Let’s talk about some famous people I have managed to run across in my rather weird life.
I already mentioned the two Tweets I got from Eric Idle. I was also mentioned in a Tweet by Ricky Gervais. I told my older daughter that I only started Tweeting so that I could get somebody famous to Tweet me back, and then she would have to get on Facebook and admit that I am cool. And to her credit, she did just that. But I have had brushes with the well-known before that.
When I was a kid, growing up in the Bay Area, I used to stop outside of this garage on the way home from elementary school and listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival practice.
Later, I went to high school with the guys in Metallica. Just to set they record straight, I didn’t really like them, but we hung out with the same crowd.
I was in a band for a while with Paul Bayloff who went on to play with Exodus.
Once, when I was a teen, we took a family trip to Long Beach and did a tour of the Queen Mary… that is a ship, in case you aren’t clear on that. They were filming some movie on the Queen Mary, and when we got in an elevator, Michael Constantine held the door open for my mom, and we rode the elevator up, chatting with him. If you don’t recognize that name, he was the guy in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding that thought Windex had medical uses. This was long before that movie was made, but he was also the Principal on a TV show called Room 222, and was in the movie The Hustler.
In my very early twenties, I used to roadie and do security and stage bouncing for a band called Blind Illusion. I loved stage bouncing. People would try to jump on stage, and we would push them back off. We tried not to hurt them as long as they were cool. But sometimes the guys would get carried away and try to grab an instrument or one of the guys in the band. Blind Illusion had a large and loyal following in the Bay Area. They knew that when we gave them a certain signal, they were supposed to move out of the way and not catch the guy who came sailing off the stage. The obnoxious fan would just end up hitting the floor in the middle of a circle of cheering rock and roll lovers.
The bass player in Blind Illusion went on to achieve a certain amount of fame. He is Les Claypool, bass player, singer and frontman for Primus. Primus is a pretty big band, even if you have never heard of them. They are the guys who do the theme song for the TV show South Park. My wife and I have stood on the side of the stage when they play gigs in San Diego. Once, when I was waving goodbye to Les on the way out of a show, he started chant my name into the microphone, and a few thousand people ended up following along. That was sort of fun.
I sat right behind Tommy Chong and Timothy Leary at the premier of one of the Cheech and Chong movies. I kept shouting “Dave’s not here.” Oh, look it up.
I met my wife when we both worked in the Tower Records store in Berkeley. I worked in the art department making the display signs. She worked downstairs in record sales. One day, when we had just started dating, I went down to see if she wanted to go get lunch. She was talking to a lady with some crazy hair, but the lady had her back to me, so it wasn’t until I got closer that I realized that the lady was Whoopi Goldberg. This was back in the 80’s before she was as famous as she is now, but I had seen her on an HBO special and some other stuff, so I had a great conversation with her. The funny thing is that my future wife had no idea who Whoopi even was. But she got back at me soon enough. She sold a Stevie Wonder album to Carlos Santana and didn’t bother to let me know.
I miss working at Tower Records. We got free tickets to all the big rock shows and even some good plays. We saw Anthony Quinn in Zorba The Greek, and even in his 70’s that guy had some energy.
After I got married and we moved to San Diego, I went to an air show. Pappy Boyington was there. If you don’t know who he is, Google it. He was a very famous World War Two pilot, and they made a TV show about his war years called Black Sheep Squadron starring Robert Conrad. Pappy Boyington was one crazy guy in the old days. I wanted his autograph, but I didn’t have enough money to buy his book. But right next to his little stand at the air show was another little stand with an old Japanese gentleman sitting at a folding card table selling his book. I bought a little rising sun decal from him, got Pappy to sign it, and talked for a while with him about his war experiences.
I got curious about the Japanese fellow next to him and asked Pappy if he knew him. He told me that the man was the pilot that shot him down near the end of the war in the South Pacific and caused him to spend the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Now they are friends.
I took a computer arts class at a community college and hung out with a guy named Carl Mesmer. He was the descendant and name sake of the Carl Mesmer who invented hypnotism. That is where the expression ‘mesmerized’ comes from.
Just a few years ago, we went and saw Eddie Izzard, a very funny British comedian. I had a chance to meet and talk briefly with Mr. Izzard after his show, along with a small crowd of other people.
Now this last story is not an actual meeting with greatness so much as a ‘degree of separation’ story, but I think this is cool. I have a friend named Chuck. He goes to my wife’s church, and we hang out now and then. We were at his house for lunch one day and I met his mother. Chuck comes from a German family, and later he told me that when his mom was a young girl during World War Two, Hitler came to her little village on a train.
The teacher at the school picked Chuck’s mom to hand Hitler a bunch of flowers, and Adolf Hitler shook her hand. That’s right. I shook a hand that shook Adolf Hitler’s hand. I don’t even know why I think that is cool. I guess it is because I have studied military history for so long. I certainly don’t think of Hitler as anything other than a world-class asshole, but for whatever reason, this was sort of an interesting highlight to my life.
