Touched by greatness: Get it right here. What are your experiences

[applegrove]

with famous people?

Me when I was a kid (about 4) I was introduced to the Canadian Prime Minister's wife (Pearson) and I promptly kicked her in the shin. My dad punched a Prime Minister (MacKenzie King) in the stomach when he tried to sit in the family pew at chruch in the 1930s. My dad was about 7 or so.

[Skittles]

1. when I was an Air Force airgal, I had to replace ID card for USAF widow

when I went to make a copy of hubby's death certificate, I noticed cause of death" "ASPHYXIATION ON APPOLLO". Yup, Gus Grissom.

[MrScorpio]

2. I was born in it

Best way to have it

[nolabear]

3. My grandparents used to live across the street from Jim Nabors mom

and I used to play with the dog he'd left there when he went off to be Gomer. Yep, big old black Standard Poodle, interesting by 1960's Alabama standards.

I have a couple others but will save them. This is the goofiest.

[MiddleFingerMom]

4. Munich, Germany -- indoor bicycle track at the Olympic grounds -- probably 1974...

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... and I'm there for a concert.
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RIGHT before the show, I go out to the concession stands for some
bratwurst. I'm the ONLY person out there except for this wild-haired
American guy who's got 3 bratwurst sandwiches (on Kaiser rolls)
spread out on his inner forearm, squirting them with mustard.
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"THESE THINGS ARE GUH-RATE!!!, he tells me hyper-enthusiastically.
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Not being a fan, I didn't realize that it was...
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... Jerry Garcia 'til I saw him onstage.
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That and when I and the onair DJ were the only two people in the
building of the community radio station in Tucson on a lazy Sunday
afternoon and I answered the doorbell to find a white-haired old
dude in white chinos and a t-shirt on the front porch.
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"I'm the musician", he said -- and I thought to myself that he was
probably a wedding accordionist.
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He was there for a wrongly-scheduled interview.
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Lalo Guerrero.
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One of the nicest, most down-to-earth gentlemen you could ever hope
to meet. I liked him immediately, though it was a good 10-15 minutes
before I realized who he was.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalo_Guerrero
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[frogmarch]

5. The summer before I

started college (1961) I worked in Rapid City, SD at an insurance agency. One night while my friends and I were leaving our favorite 3.2 bar, we saw movie star Tom Ewell driving down the street in a white convertible. We pulled alongside him at a stoplight, and my bff (we're still bff) leaned out the window and called, "Are you Tom Eee-well?" He gave her a crusty look and said (phonetically), "Yool. The name is Tom YOOL!" Then he tore off in a snit, burning rubber. We didn't think he was funny when we saw him in movies after that.

[MiddleFingerMom]

7. And it just doesn't have the same flair as "Bond. James Bond." n/t

[frogmarch]

9. LOL

Now that you mention it, no, it doesn't.

I am going to share your response with my "Are you Tom Eee-well?" friend. She'll love it.

[mucifer]

6. I've got 2 but I can't describe them because they were work related and I'm a nurse.

All I will say is that they were both nice people.

[nolabear]

16. Just tell where the tattoos were.

[IDemo]

8. Spoke with both Steve Miller and Bruce Willis on the phone

Way back when I worked in telephone repair. Steve seemed like a real nice guy.

[Hayabusa]

10. Punching politicians...

what an interesting family tradition, LOL.

As for me, not a whole lot.

Four pro wrestlers were ahead of me in a Taco Bell line once in Poplar Bluff. Funny because my mom had driven me the hundreds of miles there to see that particular wrestling event.

Oh yeah, I was in the same class as a currently convicted murderer (still appealing and has a pretty decent case if they accept it)

[applegrove]

11. We have always been a political family. My dad's grandmother was there at the church. They had some

political dealings with the PM because she was married to a politician. She said when they got home from church "Now don't you lay a hand on that boy. He has shown more political sense than anyone else in the family" (or something to that effect). LOL!

[Dyler Turden]

12. Earl and Louise Scruggs

Very nice people.

[rurallib]

13. Before a baseball game in Minnesota Rod Carew came up and sat

with us for about half an hour and just chatted.
It was July 4thof '77 I think. The attendance was really, really low and we were among the few who had come out to watch BP.
Carew was hitting over .400 at the time or close to it.
There was probably just a couple hundred in the stands. We had front row box seats at the old Met for the game. Carew finished his turn walked over to the dugout, then climbed the rail and walked over to sit with us.
Mr'. Lib had no idea who Carew was. they just sat there and chatted like old friends.

[GReedDiamond]

14. I've worked on stuff for a bunch of different "famous" types...

...where I met them, such as Dr. Timothy Leary; Madonna; The Bangles; Val Kilmer (when he was in the role of Jim Morrison in the Oliver Stone "Doors" flick -- When I "met" him, he stayed in character as Jim -- So I guess I met Jim more than I met Val -- I was told he stayed in character, even off of the set in his free time, throughout the whole period of time it took to shoot); Leonardo DiCaprio (his dad is an old friend, and I first met Leo when he was around 5 y.o. My ex-almost-wife shot Leo's first publicity stills in my art studio in Pasadena, CA, and our son, born in 1981, slept in Leo's infant cradle, which George gave to us when our son was born -- My ex-almost and I are still really good friends!).

I have also had the opportunity to record some music tracks with Sluggo of Oingo Boingo. I know Sluggo himself ain't famous, but Boingo pretty much is -- and same thing applies with the rest to follow, with whom I got to record some stuff: Don Preston of Zappa's Mothers, and Jim Fielder, a founding member of Blood Sweat & Tears, who also played with The Mothers, Buffalo Springfield, and, oddly enough, Neil Sedaka.

And speaking of B Springfield, in 1978, Springfield's then ex-drummer Dewey Martin was drumming for the first band I was ever in (Scott Thomas Lowe & Atascadero), and when he left the band, he sold me his Buffalo Springfield Oak Lawn badge (early to mid sixties) Camco drums, which I have been using since 1979:



After I left Atascadero, Top Jimmy used to hang out with my new band, Benedict Arnold & The Traitors, when we started out in late '79, early '80 -- a few years later Van Halen put out a song about Jimmy called, I think, "Top Jimmy," on their 1984 album. The Traitors, and/or the band that emerged from them, The Hundredth Monkey, played some live shows back in the early 80s with bands like The Gears, The Minutemen, Black Flag, and similar SoCal early punk bands. The Traitors performed live on New Wave Theater and jammed with the show's host, Peter Ivers, who was a first rate blues harp player and well known actor/Hollywood insider (Peter was instrumental in getting David Lynch's Eraserhead released to the general public). Around 1983, The Hundredth Monkey released a single produced by L.A. punk pioneer Geza X.

Another interesting (non-music) project was back in 1999 for The Art Science Research Laboratory (New York City), which was founded by the famous paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Stephen Jay Gould, and his wife, Rhonda Roland Shearer. I developed the official web site for their November 1999 Harvard Symposium called Methods of Understanding in Art and Science: The Case of Duchamp and Poincaré. Besides meeting Gould, I also got to meet and ride around Cambridge, Mass in a taxi, with Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp's biographer, and Timothy Phillips, one of Salvador Dali's assistants, who actually painted some of Dali's (in Phillips' own words) "lesser" works.

Other interesting people I've met:

Wild Man Fischer (he used to hang out on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and El Centro, Hollywood CA, where I worked as an airbrush artist in 1976-77, we'd "talk")

Aron "The YIPPIE! Pieman" Kay (I've not only met him, he's an old friend, actually)

Jack Herer (I was Pieman's "official representative" at Jack's memorial service earlier this year). I had a next door neighbor who was a friend of Jack's in '82-'84, when Jack was writing "The Emperor..." We used to hang out and *gasp" smoke pot!

Ron Jeremy (when I was in a band called The Well Hungarians, fronted by gay male porn star Marshall O Boy, Ron introduced us at a live gig and noted our collective similar physical attributes)

Ed Rosenthal (Ed and I tried to organize a smoke-in at Venice Beach CA, it was around 1978-79, we were denied the permits, never saw him since)

Those are a few examples of my "famous people" encounters, and I'm totally series...

PS: Emerging famous artist I know (I'm his biggest collector and personal adviser/mentor): Jaime "GERMS" Zacarias.

[applegrove]

17. Wow you've had an interesting career.

[GReedDiamond]

20. It's not so much a career as a way of life...

...particularly the music stuff, it's not a good way to make a living for most people, including myself, but it is a central driving force which motivates my basic physical existence at this point in time. A new record will be out soon...

...I forgot to mention (Don) Ed Hardy (ya know the t-shirt and everything else "brand"), I produced a series of limited edition, signed and numbered by Don Ed Hardy, fine art prints, based on watercolor paintings he produced in the 70s into the 90s:



Ed himself is a great guy, I'm happy to see him making a ton of dough for himself.

Anyway, this so-called "career" is based on an alternative approach to marketing my various skills through being in a certain place at a certain point in time, and being able to adapt to the situation at hand: audio/video/multi-media/analog/digital/hand painting/digital rendering of hand painting etc, while being underground (I have some web sites, but I don't advertise) and independent.

I have a bunch of costume graphics stuff in movies you have probably seen, but movie gigs are usually a few years apart.

Interesting, but often very stressful. However, it is all based on stuff that I love or enjoy doing, for the most part.

Edited to add pic of Catcher, giclee on paper, D.E. Hardy.

[Dyler Turden]

21. I've also met Tim and Val Kilmer.

Used to work concerts and got to meet and party with many of the 70's artists from Edgar Winter to Three Dog Night to Charlie Daniels. Crazy times. BTW, Tim was a lot cooler than Val Kilmer.

[Tikki]

22. Geza X and the Mommymen, ya?

He is amazing.
"We need more power...":)

Tikki

[GReedDiamond]

24. There was also the Deadbeats...

...one of the bass players I had in The Hundredth Monkey was Pasquale Amadeo, formerly of the Deadbeats, another band which included Geza -- KILL THE HIPPIES.

The less said about Pasquale, the better...

[struggle4progress]

15. I met wazzizname once. At least, I think that's who it was

[Tikki]

23. Did you tell him.. "You are my biggest fan?"

Tikki

[HEyHEY]

18. Through work back home I got to harrass the PM a few times

Interviewed the Aga Khan too.

[nolabear]

19. I used to know Richard Simmons.

Lost a bunch of weight on one of his programs and was on a couple of infomercials. I wouldn't admit to it for years but what the hey. He's every bit as goofy as you'd think but in all honesty he's a really, really nice guy who offers a perfectly reasonable service and has helped a whole bunch of people. He does hsve an astonishing cadre of groupies that I think he enjoys having but I never knew him to make any false promises or encourage anything unhealthy. I haven't talked to him for years but it was a fun time. His staff is brilliant, btw.

[trackfan]

25. I was in a bar with 2 Kentucky Derby winning trainers at the same time.

John Shirreffs and Chip Wooley.

[abq e streeter]

26. Quite a few, many of them musicians

Including many blues artists....Junior Wells (bought me a beer one of the times we met), Tommy Castro (jammed with him one of the times too), ate ribs and drank some beers with Willie Dixon, a kind, generous and dignified giant of a man.... Sugar Blue (harmonica on Stones' Miss You) many times......introduced by mutual friends to Albert Collins, Kim Wilson (Fabulous Thunderbirds), Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton (of Stevie Ray's Double Trouble),James Cotton, Bo Diddley (played a gig with him once and I played so badly that night that I practically cringe just thinking about it, although I do have a cool picture of the 2 of us onstage)........
Non-blues: Joe Ely ( not exactly "famous" but sure is in Texas),Ed Sanders of the Fugs, Del Shannon, James McMurtry (through his wife who I knew from here in Albuquerque)

Bonnie Raitt (hung out with her in her dressing room after the show for about a half hour, and if I hadn't already been so hung over when she suggested "going drinking" ...sigh...ah, what could have been; oh well)

Alternated sets with (and hung out during the down time) The Dixie Chicks at the 1992 New Mexico State Fair, years before they were famous. They and Bonnie are some of the absolutely nicest people I've ever met, by the way.

Have had brief (minute or two) conversations with Ernie Banks and former St Louis Cardinals Curt Flood and Joe Cunningham (again, very nice, approachable people)

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson , sort of a right wing libertarian but who also has been on a one man crusade to stop the insane drug war, is an acquaintance, also through (a sadly now deceased) mutual friend.

The two famous people that are ( in one case) or were (the other case) actually friends of mine are Rolling Stones sax player Bobby Keys, who I am honored and proud to call a friend (played with him for the first time in years this summer, and he's flying in to play with us on his birthday next month; I'll try to post some video of us unless I really suck that night, then I'll try to just post Bobby's solos) and former Clinton chief of staff,and Obama transition team chief John Podesta, who was a buddy of mine in our undergrad days many years ago. Haven't seen him since the 70's but he was a brilliant guy even at 19 and 20 years old, and a good guy too, whose integrity I admired even back then.

Those are the main ones I can think of right now anyway.....Oops one more..he's not famous but it's just too funny not to mention.An old college roommate who I still see about once a year is the author of the words "tough actin' tinactin".

[csziggy]

27. When I was a kid we visited Senator Spessard Holland in Washington

Spessard Holland had been governor of Florida during WWII and then was Senator from Florida since 1946. of Grandmother knew his wife so we had an appointment to see him. We went to his office, Mom & Dad talked with him a little. Then he invited us to come to the opening of the session. Just by chance that morning it was his turn to open and lead a prayer.

He took us down in the special elevator and led us through the tunnels going from the office building to the Capitol. As we neared the elevator, the kid operating the elevator saw the Senator approaching and tried to shoo off the tourist family in front. I felt bad for his when the Senator boomed out, "They are with me, young man!"

Senator Holland took us to the gallery and made sure we had seats, then he went down and opened the session. I could see that the people around us thought we must be important people to have a Senator seat us. It was pretty heady for a kid.

The only other "encounter" with celebrity was one evening after smoking some pot, we were headed home and got pulled over. The cop just checked our IDs then told us to get on down the road. It turned out George Wallace was in town on a campaign tour and was going to be coming by the place where we had been pulled. The cops were stopping, the chasing off any vehicles they thought were suspicious. This was after Wallace had been shot, I guess it must have been 1976. If we had known Wallace was in the area, we would have stayed away - or made some good signs to wave expressing our opinions of him.

[Bertha Venation]

28. June Lockhart visited me in the hospital when I was a baby

I'd had heart surgery. I think she was involved in some philanthropic venture having to do with kids and hearts. Or something.

I also met Penny Marshall after a screening of "The Natural" - before it was released. They did it for the audience reactions, survey cards handed out afterwards. I met her in the parking lot. She asked me what I thought of the score. I thought (but thankfully did not say) "it was 3-2, they won" but she rescued me in time and said "you know, the music?" I felt like a dolt. I got her autograph on the back of one of my checks. She said "What am I endoahsin' heah?"

[Seedersandleechers]

29. Can not name names due to hippa laws

But in the 80's I worked for a Doctor (nurse) employed by a local rock promoter. I could tell stories - it was a great decade!

[WolverineDG]

30. Met Senator Kennedy during the Texas Primary in 2008

ended up in a Youtube video when he broke out into song (Jalisco, btw, not an easy song to sing)

dg

[hunter]

31. I was invited to a fancy charity dinner by Hans Bethe.

I was a desperately poor college newspaper reporter at the time. Free food? As the guest of one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, the guy who figured out how the sun and stars work? I was awestruck.

Professor Bethe was an amazing gentleman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe

[Kali]

32. my father is pretty well known in his field

living with that wasn't all it might be hyped up to be

I know a man by the name of Juan Quezada. Folks in the fine art/ceramics world might know of him. He has even been here to the ranch.

Smoked weed with a few musicians in various parking lots after shows over the years:rofl:

was on the jury for Charles Keating's civil trial in Tucson - there were a few famous people at that ;)

probably some more but can't think of them at the moment. Have eaten at Mi Nidito's - the Mexican restaurant President Clinton ate at when he came to Tucson, does that count? :rofl:

[abq e streeter]

35. I left out the weed in the parking lot stuff too

not that I would ever have done anything like that....but if I had , it would have been in parking lots (and in the cars, vans etc...IF I had, which I of course didn't...)

[Kali]

37. oh yes - I meant that hypothetically, of course!

:hi: how're you doing?

[abq e streeter]

39. Oops, meant to reply to you, not to myself

Doin OK, I guess, thanks for asking.Looking forward to the gig with Bobby next month.

[abq e streeter]

38. yes, all quite hypothetical...

BTW, because I did mention John P. who is still such a public figure , I should probably be very clear that the (hypothetical of course) "weed in the parking lot" stuff was not with anyone mentioned in the above post. I did leave those people out ,and for that matter, there's not that many, and none are really well known , although several have written some well known songs. Their own names are,I bet, not known to 99(or more) percent of the public.

[deutsey]

33. Sat with Frank Zappa for about 40 minutes

Incredibly intelligent man. He was on a college lecture tour in the mid-'80s. My roommate knew the campus organizer of Zappa's visit and was able to get us backstage to meet Zappa before his lecture.

He very graciously invited us to sit and talk with him while he waited.

I'm a huge Zappa fan, so that was a highlight of my college years. I also met, very briefly, Chuck Berry after he gave a benefit concert at the Warner Theater in DC, and Davy Jones of the Monkees (it was kind of sad...he was at Hershey Park with Wolfman Jack getting some kind of award that looked like a Hershey's Kiss. At least Jones came down to give autographs to fans...Wolman fled the scene).

[nolabear]

34. You win. I'd love to have met Zappa!

[LiberalEsto]

36. Ate breakfast with Jerry Garcia and his wife

and gave Pig Pen a back rub.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

40. I got to meet Gov-elect Jerry Brown!

[auntAgonist]

41. Lunch with Peter Fonda and Vester Presley (Elvis's uncle)

at different times.

Peter Fonda was filming a really bad movie called "Highballin'" at a truckstop close to my home. I'd stopped in to park my trailer and I hung around just to watch the filming. He started talking to me and to my embarrassment I did NOT know who he was. (make up and all) Anyway, he suggested we go in to the restaurant for lunch when it started to rain. Long story short it didn't take long to figure out who he was and we had a lovely chat.

Vestor Presley was the caretaker of Graceland. I used to go there often because I was doing a dedicated run to Memphis Tennessee. He would always greet me at the gate and after about 4 visits he walked up the pathway with me and invited me in for "a bite to eat" .. We had a lovely visit in the back kitchen. Sandwiches and iced tea.

I've also met former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, briefly as he was getting out of his car to enter the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.


aA
kesha

[Dappleganger]

42. Mr. Rogers helped change my parents' flat tire in PA once...

I was inside of mom's tummy at the time, so I guess that's a little close. And yeah, they said he really was just a regular nice guy.