Monday, May 18th, 2009

[JonPorobil]

Sabrina Scott lived three doors down from me freshman year of college. My roommate had the biggest crush on her. Now she's on NPR, with glamor shots and everything. It's strange to see this image that vaguely resembles the girl I knew when I was 18.

Question of the Day: Have you ever known anyone who has later gone on to be famous?

[ujnhunter]

QotD: Hrmm... don't want to name drop but... not really "famous" so to speak. I was actually having this convo the other day on IRC about how 4 kids from my age group (one being my younger brother) that I went to school with all went on to make something of themselves in Music/TV and that I needed to get my ass in gear! Being from a pretty small CT town, this always seemed quite odd. 1 kid who I used to play little league baseball with plays guitar for this band The Broken West. 1 kid who I used to draw comic books with in middle school just got featured on Stereogum.com for his music. 1 kid was actually on that Survivor tv show... and my brother was actually on General Hospital for awhile. Very strange, all from the same town, all within 4 years apart age wise. Also I'm not sure if it's just a local thing, but when they play Yankee games on TV there is a commercial with Tom Hanks about Veterans, and one of my good friends growing up is on that commercial. Crazy.

[Henrietta]

DRC: I have a Nur Ein hangover today. My entry seemed like such a good idea last night, but in the sobriety of this morning I pretty much regret it ever happened.

QotD: Famous only in deathmetal/grindcore circles probably. One of my college friends is signed to Metal Blade and you can buy his signature bass from guitarcenter.

[Eric Y.]

QotD: Famous only in deathmetal/grindcore circles probably.

So are you going to say who it is??

qotd -- I met the Spinto Band about five years ago, they are probably the famousest people I've ever known personally. I've also met Bleu, who later signed to Columbia Records, and I also used to know Scott Simons pretty well (he once name-checked me during a sound-check), although I don't think he's exactly famous but at least moderatly well-known among regional touring artists.

[Niveous]

QotD: Faryl Millet

See her in a Fountains of Wayne video!

Fame could not have come to a nicer girl.

[Henrietta]

So are you going to say who it is??

I don't know how big they are. I also can't tell the difference between deathmetal and grind and math enough to describe them:

[Albatross]

One of my best friends from grade school went on to create Johnny Bravo.

[Ross]

Here.

I was the summer camp counselor for the guy who plays trombone for Reel Big Fish.

[signboy]

So. May long weekend. My freaking mic STILL isn't going to show up. bastards. On another note, I had never heard the term "May long" until I moved to Edmonton, where most of my friends were chinese. It seriously took me like 3 years to clue in that "Meilong" is for white people too.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

QoTD: For a given value of famous, I guess. I'm proud as hell of my oldest friends, regardless of the fame-factor.

Thomas Perkins, SoCal (Emmy award winning Animator)
Teresa Rodriguez Williamson, SF Bay Area (Author, Crusader, and, uhhh... force of nature?)

[rone rivendale]

QotD: I knew Jennifer Love Hewitt when we were both little kids. And I was in the same graduating class as Shaun Hill (QB for the 49'ers).

[Märk]

So are you going to say who it is??

I don't know how big they are. I also can't tell the difference between deathmetal and grind and math enough to describe them:

They're big enough for me to know about them and like them. And also have a wiki page.

[JonPorobil]

QotD: I knew Jennifer Love Hewitt when we were both little kids. And I was in the same graduating class as Shaun Hill (QB for the 49'ers).

I never thought I'd say this, but...
Rone totally wins.

[fluffy]

It says a lot about our society that the only famous people that people think about are actors and sports players and the occasional musician and maybe politicians who aren't presidents.

On that note, Jessie Keosian (a little old lady who had several "little old lady" roles in many movies and commercials) was a family friend. I fell asleep on her couch once.

One of my college friends has gotten a certain level of fame in Internet art circles from his computational artwork, and another college friend was one of the lead programmers of the infamous bnetd server. Those are pretty niche definitions of "famous" though.

Oh, and for a while my sister's best friend's mom was dating a former governor of New Mexico, and he gave me a ride home once. He is a very scary driver. But again, that's sort of a nichey fame.

[Henrietta]

It says a lot about our society that the only famous people that people think about are actors and sports players and the occasional musician and maybe politicians who aren't presidents.

You just reminded me of an Intel commercial I like:

[rone rivendale]

QotD: I knew Jennifer Love Hewitt when we were both little kids. And I was in the same graduating class as Shaun Hill (QB for the 49'ers).

I never thought I'd say this, but...
Rone totally wins.

I'd trade in this win for a win in SF.

[Spud]

I am the most famous person I knew growing up.

[inevitableguy]

QotD: My wife is the most famous person I know. She has a movie credit to her name. We knew all the Blair Witch guys in college before the movie was even made...in fact, when they made their "investment film" (which was just a 60-second teaser designed to convince people to give them money to make the real film), I got to be an extra. We've been in touch with a few of them over the years, and it was kinda fun to occasionally get an e-mail that said something like "Hey - we've been accepted at Sundance!" or "Wow! We just got offered a million dollars for our film!"

[Eric Y.]

It says a lot about our society

Or maybe it just says a lot about me that the only people I know are musicians.

maybe politicians who aren't presidents

(I'm told that) when I was very young, I was at a fast-food restaurant with my mom and we happened to sit at the table next to the then-Mayor of Pittsburgh and I puked all over the table.

[ujnhunter]

It says a lot about our society that the only famous people that people think about are actors and sports players and the occasional musician and maybe politicians who aren't presidents.

What are you basing this statement on? This thread so far? That'd be a pretty big assumption. Just because nobody seems to know a famous astrophysicist doesn't mean that they wouldn't consider them famous if they did know them. Just curious.

[JonPorobil]

One possible factor, at least in my case, is that it's much easier and more common to achieve fame as an actor or musician at a young age than it is to do the same thing as a scientist or politician.

Most of the people I know are in my age group, so it would make sense for the one person I know who has been recognized on some sort of national platform to have done so as a musician, and not in a more academic field.

[fluffy]

It says a lot about our society that the only famous people that people think about are actors and sports players and the occasional musician and maybe politicians who aren't presidents.

What are you basing this statement on? This thread so far? That'd be a pretty big assumption. Just because nobody seems to know a famous astrophysicist doesn't mean that they wouldn't consider them famous if they did know them. Just curious.

So do you know of any famous astrophysicists? I can name two (Phil Plait and Neil DeGrasse Tyson) but I follow that stuff closely, and I doubt the random person on the street could. Tyson, to his credit, is trying really hard to change the public perception of science, and that's a big part of why he's at all famous - he goes out of his way to be.

Expanding it to other scientists, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein are pretty famous, but it's not like most people even know what either of them DID, they just know them for the ALS and the crazy hair (and E=MC^2 which they might think has something to do with warp drives or maybe the atom bomb).

How many people realize that Hawking did most of his formative theoretical work long before he had lost his physical facilities to ALS? Most people seem to romanticize it and think that his disability is what led him to be a theoretical physicist, when really he's just been tenacious afterward and that's given his popular works a boost. I can't help but wonder how well "A Brief History of Time" would have sold if it weren't for that, not to mention all his cameos in popular culture. (I am not saying Hawking has cashed in on a terrible situation, mind you, just that he's benefited from it.)

Most people in disciplines which aren't specifically about getting in front of a lot of people (actors, musicians, athletes) never do, and it becomes a self-sustaining "image." Unfortunately, hucksters and charlatans seem to do better at getting into the public eye, and even without that, people seem to look to musicians and actors for advice on matters of science (cf Jenny McCarthy).