I can personally say Charles Barkley and Nolan Ryan are jerks. Charles is a rude drunk womanizer and Nolan is just plan rude.  Not a very fan friendly guy when he want sign autographs for a softball team at a softball game no less.  I live in Texas so I have run in to a few athletes.

Funny story about the subway guy Jared.  The guy who lost all that weight on Subway right.

My husband and I were eating Nine in Vegas at the Palms.  We were sitting at the bar since we did not have a reservation (great place to eat by the way).  Jared walks in and asks for the manager with an entourage no less.  He seems to be unexpected and explains that unless Chef SO and SO is cooking he will refuse to dine there for the evening. Hello you are the subway guy.  Of course being a loud mouth from Texas I had to say something.  My retort was "I thought you only ate at Subway".  He was just being a first class jerk to the 9Nine employees.  Have some respect buddy.  Before all those subway millions you were just a regular guy like the rest of us.

Everybody at the bar had a good laugh at poor Jared.  The subway guy sure makes me giggle when I see him on TV now.

Christina

Forgot to add the nice guys.  Clyde Drexler is a really nice guy. He was so bad on Dancing with the stars but he is a really sweet guy.

Akeem Olygiwaun (yes I know this is spelled wrong) is also nice.  Both these guys are very great to fans.

Troy Ainkman is also a first class jerk.  I knew some people that lived on his street.  He and his significant other (before he was married which is also  funny) were so rude to everyone on that street.  We waved at him while he was running once and he shot us a dirty look.  

Anyone from Houston know Marvin Zindler????

My grandmother was on a plane with him and witnessed him tell a woman that she had no right to speak with him.  It's not like he was in first class or anything. My grandmother was however and fellow passengers heard his attitude and asked the stewardess to shut the curtain since it was just disgusting. I hear he has cancer now so I kind of feel bad saying anything.  

Don't know if it counts as "celebrity" but I got picked out of the audience to do an adlib scene with Blue Man Group about 8 years ago.  Actually, it was all adlib on my part, but surely not their's!  I don't know if anyone has seen the "bit" they used to do with Twinkies, the flower and the squirting banana, but, that was me!

I don't know what overcame me, but I was told after the show by friends and other audience members, that I was channelling Lucille Ball!  I got a Standing "O", a pic with them all, and a memory that will last a lifetime.

I've always wanted to go back to see them but, somehow, I just don't think it will measure up to the first time.

Christina,

I am sorry that Nolan Ryan was a jerk to you.  Many years ago, when he was the one star on the then California Angels, they came to Salt Lake to play their AAA affiliate the Salt Lake Gulls.  He and several of his teammates were stretching in the outfield, when my friend and I called out from the stands for autographs.  We had arrived a couple of hours prior to the game for the sole purpose of getting autographs.  He called us to come out onto the field and the group of them would sign.  Well, being 12, we didn't realize going onto the field meant expulsion from the game.  He walked us back to the stands, made sure that we were able to climb up safely, and told the usher to leave us alone we had been his guests.  He added that if he found out that we had been kicked out of the game, he would make sure the usher would be looking for another job.  He was warm and cordial, and until I met Dale Murphy, the nicest professional athelete that I had ever met.  (Not that I met many in Salt Lake City) So it saddens me that he has changed.

Tony

You want to meet some great athletes?  Visit the Cape Cod Baseball League.  And I'm sure there are some other leagues around the country like this.  However, Cape Cod (ahem) is considered the premier college summer league.

These gentlemen, and they are truly that, give up their summers, work full-time jobs as laborers, live with local families who donate their homes, conduct clinics and camps for our kids for truly short money, sign autographs before and after every game, and give it their all.

I was at a party once at my friend's house whose daughter was dating one of the players. Some, of course, were underaged, most guests were not players, and I was a chaperone.  Don't know that I'd ever do it again but.....that's another story.

To a man, the players all graciously gave me their keys and still, never had a drop to drink, never even swore!  One of the players asked me to meet his parents who were flying in from 'down south' the following week, because I took care of his girlfriend during a difficult situation. I didn't even expect him to remember the request.  Thought he was just being nice.  But after the next game, he made sure he introduced his parents to me and told them how nice I had been to him and his girlfriend.

Nomar, Mo Vaughn, & Kevin Youklis are just three Red Sox (near and dear to my heart) who played CCBL.  And there are many others throughout the Majors who started here.

This is baseball in it's truest form and with no primadonnas.  

1.  I met Lloyd Bridges & Beau Bridges @ a tennis tournament in Houston in the 70's and got a kiss on the cheek from Beau.

2.  I met Steve Martin, who was a friend of my boss, in Las Vegas in 1977.  I went back stage after his show (in which I was seated in the front row and he rubbed my shoulders) and hung with him, Chevy Chase and Kate Jackson (Charlies Angels) who was on her lips.  Steve Martin is pretty quiet in person.

3.  I met Debbie Reynolds who was hosting a telethon in Houston in the 80's for which I was doing phone answering.  I had a person on phone who pledged $1000 if she could speak to Debbie personally.  I got Debbie's attention, she came to the phone and conducted a very pleasant conversation with the lady on the phone.  Then Debbie and I had a short chat.  She's very down to earth.

4.  Talked to Dan Rather before take off on a flight from Houston to Austin - He was in first class, I was in coach, which is why we had to talk before take off.  Nice guy.

5.  Participated in the Children's Miracle Network telathon 2 years ago and met the local ABC affiliate news people.  All wonderful people.  Had my picture taken with the Weather Guy and my business picture comes from asking someone to take my picture next to the Miracle Network sign.  It was such a good picture, I trimmed it and kept it as my own.

I loved it when Clyde "the Glide" and Hakeem Alijuon played in Houston!  Phi Slamma Jamma!

Christina - I lived in League City and my husband worked in Alvin, where Nolan Ryan lived.  He was always gracious whenever my hubby ran into him.  Also, my son sent him a baseball card to be autographed and Nolan signed it and a photo and mailed it back to us.  He only did that for local kids.  Maybe he was just having a bad day the day you saw him.

I remember Marvin Zindler, Christina -- "Slime in the ice machine!"  "Marvin Ziiiiiiindleeeeeer, Eye Witness News"

Both stories are great, Cathy!

Bill Cosby's the nicest guy you'll ever meet - I met him in New York before I moved to Nashville - and now that I'm here, I've come across a fair share of country music 'stars', who tend to be nice guys/gals in general, always with the occasional exception. Vince Gill is a bit of a pill, but other than that, I can't recall anyone who rubbed me the wrong way particularly. Clint Black and his wife are particularly down-to-earth and nice. Clint's cute, too, which doesn't hurt at all.  

Nolan Ryan. I graduated high school in Alvin, TX, Nolan's home town. I went to work for the local newspaper and married a guy who was the nephew of Nolan Ryan's partner in a sporting goods store. Nolan is a good guy. When I worked for the newspaper I did a photo shoot of him for the recliners in DeWitt furniture store. I told him how to sit and smile. Before he had a big bad agent. When he made history with the no hit thing in the 80's our newspaper did a big blow out for him. He is a nice guy. Sorry you had a bad experience with him. But he is nice and a country family guy.

Oh and I now Radley from relib, does that count?

# 1) watched Marvin Zindler sit down to dinner at Los Tios Mexican Restaurant in Houston, alone - he carefully tucked several linen napkins all around his collar and down the front of his suit as he ate. Our then 1 yr old daughter kept staring at him - he didn't respond.

# 2) Had Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane in Johnny Wiesmueller Tarzan movies & Mia Farrow's Mom) as a dinner guest, after some wine and friendly chatter, she started telling tales and singing English Pub songs. A great evening was had by all!

# 3) In LA, driving down Mullholland Drive in 1982, stopped at a redlight

looked to my right and there was James Garner, driving a black Firebird. I was staring and he looked over at my husband and I, flashed that great smile, and drove off like Rockford, leaving tread on the pavement! I still love him for that!

# 4) Ate lunch in the art room in highschool with Shelly Duvall academy award nominee and then friend, last time I saw her, she was working at the scarf counter in Foley's at Northwest Mall in Houston

# 5) Patsy Swazy was my ballet, tap and jazz ballet teacher as a child. Her younger son Buddy, is better known as Patrick.

Thanks, this makes me feel like I have had some great encounters...Oh, I also had several great conversations with Horton Foote, he won his first Academy Award for writing the screenplay for "To Kill a Mockingbird" I don't remember what the second one was for...

I think maybe Nolan was having a bad day b/c like you guys I have heard great stories.  He was just a real jerk to my entire team and we were soooo excited.  We were about 12 and this was the man.  My father was a Astro's fan his whole life she he thought it was bad when the parents repeated what happened.  I don't think he meant to hurt us and in reality I think our parents were more shocked then we were.  They were really sad about it b/c most of them LOVED this guy.  He seems to do a ton for charity so I guess that makes up for it to me.

Bee how funny.  Slim in the ice machine. He has a second round of cancer and they said he is taking the news well sill broadcasting.  Now I also know how to spell Hakeem. Thanks for jarring my memory.  Those 2 guys are one class act.  When I meet Hakeem he wa checking into a hotel,  My male friends made a beeline for him.  you could tell he was in a hurry but he was so nice and really great.

Charles Barkley blew a cigar in my face and ashed on my right before I told him he was an over grown kerk.  Not a nice guy but I have a feeling it shows.

By the way fun post Phil

Cathy, I am completely envious of ANYONE who gets to hang out with Blue Man Group. They are so neat! Our neighbor and my husband's bandmate has actually jammed with a couple of the guys in Vegas. There are actually hundreds of Blue Men.

Okay, here we go . . . working in radio in Palm Springs for the larger half of my radio career, I did meet quite a few celebs, many old time classics. Here's one of my favorite stories:

In 1985, I was doing a live remote at a 'Banana Republic/Gap' style store at the Palm Springs Mall. Live remotes were at that time done using what was called a "MARTI unit", and on that afternoon ours had gone on the fritz. So I had to phone in the breaks from behind the register counter.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, her husband the Baron (at that time) and her granddaughter who was only a teen then, and ZZ's pooches were shopping in the store.

In spite of the fact that I was wearing a pink leather dress and sporting the biggest hair in the county, ZZ saw me behind the counter at the register and assumed I was a shop salesgirl.

She said in her inimitable ZZ style, "Dahling, do you sink zeese are the right color for me" She had all these clothes in gold and navy blue.

I came out from behind the counter and took her arm, leading her back to the racks:

"Zsa Zsa, no, darling, you're a Winter! (Turning her wrist to me) Look at your wrist, you've got blue undertones! Let's put these back. You need true colors--let's get you something that will make you look DIVINE!"

Came back behind the counter, rang her up 800 bucks worth of sweatsuits in magenta, electric blue and white, and asked her to hold on a second. Picked up the phone and started doing my cut in: "And this afternoon, we have a special guest!"

Handed her the phone, and realizing she had been waited on by the DJ, she did an adorable plug for the store on the air and signed autographs for a few minutes.

That was what, I think 5-6 years before she slapped the cop and went to jail. But she was lovely to me and so fun.

Years ago I was at a tiny little dive blues bar in Austin, Texas. We got up to leave and the bouncer said, "You guys don't want to leave right now, trust me." And he locked the front doors. We figured there was probably some motorcycle gang fight happening outside. About 5 minutes later, Stevie Ray Vaughn (one of *the best* blues guitarist ever) comes walking in from the kitchen, sits down and starts playing. There may have been 20 people in there. The guy was like five feet way. He bought everyone a couple of beers and played about 45 minutes "unplugged".  It was *amazing*.

Stevie was from Austin and apparently liked to pop into places like this every once and awhile. Sadly he was killed less than a year later in a helicopter crash.

I've "met" several athletes at card shows and charity golf tournaments. By far, the two nicest people were Brooks Robinson and Ernie Banks. I was a marshall at a golf tournament and Banks signed a ball for me while he was eating Cheetos. He got that orange junk all over the baseball. You could tell he felt really bad. (I didn't really care) About an hour later he comes flying around a corner in a golf cart, skids to a stop and says, "Gimme that orange ball!" so I toss it to him and he tosses another shiny new one back to me.

Ricky Henderson was the ultimate horses ass. The guy in line in back of me had an oil painting he did of Henderson. As he approached the table one of Hendersons "posse" says, "Mr. Henderson doesn't sign cheap prints of himself." The guy explained it was a unique oil painting, not a print. Henderson glances over at it and says, "I'll sign it for an extra 50 bucks". This coming from a guy with gold chains around his neck about as thick as my thumb.

Candice

Since you were in Palm Springs "a while back" did you ever run into Frank Bogert? As a young married in Houston his daughter was a neighbor, talk about tales to tell about celebrities....her Daddy was mayor for a long time, but before Sonny Bono.

Bente wrote: "Clint Black and his wife are particularly down-to-earth and nice. Clint's cute, too, which doesn't hurt at all."

His wife isn't exactly chopped liver either!! :)

I have had the opportunity to meet several famous people. When I was in Vietnam, Glen Ford who was a reserve officer in the Navy came to our base and I shuttled him on my boat to another base about 3 hours away. He was very nice and very talkative. I have met a lot of politicians, two Presidents, Kennedy and Bush. I had lunch with Senator John Glenn in the Senate Dinning Room.  I also had dinner with Gov. George Wallace, in Nashville the day before he was shot. We had dinner in his hotel room and I had my daughter with me and I think she was only two. Although I was never a Wallace supporter, my wife was from Alabama and he was a friend of the family. He loved kids and held my daughter most of the evening, while we were there.

We lived in Madison, TN. And there were a lot of country stars you would run into. Loretta Lynn’s rhythm guitar player and his wife who sang back up were our neighbors. I never met Loretta but I had her twins at my house many times. They played with my daughters. I also had Randy and Sandy Burnett; (they were the neighbors that were in Loretta’s band) over for all parties. If he didn’t bring his guitar, I made sure I would get mine out and we had free entertainment. They did go out on their own but never made it. They were from Cincinnati, OH.

I used to golf with Don Cockroft; he was the Cleveland Browns Kicker form 67-80. He was one of the last dual kickers in the NFL. He could kick better than he could golf.

I also meet the Mills Brothers in Pittsburg. I loved their music. They were there to put on a show and I met them in the coffee shop. They gave me an autographed record album, so you know how long ago that was.

It is always nice to meet someone famous but all that I have met seem to be just regular people.

When I still lived in Michigan, Kid Rock owned a home about 15 minutes from where I lived.  We saw him and Pamela Anderson twice at local stores in our small town.  She looks waaaaaay different in person.  Let's just say that TV & makeup do her a lot of justice!

Yes, I definitely remember former Mayor Bogert! He was the mayor during PS's 'diamond years'. His birthday one day after mine. An elegant cowboy. I think he's gotta be near 100 now, but I believe still among us.

I also met Mayor Bono and his wife on several occasions. She waited tables at his restaurant which served the best cioppino in the area.

He, bless him, was a very very nice man. She was a decent waitress but she and I clashed a couple of times (another story, LOL). She definitely is right for politics.

ROFL Phil . . .

One time a girlfriend and I were at a restaurant in Wilshire District (LA), David and Iman Bowie at table a few down. Now to me, Bowie is God . . . my girlfriend wanted to go over and say hi to them. I told her if she even made a noise, I would kill her. There are some moments when you just want to live and let live . . .

Pamela !!!!!

I did appraisals on Dan Rather's ex-home and a home owned by George Segal but they weren't around.

Got Bobby Clark's (Flyers) autograph,

I know Brett Butler's (Dodgers) uncle.

My husband is Larry Walker.

Hmmm.  must be a common name...

I'm sure Larry Walker is the nicest of all the celebrities.  In the army I was an entertainment specialist.  The big names I met were Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, Johnny Bench, Porter Wagoner, a couple of Presidents, the original blind boys of Alabama, 8 of the Tuskeggee Airmen, Dan Devine and more ball players and Rock and Roll bands than I can remember.  Jimmy Carter and Dan Devine were the nicest.  Gloria Losie is supersweet Becky is too but she has an image to protect.  Have a good evening y'all.

Baseball player.  Was with the Colorado Rockies, but not sure where now if not retired.  Obviously not really my husband, but it can be fun when we're at a Mariner/Blue Jay game since that Larry Walker is Canadian.

Too bad he doesn't LOOK like John Elway ;)

Candice..Last time I talked to Mr. Bogert's daughter he was doing well, but since I don't keep up, I'm always afraid to ask. He had a fabulous cowboy museum in his garage that was more fun than any real musem I've ever been to... Plus listening to his tales of camping with all the movie star cowboys was unforgettable.

Ah, yes . . . Mayor Bogert was a symbol of when PS was 'the place' for the Hollywood glamourati. It was just changing when I got there in the early 80s. When Bono became mayor, it all became very soulless. When I go back now, it's unrecognizable to me.