She also refuses to use the hotel’s wipers, always bringing her own (a husband-wife team named Leonard and Peg, both of whom regret their liberal arts degrees).
A story I remember from the A&E Biography on Lynde is that at the height of his success he bought a mansion that once belonged to Errol Flynn and had a huge housewarming party. Sometime between the first guest arriving and the party getting big Paul became obsessed- paranoid- about the guests getting out of control and trashing the house (no real reason he got obsessive, just one of those “it could possibly happen” fears) and so he moved the housewarming party outside and refused to allow anyone inside!
There’s a story that about him, possibly apocryphal, that made it’s way into the plot of Groundhog Day (in which it happens to Bill Murray’s character. One night he was driving drunk and a police car started chasing him. He refused to pull over, drove fast and erratically through a downtown area, then another police car joined in, and it ended when he ran his car off the road and into a mailbox. When the police came to his car, so the story goes, they came up to his window with their guns drawn. Lynde rolled down his window, looked at them, and said “I’ll have a Number Three combo with a Dr. Pepper, hold the onions!” [or something like that].
There’s a one-man-show about Lynde called Off Center starring an actor/impoersonator named Michael Airington that has gotten rave reviews. Clips.
This is a completely stupid thing for me to point out, but I’m like that, so I point out that Paul Lynde ordering a ‘number 3 combo’ is anachronistic - combo meals didn’t really happen-happen until the mid-80’s.
My wife also runs a bookstore, and she’s familiar with all four categories; from what she’s told me, she’s met two more:
The Complainer: He’ll come in, leave, and then call the CEO of the chain to tell her that his book isn’t displayed prominently enough. Can go very badly for the store manager.
The Neighbor: An author who happens to live nearby, stops by once a week and wants to talk about every book in the world except his own. Will perhaps sign a couple of books as a personal favor.
Back in the 1980s a friend of mine was a waiter in a restaurant in Dayton, Ohio. One evening, about 15 minutes before closing, Rob Lowe walked in with couple young women. Since it was near closing time, they were the only ones in the restaurant. They stayed for two hours, and my friend said Rob was a belligerent and obnoxious prick the entire evening.
Sorry about all the posts, but here are a couple more:
Johnny Ramone. Was a real dickhead from everything I’ve read.
Frank Zappa: I’m a *huge *fan of FZ, but I’ve heard horror stories from musicians who worked for him. He was *not *a personable guy… business-like, joyless, cold, and ultra-demanding.
Hell, he even admitted it himself. The documentary End of the Century ( all but required for any Ramones fan, before it I hadn’t realized how central Dee Dee was to the band ) pretty well shows him off as the cold, controlling jerk that he was. However I remember reading a Rolling Stone article written after his retirement and just before his death, where he and a several other people indicated that he had mellowed out considerably after retirement. Which considering how he comes off in the movie is saying something :D.
Kinda bitter. He indicated once that all of the people he interacted with fell into two categories 1) family and 2) employees. No friends.
I’ve heard this story a few times since the late 70’s, always with a different person behind the wheel. Originally it went, “I’ll have a cheese burger, fries and a Coke.” It probably dates to the days of drive in diners and car hops rather than a drive though. That makes more sense because it better fits the model of a person approaching your car window and motioning for you to roll it down. Whether it was Lynde or not, it looks like the quote in the original post was inadvertently updated.
He’s discussed his sexual addiction in recent years (especially on his blog at the College Girls Looking for Sugar Daddies dot com). I know he’s straight and Duchovny’s straight, but they’re both admitted sex addicts… if you locked them in a room long enough, I wonder if they’d ever scrog each other.
Yep. We all have our bad days, but that’s no excuse to act like a cunt towards other people. If they’re being a wanker, you’ll probably be more angry and shouty with them than if you weren’t pissed off, but there is no excuse imo for being a tosser to someone who’s just trying to do their job, or who’s just there.
I always wonder about slebs who do this. The average Mr or Ms on the street might get away with acting like a dick, simply because no-one knows them, but if I were well known, I’d make even more sure I behaved nicely to people. I don’t spend my days fretting about what other people think, but peer opinion is still important, and no matter how rich or successful I was, if most people I met thought I was a dick, I’d consider that a fail at lilfe.
In fairness to Johnny Ramone he sort of had to be a jerk. He kept the band afloat and made sure they got paid. The rest of the band members were typically flakes (Joey and Dee Dee particularly).
I was at a Christmas party this past year and met an Australian woman who taught Nicole Kidman at the exclusive private school Kidman attended as a teen. She says that Kidman was much as we see her now (or expect): cool, kinda snooty/snotty/stuck up. The school apparently was a nightmare of entitled kids and pushy parents and the woman was glad to move on.
Jack Kennedy (future President) stepped on my mother’s foot once at a rally when he was running for office. He didn’t say excuse me so she didn’t vote for him. :rolleyes:
I know a nurse who took care of Walter Jacobson (used to be a local news anchor here on CBS here back in the day; now is some kind of attack dog for Fox locally, I think) when he was hospitalized (about 10 years or so ago)-- she said he was a total prick to the nurses and aides. Verbally abusive, demanding and unreasonable.
I liked his music, but I don’t think I would have really wanted to hang around with Jim Morrison very much. No telling what sort of shit I’d’ve gotten up to.
Hunter S. Thompson was quite a handful, I’ve heard.
Unfortunately, book tours are as tightly planned as D-Day. You live in BFE and the very idea that his publisher would see enough sales to justify PAYING FOR A STOP IN FREAKIN’ MONTANA is hilarious. Sorry, but the laughter is understandable, and the others weren’t uncomfortable for Stine, but you.
Shoe shopping in Indy? At the Payless?
(thinking) That’d work. :leer:
Dude was in T2. There are people on this very board who believe that is equal to winning five Oscars.
So is it safe for me to adore Walter Matthau even more for that, or is there another shoe to fall?
And I’m ashamed to admit it, but Jerry Falwell always looked to me like loads of fun, once you admitted you weren’t of the same faith (there’s a joke ther) and got a couple drinks into him.
(regarding rearranging books so the RIGHT ones, as in, they contain my name) So do I. Then there was the time I found Penthouse unbagged on an open rack at Venture. I thought the kiddies might appreciate some sex education that wasn’t boring, so I left one open to the (it didn’t fold so you couldn’t call it a “centerfold”) center picture.
My dad happened to run into him on the street after a campaign appearance and Jack hugged him like a long-lost friend. Dad assumed it was a case of mistaken identity, but voted for him, this being in his period in the wilderness as a Republican. OTOH, Tip O’Neill said that, after a campaign stop, JFK would pocket all the folding money in the collection plate.
I’ve heard Paul Anka say that Johnny demanded 50% of the royalties from the “Tonight” show theme music, even though he had absolutely nothing to do with writing it. Anka agreed, figuring that 50% of the royalties of a jingle played every night was worth more than 100% of the royalties to a tune nobody would ever hear (Anka says that, by the time Carson retired, the “Tonight” theme music alone brought him about 800 grand a year).
Anka also has a great story about the downside of Carson’s womanizing. When he first began performing in Vegas as a young man, Anka was befriended by the Rat Pack. Frank Sinatra gave Anka the best advice he ever received: in Vegas, never hit on a girl until you’ve made sure she isn’t some mobster’s girlfriend- because Mob guys in those days didn’t care if you were a celebrity! If Dean Martin put the moves on a wiseguy’s girl, Dino would have a gun in his face as surely as anybody else would.
Johnny Carson apparently hadn’t heard that advice. In Vegas, in the early Sixties, he started propositioning every cocktail waitress he saw. In short order, a couple of Mob big shots were beating the snot out of him. Anka managed to get the hotel manager to step in and save Carson’s life.
There was a recent Entertainment Weekly article that basically said Mike Myers is hell to work with, and that many in Hollywood were making no secret of their desire to see The Love Guru bomb miserably. Wish granted!
