The Name Dropper Meme

It's a cloudy and drizzly Saturday -- perfect for sitting here making a list for a meme!

I thought this would be a fun meme to do. I frequently think back on famous people I have seen randomly in public, and have decided to make a list for myself as it's rather easy to forget some of them. (And I'm still going to forget some.)

If you want to play along, be my guest, but here's the rules. It has to be something random and unexpected. You can't list Madonna if you paid money to see her in concert! However, if she invited you up on stage, then yeah, you can list her. For this reason, I won't be able to list Bob Hope, Lawrence Welk, Elvis Presley, or The Cramps.

Keanu Reeves - several sightings. Riding his motorcycle in LA, and another time, talking on a pay phone outside Tower Video in West Hollywood. (My guess is that pay phone is long gone, and I wonder about Tower Video!) And at a tiny bar called, appropriately enough, Smalls.

Edgar Winter - at the same bar and same night as mentioned above. (Or was it Johnny Winter? Now I'm second guessing myself. Gimme a break! It was a bar! I was drunk!)

Andrew McCarthy - at some club in Hollywood. May have been the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip. Anyway, I was walking through the club and nearly ran head-on into him. It was about as up close, face to face, as you can get.

Forest Whitaker - shopping at a pet store in LA.

Michael Gross - he showed up at my office one day as he was about to shoot an infomercial for one of our clients. I gave him my newspaper to read while he waited.

Russell Simmons - Another work-related sighting while I was working with the production team for some Def Comedy Jam spots. We pulled in one of my employees to do the voice over work. Incidentally, his name was Montell Jordan. :-)

Ali MacGraw - at a coffee shop in Santa Monica.

Nicholas Cage - at the Erewhon natural foods market in LA shopping for something dairy, if I recall.

k.d. lang - shopping at the Erewhon in LA. She was pushing a shopping cart and coming towards me down the aisle. We had eye contact and I think she knew I was a fan. I was probably bug-eyed.

George Hamilton - also at Erewhon. txrad recognized him; I never would have.

Kevin Bacon - dancing at a gay club in Little Rock after a day of filming some movie.

Matthew Broderick - OK, this one comes close to violating the rules since I was cast as an extra in Biloxi Blues being shot near Fort Smith, Arkansas. But I had no idea we'd be the only two people in the makeup room (aside from the guys doing our makeup), so it counts!

Joan Rivers - in the Northwest Airlines lounge in Memphis while waiting on a connecting flight. She had her pooch with her, and her face was a mangled mess of raw hamburger. She had obviously just had some work done, unless that's how she travels in order to maintain a low profile! I doubt it.

Sammy Davis Jr. -- driving a Rolls Royce down a street in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles back in the 1970s when I was on vacation there with my parents. I think we were trying to find Johnny Carson's house. I was driving my dad's truck, and had stopped at a cross street and saw the Rolls pass in front of me. So all I really saw was the profile of Mr. Davis, but there's no mistaking it.

John Corbett -- seen right here in Austin eating lunch at Curra's Grill. I knew him from Sex and the City, but he's more recently been in United States of Tara.

Glenn Danzig -- this is another near-disqualification except for the fact that it meets the exception criteria like getting invited on stage which I mentioned in the rules. I was at a concert in LA in which Danzig was the opening act for another band. I was at the concert as a guest of a friend who was involved in the music business and that particular concert. At the end, I was asked to drive Danzig and his girlfriend back to his house in the Hollywood Hills since they did not have transportation for some reason.

George Clinton -- twice. And he's pretty hard to miss. Once on a Southwest flight from LA to Austin, and another time in a restroom -- probably in an airport if I recall. Apparently he flies a lot.

Gene Siskel - waiting for a flight at Chicago's O'Hare.

Cheap Trick -- they were checking into a hotel in Chicago at the same time I was.

The HMV Era

I saw so many well-known people while I spent 14 months working at the HMV record store in London that I'm devoting them to this section since the conditions under which I saw them were all identical.

Paul Weller - front man for The Jam. Not so big in the states, but in England, this was akin to seeing McCartney or Lennon.

Eric Idle - I have always thought maybe it was a dream. I know for a fact it was one of the guys from Monty Python because other employees were buzzing about the fact that he was there. But I was so completely flabbergasted, part of my brain tried to erase it. I'm 95% sure it was Eric Idle.

George Michael - he was actually checking me out while pretending to shop for something. What a slut.

Philip Oakey - singer and songwriter of The Human League. Ho-hum for most of you but I was a big fan at the time.

It's interesting that I've lived in Austin 13 years and haven't ever had any really noteworthy sightings that I recall. You'd think I would have bumped into Lance Armstrong, Sheryl Crow and/or Sandra Bullock at least once! I did have one near-miss a couple of years ago. I stopped in my neighborhood liquor store and Tommy Lee Jones had just left. Apparently he was drunk as shit and was picking up another 12-pack of some cheap beer. At least he had a driver.