I know Emylou Harris’s hair dresser and Lance Hopen from Orleans. That’s about it.
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My life has been a strange mixed bag of weird celebrity encounters - many of which I was completely oblivious to at the time.
My father was a member of the Beat scene in SF and was there when City Lights opened. In my childhood I rubbed shoulders with many well known names in the Beat world, completely oblivious to who they were and too numerous to mention (chances are if they were alive in the 80s, I probably had an interaction with them - whether or not I remember it is another story entirely).
As a kid I played Colecovision at the house of the person that wrote screenplays for several well known films and would go on to get Golden Globe and Oscar noms.
I once sat in Dr. Dean Edell’s Porsche and he let me use his car phone.
A brother-in-law drives a Mercedes formerly owned by Paul Anka. Michael Wolff (of the Arsenio Hall Show) was the best man at my sister’s wedding. That same sister sang vocals for the theme of a beloved video game, and worked with many big names in the music industry (none of whom I met but I heard lots of interesting stories). My brother-in-law has done composing and producing for film and TV.
Another brother-in-law’s mother is a well known anti-circumcision activist (and was on P&T’s Bullshit! episode about it).
A few years ago I met Sir-Mix-a-Lot at a local restaurant. He was very friendly and gracious, and took a picture with me.
I shared an elevator with Alex Bennett back when he was doing the Live 105 morning show.
I had a couple of celebrity encounters at Sea-Tac airport. I saw Janet Reno heading out of the airport as I was heading in. I also sat at the table next to Jamie Duffy in an airport restaurant.
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My yoga teacher’s wife is Leslie Bogart, daughter of Bogie and Bacall. I’ve talked with her a few times and she taught our group of yoga teacher trainees anatomy. My teacher told me Bacall could be a but a pain in the ass, as in, “That’s not how you make a gimlet.” But that is such an old school badass PITA.
My actual brushes with fame will definitely win me Worst Celebrity Encounters.
I once worked out next to Linda Tripp at the height of the whole scandal. I also was at the same Inn as Newt Gingrich and his soon to be third wife (often referred to as some kind of Trollop but in reality a standard issue DC wonk with boring clothes.)
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Oh, my memory…I’d lose my head if it wasn’t tied down.
I was doing extra work in Austin in 2015 for shows like American Crime. I was an arm’s length from Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, and Andre Benjamin (who is surprisingly short).
I was living in Wichita when Crispin Glover was working on Twister (the one with Dylan McDermot), and he rode past me on a touring bicycle one Friday night.
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For my friends…
One of my younger brother’s friends was Nancy Kassebaum’s correspondence writer when she was in office.
Another one of my friends found R. Lee Ermey sitting alone at the bar of the Driskill Hotel during SXSW in its infancy, and wound up talking with him for a couple of hours.
AHHH! My dad wrote Alan Alda a fan letter at the height of MASH fame, and got a handwritten letter back. I read it, and it was very sincere and heartfelt. I hope it wasn’t fake.
He also says he shook MLK Jr’s hand, but he is sometimes prone to exaggeration.
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Because of where I live (L.A. area) and what I do (TV post production), I run into famous people far more often than I recognize them. When I do, I’m almost never starstruck, but am usually surprised. At one lunch I actually recognized Mick Jagger at the next table in one direction, and the Dalai Lama at the next table in the other direction. (This was in the Paramount Studios commissary, so not quite as weird as if it were at a Burbank Burger King or someplace similarly public.)
Let’s see. I won’t mention the people with whom I have actually worked, since that would take too long (seriously, with all the stunt casting we had on Will & Grace alone it would take ages, I’d forget most of them, and none of them would remember me anyway.) I once white-knighted Barry Meyer’s wife by changing her flat tire outside of the Disney Studios in Burbank. I was once nearly run over by David Hyde Pierce who was driving a golf cart like a maniac on the Paramount lot.
I met a few famous people whose kids attended the same schools as my kids: Adam Scott, Flea, Moon Zappa, Ben Stiller, Shonda Rhimes, Grey DeLisle (Adam and Grey may remember me; the others almost certainly would not).
Around the time he married Megan Mullally in 2003, Nick Offerman used to hang around the Will & Grace set, and we’d shoot the shit. Really, genuinely cool guy, as you’d expect, and I wish we’d kept in touch. Megan wanted to buy my 1968 F250 as a gift for him, but I didn’t want to sell it then. (I eventually ended up giving it to the bassist from The Hangmen.) Nick’s probably the closest thing I can remember to “knew him before he was famous.” Well, I mean, I knew my brother before he was famous, but he’s only kinda famous among horror fans.
I went to a fundraiser carnival at a neighborhood private school that the kids of a friend of ours attended. John C. Reilly was there, manning the zipline booth and looking as bored as any dad-volunteer might.
One day while working on The Mentalist, I parked my car in the usual parking structure and was walking to my office when I noticed my usual path was blocked for filming. I saw a bunch of 1930s cars parked around the place, so I figured I’d see what cool movie was filming. I saw some wizened old dude in a black baseball cap talking to some other guy in a snappy gray flannel suit, and eventually figured out it was Clint Eastwood directing Leo DiCaprio in J. Edgar, so that was kinda neat to see. Weird thing: in the dozen or so years I worked on the WB lot, during all of which Eastwood had his Malpaso offices on the lot, that was the only time I’ve ever laid eyes on him in person.
I ran the Seinfeld football pool for a couple years after the Seinfeld show was ended, and occasionally spoke to Larry David on the phone about it.
When Robert Bloch was dying, Harlan Ellison started up a collection among genre writers to help out his medical bills, and my brother sent me to drop off a check at Ellison Wonderland. I met Ellison one other time, at some screening. He was civil enough to me, but eventually my brother threw up his hands and stopped being pals with him, for predictable reasons.
My brother took me to a costume party at Donald Glut’s house. (He was the guy who wrote the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back.) At the party, I met Forrest J. Ackerman, who was wearing Bela Lugosi’s Dracula ring on one hand, and Karloff’s ring from The Mummy on the other.
At some screening or other, a very tiny woman sitting behind me asked me somewhat imperiously to squish down a bit so she could see (since I’m 6’2", I’m pretty conscientious about this sort of thing). Turned out it was June Foray, not just the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, but as her Wikipedia page says, “Chuck Jones was quoted as saying: ‘June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc was the male June Foray.’”
I’ve only been to a handful of red-carpet premieres (and none in years), but while leaving one that was held at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, I noticed a buttload of paparazzi walking backward in front of me, taking lots of pictures. I knew they couldn’t have been wanting pictures of me, so I looked around. Just behind me, walking to the same parking garage, was Salma Hayek.
I helped DJ the second season wrap party for Friends. Jennifer Aniston asked if we had any Jackson Five. We did, but couldn’t find it. (The coffin full of vinyl was surprisingly disorganized.)
I was introduced to Fannie Flagg, Don Rickles, and Don Knotts at Universal Studios on the set of an episode of George Burns Comedy Week called “Disaster at Buzz Creek.” I was stoked to see Don Knotts. Have no idea if the episode ended up being any good, but I remember thinking it kinda funny that the small town (I guess called Buzz Creek) was so small that the old cannon in the town square was a very small howitzer, and the main drag was named “Boulevard Avenue.”
There’s a picture somewhere of my sister and me standing next to Timothy Hutton. God knows where or why, but it was circa 1985ish. I can never remember if it was Hutton or Bottoms, but I’m pretty sure it’s Hutton.
Before he became Hollywood-famous(ish), my brother was a singer in a San Diego-based prog-rock group called Horsefeathers, and they got to open for the Kinks once. They were called at the last minute to open for Queen one time (1975ish?), but were busy rehearsing and didn’t hear the phone ring. Before that he was a music critic in San Diego right out of high school, and got to interview Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and many others. Our older brother George went to high school with Lester Bangs.
Oh, and our mom dated Frank Sinatra very briefly back in 1948, but he wasn’t her type.
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Of course none of us would have a chance against Mr Big Hollywood Guy. 
(Not that this is a competition or anything.)
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I was in this fellow’s first play, Anna Christie, he played the bartender in Act 1.
I doubt he remembers me. My main memory of working with him is both of us sitting near the director during rehearsals as the director ordered the prop person, a youngish girl, to go and get her more ice for her Diet Coke. I murmured in his ear, “You see, this is why I work lights and sound because when you do props you’ve got to constantly go and get more ice for the director.” The director notices the murmur but doesn’t catch any of its meaning. She warns us in low tones, “That’s San Quentin quail.” And we spend the rest of the evening wondering what the hell she was talking about…
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I used to hang out a lot, as people will do, with a bunch of friends in college. I lost touch with a married couple from that group as years passed and I was busy with my thing and they were busy with theirs. Then one night I was watching NASA-TV and there was the wife, demonstrating some flight-rated equipment she’d help design. Kind of a whoa, wow moment. So, not famous-famous, but maybe nerd-famous.
Over the phone, I helped the chairman or CEO or founder of MTV install some software my team had written.
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this very same person once asked me why people in black bandanas were pushing dumpsters into the street and lighting them on fire.
i didn’t know the answer - i was just passing through her town. i looked like a young punk once. i suspect, based on the conversation, she was more in tune with proto antifa than i.
eventually, she trundled off to a taxi. i forever wish i had something more useful to say. ( she also laughed good naturedly at the person who interrupted to say their favorite author was philip k dick. her response was, basically, well you’ll learn. and i couldn’t help but nod in agreement. )
unrelated, i danced next to quentin tarantino once. i hadn’t yet seen anything of his i’d liked. he was a quiet dork of a dancer, and very nice to my friends. i’ve grown to like his films more. maybe in part cause he as a person seemed pretty decent that night.
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LOL that’s an amazing story. I love it!
Speaking of surprisingly short, I’ve met Bob Brozman once. If you haven’t heard of him, he was a folk multi-instrumentalist who would blend a dozen styles of music from all around the world into each song, yet have each style be authentic. Not a really well known celebrity, but damn talented as all get out. He was maybe five feet tall. Mostly what I remember of him was that he was really really really off-putting. Like, he was unable to turn off his larger than life stage persona, at all.
Other musical people, of varying degrees of famousness…
I was told I’ve met John Adams of Nixon in China fame, but I have no memory of this.
When I was in graduate school, I drove to Chicago to see Ken Vandermark play at this little art gallery on the North Side. I was like the only person in attendance not affiliated with the gallery. We hung out a little bit afterward. He was cool and really down to earth, but I could sense I may have been irritating him.
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In second grade, the father of one of my classmates was an aide to Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Through him we got to visit the Vice President’s chambers, with the hope of meeting LBJ himself - and we did! I have an 8x10 photo of our class with the VP. My only real memory of the event is stealing the nerve to ask Johnson for an autograph. He declined but gave us all signed passes to the Capitol, my copy of which I still have.
ETA: Just looked – the pass is for the Vice President’s Gallery in the United States Senate Chamber.
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I had a math teacher in junior high who packed D. B. Cooper’s parachute.
Once in 2003, somewhere near GCT, who should pop around the corner and quickly pass me but Rudy himself, the Giuliani. He had a fixed smile on his face, and a fixed gaze in his eyes looking far into the distance, trying to avoid any eye contact. It was an expression that said "yes, I know I’m America’s Mayor, but please don’t all admire me at once. He was wearing a grey suit.
Late one rainy night, also in 2003, while walking down 2nd Avenue heading to my third-shift job I saw Joan Rivers. I had my head down due to the rain and other reasons. I was passing Elaine’s and was aware someone was getting into a taxi, when a well-heeled woman leaved outside the door to Elaine’s and called “Oh, Joan! Joan!” I looked up to see what was happening as I passed.
In 2004, when I was working as Macy’s, Jimmy Smits came up to my register to return a pair of leather pants. They were a gift and he didn’t have the receipt or price tag, so I had to go through the store’s usual refund procedure for such situations. This required me to copy the number off his picture ID and get his home address so we could mail him the store credit. We were both a bit embarrassed. I showed him the moniter a couple times to assure him I had to enter this information. I swaer I never stalked him.
And that’s about it. I think since then I haven’t been paying attention.
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I guess he saved plastic busts of himself for the truly important guests.
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Did it come with a set of pins?
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@cheem1 best.
I forgot that I met him after a Vandermark 5 show, chatting at the merch booth, until you mentioned him.
most of my famous meetings were like that, music scene people before or after a show.
Diplo was a friend of a friend and I shook his hand and got in on his guest list.
Da Brat used to come to the illegal club I DJed and would sit in my room. People would be like “that’s Da Brat over there, you should play her songs” and I’d be like “uhhh, I don’t have any.” Nothing against her, tho.
A friend threw a party I DJed and Dinco D from Leaders of the New School (Busta’s springboard to fame) was there. We chatted and he rapped a hot 16 over I believe it was the “Time’s Up” instrumental when I played it.
I passed Exene Cervenka on the stairs of the Star Bar when she played there and I was like “oh my God, oh my God.” After the show she signed my book with a Merle Haggard lyric and was really nice.
Frank Black signed the same book at his Criminal Records in-store with a flying saucer (naturally)
Diamond D shot a video in the club attached to my restaurant but I was super busy and almost missed him. The production crew were milling out front when I got off. I scanned the crowd to find he was standing right next to me. When our eyes met, I go “Oh, there you are. You had the best beat on Labcabincalifornia.” This was a huge complement because that album–The Pharcyde’s second–is mostly known as a showcase for a then-ascending J Dilla. Diamond yells “Y’ALL HEAR THAT?!” to the crowd. I wasn’t blowing smoke, either. His was best, IMO. Chatted a bit, super nice guy.
Betty Page, Dinah Shore, and that dude who wrote The Bat Poet are all alums of my high school–Nashville’s Hume-Fogg.
I wrote fan letters to Adrian Tomine when he was doing Optic Nerve who sent me a postcard back, and to the Dead Milkmen’s Newzletter that didn’t get published but guitarist Joe Jack Talcum replied and we corresponded for a few years so I met him after the show next time they came thru town. He hosted me and two friends who road tripped with me to Philly for their last show and got Rodney to take a moment from hitting on girls to shake my hand.
I was pals-y with a group called Grand Buffet thru a friend and they played an after-party for that mashup DJ Girltalk who was enjoying some success then, but I couldn’t make his show. Anyway, GB did their thing and all my crew were at a table. There was some dude on some kinda drugs lurking in back of the stage acting really weird with his eyes popping out of his head. I got up to pee and the urinals at Highland Inn Ballroom have mirrors in front of them, for some reason. I whip it out and catch Golf-ball Eyes staring at my wiener in the mirror. “hey, man!” “no, it’s cool man.” “nah, it ain’t!” So I go back to the table and relay the story to my people and they all start cracking up, like more than usual. “That was him. That was Girltalk.”
the only random ones were from waiting tables. Laila Ali and entourage sat at my tables once. She was classy, the entourage was really trashy, tho.
The lady who played Marcie on Married With Children sat at my table. My dip friend started singing the theme song and made it awkward.
Michael Jai White (am I remembering that right?) aka Black Dynamite and Spawn came in one night and my buddy was really starstruck and borrowed my camera to get a pic. I should’ve got a pic, too, but didn’t. I hadn’t seen Black Dynamite yet or I would have been a lot more excited.
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Dayum! That is some network.
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I used to really make the scene in my younger days.
My personal friends weren’t mainstream famous but were as cool or cooler. Like DJ Lord and DJ Klever were really good and respected DJs that didn’t know me very well but just knew I was a good DJ
. Lord beeping his horn and waving when he saw me on my bike, or Klever waving me into vip just off the strength of having that bond of being on a certain level was way more meaningful. DJ Fudge was a pretty good friend, just a local guy but probably my personal favorite. He was better than me when I got to Atlanta but he heard me do a dancehall set when I was at the peak of my powers. He was next to me in the booth and said “you’re killing it, man.” That was worth more than all that other stuff.
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Oh, this list reminds me that I exchanged emails with Martin Atkins (pigface, PiL, Killing Joke) for a while back in the late 90s… Interviewed Chris Connelly via email once.
Seems like there are some others from that period…
I sort of knew the goth singer Voltaire, but he’s a complete asshole, unfortunately.
A friend of mine did a Pixies Tribute album, and he got Jarboe to do a song for it… I think he had a party once (which he invited us to, but we didn’t go to) and she was there. Another friend of mine hangs out with the sometime drummer for the most recent incarnation of the Swans and for Amanda Palmer’s solo stuff, Thor. As such he’s gotten to meet all of the Swans and Amanda Palmer, who he is not a fan of, but he sent me a picture of himself and AFP…
My husband’s band used to play with the Changelings quite a bit.
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I totally forgot; I’ve also briefly met Redman, Method Man, Dazz and Kurupt, but that was backstage at two different concerts.
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