Brushes with fame....a continuing thread from PattyL's post....

What a fun idea!  Add us all together and we know everybody important! I've talked to or met several famous people: Cher Willie Nelson EmmyLou Harris Bob Hope and his wife Muhammad Ali Paul Lynde Kris Kristoferson Karen and Richard Carpenter And of course, Anna Nicole!

WOW! You guys really are hob  knobbers with the rich and famous!  I haven't had any direct celebrity encounters, but I was stationed in Japan in the 80's with Mike Tyson's younger brother, he was a pharmacy tech and I was a lab tech.  He was really nice, and Mike would fly him out to his fights.  He used to tell us that Mike had a really tortured childhood, and that he really didn't have much of a "conscience" anymore, that he would mess you up real bad for next to nothing. Boy, did that ever prove to be true!

I was in the music industry most of my life.  So I've met quite a few famous guys.  I worked for a really famous concert promoter and I used to be a handler when I was just a young teen.  I've never been YOUNG, you know. So pretty much all the rockers of the 60s and 70s.  Then I worked for the Country Music Associaton for a long time, so pretty much all of the country people from the 80s and 90s.  Beatles, Stones, The Who...    Remember Brewer and Shipley "one Toke Over the LIne?"  I dated one of them but it was sooo long ago, I can't remember who. The ones that Imet that were kind of tangental were the ones that I felt all woobly about, I guess.  I'm trying to think. I was helping a friend who is in PR with a tour for  Phil Collins when he first left (was it Genesis?) and wasn't sure if he was going to make it on his own.  He'd agreed to do these meetngreets with people who won a backstage tour.  But by the time he got here, it was pretty obvious he was big and didn't want to go through with it.  So a scene had to be made and insistances had to be put.  The next night, second group of winners, he came out to meet us and said "Oh Dennie how nice to see you again" and kissed me.   The people thought we were best friends, he really sounded warm and happy to see me. Fred Young (Kentucky Headhunters drummer)  and I fell in love and he watned me to leave my husband and marry him, but it wasn't to be.    He liked my cooking and my choice of cars, which at the time I was able to work on as well.  Friends of friends with Kid Rock,  That's a hard-drinking, strip-bar going guy I met Roy Rogers at the CMA - what a nice man!  I have always loved the big, older men.  Dick Clark is a wonderful lovely man.    George Martin.  Oooh, I'm still weak for that man.  My grandfather worked for Admiral Mountbatten and I had a horrible crush on him.    My grandfather was a big investor in the infant rocknroll days that that's how I got my "in". Actors - not so many of those.  Oh - some of the guys who played Dr. Who.  The ones that loved country mujsic.  The Bakers were here in one tour and then Pertwee in another.  I met a lot of television guys doing the CMA awards.  I acted like I was the gofer for our membership director so she'd look big and important to Al Roker.  He never looked at me - I was the underling.  I didn't even work for her, I was just doing her a favor. OOooh, when I was in Uni the first time, I was at the University of MO Columbia and I worked in the Sociology department.  They came and ran cords out my window to interview Walter Kronkite!  I hung out the window and stared at him and he said hi and we talked a bit. I met Robert Redford at Vanderbilt University.  In the late 70s a friend of his worked in the radiology department and so did I (I was married and off the road, of course) and he said "here talk to my friend Bob in California" whist he went off and did something or other.  I had a nice conversation with Robert Redford, having NO idea who he was.  Then, he came to visit and I saw him in the middle of 21st Avenue south and thought to myself Wow, that guy looks a LOT like Robert Redford. Once he got to my office, I got all excited and tried to call my friends to come and meet him, but I couldn't say Robert Redford, it kept coming out "Come quick!!  Red Robert is in my office."  I never got to meet Cary Grant.  He was the one I REALLY wanted to meet.   He caused quite a crisis of faith for me.  How could I believe in and love a God who made one of Cary Grant and didn't make one for ME?? Love Dennie

I've only had one brush with celebrity.  Living in Nebraska, we don't get many celebs here, and when we do, they are pretty close guarded. 

I was in 8th grade, about 13 years old.  My best friend and I found out that a famous singer was at the local pop radio station so we asked her mom to take us down there to see if we could get an autograph.  We just entered the lobby to the buidling, and lo & behold, the elevator opens and off walks WEIRD AL YANKOVIC!  (Yes, this is the celeb we went down to meet.)  I thought I would be so cool & calm, but I just started screaming & jumping up and down, yelling "There he is!  There he is! It's Weird Al!"    My friend was quiet as could be.  Now, mind you, there were a total of 5 people in that lobby.  Weird Al, his bodyguard, my friend, her mom & me.  So I'm sure I looked and sounded pretty crazy.    

He was thrilled to give us his autograph.  In my little datebook, he wrote:  "Dear Jolene, Stay Demented.  Weird Al"   LOL!  I still have that datebook somewhere... 

OOOH I'm a Big Weird Al fan.  He's way more intelligent that most of the people in the music industry!! Love Dennie

When the Beatles first came to America my dad met them in a local British pub.  He asked his friend why their hair was so long and then was told they'd come over to play on the Ed Sullivan show.  Daddy got all but Paul's autographs. Growing up in Stratford, Ontario Canada which is where the Shakespearan Festival is, one of the actors, Bruno Gerrusie lived next door to us.  Lots of actors used to bring their kids over and we'd play with them.  We met Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Christopher Plummer, and many more. Julie Harris used to take us all for ice cream. The keyboardist in my husband's band played with Bob Seger for a few years and the Sax player, Marty Montgomery still plays with the Supremes. So that's my story....

Okay... now I don't feel so special about meeting Dr. Creep.  :) I have autographed pictures from Rick Jason (Combat!) and Jerry Orbach.

"Hoo-Ha-HAAA!"   Dr. Creep is coool! I used to love "Shock Theater"

Does Letterman still do Brush with Fame? Funny stuff! Ohh, I remember David Hasselhoff from Young and the Restless. *swoon* He was very young then - so was I. My mother's brother (my uncle) is married to Stephen Stills' aunt. His grandmother lived down the road from my grandmother out in the boonies. We played together as kids. Total brat. My great great great (not sure how great) Grandfather was Elias Boudinot, the first President of the Continental Congress. (And before any of you young whippersnappers ask, no. I did not meet him.) My hubby's family was on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. I think they were square dancing on roller skates or something odd. Hubby was on one of those scholarly kid shows back in the day. (He will correct me when he gets up if I am wrong.) (removed sensitive info) Cary Grant. Oh. My. I was going to marry him. And Mr. Clean. And Superman. And Davy Jones. And Paul McCartney. And Dancing Bear. 

Wow, we are a bunch of almost celebs, huh? Here is mine. My dad was a rock'n'roll pioneer disc jockey, well known in the '50's. While he was jockeying in NYC, (where he did a very well known Wake-a-thon where he stayed awake in a Times Square Army recruiting office, for over 200 hours) he had mant celebs to our apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. Among them remember the Four Lads, who also sang his radio show theme song..."The Curly Headed Kid in the Third Row"...Tony Bennett, and the McGuire sisters. Remember Rin Tin Tin and the kid Rusty on the show? Well, he was having his 13th birthday at the Waldorf Astoria and we went to that. I have pictures of my brothers and myself on stage with Lt. Rip Masters, Rusty, Rinny and his handler, and the other major players on the show. I was about 4 then. Also, when I was 5, I was "married" to Rick Nelson. I would come home from kindergarten, throw open the door and yell, "Ricky, I'm home"! Ironically, when he died in that plane crash, he was pronounced dead at the same hosptial where I was born...St. Michaels, in Texarkana on the border of Texas and Arkansas. I get that that was not a brush with anything, but thought it was eerie about my supercrush on him and how my beginning and his end crossed paths. Finally, my fathers first cousin was Francis Cardinal Spellman...the late Archbishop of NY.  Thats my story. What's yours??