Who Do You Know?

Hmmm…that’s an interesting question. I suppose the most famous people I know are some of my professors, several of whom are extremely well-respected in their field, even if they aren’t well-known outside of it. I suppose the most “famous” would be the mathematician Alan D. Taylor (he even has a Wikipedia page!) who is, in addition to being an amazing teacher and a great person, also known for his work in foundations of mathematics, fair division problems, and voting theory. He has an Erdös number of 1, so if I ever were to publish a paper with him, I’d be twice removed from Paul Erdös himself!

Ooh, I just thought of another: one of the philosophy professors (whose class I took) is the wife of the brother of the Unabomber. She and her husband were the ones who figured out it was him and exposed him. In the interests of their anonymity I’ll avoid mentioning her name.

Not sure. I’m guessing Nina Hartley is the most famous, but it might be Susie Bright or Annie Sprinkle.

What about you, Hemant? I’m curious.

I work for Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, at his animal rescue charity in California. I don’t know much about baseball, but I do know that his involvement has saved thousands of animals’ lives and I feel truly honored to know him.

http://www.arf.net

Well, PZ Myers is my Facebook friend, does that count?

I’ve met Anthony Daniels (C-3P0 in the Star Wars movies) in person; he came by to see our robotics lab for an hour or so. He wouldn’t know me by name, but he’d probably remember our lab.

My great uncle was an extra in the John Waters’ film Pink Flamingos.

Not really famous, yet, but one of my oldest friends:

Kevin Matossian Co-producer of:

“Lost” the movie starring Dean Caine, (NOT the TV series)
“September Dawn” starring Jon Voigt and some others from the Caine clan.

He’s a Xian (may be a fundie, I can’t always tell)

My personal trainer was Anja Langer! That’s HUGE in my book!

I’ve met a gazillion famous people all over the world but I don’t really KNOW them. Ok, I did know some of them in the biblical sense…not the Sumo wrestlers, just the heavy metal gods. Ok, I’m going to shut up now.

I know actress Chloe Sevigny and have hung out with her several times. Chloe is very tight with my ex-girlfriend Lily Ludlow, who’s only famous in Port Chester, NY, and in the ultra-hip insider NYC art/fashion scene…

p.s.–i also know film director jonathan demme. he’s friendly with one of my brothers and i see demme at least once a year at my brother’s super bowl party.

i’ve also met mohammad ali and joe namath when i was a kid, but they probably wouldn’t remember me. they’d remember my dad, who was a sportswriter for the NY Daily News.

Mark Hoolihan, singer/guitarist/founder of the indie/emo band Jupiter Sunrise. He was my roommate for 2 months, and crashes on my couch whenever he or the band pass through town. I don’t really know the extent of their fame (37 thousand friends on myspace is inconclusive, being myspace, but they’ve played the Warped Tour), but ask him about “Incredible Weirdo” and he’ll tell you all about me.

Hrm. My aunt is the second-highest Wiccan priestess in Canada (so not famous but not… uh… unknown. Wiccans get kinda goofy when I tell them)… erm… author Robert J. Sawyer probably wouldn’t know me by name, but I met him a couple of times and shared e-mail with him and he remembered me. I also knew actor Sunny Thrasher (of My Pet Monster and the Edison Twins fame, amongst other things) for a couple of years. HE would probably remember me, if anyone knows what he’s up to.

One person regularly read my blog until it mysteriously vanished, making me the most famous person I know. =D

(No, I don’t know why my blog vanished. I get the feeling my friend’s Dreamhost account got dissolved for some reason. I bet he was hacking into government networks or something. More likely, there was just an error on the server he hasn’t bothered to fix yet. Maybe he accidentally typed “rm -rf /*” or something. Who knows?)

Kunal Nayyar He’s one of the stars of CBS’s sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”. He was a grad student while I was undergrad. Great guy. Had drinks with him a few weeks ago.

He’s gonna be hugely famous, mark my words.

My cousin is the lead singer of the prog band Coheed and Cambria. You’d have to use my full last name, which I’ll take to my grave, for him to know you’re talking about me. I’m closer to his parents than him but damned if I don’t get back stage passes!

Right now that would be PZ Myers but only if you catch him on a good day.

Someday I’m hoping to meet Hemant Mehta.

George Takei

Not sure who’s most famous….

Joel Hodgson, Tom Kenny, Glen Keane, John Musker, Eric Goldberg.

Hmm…. all animation-related people. I might be de-anonymizing myself with this post.

I know SFWA Author Emeritis William Tenn (//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tenn). Was just at a party with him on Saturday. The SD card from his digital camera was broken and I was trying to fix it for him.

I went on a cruise with James Randi in September and ate at his table several times. I chatted briefly with Christopher Hitchens at last year’s TAM party, and tomorrow I’ll be staffing a CFI table at a Richard Dawkins appearance, so I might get to meet him too.

I have is a second cousin who is a well known national broadcast/cable news anchor, though I won’t say which. But it is sometimes quite strange to have him speaking at family funerals and such, because just having “that voice” involved makes things seem uncharacteristically newsworthy and historic.

One of my best friends from high school has seen one of George W Bush’s daughters buck naked.

I vaguely knew and met Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls back before anyone knew who she was, as she had hooked up with a friend of mine at the time (the fallout of which left me with a rather bad impression of her).

I once almost met Christine Todd Whitman, but as I was dressed as a psychotic, bloody clown at the time, and I wouldn’t let her into my bathroom. Don’t ask.

I’ve worked for and met a couple of smaller tier politicians (a governor, a congressman) but they wouldn’t necessarily know me very well other than by name and profession. I did meet Congressman Bill Foster, the ultra-awesome physicist who beat a Republican in a special election for Dennis Hastert’s old seat, back when he was just this fascinating guy who just up and decided he wanted to get involved in politics, and drove several states over to donate his time.

you Hemant!

I went to high school with Brian Warner aka Marilyn Manson, but I’m sure his memory of me would be as vague or more so than mine is of him.

Nobody. He’s pretty famous. (Or is “he” a “she”?)

If we can include people who went to our high school but probably won’t remember us, then:

Graduated in the same class as Tamala Jones, who’s done a ton of TV and movies…she may or may not remember my name, but she might recognize me by face.

These next two would probably not remember me at all:
I once tutored “Erkel” (TV show: Family Matters) Jaleel White in math. HAHAHA!

Lark Voorhies of “Saved by the Bell” was in one of my 8th grade classes.

Joel said

I once met the Black Power Ranger, Johnny Yong Bosch, in San Diego

that is so awesome.

Larry Moran said,

Right now that would be PZ Myers but only if you catch him on a good day.

Someday I’m hoping to meet Hemant Mehta.

little does he know…!! yay june!

I once had dinner with Larry Moran… that’s pretty huge in my books.

I know Nelly Furtado. And by “know her” i mean she was once on my radio show in BC and the city we were in had deemed it “nelly furtado day” when really it was “international day to end racism” so I asked her what she thought about that and she said “well, i’m multi racial, so it’s like the same thing” …thats when i called her the nasty “b-word” on air and she added me to her black list – that is she’ll never do an interview for me again… but she knows me by name! woo!

Also George Stromboulopoulos. …Americans likely don’t know him (and i’m not just misspelling stephanopolous).. but he’s big in Canada. He hosts the Hour on CBC. We go for bubble tea.

Kim Jong-il. We play Unreal Tournament death match about once a week.

Okay, really (har!)…

My parents were friends with the parents of Jarome Iginla, the Calgary Flames NHL player. Jarome probably came over to my house when he was a little tyke but I don’t remember him.

My dad was friends with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Canadian novelist Carol Shields, who sadly passed away in 2003.

In 1968, my mum saw Paul McCartney walking through Hyde Park in London with his Old English Sheepdog named Martha. No, my mum didn’t faint at the sight of him.

Gotta go. I think that’s about it.

That would be you Hemant, though maybe someday Rebecca will share that distinction.

Does the answer “Hemant Mehta” count if someone else wrote it here first?

I hung out with John Popper in Newark Airport in 1998. We shared a Tuna sub, chatted a few minutes, then he signed my copy of Details, before he got on a plane to fly to LA. He had been in NY filming Howard Stern’s Movie. Nice guy. Amazing musician.

Dan Savage, maybe?

Mikey Weinstein

Morgan Freeman’s son, Alfonso, worked for me as a computer operator for a few years. I never met Morgan, though. I saw Alfonso’s picture in a magazine recently in an article about Morgan’s roots, so does that make Alfonso famous? I think it was People magazine.

Wilt Chamberlin asked me for my phone number. But then, who didn’t he ask?

And Lee Trevino asked me to join him for a round of golf sometime, but I think he was joking. I don’t think that one counts at all.

Anne Walsh aka whydoyouneedtoknow. She has a couple thousand people who get email alerts from any of three sites whenever she updates her Harry Potter fanfics.

Last message was directed at Katie Kish.

Well, my husband is pretty sure that Tim Kaine (Governor of Virginia) would recognize him, and maybe Mark Warner. He also used to know Michael Powell pretty well (former head of the FCC).

Before Bruce Hornsby was famous, he used to practice piano at a church in Williamsburg. I had a job locking the church, and so I got to kick him out every night.

And the Bad Astronomer was in my 6th grade class!

Linda said, …I know Jeeeezus!

Good one Linda…

BTW, I know the Flying Spaghetti Monster… although He really isn’t a monster…. He just seems that way to those who don’t really know Him.

I have sat at Jessica Lang and Sam Sherpherd’s dinner table and had Jessica’s cherry pie. She’s a killer baker. I think she would remember me, especially since my father was her daughter’s fav h.s. teacher.

Otherwise, my uncle is the guy on the pringles can. No joke. Dennis Gage, the guy who had the show My Classic Car, is my uncle.

Howard Stern & Jim Florentine

I guess the most famous person I know is my cousin R.J.Stewart.
He was a main writer for Xena the TV show for most of it’s run, he also wrote the movies The Rundown and Major League 2 and I believe he created the TV show Cleopatra 2525, but we won’t hold that against him.

My great uncle, who’s name I really can’t remember, created the original NBC peacock….but of course they stole his idea and fired him from the art department soon after that … so he was never really famous for it.

Depends on if we can count dead people, since they obviously can’t recognize us anymore, but I took two years of classes from and hung out with Charles Gordone, the first black man to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. And he and I were both in a production of King Lear with Jeffrey Dench, Dame Judi Dench’s brother, who might conceivably remember me.

As far as living people, the most famous one I’m positive would acknowledge me is J.D. Roberto, an actor and game/reality show host who’s appeared in such shows as Outback Jack and You Lie Like A Dog.

For me, at university I had Herbert Marcuse for a professor and with other students was sometimes invited to his house. He probably didn’t notice me much. I also had Angela Davis as a teaching assistant. But that was a long time ago.

Younger readers here may not know whom I am talking about. So here is a little documentary. “Herbert’s Hippopotamus”.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5311625903124176509&hl=en

(I submitted this once but it didn’t take, so again)

It would have to be E.O. Wilson………..very down to earth guy….

Corey Taylor, lead singer of the bands Slipknot and Stone Sour.
He lives a few miles from me, I hang out with him frequently and even ate “Xmas” dinner with him one year.
Don’t worry, no prayers were said, he’s a good atheist too.

A girl in the grade above in Grade School is on Nickelodeon’s Ned’s Declassified Guide to Surviving School Lindsay Shaw. According to Wikipedia, she’s also gonna be on Aliens in America.

My dad is kind of a big deal in Nebraska politics. A couple years ago, some of his friends wanted him to run for Congress as a moderate Republican. My grandfather was even a bigger deal. He was chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party back in the 1970s, and he knows just about every Nebraska Pol, and I’ve met quite a few of them because of him.

I was volunteering for Obama back in February during the Caucuses, and I got into a pretty good discussion with Scott Kleeb who’s running for Congress, and if you’d ask the blogosphere, is the hottest guy running for Congress.

Oh, and I have a part time job at Target, and about a year ago, I helped load a TV into the Trunk of Melissa Midwest’s car. I didn’t recognize her, but the other guy did. She runs an adult website, so googling for her is NSFW.

I know an actor at the Stratford Festival, Cam Oates… he’s helping to direct our school show. Uhh. Oh, and David Keeley, another actor at the Festival, is the father of two of my friends.

I’m trying to picture what the responses would look like if you asked a group of celebrities the flip question: “Who is the most ordinary nobody you know (who you would admit to knowing)?”

Robin Quivers? THE ROBIN QUIVERS?

I loved listening to you and Howard when I worked in NYC!!!!! It was one of my guilty pleasures!

Rick Campanelli of ET Canada / MuchMusic fame would be the one who would admit to know me… bumped into his parents today actually.

I’ve *met* a number of famous people. Dan Akroyd, Pam Anderson, Alex Trebek, Paul Shaffer, Brett Hart (tons of other wrestlers).. Master T (if any Canadians remember him, that guy was a jerk and barely 4″ tall)..

I even touched Paris Hilton’s arm once. Washed it right away as I didn’t want to catch anything.

While I’ve met lots of famous people over the years, the most famous one that would admit to knowing me back would probably be Phil Plait. I’m good with that

I went to college with Jon Stewart. We’re both William and Mary, class of ’84. Michael Powell (Colin’s son and Chairman of the FCC) was in the class of ’85. We were in ROTC together and ran into each other in the Army as well. I went to law school with Andy Card, son of W’s Chief of Staff. I’m active in Virginia Democratic politics so know Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Gerry Connolly (my new Congressman), and others. My cousin Weeb Ewbank coached the Jets in Super Bowl III.

All musicians, coincidentally. The late Cliff Burton (from Metallica) and I were good friends when he was in his early teens. We were neighbors. He was a really good, sweet kid. I knew Mike Bordin (from Faith No More) a couple years later. His sister and I were good friends and I’d see him when I went over to their house. I didn’t keep in touch with either one past my mid-teens, though.

The most famous person I’ve met and been photographed with to date is Bruce Springsteen. It was very anonymous, though. I did the fan thing after one of his shows, happened to have my camera handy and while he was autographing my album, I whirled around next to him and had my photo taken. I don’t think he was even aware of it, but it made my day/week/month/year.

Oh – and the prez is my LinkedIn friend – but let’s just say we’re not so close that my email address is on his Blackberry.