Somehow I didn't see this long-lasting thread until now. It seems I'm blessed in my connections to famous people, as you'll see below. I'm a bit surprised that some of the folks on my list have been mentioned in the thread already, but I guess some people are more connected.
If we count personal appearances, book signings, stage door encounters and the like, I've met plenty of people: Bette Midler, Jim Parsons, Adam Savage, Eric McCormack, Buzz Aldrin, etc. – and recently had my picture taken with the band Portugal. The Man – but counting such intentional meet-and-greet moments strikes me as cheating. Here are some of my more legitimate connections – all of this is true:
As far as the actual Bacon game goes (linking through film appearances) I have an unofficial Bacon number of 3, based on a film I made with some friends. It did play to some paying audiences, but not enough to be IMDB-worthy.
John Leguizamo attended college with me for a time. (I don't think we were in any classes together, but I do remember attending a philosophy club meeting with him.) A fairly close college friend was best friends with Ralph Macchio. The father of another fellow student lived across the hall from Mick Jagger's Manhattan apartment. And while I'm mentioning college acquaintances, I shouldn't forget Greg Wrangler – not a household name, but a man well known to millions of Americans as the star of a Folger's coffee commercial that ran at Christmastime for many years.
Through my work in higher education, I've known Jennifer Lopez's sister, Dee Snider's son, two of Ernie Hudson's sons, Alan Ladd's granddaughter, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Peter Laird's brother. Because of them I met the more famous relatives of Snider, Laird, and Lopez. (At least I think I met Lopez – she was introduced as "my sister", and I remember thinking at the time she was the one I heard was a talented, but not yet famous, actress.) Lynda Lopez and Ernie Hudson Jr. went on to some on-camera success of their own, and it's in part due to the latter's appearance in my film that I have such a good Bacon number.
One student I knew lived near the border of Italy and Switzerland, and was friends with some of the Bin Laden family – but I should be quick to point out that they were not at all close to crazy cousin Osama.
I attended a small graduation party for the son of CBS reporter Ike Pappas. I was a bit burnt out on JFK conspiracy theories at the time, so I didn't really participate in the conversation when the senior Pappas was reminiscing about those days in Dallas. I came to regret this when I realized later that he was the last person to ask Lee Harvey Oswald a question and was mere feet away from Oswald and Jack Ruby (who he had actually met a few days earlier) when Ruby fired the fatal shot.
I helped videotape Howard Stern's niece's bat mitzvah, and met Stern and his whole family. I also saw him years later going into a local Starbucks with the woman who would become his second wife.
I met a young Sean Lennon at another bat mitzvah, and about a year ago I ran into Yoko Ono on the street.
I've also been told I was at Jason Alexander's wedding – the Seinfeld actor, not the guy who married Britney Spears for five minutes – but I don't remember it.
I almost literally bumped into Elvis Costello at a J. C. Penney department store. I believe the woman with him was Cait O'Riordan, his wife at the time. I helped him find an open cashier's station, but avoided further conversation as I noticed a number of onlookers (mostly pimply teens) were standing at a respectful distance, and I feared they would attack him if they saw a commoner having a lengthy interaction.
My wife's grandfather was an insurance salesman, and one of his clients was Jackson Pollock. The family still gets great amusement – and sadness – from the fact that grandpa once refused a Pollock painting in lieu of a cash payment when the artist was short on money.
Isaac Asimov kissed my mother.
A cousin of mine who was a priest was a close friend to Pope John Paul II, but I think the same can be said of most Polish priests of that time.
A musician I know owns a guitar that once belonged to George Harrison. Coincidentally, he once received a compliment on his music from Paul McCartney, who sat in the back of a pub while my friend was rehearsing. (Sir Paul left the room before it actually opened to the general public.)
A guy who used to come to a semi-regular movie night hosted by a friend of mine once pitched a screenplay to Sean Connery. He also met (by happenstance) makeup legend Dick Smith and the father of Blade Runner & The Shining actor Joe Turkel.
The crossing guard at my elementary school was a cousin of Tiny Tim – the ukulele-playing singer, not the Dickens character.
I even have a strange connection-to-a-random-person-from-wherever story. I once had an online pen pal of sorts who grew up in Texas, previously worked at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and at the time was working in Zurich, Switzerland. We only started up the friendship because of mutual interests she had posted on her web page – we hadn't met in person. Someone came into my office (on Long Island in New York) to register for a class as a non-matriculated student. There were a dozen or so other people she could have seen for the same purpose. She noticed a picture of my friend in Zurich among other pictures of friends, and told me she had been her college roommate in Washington, D. C.
But my best connection brings me full circle, as it also involves Kevin Bacon. Kyra Sedgwick (Mrs. Bacon) was in a film called Singles. A scene in the film had her cleaning the toilet with a boyfriend's T-shirt. Some friends of mine in Seattle used to live in the apartment where that scene was shot. The toilet in the film was not the functioning toilet (which would have made this perfect) but a prop toilet brought in to make a better camera angle. Nonetheless I can proudly say I defecated in a bathroom in which Kyra Sedgwick cleaned the toilet.
