O/T: Great Night Tonight

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Stallone lives/lived in the hills above where I used to live so I'd see him all the time in various stores. Very nice guy for a "superstar"; always respectful of the fact that someone cared enough about him to say hello.

I see Michael Chiklis (The Shield) all the time in our neighborhood with his family. One week we sat near them at dinner, saw them a day or two later at the Aquarium of the Pacific and then my wife and her sister sat right in front of him and his wife at the theater; by then, she turned and asked if he was following us around.

I work out 3-6 days a week at a Bikram Yoga studio near my office and one of our regular 6:30 a.m. folks (we usually have 8-10 there at that time all of whom know each other pretty well) is Raquel Welch. In fact, I saw her this morning. Nice lady. The one I'm waiting to see in class is Kirsten Dunst, who also works out there.

There is an ok Italian restaurant near my house where lots of character actors eat. I've seen NYPD Blue cast members Gordon Jump, who also played Ray Schalk in Eight Men Out, and Dennis Franz, and also Bernie Kopell (Siegfried in Get Smart and Doc in Love Boat).

I was in a Chinese restaurant in my old neighborhood once and saw that actor who played Jack Klompus on Seinfeld (Take the pen! Go ahead, I insist!). I also saw Bobcat Goldthwaite (spelling?) stoned off his gourd in an ice cream shop in the same shopping center. He actually sounds like he does on stage (scary).

My alma mater is a big entertainment community high school (I am on the alumni council there). We have a carnival every year and various other events where celebrity parents show up and/or pitch in. Last year I was working a booth along side of Jason Alexander (George Costanza) and also saw Forest Whittaker, Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Leah Thompson, and that guy who hosts the celebrity poker show. All have kids at the school. For that matter, Eric Idle does too.

The weirdest one I ever had was at my wife's high school reunion. I was at the bar getting loaded with my brother in law (my wife is a twin) and we looked across the room and saw Larry Brown. His wife went to HS with my wife (and no I did not marry a senior citizen; Brown's current wife was born in 1965, a year after he was in the Olympics). This was just after he'd left the Clippers. I had my wife introduce us to her classmate and LB. Trying to make small talk without sounding too drunk I told him I was sorry to hear he'd stepped down from the Clippers. He said "I did not resign". Whoops. He was fired but it was in the papers as a mutual resignation thing.

Finally, although it is not exactly a celebrity citing, I was on an adult extension panel last year as a card expert and one of the other panels at the extension program was a tv head of publicity. We were chatting while waiting for our room assignments and he told me about Jennifer Lopez, who apparently is the biggest pain in the butt in Hollywood. When she comes onto a set, she first sends in a lackey with a bottle of her perfume to spray the air and take away the man-stink of other peoples' presence. She also won't speak directly to anyone who is not on the air with her or a director-producer type. She instead has you ask questions to a bodyguard who then relays her answers to you, even though she is five feet away.