Friday Five – Famous People You’d Like To Meet (Dead or Alive)

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week I help you get to know me a bit better with the help of a top 5 list. This week’s topic: Famous People You’d Like To Meet (Dead or Alive).

I’ve met a few famous people in my days, usually at conventions or some such. That is if you can call paying to have them sign something and seeing them for 8 seconds “meeting” them. The dream is to run into someone famous at like a fancy restaurant, and they invite you to eat with them, and you talk for a while, and leave with a new best friend. It never happens that way, but it would be awesome if it did.

My choices are all a little offbeat, and I cheated a bit, but I only used one for childhood fantasy fulfillment. Also, is it bad if my first thought on the subject immediately went to Hitler, if only to kick him in the balls.

1. Gene Roddenberry – I wasn’t into Star Trek until after he had already been dead for two years, so I never got the chance to meet him or really see him, other than in all the DVD extras from today.

 

2. Dan Harmon / Kevin Falls / Josh Friedman – Creators of some of my favorite shows that were cancelled (or they got fired from), Community, Journeyman, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles respectively. I’d want to ask them all what they would have done had they gotten to continue working with their shows for longer, and what their original endgame was.

 

3. Jennifer Love Hewitt / Amy Jo Johnson – The teen fantasy fulfillment entry, I’ve had a thing for both of them for a long long time. It’s why I was late to school in the mornings from watching Power Rangers and why I watched Party of Five. But they’ve both done some things that even I won’t watch (like the horrible Time of Your Life spin off. Even JLH’s massive rack couldn’t save that garbage show)

 

4. The crew of Apollo 13, in particular Ken Mattingly, or really any astronaut – The safe return of Apollo 13 is one of mankind’s greatest achievements in my eyes. Ken Mattingly’s contributions especially so. Having been left behind and swapped out from the main crew because of his exposure to measles (which he never did come down with), he is the one who devised the boot up process which allowed them to turn the computers back on safely. Being a software engineer, I feel like I have to do that on a daily, but not so critical, basis. I went to a reception once with Scott Carpenter, but didn’t get to meet him. John Glenn was supposed to be there as well, but had a death in the family and was unable to attend. I however had the chance to meet him before as part of STS-95, his space shuttle flight in 1998. My dad was part of the invited media to attend the launch, but he didn’t want to take me out of school for it. I am still furious about that decision to this day.

 

5. Nikola Tesla – Probably the most awesome scientist ever, and he never gets the credit he deserves because Thomas Edison is history’s greatest monster. I’d love to pick his brain about all the stuff he never wrote down, and just tell him how appreciated he is.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook