The best part of meeting someone like this would be the endless possibilities of one-liners to yell at him when you saw him. There's the aforementioned "That's two thus far" or "I beg to differ. My good friend Happy Gilmore accomplished that feat no more than an hour ago" or "And you can count...on ME waiting for YOU in the parking lot!" or my favorite- IF you see him coming and have the wherewithal to pull it off- would be to go running after someone, wildly pumping your arms above your head and yelling "I believe that's Mr. Gilmore's!!!"......but I digress.
Paul went with "Your ball struck my foot" along with a nice compliment about his work in James Bond movies, which was a solid choice. You'd have to think he gets a little pissed that nobody under 25 recognizes him without a nail sticking out of his dome, and he probably fondly remembers the glory days....when nobody could recognize him without suspenders and a mouth full of metal teeth.
So since Paul told me the story on Tuesday morning, I've spent roughly 70% of my waking hours trying to think of another random movie character I'd rather take a picture with, and I haven't been able to think of one that has the same level of hilarity, randomness, and universal recognition as Richard Kiel.
A couple of names popped into my head, like Ralph Macchio (the Karate Kid) or T1000 from T2, but they weren't random enough. Guys like Charlie Murphy, or Michael Bolton from Office Space, aren't quite funny enough.
My personal favorites would be either Adam Banks from the Mighty Ducks*** because he provided the inspiration for my favorite fake name EVER; or Jim Walsh, the dad from Beverly Hills 90210, because of how much that would make Brother laugh if I were to text him a pic of Papa Walsh and I. (Side note: one of the greatest running jokes between Brother and I is the guy at our old church who we thought looked like what Steve Sanders would look like as a middle-aged man. Every time we'd see him on the opposite side of the congregation, one of us would nudge the other and ask "Hey, wonder how bombed Steve-O got last night?" and every time we'd walk by him we'd give him the wink and the gun and yell "Steve-O!!! What's goin on? Say hi to Brand-O for me!" and keep on walking, quite pleased with ourselves. Now that I don't live there anymore, every once in a while Brother will send me texts like "just saw Steve-O buyin' a bunch of Morgan at Happy Harry's...hope he doesn't plan on taking the 'vette out for a cruise tonight." I'm sure to this day, that poor guy is just baffled that a couple of shitty desrespectful kids continually ran up to him yelling about 'Steve-O'...and I'm also sure that the only person that probably enjoyed this last paragraph is Brother, who doesn't even read this because he thinks blogs are gay. Moving on.)
The problem with those two choices is that they're not quite universal enough. I suppose quite a few friends would laugh at me meeting Adam Banks, but only because of the fake name thing- most probably wouldn't recognize him from the photo. Outside of Brother, very few people would even care that I met Jim Walsh. On the flip side, everyone knows, and loves, the big dude from Happy Gilmore.
So I am officially stumped. I can't think of any random movie character I would want to meet more than Richard Kiel. Paul stole my lifelong dream that I didn't even know I had. Question of the day: what random movie "star" would you like to meet the most?
*** When that movie first came out, a rumor went around our area of the country that the kid who played Adam Banks was actually a really good hockey player from Roseau or somewhere like that, and one time the 'Supras' played against him in a tournament. Can anyone confirm or deny that rumor?***
