Brushes with fame

Saturday, January 7th, 2006

This year, there was a super showing of star power. Here's who showed up this year:

YAHOO keynote:
Ellen Degeneres - did opening and closing monologues, joked about the neighboring Adult Entertainment Expo and how she wandered into the wrong section. Said she should have known better as they are about making things big, and the electronics show are about making things small.
Tom Cruise - was there to promote and show movie preview of upcoming Mission Impossible III

INTEL keynote:
Morgan Freeman, Danny DeVito, Tom Hanks - after a very dry and boring talk for 40 minutes, they jumped out to introduce a parternship with Clickstar, an broadband digital entertainment venture.
transcript and webcast at Intel

Well, even though I missed most of these keynotes, due to limited seating and also very odd hours (either 7.30a or 4.00pm), I still ran into some big names:


Earlier this afternoon, I ran across Sinbad who was heading into the Central Hall of the LVCC. He was pulling along one of those rollaways, and almost looked like a "regular" techie show goer. You can see that the name on his badge reads "Sinbad Bad".


As I was walking back to my room at THEhotel/Mandalay Bay, I saw someone who looked very, very, familiar. I was thinking this guy looked like a famous boxing champ, but I would have expected him to be way taller than I. It turns out that we are of the same height, a little shy of 6'.
















Heading into the hotel lobby, I was walking alongside this guy. It wasn't until someone else called out "hey Mike", that I realized he was the real deal. There he was in the flesh, the former WBC heavyweight champion of the world. He exchanged a few snide remarks with me, but as you see here, Mike Tyson was super kind to let me snap a shot.



My friend spotted Vern Troyer ("mini me" from Austin Powers) in the hotel lobby and had me come downstairs to see if we can spot him again. He was tooling around in one of these custom battery operated carts. The rear seat is made for a full size person... normally reserved for his girlfriend.