His “15 minutes” may have been up years ago. But the Goosebumps series and Stine’s spinoffs from it continue to sell well to this day. The man is richer than god and the financial/popularity envy of every children’s author save JK Rowling.
That would more than explain any ego.
Explain, yes, but in my opinion, not justify.
When I ran into him at a bar in Deerborne, MI he was as nice as he could be. I gave him a hat (was working for John Deere at the time) & saw him wearing it on TV several weeks later.
I was in a Subway in Vancouver one day, behind a VERY rude and obnoxious guy who was trying to get his sandwich for free claiming he was Zack from Saved by the Bell. The gal had no idea who he was (or wasn’t impressed) and kept telling him the price. I can’t recall if he finally paid or just left.
I was watching Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel, and he ended up visiting a restaurant that the Food Network’s Rachel Ray stopped in to weeks earlier. When Bourdain asked a server if Ray was a good tipper, the server replied that Ray had completely stiffed the waitstaff! What a cheap bitch!
News to me, and I grew up walking distance from his place.
I worked at the Coronet movie theater when ILM/Lucasfilm held their Phantom Menace premiere there. Williams was in attendance, and went in and out a couple time to the bathroom, with his kids. We made eye contact and I saluted him, he saluted back. Plenty of people don’t like his onstage schtick, but I’ve never heard he was a bad guy.
A FOAF worked on Serenity and said the most diva-ish (though not too bad) was Alan Tudyk.
He certainly came off as a cranky douche on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Some assumptions are justified. He probably is recognized almost all the time. It was your boss who happened to be the rare exception.
Maybe that’s why they put a spike through his heart in Firefly
Other way around. The show Firefly was first, the movie serenity second, so that probably wouldn’t have been a consideration.
Ricky Gervais tells a story about his father, in which a key factor is that Elizabeth II will not use a toilet that has ever been used by anyone else.
Back in the 80’s, at a sci-fi convention I won, along with one other attendee, a dinner with one of the stars, James Doohan. There was him, we two guests, and the convention organizer. Doohan almost completely ignored us fans, speaking with the organizer. We tried to talk with him, ask questions, but his answers were brief and curt. We both decided he was a jerk.
Now, a year earlier, at the same convention, I won dinner, along with three other fans, and got to eat with George Takei. He was great to us, taking time to speak to us individually. He was always laughing, had a great sense of humor. He’d told the organizer that he’d sit naked, on a silver platter, surrounded by parsley, with an apple in his mouth, to help out the con. So she had the waiter bring a little silver dish to the table with the parley and apple, and George bit into the fruit and layed his chin on the dish. I still have the picture he let me take, looking sideways at the camera.
She was one of my favorites before she went kind of crackers several years ago. I’d be willing to hear more about this.
I have heard from someone who had to interview him that Stephen Merritt can be very difficult to talk to.
Must have ran a little short with the $40 per day limit.
I have no idea what sort of reputation Rachel Ray has off camera, but that woman is making money hand over fist and I have a hard time believing she’d care in the slightest about tips.
I suspect a flub up of some sort occurred, such as it being up to her crew or producers or whomever to tip the staff and somebody forgot, etc. And unless she and/or her production have a habit of doing this, my guess is Bourdain was just taking a cheap shot at a competitor’s program by airing the server’s complaint.
Anthony Bourdain? Naw, never.
On $40/Day, Rachel Ray often leaves what I consider to be an awfully small tip. Forego the cocktail, Rach, and pay your server!
StG
It’s part of his punk-gone-grey shtik. He goes out of his way to make snarky remarks about other cooking/travel show hosts – Rachel Ray, Emeril Lagasse, Samantha Brown, Tyler Florence, Jamie Oliver, Bobby Flay, the Food Network in general, etc. He’s acknowledged that these people are probably wonderful people in real life, but he thinks their shows suck.
As long as he doesn’t dis Alton Brown, I can live with that.
No one better dis Alton! 
As far as I’m concerned Davy Jones (of the Monkees) is a complete and utter prick to end all pricks. Back in the 80’s when the Monkees came around for a 25th anniversary tour, a friend and I got to go see them. She is someone who somehow finds out where celebrities will be and will go meet them if possible.
Davy was neither of our favorite Monkee (I was a Mickey and Mike fan and she Peter), but he was signing his book in the mall near the venue where they were playing that night and we thought it would be cool to say we met one of the Monkees, so we went. Had to buy the book to be in line.
He was nice to us as we got our autographs, so he wasn’t a jerk to me personally, but had I read the book before getting it signed, I probably would have just kicked him in the balls.
Judging by what he wrote in this book (“They Made A Monkee Out Of Me”), you’d think that he was the only reason why the Monkees were popular, the show and world revolved around him, and that he was Mr Wonderful. Most of the book he talks about what chick he did and where it was on the set. I was nauseated after reading it.
Peter Tork did a lot to overcome alcoholism and Davy would constantly give him crap about it. I heard a story where Peter had finally had enough of his crap and punched him in the face on some talk show. Wish I could have seen that!