBLE table manners, I’m sorry to say.
I saw Warren Zevon in a very small club, maybe twenty years ago. He was very weird on stage - had something like thirty cups of water arrayed on the piano, which his aide-de-camp carefully lined up and refilled in each break. Very little audience engagement.
When he left, he had to come around to a door almost in the public area, so i was positioned with CD booklet, sharpie and engaging grin.
He looked at me blankly, as if I was maybe a doorman or staff, then glanced at the booklet and shot me one of the filthiest looks I’ve ever been on the receiving end of. Needless to day, no autograph.
I just saw Tony Todd in a very small theatrical production, and at the curtain call (standing O for him and his two co-stars) he was about ten feet from me. I really, really wanted to softly call out “Candyman…” but he’s so damned intimidating… and I figured I’d just collect another shitty look. Oh, well.
I’m not a big NBA fan, but I’ve had a couple of NBA encounters.
The first was in the late 80s in Miami. I was on a business trip and I kept seeing really tall men in the hotel. Finally, I recognized Kevin McHale in the restaurant area and figured the Celtics must have been in town playing the Heat. I only recognized him because of his appearances on Cheers. Then, as I was walking past the lobby, I saw Larry Bird in the elevator just as the door closed. You didn’t have to be a fan to recognize Bird.
Many years later in Dallas, I was walking into a local eatery and a guy I recognized was walking out, but I couldn’t place him. Since I recognized him, I thought I might know him. Actually I thought he went to our church. So I said “Hello, how are you doing?” He said, “Fine” and continued on.
Then I ran into a really tall guy with blonde hair walking out and immediately recognized Dirk Nowitzki. That’s when I realized the first guy was Steve Nash.
The funny part is I ran into Nash a couple of times after that in the same place and he always said “Hey, how are your doing?” first. I like to believe he must have thought we had met before and he should know me because of that first encounter.
Way back when I was a Phoenix Suns fan, Danny Manning was on the team. We had tickets for that nite’s game, and were sad to hear that he was out with an injured knee. We took our seats and of course you know who sat in front of us. With his family. I was told I spoke too loudly when I said “His knee looks FINE!”
Eh, celebrities. I’ve accidentally found myself standing next to John Hurt (I was outside the Barbican making a phone call, he was outside smoking), Leo Sayer (waiting in line at Heathrow) and Glenn Close (I was meeting a friend at the National Theatre stage door, she was chatting to the reception - she is tiny, by the way) and have hung out backstage with Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones for one show and Jeremy Irons for another. I’ve sat at the next table from John McCririck at the Ivy (odious man) and from Ramon Tikaram at a Camberwell cafe. I’ve met - and occasionally chatted to - an assortment of stars and lesser lights from the classical music world, including John Adams and Philip Glass. And I’ve spent ten minutes alone in a room with a very drunk Kurt Vonnegut Jr discussing writing and baseball.
And yet my stories still get trumped by my wife, who had a three-minute conversation with Queen Elizabeth II. And who only two weeks ago commuted into work sitting next to Rupert Graves, with whom she discussed children and schools (he was chaperoning a school trip and has a son a similar age to our daughter, albeit not at the same school).
I tend not to bother celebs because frankly I never think of anything to say apart from “Hey, it’s you” and “I liked you in that thing you did”, both of which are inane.
I got to hang out with the E Street Band after a show.
The US Special Trade Representative once elbowed me out of the way to get to a men’s room.