Oh yes, one time a number of WWF stars came to my sleepy town in Ireland for a couple of days - I guess they were doing a foreign tour and visited our town along the way. We didn’t even have a McDonald’s at that point, so it was weird to see these huge Americans who we knew the names of, just walking around my town of <20,000 people with their flashy clothes and odd mannerisms. And sunglasses - I thought that was really weird.
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Back when you could wander around airports, we’d wander around MSP, and invariably, we’d see professional wrestlers. They all wore silly clothes and sunglasses. When The Claw showed up at school, he was not dressed in silly clothes or sunglasses, though.
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Oh yeah, I totally forgot I did extra work in college! I was in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (for like half a second). Sean Patrick Flannery came to chat with the extras and was very nice, although I heard later he’s a real asshole to women.
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that dude is hilarious. love Reno 911 and his little role in Black Dynamite.
Apparently, George “The Animal” Steele, famous for devouring the foam turnbuckle guards, was a PE teacher in the Detroit area. My middle school PE teacher Mr. Wilhelm told us that, anyway, and he was always very serious. I remember thinking “this is allowed? he’s completely debased when he’s in the ring, and they just let him be a schoolteacher otherwise?”
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He was definitely the class clown type. Cut everyone up on the bus regularly.
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that’s so awesome. I was totally hoping that was your experience.
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Between 1972 and 1979, we lived in a semirural trailer park about 20 miles east of San Diego. Down the street there used to be a small independent amusement park called Marshal Scotty’s. It closed around 1994 and became the local Abandoned Amusement Park for about 17 years until some people decided to open it as a go-kart track. I think that business has gone under.
Anyway, back in 1979, there was this movie shot in San Diego called Scavenger Hunt. Had a pretty representative cast of 1979 celebs:
They shot at the San Diego Zoo and several other local locations. One scene was set at an amusement park, so they made a deal with Marshal Scotty’s and then came by my elementary school to hire a buttload of kids as extras. I didn’t make the cut (too funny-looking or unavailable or something… don’t remember), but a few of my sister’s friends are visible in the final picture. It was our closest brush with fame at the time, and I was adorably proud of our association with that movie (as far as that went), until I actually started working in the industry in 1991. I mean… my sister had a classmate who met Cloris Leachman!! 
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So, working in the UK entertainment industry… encounters with a fair number of mostly middling-famous UK people, nearly all about as interesting as any work encounter. I’ve met Prince Charles, briefly. For UK-celeb spotters, I’ve had animated non-work-related conversations with e.g. Gyles Brandreth (yes! imagine!), Stewart Lee, Bill Bailey, Mike Harding (it started at work, carried on in a pub and finished up in a hotel around four in the morning), and I carried on a correspondence for some years with John Peel. (A real regret: all those letters are now lost.) I was once left in charge of Gore Vidal, who spent the time being entertainingly rude about his host, a local politician.
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OMG!
Oh, it’s all glamour.
Re the title, I was just reminded that my musician friend Nigel has an Eno number of 2, but we agreed that almost every professional UK musician probably has an Eno number <= 2.
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Since you’ve worked on Stephen King movies, I’ll relate some 3rd degree silliness: one of my college friends went through primary and secondary school with most of the local kids hired for Children of the Corn.
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And on a completely different plane of existence…
I personally knew and spent significant time with Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford (lovely guy), Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, and more senators and governors from Illinois than most people here would even recognize. Also, worked with Wangari Maathai for a short time at UNIFEM.
And while our paths have diverged significantly at this point, to where I assume we will probably never socialize again, our family and the Obama family were friendly at one time.
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…
TRUMP 2016!
?
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Isn’t that the one where Paul Rubens had a cameo bit, pre-Pee Wee?
Wouldn’t surprise me, but I haven’t seen it in years. It never did get a DVD release.
And now I’m jealous.
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You just need to look at their photos on the post office walls.
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Ouch! 
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