Celebrity encounters

[Cassius Clay]

I worked at an AMC as a kid and Roger Lodge bought some coke from me . I didn't acknowledge that I knew who he was.

(I mean the drink)

[Gendo]

I met George W Bush while he was president. He accidentally poked me in the eye.

[Faustus5]

In the back of my mind I swear a thread just like this was already created early on in the life of this forum.

These were while I worked at a bookstore in downtown Minneapolis.

Muhammad Ali--got my picture taken with him.
Lynne Cheney--I sold the evil witch a nasty crime novel which would have been unrated if translated literally into a movie. This at the time she was attacking rappers as part of the culture wars.
Nancy Allen-sold her a magazine. She was in Carrie and Robocop.
Miguel Ferrer-we didn't have the Stephen Hunter book he was asking for. Sent him to Barnes and Noble. He was in Twin Peaks and Robocop.
Courtney Love--she came in five minutes before we closed and browsed the Women's Studies section.
Bobby McFerrin--He was whistling as he browsed magazines and indeed he was very good at it.
Timothy Leary--demonstrating some software for the old Commodore 64 that analyzed personality traits. I actually wasn't working there at the time, just showed up to see him.
Naomi Wolf--came in to sign her books.
David Durenberger-Senator from Minnesota from 78 - 95. He was in retirement and I rang up a book.
William Gibson: got him to autograph one of his novels for the bookstore I was working at.
Roxy Marquis--local celebrity, but I had to throw her in there (look it up). Was my boss for most of a year.

I know I'm forgetting a couple, but this will do.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

I met Jimmy Carter & Bill Nye.

[Derived Absurdity]

Uh... wtf. This thread is making my planned boast about meeting Matt Damon and Ben Affleck look like small potatoes.

[CashRules]

Most everyone here knows I helped pay my way through college by working for music publishers in Nashville and I met everybody who was anybody in Country Music back when Country Music still existed (still a few years before the Garth Brooks disaster that eventually devolved into bro country). I've mentioned before that I was friends with Mindy McCready. Other than that I met several professional wrestlers during the 80s: Jerry Lawler (while he was world champion), Bill Dundee (lived next door to him for several months), "Honky Tonk Man" Wayne Ferris (Lawler's first cousin), Jeff Jarrett (I helped find him some weed after a card in Tupelo, Mississippi). I met Andre the Giant in Louisville, Kentucky when I was still a kid. I met Pat Sajak in Nashville several years before he gained fame on Wheel of Fortune while he was employed as the weatherman for WSMV Channel 4. Probably the biggest name I've met in the acting business was Lee Majors back when he was still a big name in the acting business.

[Faustus5]

Professional wrestlers--thanks for mentioning that, Cash.

I routinely sold Camel shorts to Rick Flair and his girlfriend while working as a convenience store clerk.

Carl Pohlad--billionaire owner of the Minnesota Twins. I only remember him coming in personally once; usually he sent his secretary. Every Christmas, his army of friends and toadies would send him presents, and a good number of those were books. Well, when you have so many people sucking up to you, you are going to get a lot of duplicate copies of the same best sellers. So the secretary would come over to the store with a cart of these things and return them in exchange for gift certificates. That's right--motherfucking billionaire was too cheap to donate books to a school or library and had to make sure he personally got every last penny he could out of his presents.

[Anakin McFly]

Not really encounters:

- Years ago (2006-ish) I emailed Martin Freeman and his brother gave a nice reply on his behalf.

- Saw Michael J. Fox at an event and was within five metres of him when he passed by. Can confirm he's short.

- Worked over a year online with Jeffrey Weissman (replaced Crispin Glover as George McFly in the Back to the Future sequels) while developing a script written by a mutual friend. He made me and my cowriter do five drafts over 1.5 years before scrapping the project. I'm still bitter about this. He was kind of a dick.

- Stalked Keanu's house when he wasn't home and left him a note written on a napkin, which was all the paper I had around. Keanu also answered one of my questions on his Reddit AMA where I asked why he had so many characters named John and he said he'd just been wondering the same thing.

- Saw Zachary Quinto twice at events - once from a very far distance at the Star Trek Into Darkness premiere, and once at a late movie screening from his production company with FAQ, where he also passed by within a few metres of me. He looked like he really wanted to go to bed but was trying hard to remain professional and not be too cranky, and the technical failures were testing his patience. Later I managed to send him a letter via a mutual friend who was collecting letters and stuff from fans to create a scrapbook to pass to him. He told her the scrapbook was really great and he loved it.

[BruceSmith78]

Lots of famous boxers, several members of the cast of The Sopranos, and Don King have all come to my workplace and signed autographs and taken pictures with coworkers. I never bothered with any of it, because I honestly don't give a shit about celebrities. Why would I want a picture with some person I've never met, or something that a stranger scribbled on?