Have you met any celebrities?

[GrayFlannel]

I found myself sitting next to Dr J in the Indianapolis airport. I leaned over and while shaking his hand said, “I played high school ball in St Paul. Maybe you’ve heard of me. My name is Bob.” He laughed hard and it felt good.

Another time I was at the counter in the Palm Springs airport all grumpy. I looked down shaking my head over something and saw the guy behind me wearing a pair of cowboy boots and purple pants. I turned around to see that he was completely dressed in a purple suit. I looked up and looking down at me was Clint Eastwood. He smiled, tipped his cowboy hat and nodded.

 

[avro707]

Andrew Flintoff - the Brits here will know who he is.

He was training in my indoor cycling training lab for a week alongside me.

He was quietly watching my efforts and power (which was all on screen) and then started chatting, he had noticed my power was higher than his and that I was not very big - eventually asking “what are you, 60kg”. yep!

He seems really down to earth. It seems he thought our cycling training lab looked a lot more interesting than the average gym.

I’ve met a few others along the way through various different things, the British Airways Captain Eric Moody (RIP) was super interesting and very very lively, the pilot Georgina Sutton is another one I’ve met a few times, either she was the Captain of the plane I was on (767 at the time) or at a lecture when I was involved in the RAeS.

Also Rick McCrary who was at Boeing back at the time and fairly high up the chain dealing with military aircraft sales. I kept my distance as I was still recovering from a very heavy flu - he seemed very quietly spoken and very persuasive. Very clever person. Some of you will know he also previously flew the SR-71.

 

[Boyd01]

Working in Philadelphia back around 1995-96 I met city planner Edmund Bacon, we became friends and I worked with him on a project that was never realized. People have credited him with being responsible for the "Philadelphia Renaissance". Absolutely brilliant man who was a lot of fun. He would take me on walking tours of the city and on every block he had a story about this or that building. At the time he was in his 80's, I was in my 40's and could hardly keep up with him!

Even though the project was never fully funded, with the help of another friend I got a $10,000 grant to buy a "state of the art" Power Macintosh 8100 with a mind-boggling 48MB of RAM for 3d modelling and video production. Friends would stop by just to see a Mac with that much memory. It had a Radius VideoVision card and an expensive RGB monitor. But $10,000 wasn't enough to also afford the expensive disk array for full res SD video, so I had to make do with a regular hard disk and could only do 15fps. IIRC, I was using Adobe Premiere 1.0 (maybe 2.0?) at the time.

Never heard of Ed Bacon? You might be more familiar with his son, Kevin. The amusing thing about all of this was, I had a friend who was obsessed with that "six degrees of Kevin" party game that some people (evidently) played back then. He said he could always win, since I knew Kevin's father. 🤣

I never met Kevin myself but heard stories and even some old audio tapes. Those were busy times for me and I saw less of Ed over time. Some fun memories though.

 

[johnb300m]

I met Bo Burnham in Chicago after he released his first CD.
While signing my CD, I wanted to tell him how smart and witty his humor was, and how it reminded me of a style like a modern day (very modern day, z-ennial) George Carlin.
But I chickened out and just said I liked the show, and left. 🙃

 

[GrayFlannel]

We lived in Manhattan briefly while my wife was a patient at Sloan Kettering. I was standing outside my building next to Al Sharpton who was waiting for his date to come down. He tried striking up a conversation twice. Thank goodness my driver pulled up and I walked away in silence.

Another time I was exiting a building through their large revolving doors just as Jesse Jackson was entering. For some reason the door suddenly stopped trapping us both. I got pretty nervous when I saw his security detail rushing closer while reaching inside their suit jackets. I raised my hands and did my best trapped rabbit impersonation. The doors started again a couple seconds later and all was well. Whew.

 

[Ben J.]

I was in a band. We were going to record our first vinyl record, and found an inexpensive studio located out in a field. It was named "The Henhouse" because it was exactly that; a henhouse they'd managed to cram a small studio into.

First people we met there was Morten, Magne, and Paul of Aha, but we didn't notice much, because they were yet to become famous.

This was in 1981 and I was 17.

 

[xJustxMegx]

Yes I did met Markiplier (my DFF got his signature as tattoo), I also did met some Dutch celebrities such as Enzo Knol but also Jan-Peter Balkende and Ferdinand Grapperhaus, both are former ministers. I've also met Mark Rutte, I think people might know him.

 

[rm5]

I did meet Pinar Toprak in LA once. Other than that, I've performed a lot with "second-degree celebrities"--musicians who have played with much more famous people.