Talk about your brush with famous people

At a convenience store just outside of Houston, I walked out after paying for gas. On the way to my car, I encountered a man who was on his way to pay for his purchase. My eyes were cast down. Something made me look up. My eyes travelled up the expensive slacks and tan jacket until I was looking up at an extremely tall man. It was our Channel 11 weatherman, Niel Frank. His eyes stared into mine, unwelcoming, dismissive. I respected his need for privacy and went about my business.

Whew! Neil Frank. Long after every other informed person following hurricane Rita declared it would miss Houston, he proclaimed staunchly: "That's just a wobble. The hurricane is still headed directly to Galveston (and, hence, Houston). Don't relax now." I would have transferred him to traffic reporting.

I've been fortunate enough to have encountered a few celebrities. Among the more memorable encounters came about as a side effect of being stuck at an airport hotel as a blizzard did its thing over few thousand square miles for a couple days. Another of the trapped hotel guests was the actor Robert Mitchum. Really a big fella, but unassuming, unexpectedly soft-spoken, and all around a helluva nice guy. Pretty good pool player, lousy but enthusiastic at darts, decently skilled dice roller (sumbich kept winning drink shakes on the last roll - musta done that half a dozen times), great story teller, and an accomplished imbiber with excellent taste in beverages. We exchanged home contact details, and assurances we'd look each other up if circumstances brought one to the other's neighborhood, but that never happened. I was personally saddened to learn of his passing.

I was once traveling to Lisbon and upon entering the lavatory encountered Rita Coolidge who asked me if I would be so kind as to brush her teeth. I did so without comment and then returned my seat to the upright condition for landing.

I would love to talk about my brush with, say, Salma Hayek ... I'd ask her about her brush ... we'd have so much to talk about.

But cereally folks when I was still ranching Charles Bronson lived in the tiny town a few miles from my ranch and I would see him on ocassion in the local market buying milk or bread or whatever. No one really paid much attention. On the other hand when I was living in western colorado there was this dude named Ricky somthing (Shroder)( a blond t.v. star of teenager fame) who whould show up at the bowling alley on monday nights usually quite drunk and one night decided to harass me for my long hair (I was on the Police League bowling team) He was escorted outside and asked to NEVER return.

As usual, where exciting moments are concerned, I have only lived vicariously.

A surprising number of movies are filmed here in Albuquerque. During one such filming, a friend of mine was walking her dogs, sobbing over the loss of one of her favorite dogs (she takes in abused dogs). She had been sitting on the curb in order to get it out of her system when she noticed a pair of exquite men's Italian leather shoes. A hand touched her shoulder then the man asked if she was alright. She looked up to see Richard Gere. She told him, shakily, about her loss and he said that he understood her sadness and admired her for taking in abused dogs, gave her a little hug and continued on his way.

My opinion of Richard Gere has gone up a thousand percent afer hearing that story.--I also wish I could have seen his shoes as well as the rest of him.

I think I've spilled beans on all this before on a2k. Some portion of my associations, such as they were, were medical but by no means all - let's just say that all that is none of our business, and then I'll get on with some kind of list. Living in southern California for decades one care barely help but trip over celebs, and then do them the favor of not being invasive, assuming they weren't anxious to chat. My ex met another batch. I'll try to refrain from starting that list.

I may start with an early one or two, as they are harmless, but I'll muddle later stuff for privacy to them reasons.

Partly I get a kick out of the naming, more I think I'd be finally mature if I'd shut up...

- birthday party for son of Pat O'Brien (early Hollywood actor) when I was six
- Donna Corcoran was in that first grade class and invited too. She was in Angels in the Outfield, late forties movie.
None of the three of us would know each other now.

- John Craig (early tv show, Danger is My Business)
- Howdy Doody
- Jane Powell
- Maureen O'Sullivan and John Farrow
- Dennis Crosby
- Jayne Mansfield
- Eva Marie Saint
- Dennis Day
- Danny Thomas
- Gregory Peck
- John Wayne
- Tina Sinatra
- Jim Morrison, almost but I chickened out
- Patty Duke
- Prince Phillip
- George Carlin
- Robert Towne (wrote Chinatown and much else)
- David Hockney

I'm sure I am forgetting a fair number - really, ain't no big deal in my old area. Those people aren't my close personal friends. A fair number of those are just as ships passing in the day in the city. I grew up around that. A very few were friends of my parents.

Am more interested in people who stayed home writing books, etc. Someone I kinda wish I'd met, who was very local - though originally from Toronto - is Frank Gehry. He cut his teeth on local Venice and Santa Monica projects long before the larger world heard of him, and is, last I heard, building a house for himself five lots, or is it six, from our old cottage (now redone and worth boucoup bucks I'll never see).

Anyway, fame isn't always substance, often gets in the way of what substance is there.


Just remembering, Audrey (friend from work) had a beach apartment a few feet from one of the Beach Boy's house.. long time ago now.
oh, so what. She was actually more interesting, re her life.

Wow, I dont even know half those people..

Well, I don't know them for real conversation either. As to who they are, many of those are old Hollywood names.

I've been off riffing (saved a riff to my clips) and thinking I should shut up. My thinking on Hollywood is complicated, lotta layers including decades of boredom and disappointment with it, and my going on about it would be this giant tangent. Some other time.

Dys, spilling more beans, knows/knew some pretty interesting people. He knew those he knew closer than I knew those I knew, mostly.

But he may back off from the kind of obnoxious naming I just unfurled. Partly I can do that because those weren't real associates of mine.

As a waitress, I waited on Lewis Grizzard, and my family was filmed by Macauley Culkin.

Geez, I forgot Ali and Schwartzenegger., separate incidents. None of you will believe me, flaming name dropper. I was party to meeting Ali in front of Napoleon's on Main in Santa Monica. It's a croissant place. He and someone (can't remember the someone,I think a woman) were out in front as ML and I walked toward the door. She saw him first and gasped. They reached hands and he kissed her hand. She about died. This was in the nineties, when his difficulty was already apparent. As it happens, her father, some years dead, was a (mexican american, if that adds texture) boxer who had fought in a lot of local fights in the LA area in, I guess, the forties and fifties, and he did eventually have the boxer's brain syndrome. He had a tough death, and had been, oh, ok, weird, long before.
So, there was a lot of backstory behind that gasp and simple gentlemanly handkiss.

My turn..........

I was a busboy back in 1971. Frank Mahovlich and some other hockey names were at a table at Hy's Encore, on Hornby Street in Vancouver, and I had to attend to their table.



Does that count?

Sure, Reyn. Same thing as most of my list.

What were your thoughts back then, Reyn, not that it is any of my business..

My long and admittedly obnoxious list was over decades in a city populated with celebrities and would be celebrities and several million others. Many of my list were from times like when I was the hospital cashier who checked so and so out..

Interestingly, cashiering was a quite horrible job on Saturday mornings. There was always a crowd lined up at the window.. say, 60 people over three hours. It was the main time to get people out, so that more could come in on Sunday afternoon for surgeries on Monday.

Bills were complicated and of course nothing was computerized. We always wanted a check, this being before credit cards. And we dealt with people in stress whom we were asking for money. I had wads of money thrown at me once, when I was, oh, eighteen. Unpleasantness did not happen with the stars of the time, when I was there anyway. And they, the stars, did line up at the window, just like everyone else.

First star I ever noticed not do that was Bing Crosby, though by then I was hardly there anymore. He was checked in by his wife, Kathryn Grant, a new RN. I might not have been in cashiering then, probably the reservation assignment person just on weekends. She was the talk of the hospital, as I guess the nurses were pissed.

See, I come by all this naturally. We all noticed, we all were straightfaced.

Reyn - what were you thinking with those hockey folk?

Lash mentioned Lewis Grizzard -
http://www.lewisgrizzard.com/

In my youth I was a parking lot attendant in Beverly Hills (Rodeo Dr.) and a mailman in Belair. You name them and I've talked to them. Big deal. The most interesting encounter was my sustained feud with Oscar Levant--he came to his doctor more than once a week, and always accused me of hiding his car. He wasn't joking. Fortunately my boss thought Levant was crazy.

JL, I knew your parking lot history but not the mailman in BelAir thing. I worked there a bit, but never under my own name as the business. Ack, no, that's not true, I did once, a place on Mulholland. But that was, it turned out, an intermediate opportunity, as my business partner had dealt with the owner first, and then we both did as partners with the next owner. In the inbetween time, I was hired to just, er, fix things, and be thrifty. (Heh, re money spent later).

I wasn't the mailman, a stalwart and steadfast role. But neither was I queen designer in that particular case. I was hired help and should be about my business and make it snappy.

I got over that timorousness, but remember a level of 'what the hell am I doing here'. Odd for me, fairly assertive in design meetings. That all turned out to be a moderately famous property, but so what, that whole area is. I never quite relaxed.

Anyway, my point is, you were probably more sanguine there than I was, and I bet you had a commentary with yourself about it.