The Grill 2/8/10: Brushes with Fame
1. When I was eight, my father pointed out Henry Winkler in a Florida airport. I bought a postcard and asked him for his autograph. He told me to write my address on the postcard and he would mail it to me. But when I did that, he crumpled it up and put it in his jacket pocket. I was so sad. Then, three weeks later, I got a 3×5 glossy portrait of Winkler in the mail, signed with a personal note. He’s basically my favorite actor now.
2. I saw Jesse jackson at SFO when I was twelve. He’s pretty tall in real life.
3. As I’ve described a number of times on this blog and **, I was once kicked off the elevator by the Secretary of Energy.
4. My wife (and by extension I) was close to the late Nobel Prize Winner Owen Chamberlain and his gracious wife Senta. I got to meet him several times, and even though he was ill with late stage Parkinson’s he could still spin a yarn every so often. My favorite story of his: describing his mother’s reaction when he won the Nobel Prize – a mixture of pride (since he won) and sadness (because he hadn’t become a doctor).
5. I met Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of Weezer, on the Harvard Yard.
6. Dave Grohl high fived me once (he had to bend down). I’m right at the borderline age where I think of him as the drummer from Nirvana, and the whole Foo Fighters thing is ancillary.
7. Last week, there was a big crowd right outside daycare. There’s a lecture hall right next to the daycare, so I figured a seminar was just dispersing. As I worked my way through the crowd, who should appear in the middle but Paul Krugman, surrounded by sycophants/groupies trying to get a picture with him. I hear he’s a nice columnist but the minor inconvenience will make me hate him forever.
8. When I was a teenager, I got an inside tip that a KTeH pledge drive to purchase the next series of Red Dwarf episodes would feature none other than Craig Charles himself. I signed up with a few friends and volunteered that evening. The result: Craig Charles signed the hat I wore that night.
9. I once saw Robert Reich walking down Euclid Avenue. We would have made eye contact but everyone’s knees were in the way.
1. I’ve mentioned this before, but I served ice cream to a fox-coat-wearing Marion Ross. Any FK’ers got Donny Most or Suzi Quatro?
2. I saw Joe Lieberman at SFO when I was 34. He’s pretty short in real life. I interviewed Jesse jackson at a campaign rally when I was 17. He’s HUGE in real life.
3. Also served ice cream to, onseparate occasions, Howard Dean and Ralph Nader (neither wearing fur), soup and sandwich to William H. Macy, taboule and tempeh to ’80s indie band Fetchin’ Bones.
4. Spent an evening bar-hopping in North Beach with Edward Norton’s brother. With the same guy who used to date Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s sister.
5. Ate lunch at a bistro in Carmel two booths over from W back when he was Junior.
6. Met Bernie Sanders & Pat Leahy several times (sister-in-law used to work for Leahy; high school friend is the daughter of Bernie’s ex).
7. Rode the 45 next to Mattin Noblia. He’s about the size of a 12-year-old Japanese girl.
8. Walked by Huddy & Zito on Chestnut St. Huddy is surprisingly large. Z is Jesse Jackson-sized.
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Re: 8. In 2006, I was staying in a nice hotel in SF (for conference travel). One morning, on my way out of the hotel, I saw a group of about 15 fans…of something, I wasn’t sure what. So I asked them who they were waiting for. A young man pointed to a black town car. Out popped Magglio Ordonez. He’s pretty short in real life.
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My soon-to-be sister-in-law served coffee to Dean a couple years ago and he paid with all dimes.
1. Ronnie Lott was in the stands at a game I was covering in Vallejo last year. No, he has no Vallejo connection; his kid was playing j.v. at St. Francis and they were on the road. Anyway, I went and sat next to him for two minutes to see if I might get a quote for a note in the next day’s paper, but it was pretty awkward; he obviously was afraid I planned to follow him to his car or something.
Non brushes-with-fame related links.
2. “Know fear.”
3. Book club … I’m more than halfway through Martin Amis’ “Money”; anybody else read anything by him? It’s pretty funny. Rec’d.
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I accidentally combined #2 and #3 as “boob club.”
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I recall really liking London Fields by MA.
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Money is one my favorite books. Lorne Guyland is based on Kirk Douglas, who Amis worked on some movie with. The (one of the?) brothel scene(s) is based on a trip he went on with C. Hitchens.
Airport sightings: Sean Penn waiting for a flight to arrive; Tony Gwynn & SDS baseball team; Al Davis; Jethro Tull (in 1979, in Houston after I’d seen them the night before).
Restaurants: Denzel Wahington, who got up and left with what looked like a script; Mark Wahlberg; Kyra Sedgewick & Kevin Bacon (waiting for a table in a crowded UWS Italian place like the rest of the hoi polloi); Carlos Santana at Kirala.
On the street: Phil Lesh.
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SDS had a baseball team? You don’t need a play-by-play man to know which way the windup throws.
1. I was working at Great America (at the Pictorium). One night, after closing, the park allowed some Hollywood-types to use the Imax projector to screen some pre-production stuff. Cloris Leachman was there, and asked me (I was trying to appear invisible so nobody would throw me out) where the nearest restroom was, so I showed her to our employee restroom by the entry doors on the bottom level.
2. Jerry Rice was invited to a York School function in Monterey, and I got a picture of him with Mrs doctorK.
3. My parents lived for several years next door to Dan McGwire (Mark’s younger brother) when he was a back-up QB for the Seahawks. We got to visit with them whenever we would go up to visit my folks. My mom still stays in contact with Dan’s wife.
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1. {adds “showing Cloris Leachman the employee bathroom” to the Euphemism Directory}
Fish in a barrel:
1. Former Berkeley Lab director and current Sec of Energy Steve Chu
2. Nobel Laureate George Smoot
Barrel full of monkey-wrenchers:
3. Breakfast with U. Utah Phillips backstage at the Kate Wolfe Festival
4. Hung out (briefly) with Billy Bragg backstage at the Glastonbury Festival.
Scraping the barrel:
5. Visited Anthony Lane in his college rooms a few times with mutual friends.
6. Had my life routinely inconvenienced by Prince Edward in his Cambridge years.
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Re: 6. I am so sick of people like Prince Edward and Paul Krugman inconveniencing our lives.
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6. I understand a Prince Albert can be a real inconvenience.
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Do you have Prince Albert in a can?
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Is your refrigerator running?
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5. Ah, college. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Also, Peter Yarrow’s son. Alas, Liz Phair predated me by a year, and Karen O postdated me by a couple.
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But you were contemporaries with my cousin, who is famous for being my cousin.
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Also, IIRC, andeux’s acquaintance John Henderson. Who claimed to have lost a girlfriend to Christian Laettner.
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I just read this (by a HS classmate of mine and college classmate of mb’s [Edit: the same one mb just mentioned. This is his nom de plume]). Recommended.
Whew/ouch
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a) Unsurprising
b) I’m not sure what he’s getting at when he talks about the differentiation between the haves and the haves nots. It sounds to me like he’s talking about a growing deficiency in our culture. But I can’t think of a situation where you wouldn’t expect the less-skilled/more-replaceable worker to feel the brunt of high unemployment more than the more-skilled/less-replaceable worker.
Political giants ‘inside’ the Obama tent agree with me:
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Also: {snerk}
I once served as a bodyguard for Jesse Jackson. He was giving the keynote speech at the national convention in DC of the peace group SANE, for which I worked. In the week before the event we started getting weird phone calls in the office, along the lines of “no black man should ever be President” (this was in ‘86, before he announced his ‘88 candidacy).
Anyway, the calls didn’t include threats, exactly, but the voice was agitated. On speech day, our org’s director gathered together his six strongest-looking employees (that I was one of those, skinny 20 y.o. that I was, says a lot about your chances if you get in a brawl with peaceniks) and asked us to fan out through the ballroom, looking for a guy who looked agitated. I got the prime seat right behind Jesse, looking out at the audience. My posse actually ID’d the agitated dude easily–confused and angry but probably harmless and unarmed, as it turned out–and sort of surrounded him before Jesse’s speech began. The guy left without incident, and the speech went on without a hitch, though my friends told me later that my facial expression on the dais was a comical faux game face, teeth clenched, eyes darting, looking so much like I was ready to tackle Jesse that if they didn;t know better, they would have though I was the threat.
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I wondered how you guys identified me so quickly.
1. Saw Joan Cusack at the big Virgin Records on Michigan Ave. in Chicago one Christmas.
2. Met and talked to/mumbled with Tom Waits once in Sebastopol.
3. Met and talked with the guy whose life was the basis for “The Pursuit of Happyness” on the streets of Chicago.
The main problem I have with this is that the same article could pretty much be written about Rahm, placing blame on the constraints for all his decisions on someone else — who could have an article written about him, placing blame on the constraints for all his decisions on someone else — who could … etc etc
Speaking of little guys: if Danny De Vito as the Penguin is now playing the role of Michael Steele (check out the nose), then just how small is Harold Ford, Jr.?
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Do you think Michael Steele does the Humpty Dance?
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in a 69, his humpty nose’ll tickle your rear.
I’m not proud of it, but I had to sit through an entire semester of lectures given by Christina Romer and was once on the same plane as Al Davis.
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One the same plane as Al Davis? Isn’t that Hell?
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Al Davis flies commercial?
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Yes, I saw him in an airport too. The white track suit gave him away.
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For me it was the five or six Raided-themed bags I saw floating around the baggage carousel. A guy who must have been sitting in First class saw me staring at them, and informed me that Mr. Davis was indeed a passenger.
When I was a kid I met Reggie McKenzie in our local bank, and got his autograph on the back of a bank slip.
Christian Laettner was a year ahead of me in highschool. So was the guy who played the Roy Hobbs as a child in The Natural.
I had a Roosevelt in my college class.
Saw Mary Lou Lord and Martin Sexton play many times when they were street musicians.
All the other ones I can think of have been in the fish in a barrel category (various famous professors when I was in college and grad school, various world champion bridge players when I was a competitive bridge player).
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Love Martin Sexton, but only came to know of him as he started becoming famous.
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Yeah – I forgot the famous chess players from back when I played seriously. But I’ll add that I got shouted at by Nigel Short’s mother (ironically complaining that I was disturbing his concentration) when he was about 9.
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There’s a good Guffman/Tap/Best in Show type mocku waiting to be made called CHESS MOMS.
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This reminds me of an old joke:
A French peasant turns to his friend and says, “Remember when the King came to our village last week?” “I remember,” says the friend. “Well,” says the peasant, “the King spoke to me.” “Really?” asked his friend, incredulous. “What did he say?”
“Get out of my way.”
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Oh, sure. Go for the obvious one.
Forgot this one: Charlie was my college roommate’s cousin, and I met him when I joined their family for Thanksgiving in Kansas.
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Whoa.
I am sure I will think of more later but:
-On a band trip in HS we saw George Takei (Mr. Sulu) at a gift shop at the Grand Canyon.
-My family stayed at the Anaheim Marriot one year when going to Disneyland on vacation. We were eating breakfast and saw some Yankees sitting at a table a few feet from us. My parents talked me into going over and getting the autographs of the people there. I recognized two of them and got both: Dave Winfield and Lou Pinella. They were sitting with some old guy who I figured was some staff guy I didnt know and wouldnt care about, so I basically ignored him. It was about 2 months later that I realized I had missed out on getting Phil Neikro’s autograph.
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LOL…we were posting simultaneously about George Takei!
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Out of all the people I had listed, I would have bet my mortgage that Sulu would not be the one duplicated…
College:
Many of the same parties as Barbara Bush, who also lived on my block one year. Shared a class with Mike Richter. Shook Clinton’s hand at a lottery-for-access event.
Airports:
Saw someone I’m 95% sure was Joe D. in SFO when I was little.
Restaurants:
Steve Young. Joe Montana.
Actual contact:
Regularly got rides to middle school from Jimmie Johnson as part of a carpool with his daughter.
Via Mrs. Nevermoor:
She rode in the elevator with campaign-era Obama (and two SS guys) at her apartment building in Chicago. It was apparently the gym he most frequently used when he was there. She was also at Grant Park.
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Ah, yes, I forgot about the time I rode in a limo with Tony La Russa’s daughter (my friend went to senior prom with her and she offered to pay for a limo ride for the lot of us).
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Your Mike Richter comment reminded me that I grew up knowing a member of the Miracle on Ice team. He was a year older than me, his brother a year younger. Though only a year older, he was already so good he helped coach our team and when I was a pup goalie he would give me shooting drills while the rest of the team worked out. Played HS soccer with him too.
Brought George Takei on stage and sang “Mustang Sulu” to him as he pantomimed driving the Enterprise
Walked by Tim McGraw in a hallway on my way to sing at an Anheuser Busch event (and the WASSSAAP guys were in the audience)
Chatted with Joey McIntyre at a charity event (he introduced himself as “Joe” which made us laugh)
Exchanged greetings with John Glenn as he came off the stage and we went on
Sang backgrounds for Mickey Thomas on “We Built This City On Rock And Roll” and got a picture with him
Talked to Gary Plummer before singing the Anthem at a Niners game
Opened for Tower of Power and Kool And The Gang (does this count?)
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Sure – if it means that I can add Mrs GSO’s band opening for Alabama!
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Whoa.
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“Mustang Sulu”… bwahahaha!
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Mustang SuSlu? That’s how I read it at first.
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Even better!
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yay
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I love that cover.
It is now < checks watch > 2:30 pm, and I just noticed that my shirt is on inside out. Nobody else has mentioned this fact to me yet, and I’m too lazy to rectify the situation.
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This happens to me frequently. I hate the people in my life as a result.
Oh, and, not that I ever met him, but Frank Miller went to my high school. The student paper offices had old original FM op-ed cartoons on the wall when I was there.
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David Milch went to my high school. And one of my teachers (who had been a classmate of his) later got an Emmy nomination for an episode of NYPD Blue that they wrote together.
Oh, and: David Mamet wrote the Intro for the cookbook from one place where my brother used to cook.
“Now. Some fucking salt. Add it.”
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David Mamet came to speak to a college drama class that I took.
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David Mamet once shit on my porch.
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Who hasn’t?
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gp.
I knew a guy in high school who was drafted in the 7th round of the NFL draft and then ended up on the Super Bowl champion New York Giants a few years ago. NYT did a profile on him. The funny thing was that he was never a star football player in high school. Just a lot of perseverance I guess.
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I went to grade school in SW Ohio with this guy. KC was a true (and precocious) JD. He was featured in this old SI story.
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One of my friends played on Jason Hill’s high school team.
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Had a class with David Carr. Actually worked on a one day project together. Then decided that I would rather not be the guy who spends all semester doing the work for a group so the QB can get the grade…
Not as brilliant as the Curious George one, but still good:
When I was about 12 my local tennis club hosted a charity tournament with “celebrities.” They recruited a bunch of youngsters to act as “ball kids” for the tournament. My court drew the guy who played EZ on Three’s Company and the guy who played Herb on WKRP.
While working for various concert promoters in my early 20’s I always seemed to draw the job of driving people around. I drove:
1. George Clinton to the airport in my tiny Acura hatchback. He was absolutely bonkers and did coke in my passenger seat.
2. Ice T back to his hotel. This was right after Cop Killer came out and I managed to run a red light with him in the car. I immediately was sweating bullets thinking “Oh great, I’ll get pulled over and I’ve got Mr. Cop Killer in my car.”
3. Joey Ramone to the airport. He was very quiet and very nice. We talked about Jonathan Richman.
I lived in the same co-op with Rachel Maddow for a year in college.
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Strangely, I love George Clinton more now.
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1. Is that the same car you have now? Please say it is.
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“George Clinton did coke right where you’re sitting…”
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Sorry, different hatchback. The hatchback actually made driving these people around even more comical. They usually would have a few burly entourage types with them, and they’d have to wedge themselves into the back of my tiny two-door car.
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Should I?
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{snerk}
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“George Clinton did coke right where you’re …”
Brewers putting up a 7-foot statue of Selig.
August 24th unveiling.
August 25th first of many cleanings.
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jesus, talk about tone deaf
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mikeA is immobilized by conflicting reactions
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No more pork for the 12th Congressional District of PA.
Methinks some redistricting is needed here.
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Districting is hard, and all, but that seems wrong.
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You Murtha FK’er
Counterintuitive, but appealing to my non-fatalistic tendancies
A few more of my brushes with greatness which I don’t think I’ve previously written about, all while canvassing their neighborhoods door-to-door (which, BTW, is such a fantastic cover story for spies, criminals and stalkers that I will someday use it in a novel).
1. Ethel Kennedy, in McLean VA, at this house. The first few Kennedys to the door were younguns around my age, who (disappointingly) did not invite me to enter their world of privilege and excess, but instead said they couldn’t speak for the family, an thus Ethel was summoned. She very sweetly thanked me for the work I was doing, and said I should call their foundation during business hours.
2. Tina Louise. Her house is (or was) just about the closest dwelling to the HOLLYWOOD sign itself.
3. George Will, in suburban Maryland. He closed the door in my face without speaking.
4. Johnny Carson, in Malibu. While my coworker and I were trying to persuade the voice at the other end of the security intercom of another house to let us in, Johnny and a friend came strolling along the street and said (with a smile) “Hey, I hope you fellas aren’t breaking and entering!” We said no, we were working for peace, and he sort of chuckled uncomfortably and kept walking to his house, a 100 feet or so down the block. When we got to his gate a few minutes later, the armed security guard refused to ask Johnny if he wanted to speak with us.
5. I also knocked on doors I knew to belong to Bob Weir and Bill King, but alas, they were not home.
Steve Young at church in Provo
Gladys Knight on a telemarketing phone call
Several Sacramento Kings players at my old job at Best Buy
NBA coach Eddie Jordan at a parking lot in Orangevale
Gary Coleman at E3
Grant Napear once told me that I was stupid
My best friend is in a not yet famous (outside of Sacramento) band
My brother manages a band from Oakland called Immigrant that opened for MUSE and The Killers
My sister and her husband got to meet Ben Folds backstage. When he asked their names, they sheepishly told the truth: Zac and Sarah. Ben Folds has a song titled Zak and Sara.
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Wait–you telemarket called Gladys Knight?! What were you selling? Did she buy?
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Barcode readers
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Amex cards. No, she didn’t buy, but she was very nice. Man, that was a crummy job. Almost as bad as the “marketing” job that I walked out of during the interview when the sleazy, greasy-haired interviewer mentioned selling Cutco knives.
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I’m glad she was nice–I like her and I didn’t want to have to not like her.
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Were they on pills that put them in a loving trance? That made it possible for all white boys to dance?
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You’re all living in a submarine!
Off the top of my head:
Delivered flowers, on separate occasions, to Reggie Jackson and Angela Davis where they lived in the gated apartments (condos?) next to the Caldecott Tunnel.
Gave up my box seat at GGF, for Merv Griffin and his peeps, so he could see his horse run in a stakes race. Merv looked like a big pillow stuffed in a well-tailored suit.
Also at the track–David Cassidy, in skinny jeans and black leather jacket, sitting by his lonesome to watch his horse run in a maiden race. Both horse and owner seemed small and thin.
Other “track stars” I’ve seen: MC Hammer, Jack Klugman, Telly Savalas, Burt Bacharach.
They filmed some scenes for an episode of “Streets of San Francisco” at S.F. State during my first year of college and I watched Karl Malden and Michael Douglas standing around in between takes in full make-up.
Epilogue: They looked orange.
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Speaking of orange, I once saw George Hamilton at a rodeo near Snowmass, CO.
If they teach the raccoons how to do this, we’re done for.
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Also: bear cubs walking around look just like little boys walking around in bear-cub suits.
Oh, I totally forgot. I was staying at the Disneyland Grand California(n?) Hotel when a fire alarm went off, forcing us to evacuate. For about 15 minutes, I stood next to the guy who plays Monk on USA. He was dressed only in a bathrobe, while his preteen daughter(s) and (t)he(i)r friend(s) ran around in circles.
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I still think of him as the cab driver from “Wings.”
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I still think of Thomas Haden Church as Ned.
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I’m still shocked anyone watched that show.
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N&S, or Wings? N&S was great.
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Wings.
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Absolutely. A few episodes are on youtube.
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Me too
loners with very long fuses
Interesting article, but the writer has a massive stupid here:
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I want my 20 minutes back.
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Yeah, lotsa mood & setup and then … absolutely nothing.
(TWSS)
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It was….anticlimactic.
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As opposed to what some of the scientists there do, which is antarctic-climatic.
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it…freezes?
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That’s isopropanol, bitches. In the lab, we call it “IPA” or “Indian Pale Ale.”
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If you drink it, and you become an angry drunk, you could call it …
Yglesiasm of the (early) Week.
Yglesiasm of the week, non-Yglesias edition.
I wonder if it’s really necessary to have a “no cigarette disposal” sign on the three foot tall urinals in the kids’ bathroom.
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Hey, salb uses those!
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And why they deemed those signs necessary but not doors on the restrooms is beyond me.
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Duh. So they can watch for kids and/or midgets throwing their cigs in the urinals.
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Plus we need work. Mandatory signs make my brother happy.
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Those weren’t mandatory signs, they were lavatory signs.
I forgot the baseball ones: Had dinner with Bill James. Interviewed alongside David Pinto. Met Rob Neyer, Keith Woolner, Kevin Goldstein, Christina Kahrl, Sean Forman. Shook hands with Peter Gammons.
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{adds “shaking hands with Peter Gammons” to the ED}
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Did you kick him in his Red Sox-lovin’, A’s-hatin’ nuts for me?
mrs salb918 wants to add these:
1. Met Coolio when she was a teenage intern at Tommy Boy.
2. Went to a wedding and chatted with the actress who played the Mormon fiancee in Orgazmo.
3. Swears she spotted Cheri O’Teri in an airport.
I also want to add that we have an unconfirmed rumor in our department that one of the professors went to high school with Mike Judge and was the subsequent visual inspiration for Butthead.
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On the Mrs Brushes..(admittedly “fame” is sorta an eye-of-the-beholder concept)
Mrs. Aces was asked out by 15 minutes of fame pop start Timmy T. She had no idea who he was and turned him down. He responded by telling her “don’t you know who I am???”
I had regular 49ers-related brushes while working at B. of A. in Redwood City, back when the team was HQ’d in RC. A few of my favorites:
1. Roger Craig, who hopped over one of the fuzzy bank-line ropes on his way from my teller window to a desk across the lobby, and unwittingly gave some random guy the impression that the rope was easy to hop over. Random guy brought several fuzzy ropes and their metal pillars (and himself) down with a crash, then justified his hopping attempt with “But that guy did it…” (“But sir? ‘That guy’ is Roger Craig and you’re not.”)
2. Dwaine Board, who was huge in person. A teeny old lady who was at the next teller window (Board was at mine) turned to him and asked, “Are you a 49er?” He answered, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Oh! Hi! Who are you?” — “I’m Dwaine Board.” — “Oh! Nice to meet you! Are you playing a game this weekend?” — “Yes, ma’am, we’re going to Detroit.” — “Oh! Are you playing the Tigers?”
3. Matt Cavanaugh, not tremendously famous from holding a clipboard, but I had a huuuuuuuuge crush on him and just about passed out every time he came to my window. {sigh}
Miscellaneous other brushes:
4. I think I’ve mentioned before that I spilled hot minestrone soup on Joan Baez.
5. I took photography classes with the sister of one of Joe & Jennifer Montana’s three nannies. She said Jennifer is spoiled rotten. What would have been my first clue anyway? Three nannies for four children.
6. My cousin & I hung out and had our picture taken with Ron Carey (Levitt on “Barney Miller”). He was at our family reunion because he was a close friend of… I can’t remember who, the Italian side of my extended family is massive and convoluted. People are older than some of their aunts & uncles… some people that you think are your cousin because they’re your age are really the great-grandchildren of your mother’s cousin or some damn thing. Come to think of it, maybe I was related to Carey. Anyway, my cousin & I were 14 at the time, and we both towered over the guy.
7. I may have sat in a car seat where George Clinton once did coke.
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Oh, and I toured the Queen Mary in Long Beach while they were filming an episode of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” on board. I have a picture of Bruce Boxleitner glaring at me.
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I’m most impressed with number seven.
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Yeah, I don’t think that one’s real. Damn.
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One of Joan Baez’ exes once threatened to break my neck :-)
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had you dumped soup on her?
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There was dumping involved, but not soup.
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You dumped Joan Baez?!
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No, I think he pooped in her pants.
Jane Goodall.
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Um, Captain Kangaroo?
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She came to speak at the Lindsey Museum when I was 13, and some enterprising students from my middle school convinced her to come one town over to give a talk. I was one of the students who got to attend her talk.
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Ah, I forgot one: David Macaulay did a similar appearance at my grade school when I was … geez — 9? No one else knew who he was — but I brought in his entire corpus for him to sign. He was only mildly alarmed.
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You were precious, I’m sure.
I loved TWTW.
I met Robin Williams when I was probably 6 years old or so. More recently, I’ve met James Earl Jones, Warren Beatty, and Annette Bening. And walked right by Sean Penn.
Was on a flight in Europe with Kramer from “Seinfeld.” He was in first class. I wasn’t.
And I may have seen Brett Wallace on a flight to SFO. He (or someone who looked like him) was also in first class. I wasn’t.
I guess I should try to fly first class someday.
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Ah, forgot one: Jeff Foxworthy, on a flight from Cleveland to … Uh … Not-Cleveland.
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Is that how they label the flights in Cleveland?
“Not Here”
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Why would you ever pay that much for less than a day’s worth of value?
Does anybody really ever pay $5000 for a plane ticket (in non-emergency situations)? Why? Suck it up for a couple hours, then treat yourself to the best TV on the market.
Even when I’m rich (which will be never), I’ll still fly like the rest of the heathens. I’d rather give my money to someone who needs it than waste it on 5-12 hours of comfort.
That said, if I’m getting forced to go on a plane that I know will crash, and if–somehow–being in the front of the plane will ensure that I survive and land on a magical island on which I will become some kind of cog in the machine that saves the world–then yeah, I’ll pay the $5000.
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The fraction of people who are paying for their own ticket in first class has to be close to zero.
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Do businesses actually pay full price? I’d imagine there’s got to be some kind of corporate package available.
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I think they often do. It’s just that $5K doesn’t show up when you have hundreds of millions in expenses.
Of course, these days belts are tightened and a lot more people fly coach (or, at least, business class)
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Also, if one flies, say, <6x/yr, the occasional PITA of flying coach is tolerable, in relation to the savings. More than every other month, though, upgrading becomes a near-necessity for one’s sanity.
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Tell me about it …
But the restrictions on who can buy a non-coach ticket are pretty stringent too, especially in the public sector (Steve Chu had to buy coach as lab director). So we end up relying on the upgrade lottery, the big prize of our all-too-frequent flier status.
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Yeah, once my mom, brother, and I got upgraded to business because of overbooking and we just happened to pay close to full fare for economy tickets (late booking).
It was quite nice, considering the flight was a 13 hour one to Shanghai. But that’s probably the first and last time I ever get that lucky.
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I went itty-bitty flimsy tent camping in Europe for six weeks — half of which was raining — on a very, very, very tight budget. I had a blast, but was uncomfortable and physically exhausted by the time I got to the airport to come home. When I checked in for my 10-hour flight and asked for a “non-smoking” seat (this was back when there was such a thing as “smoking” on planes), I was told that there were no more non-smoking seats in coach… only first class. Would that be okay? Uh… lemme think… I saved about 75% off the regular coach fare by booking a package through a student travel service, and now I’m being offered a seat in first class for no additional charge. Yeah, I guess that’s okay. If I must.
But I don’t think I’d pay for it… unless it was necessary to avoid someone’s smoke. Which it wouldn’t be now.
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On a 2004 flight to Cairo, my mother complained to a flight attendant that she thought somebody was smoking on in the bathroom (it was a non-smoking flight). The attendant laughed as if to say, “You expect me to enforce that rule on a 12 hour flight full of Egyptians??”
In September of 1982, my old college roommate Bruce and I set out from Arcata on a driving/backpacking/hitchhiking cross-country trip. There are many fine (and a few harrowing) stories to tell from that adventure but two will suffice for these purposes:
At the end of October we were in Key West for Fantasy Fest, funds were beginning to run low and we needed some scratch. Eavesdropping on a conversation some guy was having at a bar, we learned that the City of Key West was hiring security for the upcoming Peter Tosh concert. We headed down to City Hall (such as it was) and inquired about the security positions. Someone in authority asked who had sent us. “Joe”, we lied–having purloined the name of the guy at the bar.
They asked for I.D., we filled out some paperwork and were told to meet back at 6 p.m. that night to work security; only it wasn’t for the Tosh concert. Instead we got Bertie Higgins! The skull-and-crossbones powder blue T-shirts emblazoned with the word “SECURITY” we were issued turned out to be less than intimidating for the mellow Jimmy Buffett-like sounds of the night’s headliner. I was positioned at a spot just inside the outdoor tented pavilion and instructed to stand guard against intruders. It turned out to be an uneventful evening musically and from a security standpoint.
Flash forward a month and there I was in downtown Washington D.C. My cousin Donald was a roadie for a band that was opening for George Thorogood and the Destroyers and, after spending Thanksgiving in Norfolk with my aunt, uncle and cousins, traveled to Charlottesville to help load the truck and get a ride to D.C. where I was going to re-join my pal.
We parked the truck in back of the concert hall, unloaded the equipment and helped set up. Met George and the band in the dressing room backstage (he was nice) then sat by the soundboard guys during the concert. It was a fine show but unbeknownst to me, while the band played on, someone bad to the bone was breaking into the cab of the roadie truck and stealing my backpack along with all my clothes and equipment. My cross-country trip had come to an abrupt end.
Borrowing $100 from Donald and with an apologetic phone call to Bruce (who would make it back safely to CA on his own) explaining my predicament, I bought a $99 World Airways flight from Dulles to Oakland the next day and in less than 24 hours was relieved to find myself back in the safer confines of my hometown.
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I was half-expecting to find out you’d drunk from the blue bottle of mysterious Asian provenance.
In the ’70’s Soaker’s dad had a number of foreign assignments so we did a lot of overseas travel. One day on a flight in South America, Lima to Bogota or some such, my Mom and I found ourselves with this dude as our third seatmate:
This was during the Nixon administration, so he was traveling as part of his World Bank duties. (The World Bank must not have had much of a travel budget, because he was in coach.)
I was about 11 at the time and my mom was oblivious. I think they talked about restaurants in Bogota, visits to Machu Picchu, etc. (I was sitting between them.) When we got off the plane my dad clued us in though. I was certainly old enough to know all about Vietnam, and I knew the personalities from the Nixon administration, just didn’t recognize the figures from the JFK/LBJ days.
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so he was a nice man? I liked Fog of War.
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The cost:benefit ratio of throwing you out of the plane at altitude must have been too onerous.
Mrs doctorK met Allen Funt – his son went to the same school in Monterey as she did.
Oh yeah…..I’ve been on MythBusters.
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Oh yeah… I ran into Grant and Tory at a BBQ place once.
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Oh yeah… a friend of mine has been on MythBusters!
(I have pretty lame famebrushes, don’t I? Does “frequently chatting with John Shrader” count?)
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f/lamebrushes
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Should have been done in the title. Maybe even with a BK picture.
I killed a bunch of people once.
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And you wonder why people won’t send your their addresses.
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true.
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Big deal. I killed a bunch of people twice. Damn zombies.
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I can’t seem to kill anyone. Silver bullets are expensive.
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… and the government vouchers for ‘em keep getting lower and lower …
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Kill a zombie, get a voucher. Get killed by a zombie, give a voucher. Forget to register your brain-eating and they dock you!
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LOL
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And tastes like piss water.
MB: Do you concur?
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Oh yeah. I had that bookmarked to put in today’s Grill, in fact.
Seeing as we’re still on this, I was interviewed by her when she was at KRON. I think I still have the tape of it.
BTW, downtown Berkeley was buzzing with Beer Week activities last night. If you can go out tonight, call Bistro Liaison and ask if you can still get the special beer/pork plate combo from last night. Only $12 (for both), tasty Ale Industries dark brew and pork short rib, and it’s a hefty portion. We may have been the only ones who went there for it, and the chef said he may put it on for one more night.