Brushes with fame and fortune

The closest I've come to fame is meeting some actors after some movies at our local theater and meeting some future NHL stars as part of a fan at Michigan.  

Investment wise, I was kind of fascinated by penny stocks back in the early 80's.  And wish I bought Apple when we bought an Apple II+.  Or even MS when it was available.

Then again, with that money back then, my life would have likely been very different, which certainly not something i would want.

Just going to keep my eye out for more actors and hockey players.

This is silly, but true. In high school, I had a $3.50/hr job at a small mercantile. They offered stock options, and I was in right before they exploded. Yep, Wal-Mart. Would have been a bazillionaire. 

Shrewdly, I was fired senior year for wiping up a Coke spill with UT Vols clothing, then putting the clothing back on the rack. Basically, I lasted a few weeks into the Super-Wal Mart era. No regrets. After restaurants, it was the greatest job ever. Then came the corporate monster.

I once ate what was advertised as "The World's Largest Pork Loin Sandwich" at a bar in Iowa.  Does that count for fame?

Patrick said:

In reply to BradLTL :

 

i'm not pulling the name drop thing, got too many.

 

Well, in that case.... I've met Patrick, so I'm cool by proxy.

Curtis said:

I don't sleep with drunk women.  Period.  I don't care how hot or famous they are.

Dang!  I'd still be a virgin!

Growing up on the Monterey Peninsula and working in the restaurant industry allowed for numerous encounters with the rich and famous.  

Alton Walker, who help develop the Pebble Beach Concourse we celebrate today, got his start buying old surplus airplanes for the radios.  Lead to his helping to establish the Monterey Airport so he had a place to park the planes.  As a hobby Alton would send post cards to every rural post master looking for old cars in their area.  Alton always had a steady stream of responses that ended up providing interesting cars that he would collect and then sell on.

Shirley Temple, when asked what she would like to drink, responded with " Jack Daniels on the rocks and make it a double".   

As a 30-year old from Wisconsin I don't have any major name drops or missed opportunities that keep me up at night but this one always stung me a little bit.

Back in 2006 my grandmother passed away and left me her investments including a pretty nice stock portfolio. Always a believer in innovation and technology, one of her biggest holdings was Apple, to the tune of about ~$10,000. After the inheritance was completed I sat down with a financial adviser who convinced me of the conventional wisdom that individual stock holdings were for gamblers and I should sell all of the individual stocks to invest in index funds. I thought "gee, I'm clueless about this stuff" and followed his advice.

In June 2007 the iPhone was released. $10,000 in 2006 Apple stock would be worth $405,295.36 today.

As far as following the advisor's advice, the recession hit shortly after and took almost 40% off the value of the entire portfolio, so that didn't really work out either. I still would have lost with the individual holdings, but much less in the short term and would have come out ahead long term.

One other one...

Upon being prompted to buy some I once told a friend of mine that Bitcoin was stupid fake internet money, this was in 2012 or so when 1 BTC was like $30 and people were using it to order pizza for the novelty. That was not a great call.

I once had lunch with Tim Suddard, so I got that going for me.

I've had a few brushes with fame, mostly from when I was in my old band. Back in the early 2000's, we used to practice in a small studio in Hingham, MA for a little while, and some local musicians who are big now practiced there. Dropkick Murphys were among them, and once called us "berking insane" after they saw us in the common area playing one of the greatest games ever created by mankind: a game we made up based on the board game Crossfire involving a pool table and pool balls called Hot Cross Balls (I can explain the rules if anyone cares, and yes, that's the name). Put it this way: getting a pool ball launched at your head might hurt. They wanted no part of that! Hot Cross Balls is too hardcore for the Dropkick Murphys.

Another time there, we heard the studio owner's cover band across the hall playing Van Halen's Hot For Teacher, which we used to jam on as a joke. We used to like to mess with him, so we started to play it too. Quickly, it turned into an impromptu "Van Hal-off" with the other band's drummer and I going back and forth playing verses and keeping the song going. Turns out the drummer across the hall was this guy:


Mike Mangini, formerly of Annihilator, Extreme and Steve Vai's band and currently playing for Dream Theater. Needless to say, he smoked me. He was a good sport and we had a laugh afterwards!
 

When I was a teen and raced motocross we sometimes ran team races against other clubs. My team partner would usually finish first, I'd finish second, and though he had about a 7 or 8 years riding experience on me, we were pretty close. As my priorities changed and girls -> marriage -> kids took up my time and money he continued to race. He turned pro, and at one time was rated 44th in the world. He got out of it for a while, I didn't ride for 30 years but started back up in 07.  We race the same classes now, have some good battles and I usually beat him. I wonder what would have happened if I'd continued to ride.

When I was 10 I had a tough decision to make. Race kart, or goalie equipment, my parents couldn't afford both. I made the wrong choice, because I'm a lot better driver than hockey player.

I met Wolfman Jack when I was a kid

As a kid all I wanted to do was work on stockcars.  I'd volunteered with some local street stock racers then in the spring of 94 during an ill advised attempt at engineering school I saw an ad in the back of Speedway Scene for a local Busch North team looking for help. I went out on day and meshed well with the owner/driver and his one paid employee, our crew chief, and quickly ended up spending all my free time there. We had a respectable showing on a shoestring budget with an almost all volunteer crew. Over the winter I gave up on school and went to work full time in the shop for what worked out to probably $1.50 an hour and loving every minute of it.  We started the season with a deal to run the Busch South race at Daytona where we were outgunned with what was probably the last V6.  We started 41st and finished 45 blowing that little engine right at the start.  The rest of the year went better with us doing well and having more fun than anyone should.  Towards the end of the our crew chief, an incredibly talented fabricator and hardest worker I've ever met decided he was headed south next season and our owner moved the cars to south jersey to a new shop.  Unfortunately I wasn't skilled or confident enough to move on so I had to join the real world. Several friends and teammates have moved south and done well on various Cup and Busch teams and sometimes I wonder if I could have made it but I can't complain about how things have gone.  I got to see and do a lot of things I had no business doing and met some great people along the way. 

I was in a Hot sauce drinking contest officiated by Ron Jeremy. I won and got a free autographed t shirt. he offered to shake my hand but I politely declined.

I have individually met Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, and Beetlejuice, the cool Beetlejuice one not the movie one. Those two hated each other. even though it was separate appearances all they did was get loaded, badmouth the other one, and tell anyone who would listen why they were the superior dwarf/midget on the Stern show.

I met The Greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time The Honky Tonk Man at a women's oil wrestling competition where he was the referee. 

Finally, my cousin paid the Iron Sheik to call and berate me. It was a bargain, $200 for 10 minutes of being Humbled.  


  

 

As far as brushes with fame and fortune, my mother went to high school with Roger Mudd. She also also had a lab partner in her senior years named Doris Buffet. Doris is not quite as well know as her little brother Warren (who was also at the same school). 

In reply to drsmooth :

I would have happily spent that $200 jabroni.

I considered entering the Hoonigan Driver's Wanted Challenge but thought "I'm just a schmuck, what do I have to offer? I can't compete with the Sara Prices and Micah Diazs out there" and didn't. The videos start coming out and who is one of the contestants? The dude I autocrossed with who wrecked a GTi in a spectacular fashion at one of our autocrosses to a level I have never seen again. Since then he's thrown a bunch of aero and other parts and he largely just pokes around on the street and hard-parks at shows. I beat him soundly at the Pineview Cup this year. So, if I had entered, I possibly could have made it in instead of him, and hung out with Rhys Millen and the Hoonigan bunch and maybe not get dropped early on like that dude did (I think he bombed after the second challenge)

In reply to drsmooth :

Your post reminded me that I met this guy:

The one and only Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart! I got to hold the damn megaphone!!!!! He was showing me all the places where it had cracks and damage from his managerial duties.

I met James Cromwell once, just outside of Zion National Park. I was eating breakfast with my friends and my dog. He just walked over and asked to pet my dog. I obliged, we chatted for a bit, and then he said "thanks" and left. Very friendly guy who thought my dog was cute. Dog for proof below:

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

Me and a nice racing mom I met at the track.

I've probably forgotten  more than I can remember.

Met John Fitch at Lime Rock and later at a Corvair event.   Met the head of Kaiser-Willys,   The head of Car and Driver at race at Lime Rock,  Got my name in Road and Track about an event I entered.   Drove in an FIA race once.

I stood next to Paul Newman at a driver's meeting once.  That's all I have.

Tony Sestito said:

Mike Mangini, formerly of Annihilator, Extreme and Steve Vai's band and currently playing for Dream Theater. Needless to say, he smoked me. He was a good sport and we had a laugh afterwards!
 

Huh.  Back in the late 80's (?) I remember hanging out with guitarist Bill Leverty in my friend's Fan District house in Richmond.  Leverty went on to a fairly prosperous career with the band Firehouse, which according to the wiki, "At the American Music Awards of 1992, FireHouse won the award for Favorite Hard Rock New Artist. They were chosen over Nirvana and Alice in Chains. ^" 

I recall a time in the early 90's where Firehouse was all over the radio and MTV.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I don't even remember Firehouse. Crazy.

Are you sure that's not a band made up for a movie? Looks like Rob Lowe in the foreground there...

In reply to dculberson :

No, they were real--a hair band at the end of the hair band era.

I literally almost ran into Kevin Nash as I ran into a bathroom at a Super America gas station in Duluth after a Monday Nitro show late 90’s. He was coming out as I was running in and just before almost making contact I stopped quickly, looked up and said excuse me. He smirked, looked down at me and said “uh huh”. For reference, in the pic he plays a villain in the Punisher (and Thomas Jane is taller than I am).

Also met Jesse Ventura when he was running for governor “beating two career politicians”.