Sunday, December 16, 2007

"Can I have your autograph?" "Get away from me!"

Go here to find out the best and worst of celebrities when it comes to signing autographs. Captain Jack Sparrow is the best with a pen, and Ricky Bobby is the worst.

I've always thought of obtaining autographs from celebrities as a weird practice. What do you do with the autograph when you obtain one? Do you frame it on the wall someplace? Do you put it in a book? My wife has a baseball autographed by the great Stan Musial. It's in the house somewhere...

Have you ever seen a celebrity on the street? I don't mean at a sports event or a concert hall or a movie premiere, where you're supposed to see them. I mean in some totally random place. I've only seen two that I can remember.

I sang in the choir, called the Concert Chorale, all four years in college. Every February we would go on tour for a few days. My sophomore year we sang in several churches around Washington, D.C. We had a few hours free time to travel about the city - by foot, of course - on a Saturday, so several of us spent the time wandering around the Mall. As I was walking around the Vietnam Vets Memorial, I spotted Peter Graves. I daringly approached him and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but are you who I think you are?" He whispered, "I suppose so," and walked on. One of his companions gave me an extremely dirty look, but I didn't care. I talked to Captain Oveur. Unfortunately, he didn't ask if I enjoyed gladiator movies.

On our first year wedding anniversary, The Wife and I spent a few days in Chicago. We enjoyed an extremely late dinner at the Four Seasons hotel. As we were leaving through the main doors, we saw a man bending over his luggage on the sidewalk. He looked up, and I instantly recognized him to be Judd Nelson. He must have read the recognition on my face, because he immediately looked down at his luggage again. He had nothing to fear, however, as The Wife and I walked past him without a word.

7 comments:

  1. I once bumped into Dan Quayle -- literally. He had just been out of office, so this must have been around 1993. Consumate politician that he is, he just stuck out his hand and I shook it. Didn't think to ask for an autograph.

    I've recognized, now and then, celebrities (though your definition of celebrities might be a little more restrictive than mine.) If I see one in a restaurant,I wouldn't think of intruding, though I might smile, nod my head or gives a thumbs up in acknowledgement.

    (By the way, I've been asked for an autograph -- just once. Someone recognized me as a poet who read at a local coffeehouse. But let's not kid ourselves. ...)

    jawn

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  2. I've seen Quayle too, but at a political rally, so that doesn't really count as a "sighting." I've never seen one here in Indy - maybe I need to go to St. Elmo's and Gelo more often...

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  3. We saw Sheryl Crow in Seaside several summers ago. Got a pic with her, it was too dark and we later deleted it. She was very nice. She was shopping with her parents. Dustin was playing a pick-up basketball game at a local park and Lenny Cravitz joined in for awhile...he's actually had quite a few sightings while in Seattle.

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  4. I've had my picture with Johnny Bench and Pete Rose. Plus others from the Big Red Machine era of the Cincinnati Reds team from 1975-76. My biggest kick was a picture with Nick and Drew Lachey. I also was at 2 rallys for President Bush in 2004 and got to see him kinda close. One of those rallys was just a mile from my house at Voice of America.
    JW

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  5. I saw Brad Pitt walking through the San Diego airport back in June 1995. He was wearing a stocking cap and caring a huge bag. During that same trip while walking through the Laguna Beach area, I saw the actor that played a nasty looking character in the horrow movies that were popular in the 1990's (sorry, but I can't come up with the name, but in the movies he looks really horrible, wears a hat, I think, and has very ugly looking hands. I believe he like to chop up people...) Anyway, He was coming out of a Mercedes dealership. I also walked right next to Dan Rather through the Atlanta airport a few years ago.

    I got to speak with Jeb Bush a couple of years ago at an event for the college.

    My husband got to meet Bill Cosby at an event last year at GCCC in PC.

    All of the sightings were fun.

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  6. Me again. My co-worker helped me come up with that horror movie...Freddie Cooger. Oh yeah, I was with Dustin & Leah in Seaside when we saw Cheryl Crow.

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  7. Freddy Krueger, you mean. Played by Robert Englund.

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