So I come home for lunch today. Sonya, as usual, had made it home before me and checked the e-mail.

"You've got a new reader," Sonya told me, pointing at the in-box on-screen.

The name of the new reader? Jamie Zawinski.

Cool! I linked to one of his pages a few episodes ago and I guess he folowed the link back.

For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Jamie Zawinski programmed the early versions of Netscape Navigator. Nifty, huh? He's the computing equivalent of...well..the guy who built the first TV, I guess. Or the first radio. Jamie also has a web site filled with witty observations about life, which I've been reading for a couple of years now. I don't want to be too much of a fanboy, but I've always liked his site and, well, I use one of the products he created every day. So it was a real thrill, you know?

Jamie's also something of an internet celebrity, since (until a few days ago) he was in charge of Netscape's open source project, mozilla.org. He got a mention in Suck today and I read a couple of articles about him in Wired earlier this week. It's like getting an autographed picture of Jenni, I guess.

My head wasn't too far in the clouds, though. It's always nice to get a complement from someone you admire, but I got back to work and I was aching to tell one of my coworkers about it. I realized, though, that not one of my coworkers would have any idea who Jamie Zawinski was, and they certainly wouldn't understand why he'd written me a complementary e-mail. Some of them don't understand e-mail that well.

Still, it's pretty cool, right? Brushing up against a celebrity is always nice.

As a child, my sisters (Dawne and Julie) took me to the Channel Five studios here in Memphis one Saturday morning to meet Jerry Lawler.

[Understand, back in the day (some twenty years ago) wrestling was ridiculously popular here in Memphis. Jerry Lawler was then - as now - at the epicenter of Memphis wrestling. The lower-middle class demographic was glued to the TV on Saturday mornings and showed up at the coliseum in droves on Monday night to catch the latest developments on the Memphis wrestling scene. These folks on the TV now? I don't understand 'em. Too many muscles, not nearly enough blood.]

Lawler brushed by us abruptly with a brisk "not today." I cried all the way back to West Memphis, declaring I didn't want to meet Jerry Lawler anyway.

Funny the things you remember, you know? Anyway, that was my first brush with stardom. I also think that on that trip the hood of my sister's Camaro popped up in mid-drive, making us all scream our fool heads off as Dawne aimed for the shoulder.

That scene would later be used in Tommy Boy, by the way.

let's see...I got a letter from Jon Brant, the bassist for Cheap Trick, when I was in sixth grade. I wrote 'em a fan letter, he wrote back. And I've met and talked with various other musicians, including most of the Nervous Wrecks and Todd Snider, of course.

Oh yeah, I had my picture taken with a future president (Bill Clinton, while governor of Arkansas) and a past president (Ronald Reagan, in his cushy post-presidency office in Nakatomi Plaza) while I was in high school.

James Doohan (Mr. Scott from Star Trek) and KRS1 when I was working at Ida Waldran Auditorium in college. Doohan was cool, if a little senile. He signed lots of autographs. KRS1? Well, I wanted to ask him what it was like to work with REM, but the crowd was asking him about how to overthrow the white fascist state, so I felt like my pop music trivia wasn't quite appropriate.

Sonya's got me beaten, I guess. She got an autograph from (and touched, I might add) Simon LeBon from Duran Duran. Everyone knows who Duran Duran is, right?

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