Name Droppin'

As Hoss would say, I'm name droppin'. When I was in college, I had the opportunity to meet some celebs. I collected autographs for my baby sis, AP3: Rosie Greer, Lorne Greene and William Shatner, to name three (actually, I can't remember who else, there might have been more). I also shook the hand of Mike Farrell of M*A*S*H (no autograph because he didn't want to "start anything"), and almost ran over Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Westwood, CA, with a minivan.

Watched Lee Majors and Robert Montgomery while they did some filming at CalArts, and Henry Winkler and Ed Harris when they came to the school to speak. When I met William Shatner, he was in his T.J. Hooker uniform - I think that Heather Locklear and Adrian Zmed were with him, but I was totally focused on The Man himself and can't say for sure. I know that there were two others in police uniforms with him. Somewhere there is a photo of Richard Dean Anderson and the top of my head that Nod took after a celebrity hockey game at Hershey, back before Stargate and the Kids.

BTW, Goa'uld shook Hillary Clinton's hand during the Million Mom March in 2000. And Bookworm and I shook Ben Affleck's hand when the Kerry Campaign rolled thru Harrisburg.

Diane Salvatore was my roommate for one term at Penn State. I had already made arrangements for the next year at PSU before she transferred up, otherwise I would've remained her roommate. She is now Editor-in-Chief of Ladies Home Journal, and this photo is from the November 2005 issue. Even tho' we didn't live together after that Spring term, we hung out together ALOT the following year.

On August 29, 1980, I was at the World Science Fiction Convention in Boston. While walking around the huge dealers room (full of SciFi merchandise) I saw a large group of people walking toward me. At the head of the group was Isaac Asimov. Since they came right to me, I asked him to autograph my book. He said he would for a kiss, which he promptly gave me. I told him it was my 21st birthday. He told me then that I deserved a second kiss, which he quickly gave me. What a rush!

At the same convention I met Frank Kelly Freas. His artwork appeared on the covers of many SciFi magazines, MAD Magazine (he was one of the illustrators of Alfred E. Neuman) and the cover of at least one LP. Very nice man.

When I was at CalArts, a nearby community college (College of the Canyons) hosted Ray Bradbury as a speaker, so I borrowed a bicycle and tootled over. He was funny and personable. He contributed to the "Spaceship Earth" exhibit at WDW. Disney flew him to Paris for the opening of that theme park - he was up in years and it was his first plane trip because he was afraid of airplanes.

While still out in southern California, 2010, Odyssey Two came out, written by Arthur C. Clarke. (He lives in Sri Lanka.) He came to "A Change of Hobbit", a science fiction and fantasy bookstore that was in Santa Monica. I waited four hours in line to get his autograph - I barely made it in because they cut off the line.

Finally, here's a photo of Louis Gossett, Jr. with my friend Leon Joosen in the library of CalArts. Mr. Gossett was in the TV series The Powers of Matthew Star. This was the year he was up for the Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman, which he later won. He sent an autographed video copy of that movie to the school afterwards. He was really nice. His stunt double took a liking to me because of my patch jacket. This same jacket got me free parking at USC. (To the sports fans out there, Leon's brother Willy plays the organ for the Vancouver Canucks. Leon is in the Animation biz out in California.) (Oh, and Peter Barton was also in that TV show, but he was a bit of a snot at the time and I wasn't impressed.)