What is your closest brush with fame? Either meting someone famous, or doing something yourself, like appearing on TV, or having a social media post go viral.
Share why if you wish.
Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
What is your closest brush with fame? Either meting someone famous, or doing something yourself, like appearing on TV, or having a social media post go viral.
Share why if you wish.
Well I’ve been close to a certain nerdy celebrity most of my life. My father was a fairly well-known space settlement proponent. I went with him to lectures all over the US; to a talk show that sent a limo for us to travel to their studios; to a panel of some sort where I met Isaac Asimov, and some other event where I met him again; to a Star Trek convention where I met Roddenberry and Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan, IIRC; and for an article about my dad in People, for some odd reason they included a photo of me working my high school job at a bakery. So I can fairly say I’ve been in People. Also, my father was friends with a few more long-ago famous-ish people: a game-show host, a writer, Freeman Dyson (of Dyson Spheres, not vacuums, you sillies) and other scientists you’d have to be especially nerdy to have heard of.
Then, last year, a documentary about my father’s work came out, and I was interviewed both alone and with my siblings and my father’s widow about his work. So, now I’ve been in a movie.
Let’s see…. the closest I have come to a famous person might be when I was called on stage to participate in a trick at a Penn & Teller show (and chatted with P&T after the show). I also got an autograph and/or a picture with Isaac Asimov, Stan Lee, Douglas Adams, Caroll Spinney (Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch), the Indigo Girls, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork of the Monkees (separately), and I was at a meet and greet with “Weird Al” Yankovic.
As for the closest *I* have come to fame… I’ve been on TV multiple times (but just the local access TV station in town where I currently live), I was in the newspaper fairly often when I was in school as a youngster, and I went to a national competition when I was in 6th grade (the entire school had a pep rally to send off me and my team). But my most enduring claim-to-fame, I suppose, is as co-founder of USCHO, which just keeps chugging along.