Two stories:
The only famous person I've ever met was Natalie Merchant. I was in grad school in the early 90s, my future wife and I and a friend went to Kansas City to see 10,000 Maniacs perform. I was walking around outside the venue and I spotted Natalie Merchant walking her dog with the band's keyboard player. I approached her and asked her to sign my CD. She seemed kind of nervous, but was gracious enough. Actually, she could have blown me off but was pretty cool about it.
My other story:
I had been in Denver for a year or two in the mid-90s and was working a crappy temp-postal job. I got off work and went to the local mall to blow off some steam. It was right before Christmas. A local radio station was doing a promo for Wayne's World 2 outside the movie theater where it was showing. They had a guitar and amp set up and and anyone passing by could sit down and play. Once someone had played a bit, they entered their name in a drawing and got a free pass to see the movie. I sat down and began to play my riffs, and it seemed like I was one of the few that day who had any clue as to how to actually play the guitar. So I noodled around for about 15 minutes or so and went in to see the movie. Right before the movie started they anounced the winner of the drawing. They said my name, but it didn't register at first. I had never won anything. It turns out that the prize was an all-expense paid trip to Boston to see Aerosmith on New Year's Eve. I was stunned, I couldn't believe it. I sat through the whole movie stunned, it was very surreal.
Columbia pictures sent my wife and me to Boston, put us up at a nice hotel, gave us vouchers for food at the Hard Rock Cafe Boston and shuttled us to the Aerosmith concert. The downside was that it was colder than h*ll in Boston on New Year's Eve/Day. We walked around Boston New Year's Day, I bought a bunch of CDs at Tower Records. ude:
All in all a very cool trip. There were several contest winners who attended the show with us from around the country. The couple from Arizona that won said that had won the second prize; first prize was a completely restored '58 Corvette
Anyway, that was a pretty crappy time in my life and winning something like that really boosted my spirits
tung