I guess I had forgotten about my little trip as a crew on a F5000 car. While in St. Jovite at the post race party I and the others drank Molsens and ate corn on the cobb out of a big vat with Dick Smothers and James Garner from the celebrity side. It was 1968 and the drivers like Posey and Hobbs were just... drivers. A2Z (Adamowicz) was there somewhere along with most of the SCCA gang of the period.

that was good, thanks.

mee too.

Summer 1966, Green Bay Packer training camp, my brother, my cousins and I got to meet Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, and most of the Super Bowl 1 Championship team.
My uncle was on the Packers board of directors......
As an 11 year old kid I was in awe........and Lombardi was actually a nice guy.

I flew private jet charter for 8 years. I've met just about everybody who is somebody.

He helped me move into my apartment... So in your face! :cool:

Yeah, but does he clean windows?

You guys, I can't tell you how much I enjoy reading all of your stories.
I hope this thread goes on and on.
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One more from me...not all that exciting:
One of my clients (Prop. Mng't) for 4 years (years ago) was a financial guru who was in on the ground floor of Apple.
Name withheld.
I have no idea about his $$$$$$$$$ worth, but his multi-stall garage on his estate had a new mega-buck auto about every 6 mo.s.
He also had a twin eng. something or other airplane.
His wife drove either her Bently Convert., her Snow White Land Rover, a Turbo VW Baby Blue Bug Convertible, or her black MB SUV.
She was/is a cutie and looked good in anything.
Both were as sweet as could be and would say to me, "Don, whatever it cost, just bill us."
Anyway, being around them presented me w/plenty of opportunities to process/mature through envy.
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OK, that wasn't so hot...tennis bums, listen-up.
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A hundred yrs. ago, I played USTA tournament tennis and through various introductions I met and hit with Hank Pfister several times.
He was ranked #10 World at the time.
Two things I took away from that acquaintance:
- He lost to Borg at the US Open but took a set off the champ.
Pfister said that how Borg's game would dishearten most players was that no matter how penetrating your shot was, Borg would be there waiting for the ball.
- I couldn't believe how much better I played as a result of hitting w/Pfister's level of skill.
Forever grateful, I was (am).

I interacted with Abbie Hoffman in about 1986. Perhaps the most poisoned soul I have ever met.

I met Carrol O'Connor at LAX maybe 20 years ago. He was over the top gracious!
Hung out with Crosby and Nash at a Neil Young concert at the Greek
I see David Lindley around Claremont a couple of time a month
I've met Mark Steyn a couple of times - he even call my wife and I on our 25th anniversary
I have met John Voight at a couple speeches/luncheons
I met Andrew Breitbart two times. Watched part of a football game with him in a bar. That guy had energy. RIP Andrew
Sat down with Robert Earl Keen after a show late one night in SLO. Half an hour q&a about his music. VERY down to earth guy.
Probably others but they have all been good sports and have made my life just a tad bit richer.

Saw Saddat speak in Egypt a year before he was assassinated. Plate glass a foot thick.

I hacky-sacked with governor moonbeam at a redwoods logging protest in Ukiah, Ca.
He walked by and joined in for a second. Wasn't bad for a beginner.

Campaigned for Galvin Newsome(San Francisco mayor) for a friend and shook his hand.
Slick Willie Brown spoke at our University in a small room with 15 people.

I met David Crosby getting off a plane. Actually some large person was blocking the aircraft doorway. I looked up, stammered, and went by.
I saw Susan Lucchi in a LaGuardia gift shop on another occasion.

Well, if it's just sightings and casual encounters, I saw Rod Serling speak at a university. It was far out.

My first wife worked in the Columbia office of Senator Strom Thurmond for a few years and once in awhile one of his kids would come to the office and play on her typewriter. That's really nothing, but...

As a perk of her working there, she and I got to go to the premiere of The Great Santini and met and talked with Robert Duvall afterwards. Very personable and accessible guy.

Casual encounter; my bud Brian and I were walking out the back gate of the paddock while at an IMSA GTP race weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the mid 80's and Al Holbert, Jr. was coming in the gate. We just did the acknowledgement nod with a "hello" and he returned the same.

Because of being on a listserv of Creedence fans, our whole family was treated to tickets for a Creedence Clearwater Revisited concert and aftershow passes at Chastain Park in Atlanta in '97, so we got to meet Doug Clifford and Stu Cook, the original Creedence rhythm section. Oh yeah, it drizzled during most of the concert, so the rain songs were especially fun. Elliot Easton (ex Cars guitarist) was lead guitarist for them at that time, but he didn't come to the aftershow thing. I got to meet him later when I went to one of their concerts in Peachtree City. He was not a very chatty guy, but you should hear some of his work while he was with them.

Also because of being on that listserv, my oldest son and I got in for afternoon soundcheck and were able to meet John Fogerty afterwards at an indoor venue in Charlotte a year or two later. We went to the concert that night, but John C. Fogerty doesn't give away concert tickets to commoners. :)

Again, with the CCR fan listserv, both my sons and I were guests of Creedence Revisted for the pre- and post-race concerts and IRL race in Charlotte in '99 when that crash debris went up in the stands and killed three people. Tragic and scary... it happened several hundred yards from us. The race was black flagged and the post-race concert cancelled.

My current wife taught John Mellencamp's daughter Justice in middle school in Hilton Head when she lived there in the late 90's.

This thread is fun because I am now remembering some encounters. I've run into a lot of famous people at car races. One of those was Dan Blocker from Bonanza fame. We were at the Can Am somewhere in the 60's at Riverside. We decide to get some tickets in the esses grandstands after coming in the gate. Turns out Blocker is up on the top row with several seats in the next row also reserved for his coolers and grill as well as his entourage.

So we're up there trying to watch the race with the big man looming above. He offers a few dogs to us which we devoured. He probably thought we were drinking a bit much and the food would help.

Not that he didn't have a few. :D

Harry Conick Sr. parked his Ferrari below the stands in T6.

I stood and watched Paul Newman discuss the track with Peter Brock in the pits.

What can I say? All I've ever done had to do with racing and building things house related. Never met one famous soul doing the houses.

Well if we are going to include racing drivers, I've met Brian Redman, Patrick Long, Joerg Bergmeister, Wolf Henzler. Also met Norbert Singer at Rennsport Reunion 4.

Porsche famous: met Rob from Singer when they were testing the prototype at Willow Springs.I knew his old hot rod from my PCA region when he would autocross it. The first Singer copied the look.

I've hung out with Chad McQueen several times- with Magnus and Dave from TRE.

Seen Jay Leno several times.

Met Tony Adamowicz, Craig Watkins when he was Chief Engineer for Flying Lizards.

Met Hans Stuck when I was just a wee young'un.

My wife and i stopped at a truck stop in Virginia. There sat a tour bus at the fuel island.
We both wondered who it might be.
We sat in the restaurant and figured the 5 or 6 guys at the table in the corner must be them.
Didn't ring any bells.
Our check came and these guys are ahead of us at the cashier.
This place had (it's a discount fuel/fast food place now) signed pictures of a bunch of country western stars on the walls and a few of the guys were checking them out so my wife asked if any of them were up there. Guy says "don't think they'd like our kind of music".
We head back to our rig and do some paperwork then head out. The bus is gone when we round the fuel island.
About a half hour south on 81 and there's the bus on the shoulder with the rear engine lid up and two guys looking in scratching their heads.
So i slam on the binders and pull in behind them, get out, and ask whats up as he's wiping the dip stick with what looks like a brand new T-shirt.
Motor won't even turn over so i ask if can give them a ride to the next truck stop (this is before cell phones) so the one guy says yeah let me grab my briefcase.
So in he climbs (my wife sat in the sleeper) and i've got the brakes released waiting for a break in traffic so i can pull out when another bus pulls off on the shoulder behind me.
I tell the guy and he looks in the mirror and says that must be Huey (still no bells going off) so we get out and discover that it's Huey Lewis and the fellows in the broke down bus are the Tower of Power horns. Got free tickets to the show in Roanoke,VA but i had to pass as my load had to be delivered the next morning in Memphis,TN.
My wife is still pi$$ed.

I shook hands with "Denny" McLain while he was manning a table for some charity work near the entrance of the Lugnuts baseball stadium in Lansing last Saturday.

Denny McLain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Large hands, still happy to meet people and be recognized.

Didn't he have a wicked fast ball?
I recall something about him having the fastest fast ball in his day.

As a six-month old infant, I was bounced on the knee of German rocket scientist and Saturn V chief engineer, Wernher von Braun.

These stories are killers. :)

I once ran into Dipso over in PARF....does that count? :p

Remember Bobbi Vee & the Shadows (Bob Velline)?
He was a local singer who swooned all the No. Dakota girls.
I helped set-up the stage when he came to our little town.
I know, big deal, eh? 'Just tryin' to feed the thread, boys.
:)

Ooh, I got one! In the late '70's my dad rented out his Alexandria brownstone to Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, the husband and wife duo in Starland Vocal Band.

My name-dropping skillz are weak.

I worked with this young kid in '77. He cofounded a company. I helped design the marketing communications/logo. The company went on to achieve some success.

We stayed friends for about 20 years. Died too young.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1377547777.jpg

RIP Steve.

In subsequent years, I worked with some biggies in the tech world, including Bill Gates.

Despite many years in "Hollywood" I've pretty much avoided celebrities, though I did get some face time with Mohammed Ali.

So Tech I gotta ask; are you saying you helped designed the rainbow apple?

Yes, though our design was one color. Steve wanted the colors. We gave him stripes, assuming its awfulness would cause Steve to abandon his demand. He didn't. It took weeks to finalize colors, with me finally taking a swatch book to him and choosing the orange & yellow PMS spec.

Just about fell on a sword to keep it monochrome, but I lost that argument.

WOW!

Fantastic story. Whose design was the bite :D

The art director on my team was Rob Janoff. The bite was to give it scale, since it kinda looked like a grape, otherwise, especially since it was gray-green as originally conceived.

I still remember the first icon.

Worlds Best Logo Designer | Logo Designing | Logo Design | Logo Designer

Wow, you guys are all high-rollers. All I've got is Pete Seeger's autograph on my vintage "How to Play the 5-String Banjo" record cover. I keep meaning to frame the thing.

But well, but let's see - I've also interviewed Bernie Ecclestone, Bobby Unser, Peter Revson, Mario, Shelby, Mayor Sam Yorty, Peter Gregg, Howdy Holmes, Jim Hall, David Pearson, Cale, Richard, both Allisons brothers, Al Holbert, Ferdinand Piech, Dave Guard and many others. I treasure the Guard interview above all others because I don't think many people could find him in the later years before he left us.

But God, I feel old. Maybe it's because I am old.

I had a buddy in college who would tell people he was his nephew. He wasn't.

Met Burt Reynolds. I was still at Michigan State then. He told me and my then girlfriend, now wife, about playing football at MSU stadium when he was in college. He was a riot.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Ended up discussing a book I had just read. Intelligent man. I really enjoyed speaking to him.

Michael Moore. At the mall in Flint, MI. We were both waiting for our wives while they shopped. We just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.

A couple athletes here and there. Lindsey Hunter when he played for the Pistons. Seemed like a real nice guy. A couple of boxers. Chris Byrd before he left for Vegas.

Morris Peterson worked out at the gym I used to before he left for rookie training camp. Super nice guy. Very polite. His dad works out in my current gym.

Everyone "famous" I can think of.

I bought my first house from Danny Elfman when he was with the band Oingo-Boingo. Big time music score composer for movies now. Got the entire bands autographs on one of their LPs.

I was Burt Reynolds Police security during a book signing in his home town. It was a 3 hour detail but at the end of 3 hours there were about 500 people still in line. He looked at them and said I will stay until everyone that bought my book gets a signature. Five hours later I told him I had a ticket to the Miami vs Florida State football game that started in a couple hours. He said he did to, and he'd give me a ride in his helicopter to the game if we finished in time. Sadly people kept coming and we stayed there for 12 hours missing the game. He greeted the last person with the same warm hearted smile and handshake as the first. I learned a lot about him that day. He didn't even take a meal break, he just ate m & m's and drank diet cokes, and not a single fan was disappointed.

Ah - since we are going back in time - I did the advertising for a local rock station and spent some time back stage at numerous rock concerts, and at Caribou Ranch in Nederland. From Richards to Henley to BonJovi, lots and lots of stories... ;)

In the mid-80s I bought a house in the Santa Monica mountains across from Brando & Nicholson. Henley was down the street and used to throw fundraiser events. The list of people at those events was crazy -- most of Henley's fellow musicians, the local stars, etc. Henley was a dick, but Nicholson was pretty cool.

Henley isn't very nice - however Joe Walsh - really nice.

The boys in Van Halen before their first album (1975). I was a wannabe rock guitarist in a band playing Gazzarri's on the strip. Van Halen was the headliner and we all hung out briefly. They were the hottest bar band I had ever heard and the "party" was strong in them. DLR was shirtless and wearing body paint in Feb.

Alex is a Porsche guy and I still see him periodically.

Great thread! this pales in comparison but I remember it like it was yesterday. 1990ish at the IMSA race at Watkins Glen. I am driving through the overflow paddack and come to an intersection near the hot pit entrance. Blue Taurus creeping through and stops in the middle of the intersection-trying to determine which way to turn...I am patient...still waiting...then quick tap on my horn and a double palm up and mouth "which way?". Car turns my way, driver side window down and Paul Newman says " sorry buddy, i have no idea where I'm going".

To keep it going - Tom Green stayed in our hotel in Austin this weekend.