Larry Linville: The picture I should really post with this one is of me and Larry talking (but that would take effort). In college, my friends and I were huge MASH fans (I still am, in fact, and one of the great things about TIVO is I always have some MASH episodes to watch). Linville spoke at USD one evening and my friends Doug Brunk and Keith Finley and I went over there to hear him. He talked for a while about making the show and then showed us an episode and told us about making it. After his speech, we all got in line to shake his hand. When I met him, I told him that my friends and I had memorized all of these MASH quotes and we wanted to do a book called "The Quotable MASH." He thought that was a great idea. Then he said, "It's nice to meet you," and I shot back, "Well, it's nice to be nice to the nice" (one of his own lines). He nearly fell over laughing.

Nick Lowe: My junior year in high school. I bought a ticket to see Elvis Costello at Golden Hall. It was the first concert I ever bought tickets for myself. Rockpile and Mink Deville opened (MD sucked and I've never linked them). I arrived at the show a couple of hours early. I hung out by the stage door. Nick Lowe came out for a smoke. I walked right up to him and said hello. I told him how much I loved "Pure Pop for Now People," and we chatted. A young girl came up and said, "You're Nick Lowe!" and then asked for his autograph (You'll notice in these stories that I don't ask for autographs — my thinking is, I've already gotten more from these people than I deserve, so why ask them to give me something else. I'm there to give them something — my admiration. Everybody craves admiration, no matter how big a star, so that's what I try to give in as kind and humble a manner as possible.) Nick signed the autograph and then she asks, "Do you really like the Bay City Rollers." I thought, as a teen would, that I was going to die of embarrassment. I hoped, oh how I hoped, that Nick didn't think I was WITH this idiot girl. To understand what a thoroughly insipid question this was, you need to know the song "Rollers Show," which is a pure spoof of the Rollers bubblegum pop and the fans of the band. It implies not that Lowe is a Rollers fan, but rather that he loathes them, much as he loathes Rick Astley (link is an MP3 of Dar Williams performing "All Men Are Liars" — you gotta listen). Nick patiently explained that the song was a joke, and you could see the disappointment in the young girl's (I mean, 15 years old young, whereas I was much older at 17) face.