I’ve always been a fan of stand-up comedians. I guess it all stems from the fact that we hear these surveys that say “More people fear public speaking than death.” And we’ve all had that moment we had to go in front of a crowd and speak, and we got those butterflies. Well, comedians have to do that, with the added difficulty of making people laugh. Knowing that other comedians…

I found a few interesting items happening this week that I thought I’d write about. Now, as a movie critic I have to say – I love collecting movie memorabilia. Having this in my collection would be great, despite the fact that I thought it was a crappy and overrated movie. It’s the Captain America chopper that was customized for “Easy Rider.”

Profiles in History…

You guys on this website really help me come up with many of the stories I include here. Most of them I forget about until somebody posts about their meeting so-and-so and getting an album signed. It’s always so much more enjoyable to log onto the site and see stories like that, instead of yet another person asking us if the set of Beatles autographs they just bought online for $100 is real.

It was a few months back that somebody talked about Cheap Trick, and I started…

I am just bored on this Saturday night, so I thought I’d write some random autograph things down and post them.

As a movie critic, I always laugh when there are autograph scenes in movies. Many times, they’re done poorly. The most recent one I saw was in the film “The Identical,” which is a fictional story about the twin Elvis Presley had (he died at birth), but they…

I worked at a publication for years with a music writer/photographer that was always a blast to share stories with. He met a number of rock stars (mostly in the punk scene), and had some great photos and autographs. The best autograph in his collection came as a fluke. He was working a part-time job as a librarian and they were doing one of their book sales. We’ve all seen…

The Oscars have a rule most people don’t know about. If any Oscar winner tries selling their gold statue, or anybody in your family does – the Academy can buy it back for $1. Well, the Olympics have no such rule. That means last year someone got easily one of the coolest pieces of memorabilia ever – Jesse Owens’ gold medals from the 1936 Games. Don’t feel like ya missed out. They went for $1.4 million.…

I wish I could share a bunch of meetings with Williams, but I really only had one.

It was an interview before one of his stand-up shows in San Diego. There was a crowd of about 20 waiting for him before he went inside that afternoon. He looked sad as he carried a suit over his shoulder. Yet he signed for everyone, and posed for…

A few autograph stories warmed my heart this week. It’s amazing to think that one of them involves an NFL player. It seems when NFL players are mentioned in the news, it’s usually negative.

Here in San Diego, I’ve seen photos of fans getting Charger players autographs at scrimmages. Most cities with NFL teams have stories and photos like that, but this one was…

As a member of the press, I usually get free tickets to Comic Con and I report on the various autograph things going on. The last two years I haven’t gone.

A few of my friends did report a few autograph things to me. One said if you wanted Hulk Hogan’s autograph and a picture, it would cost you $80. Another friend told me Linda Blair was signing autographs for…

I’m not a country music fan, so when I hear the name Tim McGraw, my first thought is of being a kid and watching his dad Tug McGraw pitch for the Phillies. As a movie critic now, my second thought is of him as an actor (he’s actually not bad). Yet two stories involving McGraw have popped up in the last few weeks.

He might be slapped with a lawsuit, after slapping a fan…

When I was in radio, I was lucky enough to interview some big name musicians. Doing movie reviews, I get to interview some great actors and directors. A few weeks ago, a teenage girl was telling me how much she loved Channing Tatum. I talked about how nice he was when I interviewed him, and her eyes shot out of her head. She grabbed my arm screaming, “You were in the same room…

I have always been a fan of Chris Isaak. Most people know his big hit Wicked Game (how can you forget model Helena Christensen in the video?). He’s had a few songs used in movies (my favorite being “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” in Eyes Wide Shut).

A friend and I tried to get his autograph once outside a venue. He shook his head no and walked by us. Well,…

A couple of interesting autographed items have popped up from Lou Gehrig.

Howard Henderson is a 92-year-old who was 12 when he was given a baseball glove signed by Gehrig.

He had met a number of big name folks, including Ethel Merman and Jimmy Durante. His father Ray was a songwriter, and apparently Gehrig’s wife Eleanor wanted to write songs. The boy went…

I remember as a kid reading a Sports Illustrated story on Reggie Jackson. The baseball Hall of Famer had an impressive collection of 28 cars (years later I read that his garage burned down and they were destroyed).

We all drool over Jay Leno’s car collection, but for autograph and memorabilia collectors, we sometimes like cars for other reasons. They joked on Seinfeld once when Kramer bought a car that was supposedly owned by Jon Voight.

I remember driving into…

There were a couple of cute comic strips this week that were autograph related. In the great Bizarro, by the talented Dan Piraro (who I had the pleasure of meeting at a party, and a week later buying an autographed copy of his book at Comic Con) – his strip had a woman coming home and showing her husband a picture. She is saying, “Guess whose autograph I got today?”

The man is looking at it and says, “Pt Sjk?”  (now at this point in the comic strip, autograph collectors are…

Tony Gwynn and Kasey Kasem had something in common. Both dealt with lots of hits.

I worked in radio a long time, but never met Kasem. I met Gwynn, who passed away the day after Kasem, on several occasions. He was always a class act.

One bit I did on the radio was calling the San Diego Padres and trying to convince them to let me throw out the first pitch. After…

If you want to make your wife happy on her birthday, a gift from Tiffany’s works. If you want to get one of the wealthiest NBA players something for his birthday, apparently something from Tiffany worked. No, not the store – actress Tiffani Amber Thiessen.

It’s always fun when stars talk about being thrilled by an autograph they received. Usually it’ll be a baseball…

I love when famous people have stuff stolen from them. They’re often able to bribe the thieves into returning it with a meeting and an autograph.

San Francisco Giants right fielder Hunter Pence, who was acquired in a trade with Philly in 2012, had a customized motor scooter which he wrote a few blocks from home, to every home game. It was stolen outside a restaurant on…

A quick wrap-up on some autograph thingies in the news this past week.

Most recently, that would involve the story of Brad Pitt being punched in the face at a screening of Maleficen, which stars wife Angelina Jolie (a disappointing movie, my review here: http://fox5sandiego.com/2014/05/29/maleficent/). He was signing autographs outside the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, while she was posing for photographs when…

In the early ‘80s, my parents got me a subscription to a magazine called Basketball Digest. I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread (side note: if bread never became sliced, what would be the thing we compare something really great to?)

As a basketball lover, I anxiously awaited its arrival each month. One month, they put all the addresses in of…