meet 43 people noteworthy enough to have Wikipedia articles about them

I met him at the Obama fund-raiser. We ended up talking about his nonprofit to foster the elderly doing art.

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.

Mark Jay Mirsky – my uncle!

I’m sure I can dig up another 15 or 20 people. But I’d really rather focus, at this point, on those quirky, off-the-beaten-path, unsung heroes without a cadre of PR professionals and handlers who make the world an interesting place.

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.

My days in the early Seattle punk scene meant that I ran into John Keister a number of times. Who would have thought he had a wikipedia article?

I guess wikipedia has expanded its articles, because I now can include:

Deb Eddy

I met the living and less famous Adam Smith when I was in DC. Gaak, I’m so old that congressmen are younger than me. He was all business, very focused, and was ready to be done with us in 10 minutes (which is OK by me). On the way out I told him that on a personal note, I appreciated his support of Barack Obama, and he actually flashed a smile at me.

I met Peter Schickele a long time ago at a Northwest Chamber Orchestra fundraiser. My then boyfriend and I had a silly number he wrote and we performed with oddball instruments at the fundraiser. Unlike other people, who did a great job, we screwed it up several times throughout the performance and the whole thing would have been a humiliating disaster, except Peter Schickele gave us the prize for the best performance and made us feel great about it in a way that I really can not describe.

I met Scott Oki several times when I was a United Way Loaned Executive during the 1997 Campaign.

A couple of other former Microsofties who I’ve met aren’t in Wikipedia who I thought might be: Trish Millines Dziko and Ida Cole. More of the “men get in, women don’t”?