For instance, I am two degrees from Ron Santo. Ron is a local famous guy here in Chicago. He's a former [and beloved] Cubs third baseman who now does the ball club's radio broadcasts with Pat Hughes on WGN.
Here's my important connection: Ron's wife is good friends with my ex-husband's wife. Ta-da.
I have been a mere one degree from Michael Keaton, the relatively famous Hollywood actor, two different times. I have a girlfriend in Montana who met him when they introduced themselves on a back country road, while they sat waiting in their trucks for a bunch of cows to cross from one side to the other. If I had been visiting her that day, I would have been stuck on the road and met Michael Keaton, too.
A year after that episode, Michael was in Chicago shooting a mini-series, which was headquartered in the same building where I was editing something. Only he always took the stairs and I always took the elevator, so I never saw him. I told a production assistant working on the film the story of how he met my girlfriend, complete with a description of the brand new red pick up truck he was driving. The PA passed my story along during a break in shooting. Instead of extending me an invite to lunch or a visit to his ranch outside Bozeman, Keaton told the PA to tell me the red truck was toast. These days he was driving a new black pick up. There's also a third time I was only one degree from Michael Keaton. He asked a cousin of mine to write a screenplay for him. That one ended badly. So I won't count it .
I used to play tennis with a woman whose grandfather was one of the two guys who founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He's not famous, but AA is.
My stepmother went to high school with Donald Rumsfeld. Then she went to college with General Norman Schwartzkopf's older sister. He's famous for the First Gulf War. Back in their college days his sister and my stepmom called him "Normie."
I am this close to Oprah. An athletic little boy who lived next door to us when my kids were young became a football star at my high school. He went on to play for Stanford. After reconnecting with him recently about a football video, I got to meet his three kids and his wife, who turns out to be one of Oprah's producers.
Isn't this riveting? Watch out, there may be more.
7 comments:
My first Ex was a distant relative of Mohammed Ali. My STBE is a descendant of the LDS Lee tribe who settled Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River. I was on the Oprah show.
I know Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist, Steve Benson, and have his home phone number.
Where's my t-shirt?
I KNOW BUD CORT, WHO WAS THE KID IN 'HAROLD AND MAUDE'. LIKE ME, HE'S OLD NOW.
I know there is a point to be made here.......right.
remo
were in the audience
or on the stage
with Oprah?
were you*
can't type
p.s.
my Dad said that
one of his nieces
married John Davidson
My grandmother turned down a marriage proposal from a local guy where she lived, in Dearborn, MI, because she said all he did was tinker in his garage and she didn't think he would be able to support her. I could have been a descendant of Henry Ford. My grandmother's last name was Wright, of the young flying men farther down south. Joe and Phil Niekro (baseball players) were my cousins by marriage. Ted Simmons, another baseball player, is someone I used to help with his English homework in high school. I did not help him to write sentences like that last one, LMAO! My daughter served drinks to Eminem.
xoxo
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