Brushes with fame and fortune

Tour buses I've been invited on to:

• Little Feat
• Kirko Bangz
• Minnesota Fatz
• Yo Gotti
• Kottonmouth Kings
• The Buzzpoets
• The Clarks
• Six Feet Under
• Cattle Decapitation
• David Alan Coe
• Bun B
• The Lacs
• Countless local bands that never got big

As far as the fortune part, well berkeley my grandfather and uncle, but that story has been told.

The year I heard "I'm pregnant" I sold my stake in a business for $25k, my former partners did almost a million that year.

I got laughed at for begging my grandfather to get into the Google IPO because "the internet is just a fad" and "Fidelity knows better than a 16 year old kid". I've actually made a lot of stock picks that if I had the money to invest or anyone bothered listening to me would have made a mint through the years.

I've also begged and pleaded for money for businesses that have made the people who finally did open them rich as hell. 

I served wine to Andrea Pininfarina at an L.A.-area Pininfarnia product design show in 2000 or so. Got this as a souvenir:

Also met Anna Castelli Ferrieri, famous furniture designer. (She did not think I was very good at putting [perfectly level] labels on her exhibits):

dculberson said:

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...

Is that a young Will Ferrell second on the left?

In reply to Tony Sestito :

The Greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time would have just been Intercontinental champion without him without the prefix of "The Greatest". BTW is that Magnum TA as your avatar?

In reply to drsmooth :

Nah, that's some random WWF jobber with a sweet mullet/mustache combo. Although Magnum T/A SHOULD be my avatar! 

This is a very interesting and entertaining thread ... which is why I appreciate this forum. Well, my experience is that back in the early seventies when I had a great job as a machinist/fabricator it was a great, satisfying, job. I loved it, but I wanted to increase my income. So I finished my engineering degree at night and moved on to a salaried position as a Manufacturing Engineer for a major company, for which I was well-qualified. I could make anything, and could tell other people how to make things, literally, in process sheets. Not as much fun as actually doing it myself. But that move still didn't make enough 'scarole for my life ambitions. So I crossed over to the commercial side of the business. That's where the money was. I knew enough about engineering and how things were manufactured. But the sales guys didn't have a clue on how to sell product to manufacturers. So I was the bridge. It was fun, and lucrative for me, but not as much fun as my early days of actually machining and fabricating parts and assemblies. Anyway, how this relates to the original premise of this thread? Well, I didn't make any wrong or alternative decicisions that would have helped my lifestyle. I made decisions based on my experience and education to increase my income. It worked for me. But as a result, while I didn't dislike my career, it just wasn't as much fun and satisfying as when I was a machinist/fabricator. So for me, I feel like I made all the right moves, and don't regret any moves, but maybe the result was not as much fun and satisfaction as if I'd stayed with my original occupation. (But, ahem, ahem,  I'm glad to be where I am now ).

Appreciate what you have. Disregard what might have been.

My last name is Manning, unfortunately I didn't get football genetics on my branch of the tree.  They always politely declined our invitations to the family reunion 

I went to middle school with the kid that played young Forrest Gump.

That's really it, most of the others would be more in line with "I sat next to [famous person] on a plane"

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

My one close call came in 1986.  speed week Bahama's.  Aston Martin was there with Sir Sterling Moss. Driving the Aston Martin DBR2  I was there driving my Black Jack Special. 
The first event was an autocross that because of my short wheelbase and Narrow track  plus I'd picked exactly the right ratio for the quick change, I won.  
The second event was a concours de elegance.  I was lucky because a few of the judges liked my car while the others preferred  the beautifully restored. DBR2   Tying me for the lead.  
   The first race I qualified 3rd but it was obvious both the Aston Martin and The Echidna had me beat on power by a serious amount. At the start Steve jumped the green flag by a ton and I went with him,  tucked  right on his backside. That put me ahead of  Sir Moss at the start/finish  line effectively blocking his line into turn One  but in the short chute going into turn 2 Sir Moss showed me what really serious power was and  why he was so famous, neatly taking the inside lane and passing me by a full length going into turn 3/4 

Determined to get 2nd back I dove way past my braking point going into 3/4 and dirt tracked onto the back straightaway. The trouble is someone had badly cut the corner earlier, tossing sand on the track. I'm not saying it was Sir Moss but he did seem to pick a very early apex from turn 4.   
Here's me, 105% of my previous cornering speed on sand.  OK I went a little wider, real wide, like the right side slid to off track off. Bottom line, By the time I got back on the track I was 4 lengths back and just could not make it up with  my lack of power.   The mid week races I finished 2nd in either to Moss or to Steve that left me in second place, one win away from first. 
 Henry Ford the 111(? ) Was there to buy Aston Martin.    Apparently Ford may have developed cold feet or said something to that effect.  All I know is Sir Stirling Moss jumped the start in the final race like Steve had shown him in the first race.Sir Sterling Moss  Won  with me second.  
Could I have actually had a career had I held off Sir Sterling Moss in that first race?  

There I was...

Fifth grade (circa 1992-1993) and my grades sucked.  School sucked.  It was a complete waste of time.  Well my parents decided that the best course of action (because no amount of punishment was working) was to pay my brother and I for our grades.  They were absolutely CERTAIN that I would see my brother raking in the coin, and then I'd do better.

'Cept, I was doing just fine, I just wasnt doing the work...  By the end of the year I had straight A's and $120 in my pocket with no idea what to do with it.  I was a kid MILLIONAIRE!  I figured "why not try the stock market?"

So I started reading the news paper and I came up with a list of stocks I wanted to watch.  Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Safeco, and one or two others.  I made a few spreadsheets, and even a graph or two as I tracked them over the course of a couple months.  Living a short throw from Seattle meant Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks were at the top of my list.  The first two were super expensive, and I couldn't buy very much which left Starbucks at under $2 a share.

So with my mind made up, I went with my parents to our bank (SeaFirst at the time, now Bank of America) and we inquired as to how I could purchase stock in Starbucks.  The guy at the counter gave me all sorts of info, and eventually said that it'd be $50 for the transaction (half my money gone!  just like that!)

I said no dice to that nonsense and picked up a Cabellas catalog.  I found an 8-shot CO2 pistol that looked exactly like a 1911 for $70, and then spent the rest on pointed pellets, CO2 cartridges, and a set of cheap-o throwing knives. 

Anyhoo, with what calculators I can find it looks like I'd have $34,000 (not counting dividends) if I had managed to keep that investment from then to now.  I can live with that.



 

In reply to Hungary Bill :

I started trading in the 90's through a broker.  Yup, 50 bucks per transaction.  Now e*trade and all the online brokers offer commission-free trading.  Never been a better time for the little guy.

1978. Was a mechanic for an offshore race team that had big aspirations. We did the APBA tour and traveled like rock stars.  Helicopters and Yatch parties with young women looking for rich husbands were in vouge with all the fixings. I worked for Walter and Jim was the boat owner. Don Johnson was just getting into the game at this time so he was part of the celeb crowd.

BIG party in NJ at the Trump Palace Casino Offshore Grand Prix.  The man was there just milling around like a human and eventually his wife threw all of us out of the ballroom for reasons I am not sure about. We won that race and I was going to climb this offshore ladder in some way shape or form as a path to glory!

The original E36 M3ty Youtube video that reminded me of this lost chapter of my life. The Bandit is at around 5:40.

My cousin is NFL player Riley Dixon. A quick check of Wikipedia, because I pay zero attention to football, shows that he played for Denver and is now one of the few bright spots on the Giants. I've never met him because we don't have anything to do with that part of the family (The Dixon family has more bad blood than a hemophiliac's convention) and don't follow the sport, I only found out because someone heard my full name and asked "Dixon? From Oneida Lake area? You related to Riley Dixon on the Broncos?" I later asked my father and he confirmed.

In reply to NickD :

I have a distant cousin who played for the Raiders back in the 80’s, Jeff Gossett, but like you I don’t follow sports & I’ve never met him either. My father was kind of close to that side of the family & told me about it back then.

After doing the Ancestry DNA thing last year & finding some other family history out - John Wayne was my grandfather’s cousin(on my mother’s side), though John’s parents had moved west & lost touch with the family - I ended up friending Jeff on FB and finally figured out how we’re related. 

Knew him back when....

rammy Award winner Jorge Casas has died at age 68. The bass player was born in Havana, Cuba, and since 1986 he was the regular bassist, musical director and producer for the Miami Sound Machine and for Gloria Estefan,

His Dad worked for my dad. I hung more with his little brother who was a World Class E36 M3-disturber. Oh boy, thank the lord for statutes of limitations! Anyway, Jorge was the dorky older brother who played E36 M3ty carport band music. Until he din't, and somehow hooked up with Miami Sound Machine. Many years later the band was playing in Tampa and the my parents got a call to come and hang out backstage. My parents are pretty cool. They had fun.

Pete

No real brushes with fame for myself, and most interactions with famous people were at autograph signings, so I don’t think they count.  Closest “almost” brush  with fortune was the interest in blackjack that I developed in my late teens.  By the time I could legally play, I came up with a counting system that seemed to net me a .5-1% advantage.  On rare trips to Vegas or riverboat casinos, it worked out in practice.  I put together a spreadsheet that showed I could be a millionaire by age thirty if I played a certain number of hands a week, and upped the stakes as the years went by.  I decided moving to Nevada was irresponsible when I had a “real” job.  Probably would have ended up broke or banned from the casinos anyway.  Tried my counting method at the office holiday party this year - in the past twenty years my brain has slowed down too much to keep up with the cards.