<p>I’ve had several “famous” encounters - Met Diane Keaton on the street once. It was in the “Annie Hall” days and she actually WAS dressed like Annie Hall. I also had Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley get pressed against my car window by excited paparrazi’s. I also managed to kiss Harry Chapin after a concert (long story there) a few weeks before he died. And, I once ate in a restaurant seated next to Sylvester Stallone. He was eating an enormous ice cream sundae.</p>
<p>I was walking with a member of the New York State Assembly when a pol we knew invited us upstairs to a small party, just a couple of nice guys…I entered the hotel room and met two Rockerfellers.</p>
<p>I’m not a sports fan story. I was at another hotel in Buffalo and went into the Bar and as I sat down a guy walks up to me and gives me a big handshake and says, “Hi, I’m Jim Kelly!” I said hello and asked him what he did for a living…He looked pretty dejected until everyone else in the Bar recognized him.</p>
<p>I do like community events so while I was living in Kona Hawaii, I volunteered at the finish line for the Iron man. One of the finishers ran past me and I missed his number so I turned to the guy next to me and told him to get that guys number… when he came back to give me the number I realized I had sent Keven Costner (taking a break from his “waterworld” movie) to do an errand for me.</p>
<p>A year later, I had a terrible cold and was playing golf with an ample supply of cold medicine when I thought…this stuff is really affecting me, that guy looks like Pat Boone…it was.</p>
<p>When I was a Veep at FAO Schwarz in mid-80’s, we would open the store after hours for private shopping by certain celebs. A couple I remember[ul][<em>]Billy Joel and a very pregnant Christie Brinkley came in to stock up on necessities such as antique carousel horse[</em>]Don Johnson came in with 5-7 year old son (divorced from Melanie Griffith at the time I think)[/ul] It’s amazing the sudden need all us top execs had to be in the store those evenings. Jaded New Yorkers who have seen it all? That’s a bunch of hooey.</p>
<p>Oh this is fun it is reminding me of celebrities I have actually met.</p>
<p>My daughter saw Kevin Bacon walking his dog in central park( she didnt’ know who he was ), but when Stanley Kramer ( Guess who’s coming to dinner … Inherit the Wind…The Defiant Ones et al) used to live in Bellevue ( a suburb of Seattle) I sat next to him at a Macdonalds in Bellevue Square ( a mall) when my older daughter was little. We lived just a few blocks away and I often took her there ( she was about a year) for some running around and to get out of the house. I chatted to Mr Kramer a bit, just about nothing really, but he seemed lonely and I actually saw him there often that year. Just a very sweet older man. Lonely. I heard he moved back down to CA after that.</p>
<p>Oh and Jane Goodall spoke at my older daughters school as part of her Roots and Shoots program. That was very cool! Fantastic speaker and I took my younger daughter out of school to hear her.</p>
<p><<<thunking head=“”>>>> how could I forget when they made Twice in a Lifetime with Ann- Margaret, Gene Hackman and Ellen Burstyn in Seattle. Gene Hackmans trailer was parked at the end of our street and the house that Hackmans and Burstyns characters lived in is two blocks away.
This was right after we moved from Bellevue to Seattle and I used to take D by the movie set when we would go for walks- but you know how * boring* and slow making a movie is?</thunking></p>
<p>Ate lunch at a table next to Jill Clayburgh at Mt. Kisco Deli one lunchtime.</p>
<p>Kissed Pete Seeger and stood onstage with him at a concert.</p>
<p>Watched Rudolph Nureyev act like a quivering mass of jelly, throwing up into a barf bag in First Class as the plane we were both on took off.</p>
<p>Shook hands and got baseball signatures in the same day from Don Larsen, Paul O’Neill, and Derek Jeter.</p>
<p>Shook hands with Steve Wozniak and Dean Kamen after my son’s team won an award at a FIRST robotics competition.</p>
<p>Went to check out the room at the Unitarian Fellowship where our wedding was to be celebrated shortly, and found it crammed with building stuff, lights, and electronics, and heard a gurgling choking noise. Glenn Close and Michael Douglas were filming an alternate death scene from the end of “Fatal Attraction” in the room where we were to be married in two days. They ended up not using that scene, but it was cool to watch and listen. And they cleaned up quite nicely.</p>
<p>Sat near former 49ers quarerback Steve Young on a flight to Utah a few years back. Also met another former 49er great, Ronnie Lot. While my father was in college in India, Prince Charles paid a visit to IIT as a guest speaker, and my father sat right beside him at the dinner reception.</p>
<p>There’s many from Silicon Valley: Sabeer Bhatia (Founder of Hotmail), Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle), David Hitz (Founder of NetApp), and Rick Belluzzo (Former Microsoft President and COO).</p>
<p>OK, well 49er fan, I did not want to brag, but I shook hands with Roger Staubach, Tony Doersett, and Tony Hill. I carried Nate Newton’s helmet (no, there was there no weed in it !), and I stalked (er, I mean met) Emmit Smith at the Sheraton in Seattle before a game a few years ago!</p>
<p>Boring and slow about sums up the movie making process. I was approaching the train station during a filming of Streets of San Francisco with Karl Malden and Michael Douglas many moons ago. Excitedly stopped to watch, but after minimal sighting of either of these two and seemingly hours of watching stand-ins pose to achieve correct lighting, etc. — I gave up.</p>
<p>mootmom - maybe you and Pete can have a double wedding with concerneddad’s S and Ms. Lohan</p>
<p>Saw Carol Burnett a few places ahead of us in line at the box office to get tickets to see Lily Tomlin on stage. She sat a couple of rows ahead of us at the show too.</p>
<p>Saw and briefly spoke to Parker Posey on the streets of New York. She was wearing roller blades and skated away down the street.</p>
<p>Once in Atlanta I was attending a huge convention of clinical chemists. Around dinner time the downtown hotel area was taken over by groups of roving clinical chemists. I fell in behind one group and thought: Wow, those guys are the biggest and most buff-looking group of laboratory guys I’ve ever seen. After I caught up with them, I saw that they weren’t chemists - they were LA Dodgers. It was Mike Piazza and about 5 members of the pitching staff walking back to the hotel after dinner.</p>
<p>Saw Ronald Reagan on an airplane years before he became president. I’ve seen lots of famous track stars on planes, sitting nearby in the stands, at the concession stands, etc. at track meets: Carl Lewis, Maurice Greene, Michael Johnson, and many more. Track is one of the few sports where it is common for the stars to mingle with the fans. I met Wilt Chamberlain the same way, since he was a big track fan.</p>
<p>Once while searching for a bathroom in the “catacombs” of the Opryland Hotel, I stumbled right into the dressing room of the Smothers Brothers. Dick was friendlier than Tommy.</p>
<p>Hey EK4: what about the requisite Seattle Bill Gates sightings? (“I saw Bill Gates buying coffee at the 7-11.”) I remember when Bill’s whereabouts and shopping trips were routinely part of the P-I’s columns. Now I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of his kids; you have to be impressed by that.</p>
<p>I did get to meet Bill at a party I was at with my husband a few years back. I was not that impressed, but my mother was. (Someone mentioned to me (at her memorial service!) that she’d bragged about it.)</p>
<p>And I should have mentioned, to go with our other discussion about what we were all doing when Kennedy died: I got to shake hands with Kennedy while he was campaigning, when I was four.</p>
<p>Bill gates doesn’t count cause he grew up here. I have seen him driving around Medina in his Honda van looking appropriately geeky but since my daughter works where his kids attend school, I never thought of him- he isn’t exotic enough I guess ;)</p>
<p>Lots…</p>
<p>Lots of famous architects including Phillip Johnson. </p>
<p>Lots of celebrities in New York City. Lived in the same buildings. Been in Miles Davis’ townhouse. Met Larry Hagman in the early 80’s. He was a guest at the same ryokan in Kyoto. Now have Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (early inductee) in the family.</p>
<p>Favorite celebrity story is about my dear petite mother, age 65 at the time. </p>
<p>Mother was trundling along in her 1989 powder blue Camry hatchback, two hands on the wheel. As she does. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Ozzie Smith coming out of a coffee shop. Forgetting her station completely, she throws the Camry into reverse and squeals backwards towards the shy baseball player. She shouts his name “Ozzie! Ozzie!”. Such was the nature of her affection.</p>
<p>Ozzie apparently didn’t recongnize her. (He wouldn’t). One glimpse of Mother’s Camry veering his way and he burst into a mad sprint, racing for his late model sports car. He jumped into his getaway car and left mother behind to regain her composure. </p>
<p>She loves to tell that story on herself.</p>
<p>Jmmom: Lawrence Welk was not playing; this was a fund-raiser with music by a local band who donated their time.</p>
<p>My little sister plays on a little league basketball team with Darryl Strawberry’s (infamous baseball player- Yankees) daughter and we met him formally and he came to all the games.</p>
<p>Driving home from the Lyric opera Of Chicago late one Saturday night in the early 90’s, my husband was going 85 in the left lane in his “grey market” european BMW, and I noticed a car streak up in the right lane next to us and slow down to our speed. I looked out the window to see Michael Jordan checking out the car. He smiled that famous smile and gave us a thumbs up and took off probably going over 100 miles an hour being chased by a bunch of paparazzi and teenage kids. I noticed his North Carolina license plate was MJ- I.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and I grew up in the same neighborhood as Tracy McGrady (famous basketball player, Orlando Magics, Houston Rockets). My aunt and his sister got into many altercations at the Basketball court. He comes back during the summer and has a cookout.</p>
<p>Candace Bergen and Louis Malle canoodling in front of us during the Off Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s “True West” featuring Joh malkovich and Gary Sinise.</p>
<p>Today the press took pictures of me with Andy Roddick. I’m stoked.</p>