I’ve only had one celebrity run-in of my own, and that was when I met Garth Brooks in a casino. I thought he was pretty nice.
– Sylence
“The problem with reality is the lack of background music.” – Anon
My first girlfriend’s mother went to high school with Billy Joel.
My girlfriend met John Goodman at a rugby tournament.
(This one’s a stretch.)
When Mark McGwire hit his record-breaking homerun last year, my brother was visiting me in St. Louis. On his flight home, he sat next to the guy who was carrying that ball to the Hall Of Fame.
As for me personally, I haven’t ever been closer than “studio audience” distance to anyone famous. That’s just how my life works.
Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank.
OK, I’ll go head-to-head with Stoidela (East Coast vs. West Coast!):
Work-related meetings:
Sharon Stone (very nice)
Eddie Murphy
Spike Lee
Judge Reinhold
Anita Page (silent movie star, a sweetie)
Sylvia Sidney
Adam Sandler (nice guy)
Sean Young (insane bitch from hell)
Shirley MacLaine (yes, she’s nuts)
Nic Cage (very nice)
Esther Ralston (another silent star)
Margaret O’Brien
Ann Miller
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Ashley Judd (another sweetie, and very smart)
Richard Grieco
Tony Franciosa
Robert Vaughn
Non-work related:
Eliz. Taylor (well, she glared at me)
Andy Warhol
John Waters
Lillian Gish (a real doll)
Bette Davis
Joan Crawford
Yoko Ono (just last week!)
Carolyn Bessette Kennedy
Drew Barrymore
Tim Robbins (not good-looking in real life, either)
The Lady Bunny (NY drag star)
Lypsinka (ditto)
. . . and I’ll think of some more after another cup of coffee.
I’ve exchanged a few words with Roger Ebert after a speech in Champaign, IL (his hometown) about 2001. The man is a great speaker with remarkable insight.
Uh, well, I have a friend that used to go to a lot of “night clubs.”
He has met Ashlyn Gere, Nina Hartley, and Ginger Lynn.
Working with the Activities Board at college and with the Troubadour series here in Lexington, I’ve met several cool people.
I took Andy Richter (Conan o’Brien) sidekick out to dinner and then introduced him when he spoke. He’s a really cool guy, and has an odd working-stiff attitude about his job.
We had the Indigo Girls on campus my senior year. I’m a big fan, and I had done most of the legwork on getting the concert together, so I was pissed when they didn’t let me go to get them at the airport. So when we had dinner, I just sat down next to them. I didn’t say much then, since they were making out their setlist, but we chatted quite a bit later. Nice people, and very respectful of their fans.
The most approachable celebrity I’ve worked with is Bruce Hornsby. I’m a musician, and most of the ones I’ve met aren’t interested in talking about their craft. After Bruce’s show here last March, he turned the post-show autograph session into a piano clinic, enthusiastically answered the fans’ questions, and even asked them some of his own. He’s coming back for two nights in February, and I can’t wait.
Others I’ve met, in more of a handshake, thanks-for-coming manner–Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, John Prine, Roger McGuinn (from the Byrds), David Crosby, Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck, Steve Earle, and others I’ll think of later.
I also shook hands with President Clinton, and–even better–Chelsea. I have long had a crush on the young Miss Clinton, and I must say that she is fine in person.
Dr. J
Stoid: What accident? When? Am I not paying enough attention to celebrity news, or is this a recent thing?
I recall something about a car wreck while he was drunk and doped up, but I thought it was a while ago.
One would think that “anyone with eyes could see”, but unfortunately, everyone I ever hear talking about him just makes fun of his movies and says they like his sister better.
Veni, Vidi, Visa … I came, I saw, I bought.
I had dinner with Bob Geldof when I was living in Athens. Greece, not Georgia. We were at a concert, and some of the girls I was with went and asked a roadie if they could get a picture of Bob. He invited us all to go to the bar and have dinner with the band after the show. Very fun!
I once had lunch with Willie McCovey (SF Giants) and John Schneider (Dukes Of Hazzard). Very nice gentleman.
Ummmmm… I’ve had the Canadian weightlifting team trainer from the 1968 Olympics as a houseguest. And I met the Chief General Counsel for UAL Corp. at a cocktail reception and he told me he’s seen my published works and likes it. And a cashier at the Mount Prospect Wal-Mart once called me “hon”…
“Give the Governor harrumph!”
Once I went to a Rick Danko (bass player for The Band) concert. I was sitting by myself at a table, and during the opening act he came out to watch the act and sat down across the table and talked a little bit.
Another time, at a science fiction convention, Kelly Freas (science fiction artist and creator of Alfred E. Neuman) had a room with some artwork set up in it. He had locked himself out of the room, and I, being 10 years old and small, was asked by him to crawl in through the window and let him in. His wife, or somebody, was admonishing me to not knock over the paintings that were underneath the window. I was all ready to go, but then someone came along with a spare key.
Ooh, I forgot about college years… I used to hang out with the Dead Milkmen, enough that they’d ask others about me, and I chatted with Timbuk 3 outside the 930 Club in DC.
i’ve met/hung out/partied with:
All of the Ramones(my sister dated Johnny for awhile)
All of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones(several times)
Matt Pinfield
Jennifer Lopez
Biohazard
I’ve rubbed elbows at a few NYC clubs with:
Madonna
Mariah Carey
Howard Stern
Atlantic City:
Donald Trump
Tom Jones(this one nearly stopped my heart!)
John Bon Jovi
and when i was a kid my stepdad bartended private parties for Bill Bradley(basketball player/Senator)
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos
Like some others, I’ve had a fair number of celebrity sightings/meetings simply because of geography. The only ones that I find memorable are when I get to meet a childhood hero. Here’s my two.
I bought a Coke for Gene Simmons (that’s a cola, thank you very much).
I personally thanked Mike Eruzione for the miracle on ice.
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
Waiting for a small ferry boat (charter tour out to Alcatraz) in San Francisco, and watching it chug up, I noticed it had a figurehead of a fierce-looking sea captain in a blue grogham with a grey-streaked beard.
I nudged the guy standing next to me and pointed out the figurehead; “Hey, that figure looks like George Lucas”.
The guy nudges the guy next to him, and says, “Hey, George, it’s you!”.
How could I not notice that I’d been elbowing Tom Selleck?
“You can’t tell me what sucks!” - Beavis, a true Objectivist
Sheesh (says Veb humbly), I’m running with a fast crowd here.
You’ve met and interacted with some pretty high powered folks. The question about how you’d act if you met Cecil prompted the question. I guess I was just curious how this highly individualistic group has reacted when confronted with The Famous.
Is it okay if I make formal application for Class Wallflower now?
Sinking back into obscurity,
Veb
Flora:
I like your list better than mine!
I always forget one of the juiciest…because I try to block it out of my mind, I guess.
I was in a movie theatre and Richard Pryor, whom I had no clue was in the theatre with me and was recently out of the hospital after his burn “accident” apparantly overheard me tell the rude match joke about him. He followed me out to go have a smoke and stood next to me so i oculd see it was him right after I told it. I fumbled like the idiot I was…
This is a non-smoking area. If we see you smoking, we will assume you are on fire and act accordingly.
My tiniest of tiny brush with little to no fame at all:
I have been banned from working for Peter Jackson’s WETA FX studios and any film he makes because when I visited his studio facility once about four years ago, and was shown around, they didn’t ask me to ‘not tell’ what I saw. So I told.
I revealed nothing that interesting, but I put it on the internet with my name signed to it. They tracked me down and now I’m blacklisted.
Bastards.
So that’s the nearest I’ve come to famous anythings. Pretty smalltime compared to some on this thread, that’s for certain.
However, if anyone here can somehow engineer me ‘accidentally’ meeting Samantha Mathis, I’d be ever so grateful.
“Waheeey! ‘Duck!’ Get it?”
“Errr… No…”
“Duck! Sounds almost exactly like fu-”
Thanks, Stoid! When I mention Lillian Gish or Anita Page to most people, actual, visible question marks form over their heads.
Just last night, I was at an Ute Lemper concert in the Village–if there’s ever a woman I would turn gay for . . . While singing Black Market, she came into the audience and lifted off my (faux) pearls and shoved them down her cleavage. I swear, when I got them back from her after the show, they’d turned real! Can she be sainted now?
WARNING : LAME STORY AHEAD
I went to Universal Studios with my family. Oliver Stone was signing autographs on that day. He looked at me and waved, and I waved back. That’s as close as I got to him.
What made him ruin my vacation was like this. My parents are really conservative Catholics. Stone was there promoting his movie “Natural Born Killers”. Now imagine all the people you know that were obsessed with that movie. Those were the kind of people that were all over Universal Studios on that day. My parents weren’t in a happy mood when they had to wait in line and go on rides with these “freaks”. I think they were actually scared from some of them. When we left the park, my parents began to cuss out everything about the park, and said we would never go back to Universal Studios. Hearing this, I was in a very sad mood the rest of the day.
So that’s how Oliver Stone ruined my vacation. He had a autograph session, which attracted all the “freaks”, which offended my parents, which vowed never to go back, which ruined my vacation.
END OF LAME STORY
Oh yeah, I met George Bush when he visited my school back in 1988. Nothing special, just saw him talk, that’s all.
An evil person is someone that knows how to escape a deserved punishment. A good person is someone that accepts other’s punishments.
Fun with HTML (tutoral)
Give someone an F.U.