I thought surely you’re exaggerating, until I pulled up Google Maps and looked at the screwy, circuitous route the Interstates make to connect the two. US 74, the most direct route, is about three and a half hours. I didn’t know any two points in that state were more than three hours apart.
Can you expand a lot on this??
IIRC, in the 70s and 80s, whenever he was mentioned in whatever celeb magazine I read, he was a real prick. Then, I dunno, after Aunt Bea died, I guess, he was,* and had always been*, Sheriff Andy Taylor in the flesh, and loved everybody, and would change your flat tire in the rain for you, if you were too tuckered out. All of the old dirt just disappeared.
Not like you have an agenda or anything but Im guessing he must have been a cross between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
Man I would have had no freaking clue what you were trying to communicate. But nonverbal communication has never been my strong suit.
I’m a fairly big liberal, but my two biggest celebrity encounters were Mike Huckabee and Justice Scalia.
Saw Mike Huckabee walk past me in the lobby of the New York Hilton. Figured it wasn’t really him - yelled “Mike!” - then felt a little like an idiot when he turned around. This was right after he dropped out of the race - he was very friendly - I asked if I could take his picture and he was totally cool about it and asked about my iPhone.
Was in baggage claim on a flight back from London and was walking by a carousel where one guy in a sport coat was kind of tiredly checking luggage to see if it was his. I was walking by to go to the men’s room and thought “that guy looks a lot like Justice Scalia”. Noticed a guy next to him - wearing a jacket with a small US Marshall pin and figured that was a good sign it really was him. No one else seemed to recognize him, but after making eye contact with the Marshall - he gave me the nod that he wouldn’t shoot me for approaching him. He was obviously exasperated from his flight, but kind of perked up when I asked if I could shake his hand. His response - holding out his hands for display before shaking mine…
“Sure - there are only 18 hands like these.”
Yeah, I was thinking about 85/40, which is not the best way to go. Greensboro, which is near the middle of the state, is 4.5 hours from Highlands. Asheville to Wilmington is about 5 hours, and the Outer Banks to parts of the mountais would take quite a bit longer. NC covers a lot of ground, east to west.
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. Of course I have no agenda, as I’ve never crossed paths with the man. I’ve talked to about a dozen people in Wilmington, some of whom he was extremely rude to. Others told stories of ways in which he abused various kind gestures that were extended to him when he first arrived it town.
He asked a friend of ours if he could use their dock space on Figure Eight for a few days, then refused to move his boat, or make arrangements to have it moved, for several months. The owners couldn’t use it for their own boat, which pissed them off after it became apparrent that he would make no effort to act like a decent human being. They made it very clear that his actions wer unacceptable and gave him a deadline. he still refused to move the boat, at which point they finally had it towed. Then he cussed them up one side and down the other.
That’s one of several stories I heard.
Clearly, some celebrity types are just plain mean assholes. At the same time, I have had days when I was a mean asshole and days when I wasn’t. I don’t think that comments about a single meeting can brand a person for life even if they are a celebrity. They are just people, too.
My story…I saw Roseann’s ass at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Not as unpleasant as it sounds, but something I could have lived without. She was showing her new tattoo to EVERYONE in a LARGE and public room.
I can’t quickly google it so maybe it wasn’t here I shared it. Just a quick rundown:
He stayed at a hotel where I worked and we screwed up- I’ll say that immediately. The sales staff had booked two back-to-back big conventions, each filling about 200 rooms, and the first convention’s folks were all supposed to check out on Sunday, the same day the second convention was supposed to check in. Add to this that the sales staff had promised the people in the first convention late checkouts, AND that Sunday is usually a dead day in business hotels so fewer housekeepers were scheduled than normal (it was a very poorly managed hotel), it was a frigging nightmare for the desk staff: at 5:00 p.m. there were 200 people waiting to check into their rooms and only a few rooms available. Total nightmare.
Gallagher was performing in the Civic Center across from the hotel. His wife, who looked like Fran Drescher but with a buzz cut and seemed to be “on something” was with him. Their room was not ready, and again, that was the hotel’s mistake. We (the front desk staff- who had nothing to do with the fustercluck, btw, but were catching the hell from it) tried to tell him “we understand that you need a room now, but we don’t have any, what we will do is get you a room at another hotel in town and arrange transport if needed”.
I understand him being upset, I could understand if he’d raised his voice and demanded to speak to the manager (who was nowhere to be found, of course), but instead he proceeded to scream and rant and rave and throw things in the lobby like an out of control child while his ‘lady’ was rolling her eyes and saying ‘let’s just fucking go… let’s just fucking go…’. Even people who were irate over the hotel’s incompetence and had been yelling and demanding the manager’s home number earlier were looking at him with a “WTF?” expression, and in a weird way he kind of helped us by making a sort of “Get a load of that crazy asshole!” sympatico twixt desk staff and irate patrons.
What was funny: he apparently thought everybody recognized him and was awed by him, but nobody in the convention (which, I remember, was a Rural Water Works Board) seemed to have a clue who he was, and when he tried to be funny with “We need to storm the desk and take them out and tar and feather them” and some other lame stuff one asked him “Which water board are you with?”
“I’m Gallagher.”
The guy who asked “I’m Joe Benson from the Dozier and Opp Water Board” (or whoever/wherever he was from). “Which water board are you with?”
No pun intended when I say that threw water on him and he had us get him another room. He and his lady had their Harleys taken off the tour bus and went over there.
Again, he had every reason to be upset- the hotel totally screwed the pooch all around that day- but it was the way and the degree- we thought we were going to have to call the cops for a second.
I didn’t learn til later that he has a long reputation as being a bastard of bastards and is HATED in show business. When I learned he was a major hateful neocon it was sort of surprising for somebody who’s done as many drugs as he’s admitted to doing, but wasn’t shocked that in interviews he is one of the most openly bitter and vile little assholes on Earth. By his own admission he made millions and millions in the '80s alone, but a couple of years ago was living in a long-term-stay hotel (not a nice one but like a Residence Inn) because he’d lost everything through divorce and high living (though his manager said in an interview that he did at least manage to provide for his kids with some of the assets), then he had heart attacks onstage and had to retire (though he is doing a limited ‘going away tour’). Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Regarding Andy Griffith…
Not my own account but that of my father. In the early seventies my father was a lineman for Bell Telephone in Southern California. He was routed out to make a repair at a studio, I think in Burbank. While checking in at the gate the guy behind him in line started honking his horn continuously. He exchanged a glance with the guard at the gate and popped his head out of the van too see what all the fuss was about. It was at that moment an enraged Andy Griffith delivered this nugget of wisdom.
“C’mon, c’mon… A dollar before a dime.”
So yeah… Andy Griffith was a douche.
Well, he was French, so that covers the first and third.
Interesting. I know zip about him as a person, but in the era when we watched two or three of his concert tapes I was repeatedly unnerved by the viper-like glare he fell into on every pause. It was like, “Joke! Punchline! [I hate everyone of you fuckwads laughing at me]” over and over - a glittering, evil look that spoke volumes.
Oh well. I assure you they are better to their fans than pretty much any celebrity in the world. And I know people who were in the high school Teller taught in. He was well liked there too.
I am sufficiently… striking in appearance that I have often encountered that strange, deferential, “I know you’re SOMEbody” attitude. As the years wear on, I tend to get taken for musicians I’ve never heard of. “Aren’t you so-and-so… the lead for [some band I’ve only vaguely heard of].” There was an era when quite a few people thought I might be Frank Zappa, which I found flattering.
My favorite time, though, was in NYC. My wife and I went into Sardi’s, dressed fairly well for an evening out, and were treated VERY deferentially by the maitre-d and staff. (Other couples who came in were shoved to center-floor tables.) I ended up paying with cash because I didn’t want to spoil their illusion. I’d love to know who they thought I was… or if their celeb-radar just failed them.
Here’s an interview Gallagher did with the Onion’s AV Club where he came across as kind of an ass.
This wasn’t unpleasant, so much as awkward, but I very nearly ran into Karl Lagerfeld. He was on Orchard Street in New York shooting a Chanel ad and I was walking toward him on a very narrow sidewalk. I smiled and nodded and he just looked at me and kept walking. His team was very nice though and let me take photos of the shoot.
I also literally ran into Dennis Kucinich at the cafeteria of one of the office buildings in DC for representatives. I’m 5’1 and he was barely taller than me. Again I smiled and nodded, but I don’t think he even saw me.
And now for the positive. This wasn’t a random encounter because it was at a concert, but I gave Morrissey a note while he was on stage thanking him for being such an influence on my life. I was worried that he wouldn’t take it, but he leaned over really far to take it from me and opened it with a dramatic flourish, showing it to the audience, then he put it in his pocket. I have no idea if he read it when he went backstage to change or at a later point, but I was very happy nonetheless.
I used to look like Kid Rock when I was younger, or I should say he looked like me. My hair wasn’t as long, but there was a resemblance. When I traveled, it didn’t help when I told people I was from the Detroit area. There were a few people who took some convincing. One guy in New Orleans wouldn’t leave us alone, and I finally convinced him that I was not KR, when my friend steps over and says “you know Rob, as your producer, I don’t think you should lie to the fans.” (his real name is Rob Ritchie).
It got to the point where we would play Kid Rock sighting sightings, as in, we would look for people in a crowd who think they saw Kid Rock. The main problem is that a lot of people consider him a no talent hack, so it’s similar to being named Michael Bolton, or George Michael. Many, many times I would have a conversation like this:
Girl 1- Hey, you look like Kid Rock!
Girl 2- Kid Rock? I think he’s ugly.
Me - Wait, was I just called ugly through a roundabout way?
Anyway, it doesn’t happen anymore, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
Did you ever get any female attention of the positive kind through this ruse?
(someone who looks very little like any celebrities that he can think of is curious)
Nah. Usually I was with my wife, and it was usually dudes that really thought I was him. Girls only seemed to comment that I looked like him. I was tempted to find a Pam Anderson look-a-like and go do bizarre things around Detroit to see if I could make the papers.
[Andre the Giant]
I took that to mean that crucible mimed drinking a cup of water as if asking “Do you want some water?” or “Are you thirsty?”