meet 43 people noteworthy enough to have Wikipedia articles about them

Well, how about this: my latest improv teacher, Gerri Lawlor, has a Wikipedia article about her.

I first saw her perform last August, when I was on a date with a (different) improv teacher. She gave the most amazing improv performance I had ever seen (even to this day). I thought, “This is the kind of improv I want to do.” A lot of the humor was pretty dark (I remember an “Inuit soufflé” served at a French restaurant), but it was genuine stuff, the kind of thing you can only get when you tune into your subconscious and let it speak. During the show, one of her characters said that Werner Herzog had made a documentary about her childhood. Turns out she’s a big Werner Herzog fan, and talked about him some with me and my date afterward.

Last night, she invited me out to see a friend of hers perform accordion music. She told me this guy, Mark Growden, is a genius, and she was not kidding. This was the first time I ever realized that the accordion is an actual music instrument.

This was at the Hotel Utah, an Old West-style saloon. It fit. After the show, she bought me a shot of Jack Daniels, and I tossed it down. We talked about improv, Johnny Cash, sacrilegious videos and musicals we’d like to make, and lots more. I gave her a ride home, and she lent me two Werner Herzog movies.

The class, by the way, has been the best ever. Not only is she an amazing performer, she knows a zillion little tips, and made me and everyone else feel completely at ease. I’ve never picked up so much improv in such a short time. I was nervous about coming to her class, thinking that there’s no way I’d have her spontaneity and truthfulness to character. But she drew exactly that right out of me and all the other students.

I just discovered that this fellow has a Wikipedia article about him. In the early 1990s, I used to hang out at a Wednesday night salon in Los Angeles where he was a regular.

24Marilyn Wann

Met her at a friend’s birthday party.

23Gene Roddenberry

I was about 14 years old, at some little Star Trek thing in Columbus, Ohio, where Roddenberry gave a talk. He talked about how the show was about ideals and people had come to him saying that it inspired them to have children, since Star Trek gave them hope for the future. I didn’t care about any of that, though. He also said that an alien had left him messages telling him that he was doing a good job. So during the question period, I went over and asked him for more details about that. He told me to come by the dressing room afterward. He gave me a record of Spock’s father talking about Vulcan stuff.

22Daniel Friedman

21Frank Zappa

So far, I’ve met:

1* Larry Sanger

2* Daniel Stein

3* Michael Jackson

4* Marshall Poe (by phone only)

5* Jerrold Marsden

6* Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

7* Martin Fowler

8* Damian Conway (by phone only)

9* Ward Cunningham

10* Kent Beck

11Max More

12Ralph Johnson

13Saul Kent

14Mike Darwin

15Michael S. Berliner

16David Kelley

17Leonard Peikoff (by phone only)

18Vincent Sarich

19Larry Niven

20Jerry Pournelle