I was on ship during the filming of Rules of Engagement, with Samuel Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. If you ever watch the movie there is a scene where Mr. Jackson is running with a bunch of Marines on the deck of a ship to three helicopters that are heading out to pick up the ambassador. I was one of the Marines running to the helicopters. Even though the shot is about 30 seconds it took about 8 hours to get it right. We were so tired from running back and forth to the helicopters. Mr. Jackson was joking around about how heavy the equipment was and had some choice words about how many times we had to run. He was so funny and a really nice guy.

By accident we stumbled into the memorial service for Bob Hope at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC. At least a dozen bishops.

I’ve met quite a few celebrities and politicians because I’ve traveled a lot with my father who was a live sound engineer and then for myself as I sang the national anthem at events and worked on film projects.

Still, my ultimate experience was meeting “Weird Al” Yankovic. To put this into perspective, imagine a girl with very low self confidence who doesn’t fit in, kind of looks weird, and has no interest in normal pop culture. That was me in seventh grade, when I became obsessed with Weird Al. I went to all of his concerts I could into high school, but I never got closer than having him give me a thumbs up when I held up a Weird Al pillow my aunt had made me from the front row. Then, my senior year in high school, my dad surprised me with a Christmas present. He had bought two tickets to a Weird Al show on Ohio State’s campus (I lived in Ohio at the time). We were so far from the stage, way back in a couple of balcony seats. I was just happy to be there.

Then the opening act came out. It was a magician my father had worked with several years before as his sound engineer. My dad exclaimed, “He owes me money!” and promptly ran out of the theatre.

About a half-hour into the show, my dad came back. He’d exchanged the man’s debt for two backstage passes.

After the show, we waited by the stage door until they led us into a room where the band was sitting, eating pizza. There were a few other people waiting to meet the man himself. Al wasn’t there yet.

Then he came into the room wearing a purple shirt with pizzas on it (irony or on purpose?). I got to meet him first. He sat at a little table at the end of what was likely used as a classroom during the week. The first thing he said was that he liked my outfit (Weird Al shirt, Hawaiian shirt, huge baggy pants, and Mork suspenders with buttons all over them… yeah, such was the way we dressed in high school). He signed my CD, signed my Hawaiian shirt, let me touch his hair (that glorious, glorious hair!), and even allowed me to sit on his lap (kinda) and have my picture taken. I think overall I was a creepy fangirl, but he didn’t seem to mind and, in fact, seemed to find amusing.

So I went back to my normal life with my 8×10 picture of me sitting with (read: on) my hero and my… shall I say it?.. heartthrob, never to meet anyone as magical as “Weird Al” Yankovic again.

Maybe if I ever got to meet Patrick Stewart he let me rub his bald head for good luck… Naw. He’d never go for that.

i wouldn’t call it a brush w/a famous person,but i’m going to be on Modern Marvels. the company i work for will be featured in an upcoming episode in February titled “Hot & Spicy” and i got to do my little piece on the lab work that i do!

I think it would have to be when I met Buh-Bye on this blog. That guy’s writing skills make Hemingway’s work look like Cat in the Hat. He is a literary genius.

As an undergrad at Mizzou in the early 70’s, I was a member of a couple of the Student Activities concert committees. I worked behind the scenes at several concerts where I got to meet Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Ravi Shankar, Count Basie, and McCoy Tyner. No photos, though, just good memories of the events and the people. My weirdest encounter was at the Elton John concert in 1973 - I was sent on some trivial errand and ended up in the dressing room while EJ was changing costumes. Not a pretty sight!

Ran into Kurt Warner a few yrs back, not a friendly guy, asked for an autograph, he was very rude about it acted as tho he shouldn’t be botherd,so much for brotherly love ………..GO STEELERS!

Didn’t we just do this one a couple of weeks ago?

Once I …..oh never mind.
There was that one time…wait that was someone else.
Oh yeah, I saved….. nope, not me either.
Oh, oh, oh I know…… darn, that was whats his name, not me.
Oh well, guess I am just an average Joe. Hey that’s it “Joe the Plumber”. Nah, that doesn’t work either. Oh well…..

I work for a well-known, local hardware store on the Hill. A couple of years ago, a producer from National Geographic comes in with a cameraman and explains that they are doing a special on American families that they transplant to exotic locales around the world. Seems a local family was sent to live in a yurt in Mongolia for a couple of months. After their return they wanted to send the host village a chainsaw. The prod needed an end piece to the show so she thought a good finish would be a clip of my “reaction” when told that the chainsaw would be sent to Mongolia. From then until forever, I will be the guy at the very end of this program, with feigned astonishment exclaiming…”MONGOLIA!?” Having watched the program later and noting the dearth of timber in that country or at least in their immediate vicinity, I still don’t know what the chainsaw was for…they did have a lot of goats though…hmm.