For me it was Jeff Kinney. I was meeting a different author I love, but there wasn’t enough room downstairs and we had to go up. Turns out that’s exactly where Jeff Kinney works! He’s the author who got me into reading so I thought that was so cool
Dolly Parton at the Nashville rotating restaurant (on top of the Sheraton in the 90s). I was having dinner with a friend and just getting to know her better. She was explaining to me how she always runs into celebrities. She carried around an autograph book everywhere she went. We go to leave and Dolly is coming in. My friend gets another autograph. Dolly was very sweet and very short.
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I am so jealous. If I could meet one person in the world it would be Dolly. She is my absolute hero. I don’t even think I’d be able to speak, I would just start crying.
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That’s nice. Besides clearing the two rows part for obvious reasons, was it business class, first class, or coach?
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50 cent. He was at a charity function I attended for work. I buckled and joined the people asking for pictures. He was ridiculously nice, absolutely JACKED and smelled incredible.
Slightly different genre I also met Amy Grant at a different charity event for work. Also very nice, slightly less jacked and no discernable smell to speak of.
I met all of you cool guys here. Witness me!
Neil Armstrong. Got to shake his hand at a symposium where he gave a talk.
Jimmy Carter, Céline Dion, Michael Gorbatchev, Bruce Springsteen, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many many more. One of the benefits of working in the luxury hotel scope for a few years.
Brian Blessed is probably the most known person I’ve met. He is exactly like his appearance on any TV show you’ve seen him on. He wants to tell stories, endlessly. He’s always got a fascinating story or fact to tell you. He wants to speak to literally anyone about anything.
This was at a convention years ago, and he had two handlers who were ripping their hair out from the frustration - they were bitching about how impossible he is to get from place to place but he’s just so goddamn nice.
Other notable meet (to me) was Regi Fils-Aimé. I was wearing a Zelda necklace and he went “ooooh I like your necklace!” and I pretty much resembled that scene where Troy meets LeVar Burton in Community.
No idea. Picture it: Late summer, 1998.
I was working on the Jungle Cruise at Walt Disney World, and had a VIP group get on my boat with one instruction: no Brazilian guests could share the boat. Nice enough dude, built, good lookin’ dude.
As we moved down the dock to load the rest of the guests, a Brazilian tour group saw who was there and COMPLETELY LOST THEIR MINDS. Americans, including me, had no idea who it was.
Went through the ride, they got off the boat, left via the back way.
This was similar to an experience I had years ago.
Was at a summer class at a school in NYC, and one of my classmates was a lovable idiot with a British accent who was very down to earth and nice despite often saying incredibly dumb things.
One day we’re out in one of the parks for a project, and a group of middle school girls wearing uniforms lose their fucking minds.
Apparently they were foreign students from the UK, and it turns out my classmate was one of the members of a huge boy band extremely popular in the UK, but not very popular or well known here.
Weird how relative fame is.
(For example, I have several answers to the OP question ranging from dinner, birthdays, or going to private clubs with different very famous musical artists, but my personal fan experience was meeting Todd Howard at E3.)
Stan Lee - San Diego Comic Con 1995.
https://i.imgur.io/aQas1rv_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium
I lived and worked in New York and met a ton of celebrities/big names there. James Gandolfini was really nice. Bjork was not particularly nice. Tori Amos is one of the sweetest, most open and genuine people I’ve ever met. Ethan Hawke was a gross dick. Rik Okasek smells bad but is nice. I got shitcanned with Claude Coleman, my favorite drummer. My favorite celeb I have ever met though is Joan Jett, who I have met many times and is absolutely the best. It was super funny the one time I was just hanging out randomly on the street with a group of friends and this short little muscular blond lady rushed up to me, gave me a hard hug, and rushed away and I got to be like, “Oh, that was just Joan Jett” to my friends.
Penn & Teller. Really nice guys. Penn is ridiculously tall, and having a conversation with Teller is one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had.
I’ve also met tons of metal bands, too many to list. I’ll say the chillest/coolest I hung out with were The Black Dahlia Murder or GWAR.
Kurt Vonnegut. Met him at a Brooklyn farmers market, sitting on a bench. He seemed lonely and talked to me for so long I had to excuse myself.
Isaac Asimov, who called me a few times. Very kind and patient man.
I cooked lasagne for Todd Barry once. It was a good lasagne, made the pasta by hand and spent a full day to make the ragu.
I didn’t actually meet him, but I made Bill Hader smile!
I was walking being him in a parking lot/alley in Venice and when I realized it was him I got super excited, then my friend whispered loudly “keep your cool, don’t make a scene” and then when he turned the corner we could see the smile on his face. It was very exciting
I’ve also walked behind Fred Armisen and Carrie Beownstein when I walked past a place where they were filming Portlandia
If you count the dudes from Last Podcast on the Left, though, I’ve met Henry Zebrowski so often that he recognized me on the street when I ran into him coming out of a bar. And he was in a Scorsese movie
Hail yourself! I was just scrolling back to see if anyone had met any of the boys. I am sad I haven’t met any of them yet. Seems like all of them would be excellent folks to get a beer and talk about weird shit with. It’s strange how parasocial relationships work. I’ve been listening to them twice a week for 8 years and feel like they’re my friends.