Six Degrees of Separation from Celebs - Wordforge Edition

RE: Meetings in passing, those are easy both in NY and LA.

Had a list of the NY ones at some point, but since moving to LA, I've stood on line in the supermarket behind Isabel (Weezie Jefferson) Sanford (the bag boy kept asking her to "Say hello to George for me"), run into James B. Sikking in the post office, passed a very furtive-looking Stephen Spielberg crossing Santa Monica Blvd. on the way out of a local gallery.

Still kicking myself for sitting behind Eddie Olmos on a flight from LA to NY (while reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ) and not speaking to him...

I'm going to get hammered for this, but:

I appeared on Peter Frampton's Live In Detroit DVD. There's an interview segment on the DVD with a disembodied voice interviewing him. That's me. It was completely uncredited and done as a favor to Peter in a studio in LA.

We developed something of friendship after I wrote a story about him and the DVD's production (it was one of the first concert films shot in HD and mixed in 5.1) for Home Theater, although we haven't spoken in a couple of years. If you search Home Theater's website story archive, the original story should come up.

Wow, so many people that I've met:

When I used to work at Six Flags Magic Mountain back in the 80's we had a lot of celebs come to the part and I got to meet them. I personally met the following:

Tom Cruise & Emilio Estevez (visiting together)
Mr. T
Sylvester Stallone
Weird Al Yankovik (helluva nice guy, chatted for several minutes)
Gallagher
G.W. Bailey (Capt. Harris from the Police Academy movies and Sgt. Rizzo from MASH. Great guy. He even got me on the set of a couple of films he was working on at the time when I tried breaking into the film industry.)
Barry Corbin
Leslie Easterbrook
Patrick Wayne
Kareen Abdul-Jabar

And in my other travels:

Red West
Maury Povich
Carly Simon
Jerry Mathers (I used to deliver to his house)
Chris Lemmon (Jack Lemmon's son)
The whole cast of the Vietnam series Tour Of Duty (I was at a restaurant when they all came into the bar after a day of shooting, personally met and chatted with Terry Knox).
Dean Cundey (Director of Photography for everyone from John Carpenter to Robert Zemeckis)
Don Bluth

I know I'm forgetting a mess of folks, so I'll add them later when I remember them.

Carly Simon was sweeeeeet back in her prime!

^Saw her and her entourage in Penn Station once during a blizzard that had the NY-area airports closed. Hanan Ashwari was also in the crowd.

Richie Havens favors Newark Airport...

The celeb I'm closest to, through a friend of my mother's, is Dave Barry. We've met a few times, and he has a running gag of always signing my books "To David, My Idol".

Aside from that, I met Jeri Ryan once briefly through someone at church, but that was more of a fly-by night thing.

I'm no more than 3 away from any given Hollywood Celeb(tm) due to what my mom does for a living.

There is soo much potential for a Red Room style reply to that, but alas, it's in the wrong forum.

What? My mom owns a modelling and acting agency. She peddles human flesh for a living.

I've met Adam Pascal (Rent).

My friend's brother is smoking buddies with Ron Glass (Firefly, Serenity).

I nearly ran into Steve Wozniak once (caught myself before I fell further after tripping, found myself four feet away from him), and I think we may have eaten dinner at the same diner at the same time, but no one else who was there thought it was him.

My best friend met Yasmin Bleath, and his brother went to preschool with Tim Hardaway's son.

I'm acquainted with the head of the Cleveland Browncoats, who's no more than 2 degrees from about half the Firefly cast.

I've met a bunch of techie blogger celebrities, do they count? (Wil Shipley, John Wolf Rentczh, etc.) And my former housemate dressed up as Cory Doctorow for the XKCD meetup and met the author of the comic.

I actually got to see him in Aida when it first ran in NYC. I had front row seats and at one point he nearly fell on me when he ran to the edge of the stage.



I finally thought of a few more celebs I used to see around town when I lived in L.A.:

At a restaurant in Malibu I was in the downstairs bar talking to a friend of mine who was tending bar. Chris Penn was sitting at a table by himself drinking, smoking, and generally ignoring us. He looked pretty miserable. A little while later Robert Redford came in and walked up the back stairs to the upper restaurant. Apparently he has a phobia of elevators.

Another time I was on the 101 Freeway from Camarillo to my home in Van Nuys after getting off work. As I was driving I noticed a black Lamborghini in the fast lane ahead of me, and whoever was driving it was being cool and totally following the speed limit, not something you would think of when thinking of driving that type of car. I started to wonder if it could be someone famous, so I started creeping up a little bit faster to catch up with it. After about ten minutes I was able to pull alongside, looked over and saw Nicholas Cage behind the wheel.

Another time I was in a bar in Santa Monica and Tom Berenger was at the bar having a drink. Also during this time I worked at a company that had offices in Santa Monica and Tom Hanks had offices in the same building while he was doing post-production on his film "That Thing You Do". I got to see him several times around the building, but he was never really friendly and wouldn't look you in the eye.

I previously mentioned that I used to know Red West. I worked at a gourmet deli/liqour store in Valenica CA and he used to come in several times a week. He was working on Road House at the time and I chatted with him about breaking into the film business, but I never got the nerve to ask him about Elvis. Oh well.

And of course, most recently, I was on the Maury Show for Halloween. While it was an overall good experience, I can honestly say that Maury Povich is a prick. He was not friendly to his guest, and acted like someone pissed in his Wheaties that morning. He really seemed like he didn't want to be there and was pretty rude when the cameras weren't rolling.

In case no one saw it, here's the clip of our segment.

[YT="The Maury Show"]lw8vZ4X14n0[/YT]

Spent 30 minutes or so with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

Rode in an elevator with Bo Svenson of Kill Bill: Part 2 (Reverand Harmony from the wedding rehearsal scene).

Chatted in person with Mike Starr of Dumb & Dumber ("the Gas Man").

Got to talk with Buddy Rich (the best drummer that ever lived) many years ago.

Met Elvis' uncle.

Carl Perkins and W.S. Holland (Johnny Cash's drummer) don't count. They live(d) here in town.

When my Dad was in the Army, he met and had a cup of coffee with Elvis Presley. I guess he mainly talked about his mom.

My parents still have their tickets for the Portland, ME show he was supposed to do next when he died.

My mom was a waitress and met a lot of different celebs...Robert Redford hit on her even. Stephen King used to request one of her tables.

Redford was a lousy tipper, I hear.

My boss from the days when I worked in private security was in Presley's unit. They remained friends after both got out of the service. Frank had silly amounts of pics of them together.

From working at the casino I know various people who dealt to famous people. Mostly Australian celebrities who no-one outside here would recognise but some people like George Harrison. I dealt to a few members of the Australian cricket time without even realising.

Through work it would probably be three steps to George Lucas through bosses doing business with high up Lucas Arts people.

When my grandmother was young she lived near John Thaw (actor who played Inspector Morse) and apparently shared a pram with him at least once. Or as she likes to put it she slept with him.

I'm 7 degrees away from Kevin Bacon...

My grandmother occasionally visited with Judy Canova, vaudvillian and mother of Soap's hotty Diana Canova.

Was clicking through IMDB... seems I was an extra in a flick with Meredith Baxter Birney and David Ogden Stiers. Cool...M*A*S*H points.

I was going to pass on this thread because I didn't think I had any "separation" between me and the famous people. I've meet lots of them through work, which doesn't really count.

Then I remembered that a friend of mine has a brother who's an actor. He had a role on Deadwood (though I don't recall which one other than it wasn't a main character) and he roomed with Jimmy Smits in college.

>EDITED< to add that one of my cousins used to work for this place in Hawaii and met quite a few celebrities who bought the "experience". He told me that Tom Hanks was an asshole, but John Candy was one of the coolest guys he ever met.

I can only think of two (one of which it's likely the non-Brits won't know anyway).

My aunt knew Brian Ferry whilst he was at University. I'm told they dated, not sure how true that is.

My uncle used to employ Jimmy Nail (a crap Brit actor for those who don't know). I'm sure I met him when I was a kid, but really don't remember.

Oooh, another one that won't mean anything to non-Brits: my dad used to do a lot of work for Georgina Hale, AKA T-Bag the witch.

Was it a porno? That would be beyond cool!

Tea Bag the Witch would be one cool band name!

^^^ Isn't that Anc's real nickname?

Well, by six degrees, y'all are associated with just about every damn celebrity, sports star, or media whore that ever was- through me. I fly a crapload of those people around. Unfortunately, I can't drop names and details and such (client confidentiality is part of our big sell), but trust me- you could probably cut it down to three or four degrees of separation and still be right in there.

All I'll say about celebrity trips is this: I don't like those flights much. Waaaaay too high maintenance.

When I worked construction I knew a guy who knew a guy who was once Paul Lynde's (Bewitched, Uncle Arthur) driver. He says he used to take him to gay bars.
He never seemed gay to me, but one of the Darins was gay also.

Oh, I got my undergrad degree the same place Ahnuld got his. Does that count?

Lemme guess, Liberace's coming out was a shock to you.
The second Darren was gay, the first was a pill-popper.

Hey, I have no "gaydar."
Actually, I can't read people at all.
Since I can't detect hints/subtleties, I'll never even know if a woman likes me unless she's pretty much grinding herself into my crotch.

Missed opportunities? You know it - but those are the breaks.