I’ve had a couple. I had backstage passes for The Talking Heads and shook hands with David Byrne and the rest of the band. They also invited us back to the hotel for some nekkid swimming and a little Ooo-la-la, but we had to take a pass.
I also crashed my shopping cart into Dan Fogelberg at the little grocery store in Nederland, CO.
Back when I was a little younger (like 15) I managed to meet a few rock bands.
I hung/partied/was propositioned by:
Queenscryche, Van Halen, Alice In Chains, and Metallica They were all very cool, but of course Layne Staley was very wasted backstage.
Jason Newsted gave me crap from the stage because I wasn’t singing along to “Seek and Destroy”
I also met a few wrestlers when I worked at the arena, but I didn’t really know who any of them were. My nephew is duly impressed.
My big claim to fame though - I got my picture taken with the “Mr. Clean” guy in the white suit. He asked me what I was doing later. :wally
I know I’ve said this before, but I lived in Fred Roger’s neighborhood when I was a kid, before he moved to a different part of town. This was in the late '60s. I would see him around at stores and such, and there was always the Halloween sightings.
Professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino also lived in the same neighborhood as us. He and my Dad worked contruction together in the late’50s/very early '60s. I went to high school with his late son David, who also became a professional wrestler, but that was more of a friend-of-a-friend relationship.
After my parents got divorced, my dad dated a woman that worked in the front office for the Pittsburgh Steelers. This was during their hey-day in the Steel Curtain years. I don’t know of any of those guys I didn’t see and speak with repeatedly.
I went to high school with Mark Kelso of the Buffalo Bills (and Philly Eagles for his first year in the NFL). Also in our class was Leigh Curl, who was and may still be, the orthopedic doctor for the Baltimore Ravens. She also won a lot of NCAA sports kudos when she was in college.
I had a class with Dan Marino at Pitt in 1982. Me, him, and about 400 other people. (twenty years later, my brother ended up being in a PSA type commercial with him.) And in junior high, I played football against Jimbo Covert (Chicago Bears).
I’ve met a lot of musicians over the years:
But I will never ever speak of the Hideous Matthew Sweet Encounter.
And also just a couple of weeks ago, I stood in the beer line with Rudy Boesch at a function at the Little Creek Amphib Base in Virginia Beach. He’s a very nice man, and is someone I have wanted to meet long before he was on Survivor.
Starting with sports…
Played street hockey with U.S. Olympic Gold Medal hockey player and N.Y. Islander Ken Morrow. My best friend was neighbor to, and we played catch often with, N.Y. Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson (even though he was a Met and I was a Yankee fan :)). When we were teens, went fishing often with, and played Little League baseball against, N.Y. Mets pitcher Pete Harnisch. When working as a bank teller during college, would talk with N.Y. Mets Howard Johnson and Randy Myers almost weekly.
From movies and TV:
I’ve shared elevators with Jerry Orbach and Joan Rivers. The former lived in the same building as another best friend (pre L&O). The latter had offices in the same building that I worked in, and was in the same express elevator bank. She and her little mutt that was always with her were insufferable.
Shared a large lunch table with Danny Aiello.
Worked one summer setting up portable AC on movie sets. Most work was pre-production, but got to work on one movie that was filming starring Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep. DeNiro was pretty nice…the walk-on actors were mostly snobs. Didn’t really get to talk to Streep other than asking “Pass the creamer, please” at the coffee table.
For politics, I got to talk at length with Mario Cuomo after he was N.Y. Governor, and Michael Bloomberg before he was NYC Mayor.
Chance encounters, where I’ve exchanged one or two sentences, are far too numerous to detail - a sampling of those I’ve encountered outside of their working environment: Matthew Broderick, Dave Letterman, Madonna, Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Tiger Woods, and Samuel Jackson. Most of these meetings were along the lines of “I liked you in …”, “Thank you.” (well, not Madonna as there is nothing she’s done that I like).
Okay, the biggie is going to school with Andy Kaufman. I only knew him enough to say hi to but he was buds with my roommate’s boyfriend. Yes he really was that zany!
I spent a delightful evening chatting with Warren Oates in a bar in Saratoga Springs.
Waited on Tennessee Williams in Key West at the Pier House. He was a sweetheart.
Waited on Gerry Spence in Teton Village, Wyoming. He was very nice but his wife was “in a mood.”
The rest are just famous people I got to meet once…John Melloncamp, F. Lee Bailey, and Angie Dickinson.
Wil seems like a pretty cool guy. He hangs out on Fark, he’s one of the moderators, I think.
Risley? I lived there for a couple of years in the early 90’s.
I’ve mostly met athletes - the uncle of a friend of mine is a former big league manager. I met Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, Ken Singleton, and a few others through him.
I went to college with defensive tackle Seth Payne of the Houston Texans. He’s a big dude.
Former Washington Capitals player Craig Laughlin rented my parents house for a while when we lived out of the country.
Having been in the Food/hospitality biz for the better part of 30 yrs there have been many brief brushes and some meaningful interactions…
Cooked for 3 Illinois governors, Burt Lancaster, John “Cougar” Mellancamp, Bob Wier and Ratdog, and the bands Leftover Salmon, String Cheese, Vic Wooten (solo project)…
As a waiter in a VERY high end St Louis establishment I met/waited on:
ALL of the '97 Detroit Redwings (sans goalies as I hear they have no table manners)…Yzerman IS a class act
The Great One…Mr Wayne Gretzky and his wife…Wayne was in (during his SHORT St. Louis tenure) 3-4 times a week after games and was totally accessable to anyone.
Brett Hull(many times)…total dick, enough said.
All of the St louis Rams and Front Office…damn them guys are HUGE…
Prince Albert of Monaco…a ROYAL pain in the ass…
Many other but my mind is a bit of a blurr…late night/ early morning
I met Philip Jose Farmer once, and he signed my book.
I pissed next to Cuba Gooding Jr. at Disneyworld. Said hi, didn’t know it was him till he started talking to another fellow in the restroom.
I had backstage passes to meet country singer Collin Raye. He was a very pleasant down to earth guy, have my picture with him.
Also have a picture of me and up-and-coming NASCAR star Denny Hamlin (rookie of the year, for sure). Talked to him for about 15-20 minutes last year about the ins and outs of his sport. Cool guy.
I perfomed once with Louie Bellson in college. We perfomed a number of his songs so of course he knew them. He loves to play fast and I remember he started off a song that’s normally around 200-225, well over that.
I’ve meet a number of metal acts, but nothing all that exciting.
I once sold Tony Kubek a pair of snowshoes. In the off-season (when he was a broadcaster) he did some high school coaching in Appleton, WI, where I worked in an outdoor store.
I peed with Steve Martin when he was at Florida State University performing, back in 1975, I think.
I did one for the jazz geeks, now here’s one for the academic geeks:
In a men’s room in Pennsylvania, I inadvertently jostled Stanley Fish with my backpack.
I met Christine Lavin (folk singer/recording artist) twice. The first time, she was touring with Cheryl Wheeler and a few other female singers. I went backstage after the show to get autographs. She offered to share their M&M’s with me.
The second time was the night before my 40th birthday, just before a solo show. She made a point of mentioning me during the show, and said I was in my “late, late, late, late thirties.”
That’s all I got.
Well… I haven’t gotten up close and personal with him, but a shirt I painted has…
And I guess he’s technically a ‘celebrity’ and not achieved STAR status yet. Whatever. I’m still pretty damned happy about it.
Off American Idol this year came Ace Young… quite possibly the hottest piece of manflesh to grace my TV. Ever. I have begun following his career, joined several sites dedicated to him by other middle aged obsessive women like myself. I have met quite a few gals that actually KNOW him. I found out he likes horses, so on a whim, I painted a T shirt with a white horse on it, and sent it to one of the gals that knows him, and she gave it to him for me.
He wore it at the AI concert that night. 
This is my brush with stardom.
Went to school with Tom Cruise. He’s shorter than you think…5’6 maybe?
(subject changed to avoid being declared ‘fair game’)
When I was 10 or 12, I used to save my quarters & ride my bike to the student center at Motclair State to play video games. One night, a very scraggly student, who happened to look like Bruce Willis, but with long thinning whispy hair, yelled at me for playing Galaxians too loudly (like players can affect a game’s volume). Evidently, I was interupting his solo game of pool. He gestured me to get out and I ignored him until he jumped up on the table and starting running across it and at me with a pool-cue in his hand. Yes, Bruce Willis needed a pool cue to chase a a kid (me) away from the video games. I checked later on as the face on Moonlighting seemed familiar and lo-and-behold: he’s a Montclair State alumni.
I’ve had nice 10 minute chats at seperate times with both Tom Keane and Jim Florio; both are much smarter people than you’d think.
I once had a job where I had to coordinate some work at the apartment of Lauren Bacall. Her assistants were wonderful. Lauren kept cancelling appointments though. The day I left that company, that ticket was still open, the work not done, as it had been once again ‘rescheduled’.
I’ve seen Yogi and Dale Berra around, but never got to say ‘hi’.
My wife and I were in Vegas at the Luxor in 1997, walking around the banks of slots. A group of young men were walking fast in a column (like one of those weird college fraternity things) coming towards in a really fast walk/march. My wife stepped back, but I didn’t get out of the way in time, and the lead jerk put his shoulder down and butted me out of the way. I was spun around and they were 10 feet past me before I had my balance and could say ‘wtf!’ . That’s when the last one turned around and looked at me while still walk/marching. It was Stephen Baldwin (the blonde Baldwin; the one from ‘Young Riders’)
Oh. And Olympia Dukakis sat at a table next to my wife and I at a restaurant once.
When I was a kid my dad worked for Brown and Williamson and repped Indiana. The company sponsored the Viceroy car at the time, and we had Al Unser and Mario Andretti over for dinner. I understand my Dad played poker with them. I simply remember that the women around them all had really big hair (my mother’s take is “you remember that?” - then she laughs and says “yes, they all had really big hair”) and that when we had to go to the track it was really loud and the grown ups drank a lot.
Back in the 70’s, when The Donny and Marie Show was on the air, it was produced at the Osmonds’ studio in Utah. I got a job there one summer doing cue cards for the show, so I got to meet all of the Osmonds as well as their weekly guests. Some of the ones I remember are Susanne Sommers, Buddy Hackett, Mel Tillis, and of course Paul Lynde.
During my college days, I was working backstage in the TV truck at a Neil Diamond concert on campus, when he came into the truck. He said, “Hi, I’m Neil Diamond.” Meawhile, I’m too stupid to say anything except to mutter, “I know.” :smack:
When I was even younger, I sometimes would go skiing at Sundance Ski Resort, and on more than one occasion ran into Robert Redford in the lunch line. He’s much shorter than he appears on film.
Served Canadian musician Sam Roberts at the restaurant one night. He was extremely nice.
Met comedian Colin Mochrie when I was doing a show for the Second City. In true Carlyjay fashion, I managed to (amiably, I swear) call him a bastard within the first two minutes after meeting him. He laughed, but I have a feeling he thought I was an idiot.
My favourite, though. I grew up in a town in Ontario where **Dan Aykroyd ** has a home. He’s a very common sight there in the bars and in the downtown area. He was known around town for being something of a jerk, and a lecherous jerk at that.
One day, I was walking on the main downtown street with a bunch of my friends, and I looked up and saw two familiar people walking towards us. One of them was Dan Aykroyd, and the other was, heart-stoppingly… Johnny Fay, drummer of The Tragically Hip. I love the Hip, and so of course I took this opportunity to approach Fay.
“Hello, Mr. Fay. I just want to say I love your music, it’s an honour to meet you.”
During our short conversation, Aykroyd kept saying “Yeah, and I’m Dan Aykroyd, how are you?” and other such lameisms. I sort of gave him an impatient glare and kept talking to Johnny Fay.
As my friends and I walked away, I was floating with happiness. My friends were really quiet. Finally, someone said, “Do you know what you just did?”
“Yeah!” I crowed, “I just met JOHNNY FAY!”
“You snubbed Dan Aykroyd.”
It’s been my proudest moment yet.