Pharyngula

Yet more internet melodrama! Several of our unwilling contestants took a shot at the immunity challenge, to comical effect: they either completely failed to be aware of what people find irritating in their posting habits, or in one case, even plagiarized his answer. The result of the vote by the readership: none met the challenge, although several thought Facilis made a good effort, so no one has immunity.

What about the vote to see who would be banned? Once again, John Kwok saw an ember of a possibility that he might be selected, and chose to fight it by repeatedly throwing buckets of gasoline on it. If he’d just ignored it, I’m sure he would have been passed over without a problem… but by constantly fanning the flames, he kept a constant volley of votes for him going, and finally ended up in second place. Good work!

The final winner, though, and the one who is now banned, is the loathsome Simon. His foul-tempered hatefulness was an unstoppable force, and the silliness of a Kwok could not match it. Simon is gone, and good riddance.

Now, I had planned on doing one more round of voting to clear the blog of a total of three trouble-making pests, but in the end I’ve decided to cut it short right here. Something happened that compels me to simply ban one more person outright, and end the whole series. It seems that one of our contestants has been writing to a friend and asking him to use his powers of persuasion to compel me to a) LEAVE KEN MILLER ALONE!!! (should be read with a Chris Crocker-esque shriek, and with much running mascara) and b) grant the correspondent immediate, automatic immunity. He also threatened to complete his novel and include me as a character, ala Michael Crichton. Can you guess who it was?

Somebody is taking this far too seriously, and I think it’s time to cut off his little obsession. Goodbye, John Kwok. You won’t be commenting here any more.

And we’re done, for now. Those who survived Survivor: Pharyngula! should not rest easy, though — I will use my vast powers capriciously, and with malice, if you should persist in your ways that got you on the list in the first place.

One of the victims has responded in email.

Hey PZ -

Since Rick Moody lampooned a certain former “New York Times” book reviewer who had dubbed Rick, “the worst writer of my generation”, in his novel “The Diviners”, it looks like you’re going to be honored twice. I already have an IRA terrorist whose persona is quite similar to yours (I told Greg that this was an accident.). Assuming that I sell this novel and write another, I’ll be certain you’ll appear in that one too.

BTW, Rick has since “kissed and made up” with the object of his affection. I haven’t asked him about it, only because I know he’s not one to talk about it (I’ll let you guess how I know Rick. Hint: Look at my Facebook page.).

I’m giving you a chance to change your mind. I think you ought to reconsider ASAP.

Oh, dog. He knows Rick Moody! And he’s going to pretend a fictional IRA terrorist (who is “a sadistic terrorist and murderer”) is me! But you know, I don’t think I’ll reconsider.

It gets better! A new threat from the Kwok:

PZ, what comes around, goes around. Am looking forward to giving you the just dessert that you so richly deserve. And if you don’t behave with the Muslims, I might do a “Pontius Pilate” act and give my cousin Jim and his CAIR buddies carte blanche to deal with you as they see fit.

Comments

#1 J_w23
March 20, 2009

We’re all going in italics here!
#2 Michael Hawkins
March 20, 2009

The worst thing about these creationists is that they don’t get how ugly everything is they believe.
#3 Ryan Jones
March 20, 2009

http://www.about-seattlewa.com/wp-content/uploads/OH_NOES.jpg
#4 Zeno
March 20, 2009

PZ: I will use my vast powers capriciously, and with malice

It’s quote-mine paradise! Expect to see those words repeated by creationists and other god-botherers as they wring their hands over the excesses of the ungodly. (Never mind that PZ has been more polite to them than they are to him.) If they don’t credit the words to PZ, they’ll probably claim to be quoting the Humanist Manifesto.
#5 SLC
March 20, 2009

So Mr. Kwok who has already been banned by Abbie Smith over at ERV for being a cyberstalker is now banned at pharyngula for being an asshole. Maybe he should start his own blog so he can trumpet his high school days ad nauseum.
#6 QrazyQat
March 20, 2009

…capriciously, and with malice

Somebody’s been reading the Bible again!
#7 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Eh. There’ll always be trolls. But being rid of those two (and Barb) is a good thing; neither added very much at all.

Did we end up solving the riddle of the two Pete Rookes?
#8 Matt
March 20, 2009

Hooray!! Adios you two TOOLS!
#9 Kel
March 20, 2009

It seems that one of our contestants has been writing to a friend and asking him to use his powers of persuasion to compel me to a) LEAVE KEN MILLER ALONE!!!

Hilarious!
#10 Michelle
March 20, 2009

Well that was a thrilling ride!

I’d say congratulations to the survivors but you know… They don’t deserve any.
#11 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

Without Barb, it has been much nicer coming here. I won’t miss either Simple Simon or Kwok. The two PR mystery needs to be solved.
#12 Grendels Dad
March 20, 2009

Good riddance, and Happy Monkey!
#13 pcarini
March 20, 2009

All I can say is that they won’t be missed.
#14 Dustin
March 20, 2009

Aww, damn. And I just made this fresh batch of rhetorical napalm.
#15 WTFinterrobang
March 20, 2009

Good riddance to bad rubbish!
#16 Klokwurk
March 20, 2009

Hell hath no fury like a graduate from the top high school in the US scorned. Let the facebook apocalypse begin!

I’m glad to see Barb and Simon gone.
#17 Eidolon
March 20, 2009

We hit the Daily double. speaking of doubles – then there is Pete A and B.
#18 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

Plagiarized an answer? It was a rephrased sentence. One sentence in ~500 words. I wan’t aware that you expected citations…
#19 David Marjanovi?, OM
March 20, 2009

What comment 12 says.

BTW, Pete Rooke’s plagiarism appears to be limited to most of one sentence…
#20 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete, we are scientists. We cite all but our own work. We expect the same from you.
#21 PZ Myers
March 20, 2009

Read the last paragraph of the article again, Rooke. Slowly and carefully. And think about it.
#22 Bryn
March 20, 2009

I’m glad to see homophobic, angel-food-outside-around a-creamy-hate-filled-center Barb and the extraordinarily creepy (“Heh. Heh, heh! I said anus!” while wanking vigorously) Simon go, but I still feel pity for Kwok. No, he really doesn’t add much to the convo, but high school seems to be all he had. A fly trapped in amber, never moving on, fixed in a moment of time, with nothing ever able to live up to high school? C’mon, that’s just sad.

But, hey! PZ doesn’t tell me who I have to invite into my living room (virtual or otherwise) and I extend him the same courtesy. But I’m not making book that any of the other contestants catch a clue.
#23 slang
March 20, 2009

are you keeping a tally of your facebook friends, PZ? Can we expect a graph soon?

How about for the next round: Pharyngula-Highlander, There Can Be Only One!
#24 Screechy Monkey
March 20, 2009

Wow, a 2-for-1 Friday Happy Hour Special!

Or should I say, a Friday Happy Monkey Hour Special?
#25 AdamK
March 20, 2009

Whining. What a good idea, Petey!

But you left off the supercilious insulting and misstating of facts.
#26 DaveG
March 20, 2009

I will use my vast powers capriciously, and with malice…

Thou Art God?
#27 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

PZ, I might have missed it – being on the other side of the world and different time zones and so forth – did you ascertain if this Pete Rooke the same Pete Rooke who was nauseating us with vile analogies post-Crackergate? I think it’s someone else, and I’m not the only one.
#28 pcarini
March 20, 2009

And I never did find a good opportunity to work the phrase “rock out with your Kwok out” into a post.
#29 True Bob
March 20, 2009

I hope that the recent doom of some trolls, and more importantly the survival of other trolls, will evolve a better form of troll.
#30 Bride of Shrek OM
March 20, 2009

Sigh, it’s over. I was kind of hoping for a whole season of viewing pleasure.

Maybe next year we could send them all on some type of virtual Amazing Race whereby they have to win immunity each week by visiting some reputable scientific organisation website and writing a 200 word summation of the value of that organisation.

May I just say though I was a little disappointed in the survival efforts displayed by our trolls. None really put in an effort as such. Trolls these days, they just aren’t like they used to be.
#31 Glen Davidson
March 20, 2009

It is tough to see why anyone would think it would matter more than a little to be banned. Except, I guess, to trolls.

Even more, I wonder why anyone would let on that it bothers him so much, even if when it does.

Try to pretend that you have some perspective, trolls.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
#32 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

2. There are no two Pete’s. Someone dragged up a page by a paster of the same name. I was happy to take up the mantle. I have no children. Why this should matter, I am unsure.

I am grateful to His Benevolence for bestowing upon me posting rights. My answer to the challenge deserved more contemplation.
#33 Qwerty
March 20, 2009

Wow! No more Kwokery and simple Simon is gone too.

I guess Facilis didn’t need his semi-sought after immunity.

I still agree with some that Scott of Oregon should have been on the list of nominees, but I am sure that perhaps there will some day be another round of Pharyngula Survivor. It certainly beats the crappy TV show. (I watched it once at the finale of season one at a friend’s survivor party. What a waste of time. I think I was voted out of the party as I haven’t been reinvited to subsequent finale parties.)
#34 pcarini
March 20, 2009

2. There are no two Pete’s.

Does that mean, Pete, that you claim this disturbing list of analogies? Are they all your own work?
#35 Carlie
March 20, 2009

*deep breath*
Wow, the air smells a lot more fresh and clean now. Ahhhhh.
#36 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

I’ll heed the advice however.
#37 Tabby Lavalamp
March 20, 2009

Hooray! Let the Facebookopalypse commence!
#38 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

Finally, yes those analogies are of my construction. Fictional and fantasy, not an snapshot of my innermost thoughts/desires.
#39 wazza
March 20, 2009

Glad my namesake is gone (no, I’m not called John, nor Kwok)
#40 Feynmaniac
March 20, 2009

Ah, I was hoping for one more round where the contestants would fight to the death.

**pouts**.
_ _ _

Actually, besides Simon, I didn’t want to see any of the other contestants go. I thought Barb would offer much entertainment and FSTDT entries, but I’m not exactly shedding any tears that she’s gone.

Silverfox, Pete and Facilis are healthy reminders that there is a left side to the bell curve. Facilis was annoying. Repeating his arguments over and over and over while not responding to the criticisms. I think Ken Cope summed it up best: “I don’t see how posts from facilis pass the Turing test”. However he has stopped and has promised to not to do it again.

As for Petey, looking back at his posts from a few months ago one sees a change for the better. Whether this is from maturing, identity theft, or switching medication I don’t know. Also, if I didn’t know better I would have thought posting his sexual naivete was a routine to garner support.

AG is kinda what a love child of Walton and Rorschach (from Watchmen) would be like. Sure his posts are inane, but just killfile or ignore them like most people do.

Piltdown is eccentric. Like his moniker he seems to be a fossil, supporting a Catholic monarchy, suggesting that PZ was possessed by demons at one point, and using Latin terms. However none of this is cause for a banning.

I didn’t think John “The Facebook Menace” Kwok deserved to be banned. It has been suggested he suffers from Asperger’s or NPD and it wouldn’t surprise me if both were true.
_ _ _

I hope our Survivors will take this a huge hint to change their BEHAVIOR (no one is asking them to change your positions). They showed they were incapable of self-assessment but I hope they are capable of looking out for their self-interest.
#41 Menyambal
March 20, 2009

Seriously, in Sweet Pete’s defense, I saw *no* plagiarism. I just highlighted a bunch in the center of each of his defense’s paragraphs, and clicked on Search Google For:. I got nothing. I didn’t check each sentence, true, but I’m saying he didn’t plagiarize much, if at all.

Can somebody document this alleged plagiarism a bit better?
#42 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke2 wrote:

2. There are no two Pete’s. Someone dragged up a page by a paster of the same name. I was happy to take up the mantle. I have no children. Why this should matter, I am unsure.

Okay, definitely two different Pete Rookes. What are the odds of that?

Pete Rooke2 – did it not puzzle you when people were making all sorts of comments about disturbing analogies that you’d never written? At no time did it occur to you to point out you had no fucking idea why they were abusing you for being a sick, gimp-suit-loving torture-porn-watching freak show?
#43 PZ Myers
March 20, 2009

Current tally of facebook friends: 4414. I shall watch anxiously to see if that number plummets.
#44 Leigh Williams
March 20, 2009

I’ve never watched Survivor and I loathe “reality shows”, with the possible exception of The Amazing Race in very small doses, but this was lots of fun.

Pete, please give us just a little more clarification. Are you the only and only Pete Rooke who has ever posted here?
#45 The Helvetica Scenario
March 20, 2009

I wonder if he’ll give the character a clever name, like M.Z. Pyers.
#46 tsig
March 20, 2009

P Z
“time to cut off his little obsession”

He might be obsessed but cutting it off is cruel.
#47 pcarini
March 20, 2009

Assuming that I sell this novel and write another, I’ll be certain you’ll appear in that one too.

Your vanity press will be so proud!
#48 IST
March 20, 2009

I was (wow, am I actually saying this?) glad to see that we didn’t remove Pete… if only because he stands to learn from being here if he opens his mind to the responses. Why, just today, he learned what plagiarism is! @Pete Rooke> It’s a typical undergrad mistake, and one of which I’m continually trying to disabuse my HS students. Learn from it, is all.
#49 thalarctos
March 20, 2009

I wonder if he’ll give the character a clever name, like M.Z. Pyers.

That’s veering dangerously close to Davison territory, so yeah, probably.
#50 The Biologista
March 20, 2009

This guy’s threats make no sense to me.

“I know a person some people have heard of. I’m going to write a terrorist character as a reference to you. The few people who get it won’t understand what the fuck it has to do with anything. So you better reconsider.”
#51 Screechy Monkey
March 20, 2009

The Mighty Namedropper wrote: “Assuming that I sell this novel ”

Somehow I don’t think PZ has anything to worry about. Kwok’s magnum opus has “vanity press” written all over it. And once he gives away free copies to all the people he knows, he’ll be too broke to attempt another.
#52 The Science Pundit
March 20, 2009

@SLC (#5)

So Mr. Kwok who has already been banned by Abbie Smith over at ERV for being a cyberstalker is now banned at pharyngula for being an asshole.

I wonder if there’ll be a villianous female character in his book?
#53 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

I stand by everything I wrote previously. OTT it may have been but the context must be borne in mind. Sock puppeting is a bannable offense.
#54 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

PZ Myers,

not that I agree with Mr. Kwok but he was likely referring to quality and not quantity.
#55 Cruithne
March 20, 2009

So PZ is going to be an IRA man?

I knew those shifty eyes and that beard was there for a reason.
Ah well, I’m moving back to Belfast next week, after four years away. I’ll look out for you PZ.
#56 The Helvetica Scenario
March 20, 2009

I’m willing to guess Kwok’s novel will have more references to his high school than a Dan Brown novel.
#57 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Thou Art God?

*Waves hands frantically*
Ixne on the odGe! Ixne on the odGe!

Great comp – and all done without “unmasking” anyone. I certainly know which of the banned I wouldn’t like to have with me if I ever blunder into quicksand…
#58 Collin Tierney
March 20, 2009

What an idiot. In a defamation case the most difficult element to prove is actual malice, and… Congrats to Kwok for ensuring all the evidence is in place prior to any publication he might make.
#59 Blake Stacey
March 20, 2009

He also threatened to complete his novel and include me as a character, ala Michael Crichton.

Dang. It’s too bad my novel is all wrapped up and stamped with an ISBN, or I could have reciprocated in kind.
#60 Dahan
March 20, 2009

So PZ, when do the “I survived Survivor: Pharyngula!” T-Shirts come out?
#61 Avenel
March 20, 2009

Just as a counter, I went ahead and added PZ as a friend on facebook. It would be cool if the numbers actually went up from this.
#62 eddie
March 20, 2009

Right now I’m watching Part Troll by the genius Bill Bailey.
Hey! Have facebook come through with those burgers yet?
#63 Phyloograptus
March 20, 2009

Does anyone else see the strangeness in the fact that the terrorist is an IRA terrorist, who were Catholic terrorists continuing a religious war against the protestants and he bases this terrorist on an athiest !
#64 CrypticLife
March 20, 2009

I really think John Kwok was trying to get banned with his “threats”. C’mon, loss of Facebook friends?? Being parodied in a novel? Even if someone managed to carry out such threats on me I’d likely just laugh. I probably would have had him banned the first day just for the hilarity of seeing him try to carry out his threats.
#65 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

PZ
I’m writing you into my book, and you’re going to me a big dumb poopy-head meaney!!
I’m also telling Stephen Hawking…and my mother…and my mother is a very powerful person…and she says I’m the handsomest guy at school.
So there.
#66 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

eddie,

I switched over after Newsnight Review. I find him a remarkably unfunny man.
#67 Carlie
March 20, 2009

Man, everyone on Facebook needs to go look at PZ’s page. The Kwokocalypse continues.
#68 uknesvuinng
March 20, 2009

Can John Kwok be any sadder? I’ve got a long abandoned Facebook account. I think I’ll go log in and add PZ just for the hell of it.
#69 Sandi Hj
March 20, 2009

Oh NOES!!1! PZ’s Facebook friends have plummeted to 4,612!

Oh, wait, never mind.
#70 SLW13
March 20, 2009

I think Kwok is the only person I’ve ever seen/heard of outside of a bad movie who managed to become a caricature of himself.
#71 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke wrote (about Bill Bailey)

I switched over after Newsnight Review. I find him a remarkably unfunny man.

Then there’s something wrong with you.

Well, something else wrong with you, that is. No doubt you don’t think much of Tim Minchin, either. Still, I can’t blame you – if I held ridiculous archaic beliefs that comedians could make so many jokes out of I’d probably struggle to appreciate them, too.

I saw Rich Hall last night; he made a joke about how Americans could never understand why the English put Darwin on their money.
#72 Kel
March 20, 2009

I would find it hard to see how Pete Rooke could like Bill Bailey, it’s like expecting a high school student to appreciate Shakespeare.
#73 druidbros
March 20, 2009

So Mr. Kwok who has already been banned by Abbie Smith over at ERV for being a cyberstalker is now banned at pharyngula for being an asshole. Maybe he should start his own blog so he can trumpet his high school days ad nauseum.

I fully expect him to turn up on the nausea producing reality show…’High School Reunion’.

PZ, many thanks for the great entertainment this week. I cannot remember when I have had so much fun reading the comments.
#74 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

How many notes feature the queen’s head? Something many Americans would also struggle to understand, no?
#75 PZ Myers
March 20, 2009

OH NOES! Now it’s 4723! Behold the power of the Kwok!
#76 Sili
March 20, 2009

And if you don’t behave with the Muslims, I might do a “Pontius Pilate” act and give my cousin Jim and his CAIR buddies carte blanche to deal with you as they see fit.

What the squid does that even mean?

Current tally of facebook friends: 4414. I shall watch anxiously to see if that number plummets.

Why the ‘pod haven’t you handed in all those people to the tune of 441 cheesburgers yet? Or are you just doing it one burger at a time?
#77 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

I also dislike Eddie Izzard. Not Funny (to me). This has nothing to do with his situation and dress but he simply isn’t funny!
#78 Stephen Wells
March 20, 2009

@72: Oi! Some of us were properly brought up and appreciated Shakespeare from an early age!
#79 Faithful Reader
March 20, 2009

For “just desserts,” be sure to demand chocolate.

What a maroon.
#80 Numad
March 20, 2009

The Kwokster’s parting shots have me in continuous giggling.

Fear Kwok’s familial influence!
#81 druidbros
March 20, 2009

Oh man thats so funny. I am not convinced Kwok even knows what CAIR promotes. The following are from their Core Principles.

1. CAIR supports free enterprise, freedom of religion and freedom of expression.
2. CAIR is committed to protecting the civil rights of all Americans, regardless of faith.
3. CAIR supports domestic policies that promote civil rights, diversity and freedom of religion.

Guess you are in the clear PZ!
#82 pcarini
March 20, 2009

PZ, what comes around, goes around. [snip] …I might do a “Pontius Pilate” act and give my cousin Jim and his CAIR buddies carte blanche to deal with you as they see fit.

So his Muslim friends are going to ban you from their blogs now? Just when I thought he couldn’t one-up the Facebook threat…
#83 Andy Allen
March 20, 2009

Posted by: Avenel | March 20, 2009 7:35 PM
Just as a counter, I went ahead and added PZ as a friend on facebook. It would be cool if the numbers actually went up from this.< \blockquote>

Good idea – just did this too. Lets see if we can skew Kwok’s threats like we can skew polls

Andy
#84 'Tis Himself
March 20, 2009

Okay, definitely two different Pete Rookes. What are the odds of that?

I have a fairly uncommon name which is shared by a lawyer in Miami, a sailmaker in Sydney, and a physics lecturer in Cambridge.
#85 E.V.
March 20, 2009

I don’t get it.

It’s a blog.

A damned fine blog with lots of interesting posters, but why the screaming and flailing on being escorted out? Most hate the site anyway and Kwok was more content on playing 6 degrees of Stuy. Surely he can find other venues for his reveries, the geriatrics over at the Stuyvesant Retirement Home will love him.

I think PZ has some fans/stalkers who are very conflicted and possibly due for a straightjacket fitting.
#86 kamaka
March 20, 2009

Peter Rooke @32

Someone dragged up a page by a paster of the same name. I was happy to take up the mantle.

Pcarini @34 provided a link to one “Pete Rooke” creating odious analogies during The Crackergate.

I was happy to take up the mantle

Took up the mantle is correct, no way you wrote that.

I’m curious as to why you would take on someone else’s persona instead of creating one of your own.

Because I highly doubt your name is Peter Rooke.
#87 IST
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke> after your previous comments disparaging the skill of your teachers, I don’t doubt that you fail to find Eddie Izzard funny… much of his act depends on understanding the historical context. Also, I’m an American and fully grasp why you put your figurehead monarch on your money.. after all, noone on ours is alive. Homage is homage.
#88 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

I swore that I would not open a facebook account, but if that’s the way we’re going here…
THIS. IS. PHARYNGULA!!
#89 John Morales
March 20, 2009

Great. 9/91 posts by Pete Rooke.
When on thin ice, test it by jumping up and down…

Well, anyway, thanks Pete. Downloading Part Troll on your recommendation.
#90 Andy Allen
March 20, 2009

Darn – blockquote failure. And it looked so nice on preview…

Andy
#91 eddie
March 20, 2009

Awesome!
The blurb on BB’s next DVD release;

“I find him a remarkably unfunny man.” – Pete Rooke
#92 Ken Cope
March 20, 2009

I’ve never watched Survivor and I loathe “reality shows”, with the possible exception of The Amazing Race in very small doses, but this was lots of fun.

My beloved wife (whose father not only taught college English, his best friend had George Lucas as an English student at Modesto JC) and I spent 5 wonderful years living in a tiny apartment in Sausalito, with a balcony from which we could view Mt. Tamalpais, the Bay Bridge, the houseboat in which Alan Watts once lived, and the rest of the Richardson Bay across to Tiburon and Angel Island. We rented it from a couple who were not only among the first contestants on the premiere episodes of The Amazing Race, they were also the very first openly gay couple on any reality TV show.

Uh-oh, wait PZ–I’ve said too much. Don’t Kwok me, bro! Don’t Kwok me! (and if you click on my name and look at my picture, you can see a very underexposed view of Dave Gibbons from the back, being interviewed by a Wired.com film crew)
#93 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

kamaka,

The analogies were mine. The persona of the pastor linked to on this site is what I took up the mantle to.

They however, are utterly unrelated to me and have never (to my knowledge posted on this site). I am the only Pete Rooke of Pharyngula.
#94 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Fake Pete Rooke wrote:

How many notes feature the queen’s head? Something many Americans would also struggle to understand, no?

Well, perhaps – but only if the Americans in questions were as stupid as you appear to be, dimwit. Does the term ‘head of state’ mean anything to you? I suspect most Americans are aware of where the Queen fits into UK social structure.

And why am I not surprised someone like you doesn’t like Eddie Izzard either? I don’t rate him as highly as Tim Minchin or Bill Bailey, but he’s still clever and funny. And a good dramatic actor when he wants to be.

Kel – I never appreciated Shakespeare ’til after high school either. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say I thought that was typical.
#95 Rowan
March 20, 2009

Unless there are two people on Facebook named PZ Myers at the University of Minnesota Morris, I am seeing a friend count of 4,311 currently. This is an increase since March 17 when it was 4,033, but a decrease of what PZ posted up thread.

John Kwok has gained one to bring his massive total to 416 as of today. Interestingly he hasn’t dropped himself from PZ’s friend’s list.

Hrm…
#96 pcarini
March 20, 2009

I am the only Pete Rooke of Pharyngula.

The other one’s been turned into a book…
#97 'Tis Himself
March 20, 2009

…and give my cousin Jim and his CAIR buddies carte blanche to deal with you as they see fit.

It would appear Jim and his buddies need Kwok’s permission to do anything. How sad for them.
#98 foolfodder
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke said:

I also dislike Eddie Izzard. Not Funny (to me).

Sacrilege, burn the heretic!
#99 pcarini
March 20, 2009

Wowbagger: Just out of curiosity, why do you think this is a different P. Rooke? I’m inclined to take him at his word, and I don’t think anyone else would claim those crackergate posts.
#100 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke wrote:

The analogies were mine. The persona of the pastor linked to on this site is what I took up the mantle to.

Emphasis mine, to point out poor sentence construction. Have you suffered head trauma in the months you’ve been away? Are you on heavy medication that affects your cognitive functioning? I ask this because the original Pete Rooke, for all is vileness, seemed to be a lot better at stringing sentences together than you are.
#101 kamaka
March 20, 2009

Pete @93

The persona of the pastor linked to on this site is what I took up the mantle to.

They however, are utterly unrelated to me and have never (to my knowledge posted on this site)

This is babble.

Try answering in English.

You DID NOT write that stuff.
#102 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

@ Wowbagger

I believe I conversed with you around the time of the desecration. Your posts always stand out for their completely hostile tone and a style which lacks even trace elements of charity/humo(u)r.
#103 Marc Abian
March 20, 2009

I’m in the same boat as Pete. What I’ve seen of Bailey and Izzard didn’t make me laugh at all. The claims made by some posters here than the former was funnier than Dylan Moran was quite amsuing however.
#104 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

Ken Cope @#92 with the KWOK-BLOCK!!

Alright, a round of name dropping in honor of the Kwokinator.
On a long acid trip night, I hung out with The Smashing Pumpkins.
I ran security at a private party for Green Day.
I ran into Axel Rose while he was buying cigarettes at a shell station.
There are several more, but the biggest one was when I met PZ Myers in Columbus, except there was no acid.
Dammit PZ, where was the acid?
#105 'Tis Himself
March 20, 2009

Bill Bailey can be funny but he can be terribly unfunny as well.
#106 Feynmaniac
March 20, 2009

Petey has also wrote :

I have counselled in prisons and not come across such filth.

Odd that a 22-year old would have counseled in prisons. There is something fishy going on here….

I half suspected the real Pete Rooke posted those analogies during crackergate, left, and then a Poe stole the name and began reposting them.

He makes his original creepy “book of human skin” analogy here. His tone has changed much since then. I wonder if PZ could check the email and IP to see if it matches the current Rooke’s. It either are the same it’s the probably same guy. If they don’t maybe we should investigate further…..
#107 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

pcarini wrote:

Wowbagger: Just out of curiosity, why do you think this is a different P. Rooke? I’m inclined to take him at his word, and I don’t think anyone else would claim those crackergate posts.

There seem to be vast inconsistencies between the two, both in content and tone – I am, amongst other things, a writer (of sorts); it’s something I look at in everything I read.

The original Pete Rooke represented himself as much older – he talked about the awful things ‘young people’ do, and also mentioned that he occasionally counseled people in prison – and he wrote in a more formal style.

This new Pete Rooke has revealed that he’s (IIRC) 22 – and in another post he told another poster to ‘fuck off’, something the original Pete Rooke never did, despite the hundreds of far more insulting comments he received (many from me) during the Crackergate posting frenzy.

I tend to take people at their word, too – but there’s just something triggering my spidey-sense on this one. Admittedly, the current Pete Rooke might be the ‘real’ one and the earlier one just a persona he concocted – but I don’t think so.

Why would he do it? I’ve no idea. Why do any of our trolls do what they do?
#108 'Tis Himself
March 20, 2009

Alright, a round of name dropping in honor of the Kwokinator.

My boss is a woman that probably none of you have ever heard of. I doubt you know her husband either. I once ate pizza bought by an author who had just sold a reference book on fuels and lubricants. I am on a first name basis with several people famous for their anonymity.
#109 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

My gap year was spent working for a charity in South Africa. Although it may have been grand to call it counselling it providing CV/job advice.

As to the analogies I can only repeat that they are fantasies only in the sense that they are fictional imaginings. They reflect not one iota on my innermost desires/motives.

If IP adresses are determined by the service provider (rather than individual machines) then it will bear this out.
#110 pcarini
March 20, 2009

@Wowbagger #107: Gotcha.. Something does seem odd about Rooke becoming so active again, having been out of sight for so long after Crackergate. The “fuck off” was so out of character that I was sure someone else had stolen his handle for that one, given how much the old Rooke whined about swearing.

I guess I’ll have to keep my eyes open from here on out – what sort of twisted asshole, even in jest, would take the persona of Pete Rooke?
#111 Dustin
March 20, 2009

Oh, crap. Do you know what Kwok is going to turn into after he sends his literary pile of compost to a vanity press? He’s going to start calling himself a “published writer” every time he talks about his high school.
#112 Sioux Laris
March 20, 2009

John Kwok, the cartoon threat was gone,… and there was much rejoicing. [pennants wave] yeeaaah.

Frankly, Mr. Rooke comments much, much too often. He sounds like a teenager who needs to shut up and listen more, and ask some questions rather than let us know what is on his mind. (and that is, as Basil Fawlty answered when asked about what the corpse in the basket was doing: “Not much.”)
#113 Feynmaniac
March 20, 2009

Pete, how about this:

A long time ago at college I was engaged in a heated debate with a classmate, whose name escapes me right now. He was arguing that the idea papal infallibility was flawed.
#114 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

The other alternative is that Rooke suffers from one or more psychiatric/psychological disorders. That would probably account for both the current state (he’s on medication), the previous one (he hadn’t been diagnosed) and the discrepancy.
#115 Josh
March 20, 2009

And then there were…well, how ever many of us there are left.

Good bye, Simon. The air lacks that distinct air of feces/faeases now…and that’s a good thing.
#116 kamaka
March 20, 2009

Honestly, Pete, you’re just a ghost on the net and I don’t give a crap about you or what you have to say. In fact, I doubt I would ever respond to you again.

Whoever you are, you are not the person who posted during Crackergate.

And why would you claim those weird analogies as your own? That was some nasty stuff. Does claiming it give you a sense of power?

Hey, Petey boy, you been sittin’ in the basement in your underwear too long.

Take a shower, put on some street clothes, pack a bag, say goodbye to your mom, and go get a life.
#117 Badger3k
March 20, 2009

Gotta say that I never found Izzard funny, but I haven’t seen too much of him. No idea who Bill Bailey is, except for the old song from the 40′s (?) – also used in the first episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Gil Gerard show) – IIRC. Think Tim Minchin is hilarious, and very sharp as well.
#118 scooter
March 20, 2009

Wow @ 107

Why do any of our trolls do what they do?

Yeah we need a better class of trolls, that’s for sure. Back in the USENET days, I used to troll a lot of the right wing groups, alt.limbaugh and so forth.

I used to study them and figure out where they disagreed, then I would try to start fires around those issues, and getting them fighting amongst themselves. That’s good trolling. These trolls we have are fucking chowderheads.

Yall feed them too easily, that’s why they keep hanging around at the kitchen door, pharyngula is sort of a charity for thick skinned trolls who just want something to interact with, even if it’s at their expense, so they come here, throw the line in the water, and get a bite every time.

Although I missed out on Barb, I didn’t drop in too often this winter, sounds like she was something else, I would have liked tangling with the Barb I suspect.
#119 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

I think I liked Pete’s posts better before he wasn’t banned.
Hey Pete – you’re going to Hell. Woooooooooooooo!

But I think we can expect some films based on Kwok’s forthcoming books, such as:
“Gone with a whine”
“Alumnni Robot”
“My School Musical”
“The AlmaMater”
“Akwockalypse Now”
#120 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

College in the UK is typically used to refer to higher education centres for 16-18 year olds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form_college
#121 Dianne
March 20, 2009

Supposing John Kwok’s novel is completed, sold, and published, didn’t he just hand PZ Myers all the evidence he needs for a successful defamation of character suit? I thought one was supposed to at least pretend in public that the similarities were coincidental.
#122 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete, you asked what you could do to avoid being banned. Here’s a short list
1) Realize we don’t give a shit about your opinion, so don’t give it, and more importantly, don’t repeat it.
2) Being a godbot, you are in hostile territory and should keep a low profile (don’t post often)
3) When challenged to provide data, like say the physical evidence for your imaginary god, either put up or shut up. No evasions.
#123 Marie the Bookwyrm
March 20, 2009

I’m just curious here, Pete. As a 22 year-old, do you really consider age 16 (to 18) to be ‘a long time ago’? Personally, I think of ‘a long time ago’ as a minimum of 10 years.

*Totally unrelated to Pete*–LMAO at Kwok achieving his own banishment!
#124 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

Six years? At times yes, at times no. It depends on the context and my thought processes etc.

NoR,

despite your best efforts I have been saved from banning. There is enough common ground for me to act as a valuable intermediary between two disparate communities.
#125 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

One of Pete Rooke’s comments in his previous incarnation:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/now_ive_got_bill_donohues_atte.php#comment-973131

Have a read. Does this sound like the one who’s posting now?
#126 Cath the Canberra Cook
March 20, 2009

LOL, nay, veritably ROFL at the facebook thread!

Hey, PZ, I actually am a published writer! And my sister went to school with a famous actress! So that must mean something, though what, I’m not quite sure. The Kwakpot never quite explained the relevance.

(For the curious: I write restaurant reviews for the local newspaper.)
#127 sparkomatic
March 20, 2009

Kitty’s bitch @104
I ran into Richard Simmons in the Baltimore airport on the way to my high school reunion…top that for a load of Kwok!

Anthony K
You made beer come out of my nose…

I think being banned for narcissistic horseshit should indeed be heretofore referred to as being “Kwoked”.
#128 Kel
March 20, 2009

(For the curious: I write restaurant reviews for the local newspaper.)

In the Canberra Times?
#129 Mark
March 20, 2009

All I have to say to Kwok is what Vice President Dick Cheney said to Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor.
#130 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

There is enough common ground for me to act as a valuable intermediary between two disparate communities.

Pete, unless you renounce your god and religion, and embrace the scientific method, there will be no common ground except in your deluded mind. That is precisely what I was warning you against. You are in a world of your own, and it does not include most of the Pharyngulites. Realize that and act accordingly. Consider yourself a hostile poster, and never pretend you are a regular. That way can can continue to comment. Otherwise, I do predict you will be banned. Not by me, as I don’t have that authority. This is PZ’s blog, and I get the feeling he doesn’t see his blog as a bridge to the religious, which apparently you do. That is what will get your banned.
#131 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

Wowbagger,

as I’ve said the context must be taken into account. That particular comment was generated online in anger:
http://www.pakin.org/complaint/

I added in a few sentences to make it more relevant.
#132 Nanu Nanu
March 20, 2009

Name dropping thread? I’m related by marriage (his) to the director of the original “Planet of The Apes”!
Does that give me some evo-cred? Everyone loves talking monkeys on horseback.

“Akwockalypse Now”

I l-o-fucking-l’d
#133 mayhempix
March 20, 2009

That squirmy Kwoksucker is gone
and he worked real hard to achieve it.

I don’t blame PZ for banning him outright.
Kwok’s threats were both lame and vicious at the same time…
no mean feat that.

Rooke seems sincere in his desire to let us know
he is the one and only Pete Rooke on Pharyngula.
Why he wants to claim credit for it remains a mystery.
I guess he’s proud of the anal fixations and repressed sexual fears
that he projects through religious myths and fantasies.
#134 David Marjanovi?, OM
March 20, 2009

My answer to the challenge deserved more contemplation.

Indeed so. Please explain what (…if anything…) you meant by “scientism”.

I didn’t think John “The Facebook Menace” Kwok deserved to be banned. It has been suggested he suffers from Asperger’s or NPD and it wouldn’t surprise me if both were true.

And that’s exactly why he’s incapable of changing his behavior. He’s incapable of no longer being annoying. Removing him was all that could be done.

John Kwok has gained one to bring his massive total to 416 as of today. Interestingly he hasn’t dropped himself from PZ’s friend’s list.

I have a fairly uncommon name which is shared by a lawyer in Miami, a sailmaker in Sydney, and a physics lecturer in Cambridge.

Ha. There’s a guy with my full name here in France at the same bank! And except in Poland, where it’s spelled with w, my first name is pretty rare outside of English-speaking countries.
#135 ZK
March 20, 2009

Blimey, should we have a whip round and buy PZ a new pair of boots so that he can quake in them?

John Kwok’s threats are like being savaged by poodles, no?
#136 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Supposing John Kwok’s novel is completed

I predict he won’t get far with it. I mean, what will his characters do when they leave school? It doesn’t matter anyway though, because he would have had furious rows with them all by page 20, and would probably have been banned from his own book well before Chapter 6.
#137 That Other Guy
March 20, 2009

Man, what is WRONG with that Kwok guy…
#138 windy
March 20, 2009

Alright, a round of name dropping in honor of the Kwokinator.

I am related to a nearly successful female presidential candidate. One of my teachers at my prominently situated but academically un-impressive high school went on to become a presidential press secretary. And all this is even less impressive if you realize I’m not talking about US politics…
#139 David Marjanovi?, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete, unless you renounce [blah blah blah]

Nerd, I’ve said it before: you are getting tedious.

That particular comment was generated online in anger:
http://www.pakin.org/complaint/

It does look automatically generated.
#140 Jackal
March 20, 2009

ZK,

Standard poodles are about the same size as dobermans, and even toy poodles have viciously sharp teeth and claws (that have savaged my ankles many a time (damn my relatives and their bratty poodle)). I’d say it’s more like having pingpong balls tossed at you by a two-year-old.
#141 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke,

You got me there – I hadn’t counted on a blather-generating program.

I’m guessing, then, that much of your earlier material was appropriated from other sources, which would explain the discrepancies in tone between then and now.

So if it is true then so be it; I’ll not question it any further. Though why you’d choose to misrepresent yourself as a creepy old Catholic necrophile is beyond me – but I can’t say I’m not glad to know that such a creature doesn’t exist.
#142 Kel
March 20, 2009

So if it is true then so be it; I’ll not question it any further. Though why you’d choose to misrepresent yourself as a creepy old Catholic necrophile is beyond me – but I can’t say I’m not glad to know that such a creature doesn’t exist*.

*ahem, Piltdown Man
#143 Alan Kellogg
March 20, 2009

I pissed off Groucho Marx once. I was nine. Some people just don’t appreciate getting your autograph.
#144 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

More name dropping.
I met Natalie Merchant. She seemed to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown at the time, so we didn’t really talk.
I helped Nirvava load their equipment in the van after a show. It was just before they were famous and I gotta say, they were cool but the show was crap.
Jello Biafra!! Only saw him for about two minutes, but he was super cool.
For the comic book fans;
I did a convention with John J Muth. He was very nice but I spent most of my time trolling for chicks. Hey, I was eighteen and attractive guys at comic conventions were very few and far between. you work with what you’ve got.
I know David Mack pretty well, but his reputation has taken a lot of hits since his tricks were discovered recently. Very nice guy though, regardless of his artistic shortcomings.
#145 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

I’m pleased we can put an end to that insidious rumour. I must make clear however that the analogies, and much else in sentiment at least, are of my own construction and I stand by them despite their OTT nature. They stand in the context in which they were written however. It is easy to mock in hindsight. Time dissipates all emotion.
#146 E.V.
March 20, 2009

At my former studio space, a woman and her boyfriend moved into the loft down the hall. She was very pretentious and always talked as if she came from money and knew several movers and shakers. She and I talked one day and she started dropping name after name and then said that she once worked for Dr. Leakey. I said, “Oh really?”, open to the fact that she may have actually worked for one of the family members. She assumed I did not know of Richard or Louis began to expound about Kenya and Lucy, to which I replied, “have you been to the Afar Triangle?” She brushed it off as if it were a non sequitur and babbled on.
I interrupted her trying to clarify by simply replying to her mention of Lucy, Australopithicus Afarensis? (Thank you SJG books)
She looked at me as if I were suffering from Tourettes. I knew then she was full of utter bullshit and soon discovered her type of personality disorder. She did know a few of the people she namedropped I later learned, only because she insinuated herself into people’s lives. Talking with her was an exercise in credulity. Kwok reminded me of her after just a few of his posts
#147 ZK
March 20, 2009

Jackal @140

Oi! My poetic licence clearly states that I have immunity from reality when attempting witty allusions and bon mots.

So there
#148 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Kel wrote:

*ahem, Piltdown Man

I believe Piltdown’s chief disturbing fantasy* is his dream of rimming the current Pope’s ass – not the ass of any of the dead ones, so he’s not so much a necrophile…

*_{Well, his chief disturbing sex fantasy. His hopes for instating some sort of nightmarish Catholic monarcho-theocracy – mostly out of Taliban-envy – is pretty awful, too.}
#149 Pete Rooke
March 20, 2009

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury if we are to name drop.
#150 WTFinterrobang
March 20, 2009

Pharyngulite A: What is that s-kwok I hear over at facebook?

Pharyngulite B: Oh, that’s just John Kwok’s last hurrah.
#151 Jackal
March 20, 2009

My uncle made small talk with Dan Akroyd without ever realizing who he was. My cousin sat next to Jimmy Carter for an entire flight without recognizing him. It stands to reason that I’ve encountered scads of celebrities without realizing it.
#152 nick nick bobick
March 20, 2009

Name dropping – Ha, ha ha! I pissed in the urinal next to Hans Bethe 10-12 years after he received his Nobel. He was a consultant at the company I worked for and had just finished participating in our monthly lecture series.
#153 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Complaints you say? I bet we all wish we had written

this!
#154 Necessarily Anonymous
March 20, 2009

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury if we are to name drop.

That’s nothing. I sucked his knob.
#155 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Pete Rooke wrote:

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury if we are to name drop.

Did you punch him in the face for his heresy?
#156 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury if we are to name drop.

Pete, people were making fun of Mr. Kwok, who got banned. One of his annoying traits was name dropping. So Mr. Kwok was being mocked by all the name dropping people. You didn’t realize this, or if you did, you did it wrong.
#157 Kaessa
March 20, 2009

Hrm… name dropping.

Well, I met Arlo Guthrie when he came into the store where I worked. I didn’t even know it was Arlo Guthrie until one of my co-workers just about passed out from excitement.

My ex-husband used to brag about having done coke off of a hubcap with the guys from the band Tesla before they were famous, does that count?

I got nothing. :p
#158 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

Oh my god!!
I almost forgot.
I used to see Jerry Springer at least once a week. He regularly came to a restaurant where I worked in the late eighties.
He was actually a nice guy. Horrible tipper, almost always with a trashy woman, but a nice guy.
He’s best known locally for writing personal checks to prostitutes. I don’t know if that’s commonly known outside of Cincinnati.
#159 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Seriously, Pete, shouldn’t you be praying? There’s a little girl in India who’s very poorly, and for want of one prayer from you, Jesus might just suck the life from her flimsy body.
On your knees man!
Anyway, if you aren’t being stupid and boring you’re being boring. If you want to learn anything, stick around. If not, fuck off.
#160 Rowan
March 20, 2009

Name dropping? Hmmmm… let’s see. You know what? I typed up a list of famous people I have met over my lifetime or are friends of mine. It is absurd when I read it over because of the various jobs and interests I have had I have encountered more people than I realised.

I find it amusing. These are simply people who have jobs that put them into the public’s eye so they are perceived as celebrities in their fields. They are no different than anyone else when it comes to living life except they are “known” by the public when their name is mentioned due to their reputations in the literary, entertainment and the sciences.
#161 Tziedel
March 20, 2009

I once spent the evening getting drunk and slow dancing with Frankie Avalon. He was very short and his over-hairsprayed hair kept sticking to my neck.
#162 AJ Milne
March 20, 2009

Fear the Kwok; He’s got such friends
As no one else. You make amends
And kiss his butt, or he’ll get pissed
And take you off his Facebook list.
He knows McCourt, he knew James Dean!
(And his neighbour’s cat
Once played for Queen.)

Fear the Kwok. This is no lie:
Respect him or your blog will die.
He’ll write a book–just you wait, boy!
Working title: ‘Did I Mention? I’m Stuy.’
Why, he knows Bono, he knew Ghandi!
(And his best friend’s dog
Went to school with Blondie.)

Fear the Kwok. You let him post!
Do it or your friend’s list’s toast.
He knew Einstein, he knew Freud.
And now he’s getting extremely annoyed.
Sure, it sounds like he’s off his meds,
But don’t screw with this guy–why, he’ll call in the feds!
Don’t you know who he is? Don’t you know who he knows?
He’ll call in the Company! And you’ll get the hose!

Fear the Kwok! No, really, man!
What!? How dare you do this? How dare you ban?
How dare you tell him his time here’s through?
Well, he means it, buddy! You’ll get what’s due!
He knew Hawking! He knew Cher!
(Her butler’s brother does his ferret’s hair.)
You’re askin’ for whupass–he can call down a hex!
As the gods are all on his rolodex!
#163 Horse-Pheathers
March 20, 2009

O narcissistic douchebag, go throw your childish fit,
Drop your names and play your games, you blithering lackwit.
Write your little novel — I doubt you’ll publish it.
And if they do, you’re still be you, you fetid Kwok of Shit.
#164 Feynmaniac
March 20, 2009

While we are on the subject, what famous people have commented here?

I know Richard Dawkins occasionally does, and Roger Ebert has done so twice. There was once a comment by a ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson’, but I don’t think we ever figured out if that was really him.
#165 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Didn’t John Kwok comment here once?
#166 John Morales
March 20, 2009

LOL

AnthonyK @165, you’re in my Molly list.
#167 speedwell
March 20, 2009

I got to hug Isaac Asimov backstage after he gave a talk at our local community college, when I was a teenager.
#168 Ken Cope
March 20, 2009

Well, I’ve enjoyed a beer with PZ Myers, an Illuminating Materialist from Pixar, and Scott Hatfield OM. A friend of The Countess snapped the pic. Clueless people would Kwok the event’s importance. It makes the time I danced with Angelyne at the fortieth birthday party of Micky Dolenz pale in significance.
#169 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

Rowan
Take the stick out of your ass and cough up the list.
This is the only oportunity to have it be funny instead of pretentious. Have some fun with it.
Met Trent Reznor. A friend of mine knows him well. He’s a jackass. His first album was awesome though.
#170 Ben
March 20, 2009

Hey Kwok,

The rules of punctuation are tricky, but if you’re going to write a novel, you’d better bone up.

Here’s a tip: If you can’t decide whether a comma should go inside or outside a close-quotation mark, always opt for inside. You’ll be right more often than you’ll be wrong. As it stands now, you’re wrong more often than you’re right.
#171 Kitty'sBitch
March 20, 2009

Ken Cope
I am a HUGE fan of Mickey Dolenz.
I’m sooooooo jealous.
Seriously, a fantastic vocalist.
#172 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

I once stood at a bar next to Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age. He seemed impressed by how high I was. I’ve also met assorted Australian musos who most of you wouldn’t have heard of.

Probably the most famous person I’ve met is Golden Globe winning and Oscar-nominated actress Brenda Blethyn. Oh, and Mandy Patinkin, who I met when he did a masterclass while he was here for the Cabaret Festival a couple of years back.
#173 Ben
March 20, 2009

@164

Christian Wright has commented here. He wrote this:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=wright_29_2
#174 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

Well I once met someone who knew Jesus.
#175 Wowbagger, OM
March 20, 2009

Ken Cope,

That’s you with the beard and long hair? Man, you were robbed – you should have been cast as Dumbledore
#176 j.t.delaney
March 20, 2009

Oh, dog. He knows Rick Moody! And he’s going to pretend a fictional IRA terrorist (who is “a sadistic terrorist and murderer”) is me! But you know, I don’t think I’ll reconsider.

John Kwok ‘knows’ Rick Moody? Puh-shaw! John is entirely too, too modest here (typically Kwok!) You see, he’s actually a very close friend of Rick, who did quite a lot of field work getting to know upper-crust socialite John. In fact, Rick Moody based most of the characters from an entire novel on John Kowk and his whole family — you may have heard of it, it was a little book called The Ice Storm. Now you see the calibur of individual you’re dealing with! I suggest you tread lightly, lest you say something hurtful and are immortalized by Johnny-boy in an (unpublished) novel forever.
#177 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 20, 2009

Let’s see. The Redhead met actress Dawn Wells at a book signing, and the book had several recipes for coconut cream pie…
#178 AnthonyK
March 20, 2009

He seemed impressed by how high I was

Awesome! How high were you?
#179 John Morales
March 20, 2009

Bah.

Not only do I not know any famous people, I don’t even know who most of the dropped names are.

Ah well.
#180 WTFinterrobang
March 20, 2009

I had a threeway with Adam and Eve some time ago.

WTF?

PS I think Cain is mine.
#181 debaser
March 20, 2009

I would like to point out the “Fuck the Homophobes” voting strategy produced spectacular results in this competition. I highly encourage everyone to adopt this strategy towards their non-electronic voting strategies.
#182 JackC
March 20, 2009

Ken @ 92 – dude, I love the hair – and your choice in beers. when my hair gets that long, it all curls up around my neck. I am suitably jealous.

Fenymaniac@113: that quote reminded me of something my father used to say about a friend of his in college. he would occasionally take a pose of deep thought and say…:

“I am inclined to doubt Avogadro ….”

JC – off to bed.
#183 ennui
March 20, 2009

Went to high school with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Still holding on to video of Trey’s karaoke rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” from last year’s Squidmas party, for blackmail purposes (not yet posted anywhere).

Once delivered a bedroom set to Penny Marshall’s home in the Hollywood hills. Once saw Steve Martin and Martin Mull walking down the street near Central Park.
#184 Ken Cope
March 20, 2009

Wowbagger @175, I was picking up my second grader Monday, when a young girl ran up and said, most sincerely, “Hi Jesus!” then turned around to her three older friends who apparently had put her up to it asking, “What?!” after I’d laughed and responded, “Try Lucius Malfoy.” A couple of years back, when a computer graphics student tried snark, “Whatever you say, Gandalf,” I told her, “It’s Saruman to you,” which stuck. At least people get that it’s more wizard than hippie, which I was way too young for.
#185 papa zita
March 20, 2009

A fly trapped in amber, never moving on, fixed in a moment of time, with nothing ever able to live up to high school? C’mon, that’s just sad.

No, Bryn. That’s Al Bundy!

Archaic Married With Children reference, since the character, like Kwok, ceased all social and moral development the moment he graduated High School. And spoke of the time incessantly after that moment.
#186 Sam C
March 20, 2009

I’m disappointed.

I expected a whole stream of posts as people stood up and shouted:
“I am Pete Rookus!”
“No, I am Pete Rookus!”
“No, I am Pete Rookus!”

Now, why didn’t that happen… oh… yes, Spartacus was a a leader and these were people who respected him… I get it now.
#187 Ken Cope
March 20, 2009

I am a HUGE fan of Mickey Dolenz.

Being able to identify The Monkees was the key to conversation with Helene, my sixth grade classmate with the long, straight, ironed blond hair, black fishnets, and matching white vinyl boots and mini skirt. The crazy thing is, even though I really did find myself dancing with Angelyne (the driver of the pink Corvette in Earth Girls are Easy who lived up the street from me in West Hollywood, I stopped thinking I was cool once I learned I’d missed the after party for Micky, held at Julie Newmar’s home and documented on videotape by a co-worker.
#188 Rowan
March 20, 2009

Here are a few of the names that people might know.

I have been kissed by Neil Gaiman. Shaken hands with Zahi Hawass. Met and have had long conversations with Mark Hamill, James Marsters, Walter Koenig, Jack Kirby, Forrest Ackerman, Jules Schwartz, Jeanne Kimball-Smith and Joe Cosmo (NASA Mars Program).

I have worked below the line in Hollywood, so I have encountered quite a few people due to various projects. Here are a few.

I got to meet Stan Winston while working on practical designs for the Iron Man Mark III suit because I work in armour. That was cool. Sitting in the conference room surrounded by all the creations from the studio was incredible.

I have talked Lou Ferrigno, who I swear has a portrait in his attic, on numerous occasions. I have had the displeasure of having to work with Gene Simmons from K.I.S.S. I have had the pleasure of holding the primate celebrity, Crystal, known as the little nasty antagonist in Night at the Museum and the upcoming Night at the Museum II. I have tried to explain digital networks to a confessed Luddite, James Spader, regarding why his analog Motorola cellphone from 1999 really needed to be replaced when he complained it didn’t work in 2006.

I have taken fencing lessons from the Russian Pentathlon coach, Gennadi Kleimenov.

Yeah, I shall quit now before I bore everyone.
#189 Kaessa
March 20, 2009

Ken @175.. Definitely Saruman, and I love the look.
#190 'Tis Himself
March 20, 2009

I once had a debate with Alan Greenspan about whether or not Budweiser is drinkable (I took the negative side).
#191 Kraid
March 20, 2009

And I never did find a good opportunity to work the phrase “rock out with your Kwok out” into a post.

But given the circumstances, there’s still an opportunity to use the term “Kwok blocked.” Strike while the iron’s hot!
#192 cpsmith
March 20, 2009

Name dropping eh? Well, I got to chat with Elizabeth May (leader of the Green Party) once at a house party and I’ve met Ellen Page (she is friends with my bother). Perhaps it is not too impressive, but I like these names better than any that Mr. Kwok was tossing about.
#193 Feynmaniac
March 20, 2009

Damnit, we got a Kwokidemic !
#194 Ken Cope
March 20, 2009

I got to hug Isaac Asimov backstage after he gave a talk at our local community college

But the way to Kwok out would be to claim that Isaac Asimov once threw you out of his apartment, a la Charlie Wagner (by the door rather than through the window, alas).
#195 Sastra
March 20, 2009

All right. I can drop names, too.

I once slow-danced on “the Titanic” with Richard Dawkins — this was after he dressed me up as a bunny. It felt very strange at the time, but I guess it sounds even stranger.

And I once told PZ about it, and made him laugh.
#196 tmaxPA
March 20, 2009

I once had a drink with Randy Quade in a hotel lobby in Pittsburg.
#197 Wowbagger, OM
March 21, 2009

AnthonyK wrote:

Awesome! How high were you?

I dunno; what units does one measure highness in?

Anyway, in the good (or bad, depending on how you view illicit drug use) old days when I used to take stuff, I always looked a lot more zonked than I actually was. Apparently my eyes became about 95% pupil and people would freak out when they saw me.
#198 Scott Hatfield, OM
March 21, 2009

Ken (#168) wrote:

Well, I’ve enjoyed a beer with PZ Myers, an Illuminating Materialist from Pixar, and Scott Hatfield OM. A friend of The Countess snapped the pic. Clueless people would Kwok the event’s importance. It makes the time I danced with Angelyne at the fortieth birthday party of Micky Dolenz pale in significance.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

OK, Ken, ya got me. I seriously, nearly fell on the floor laughing.

The funny thing is that I’ve been known to name-drop, especially when I’m on my blog.

It’s flattering to get a response from someone higher-up in the social pecking order of science, and I suppose if I was the obsessive type it could quickly become a habit. Name-dropping, that is, and not blogging.

Did I mention I have a blog? Also, when I’m not blogging I’m reading a blog, like this one. Blogs are good. I have one. You should read it. I’ve had people like Ken Cope leave comments on it. In fact, when I was in high school, I psychically predicted that I would somehow have famous people leaving me notes. That’s where the blog comes in. My blog. Reading it will do you good. You know that PZ Myers has left a post there. He didn’t go to my high school. But that is alright, though he does have a blog, but I think you should read mine. Did you know that I attended Desert High School? It was in a desert. But you knew that, probably. But, like other famous posters have pointed out, blogging is good and I do it well. At my own blog. Which is about me, and my interests. Which include blogging and talking about people who have commented on my blog. Some of them went to school with me. Others didn’t, but they still left comments. That is, comments on my blog that you should definitely read.

I guess you could say I grok Krok. I’m going to miss the little fella. Say! Maybe he’ll read this, and visit my blog!
#199 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

Met and have had long conversations with Mark Hamill, James Marsters, Walter Koenig, Jack Kirby, Forrest Ackerman, Jules Schwartz, Jeanne Kimball-Smith and Joe Cosmo (NASA Mars Program).

Out of that list, I can only claim to have met Forry Ackerman at an AFI event in honor of Ray Herryhausen, with Ray Bradbury there too to bask in reflected glory. My beautiful wife, however, attended high school, not at Bed Stuy, but in Modesto CA, a junior while James Marsters was a senior. We uploaded his senior photos scanned from her yearbook to the appropriate Buffy group on usenet, and some nice Buffy fans snagged them, copyrighted them, and hosted them for us all.
#200 Ichthyic
March 21, 2009

no one is asking them to change your positions

speak for yourself, if indeed you are even being honest with yourself.

no desire to see barb change her position?

or simon?

or Silver Fox?

or Piltdown?

you have got to fucking be kidding me.
#201 Bryn
March 21, 2009

Okay, Kwok was pitiable. Now he’s moved directly into batshit crazy-land. Good call to all those who voted to ban him and PZ.

(Oh! And I got to hug James Burke, author of “Connections” amongst other things, when he did a talk here. Golly! Maybe I should work that into a sig line along with where I went to HS and college!)
#202 Ichthyic
March 21, 2009

I once slow-danced on “the Titanic” with Richard Dawkins — this was after he dressed me up as a bunny. It felt very strange at the time, but I guess it sounds even stranger.

I once had an hour long debate with Paul Ehrlich about the role scientists should play in politics, while the cream of San Francisco Society looked on.

I went to grad school with Jonathan Wells, and used to have lunch with him once a week.

Biggest name drop:

I had drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.

:p
#203 Stardrake
March 21, 2009

Well, I worked with the Flying Karamazov Brothers (*slap*HO!) and Penn & Teller at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

So there! Nyah!
#204 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

I had drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.

We’re not worthy!
#205 Longstreet63
March 21, 2009

I once took high tea with the Duke of Wellington, but he was a bit standoffish, having died in 1852.

It quite spoiled the afternoon.
#206 Rowan
March 21, 2009

@Ken Cope at #199

I have known both the Rays for a number of years. They are a great pair to sit down and talk to. I helped with the King Kong portfolio of Harryhausen’s work that was printed at the time Peter Jackson’s version of the movie came out.

As for Marsters I worked with him with costuming on his recent film, DragonballZ. He is quite down to earth. I have had dealings with celebrities who seem to think are so special they need to be treated as though they poop diamonds or something.
#207 Jadehawk
March 21, 2009

i was gonna play the name-dropping game, but then decided not to out myself as a former hormonally-challenged airhead teen :-p
#208 Rowan
March 21, 2009

@Ken Cope #199

I looked at your link. I have met some people in the world of animation you may be familiar with, John Lasseter, John Pomeroy, Eric Scott, Dan Camp, Ollie Thomas, and Frank Thomas.
#209 Ichthyic
March 21, 2009

@the Rookster:

It is easy to mock in hindsight.

It was easy to mock at the time you posted them, too, if indeed you did. just go back and read just how well and thoroughly we mocked them.

I’m not with the others that see “hope” in you.

I know you’re just a fucking troll.
#210 Rowan
March 21, 2009

Hrm… Make that Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Too close to bedtime. Brain is getting fogged.
#211 Leigh Williams
March 21, 2009

Ken Cope #92 — Sausalito with a view! I envy you. And I believe I remember your landlords; we did watch some of the first season of Amazing Race, and its inclusiveness is one of the things I like about it. Thanks for the reminiscence! (I’m sure PZ won’t kwok you, bro. But let’s just reinforce the meme, shall we?)
#212 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

Marsters…is quite down to earth.
Modesto does that to you.

Ray Bradbury used to have lunch at Disney’s all the time to be with his pal Harper Goff, the Imagineer who designed the Nautilus. The best Ray story I have is from the Voyager II flyby of Saturn when the Planetary Society held a big event in Pasadena, hoping the craft would survive the ring plane crossing so it could make it past the next two gas giants. We all watched the hot pixels feed one at a time onto the big screen, fresh from JPL (Look! Is that noise, or Hyperion?). Ray was a guest on a panel Ted Koppel was hosting for live broadcast on Nightline, with Bruce Murray, Gene Roddenberry, and Carl Sagan. They’d apparently had a lot to drink at dinner, and Ray decided that he’d get all mythological and embody the essence of the patriarchal god Saturn, acting all Chronos at us. He actually urged all the women in the audience to support the men who have made the space program possible, so that when we build colonies on Mars, “You can all wear short skirts and make babies for them! [BURP] What? WhadidIsay? Whyareyou all booing! You haven’t understood a thing I’ve said and yer all FCCheads!” and he somehow found the wings of the stage. He very graciously held court with fans afterward as if nothing had happened.

That’s the nice thing about having lived in LA. If there’s anybody you’ve ever wanted to meet, and tell them how much you’ve admired their work, they’re likely to have had to live or work there for a time also.
#213 Rowan
March 21, 2009

@Leigh Williams #211

Amazing Race: Season 13 had two players I have known as friends for many years, Mark Yturralde and Bill Kahler.

Um, probably time for me to shut up now, right?
#214 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

I’m sure PZ won’t kwok you, bro

So, to be kwokked is to be banned for being profoundly and cluelessly full of yourself, but I like Scooter’s usage: to Kwok is the opposite of grok.
#215 scooter
March 21, 2009

Biggest name drop:
I had drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.
:p

One up, I documented you having drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.

oh wait, so did you, where is that Flicker link?

might as well drag these links out again, make everybody jealous.
Here is Sastra’s final interview, she has since resurrected.
http://acksisofevil.org/sastra.html

PZ and the West Coast gang at the funky commie bookstore in LA.
http://acksisofevil.org/pz-la.html

Scooter interviews PZ on the QM
http://acksisofevil.org/aai.html

more photos from Ich
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichthyic/sets/72157607560511322/

there’s some photdropping for ya
#216 Discombobulated
March 21, 2009

In memoriam to Kwok the name-dropping blowhard,

I ran into Ron Jeremy at a Sigur Ros concert at the Hollywood Bowl a few years ago.

The funny thing is, he was about 8 rows behind us; I guess porn doesn’t pay that well after all…
#217 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

I worked with the Flying Karamazov Brothers

I got to get called up on stage as a stooge for a bit with The Reduced Shakespeare Company. I won a condom.
#218 scooter
March 21, 2009

Biggest name drop:
I had drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.
:p

One up, I documented you having drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.

oh wait, so did you, where is that Flicker link?

might as well drag these links out again, make everybody jealous.
Here is Sastra’s final interview, she has since resurrected.
http://acksisofevil.org/sastra.html

PZ and the West Coast gang at the funky commie bookstore in LA.
http://acksisofevil.org/pz-la.html
#219 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

I worked with the Flying Karamazov Brothers
and I hit send before typing what I meant to in the first place; I’m both jealous and impressed! and Penn and Teller too?
#220 scooter
March 21, 2009

more photo dropping

Scooter interviews PZ on the QM
http://acksisofevil.org/aai.html

more AAI 08 photos from Ich
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichthyic/sets/72157607560511322/
#221 Pharyngulette
March 21, 2009

(ahem, ahem)

You think ol’ Kwokkie could drop names? Ha. Stand back everyone. I met and chatted to Tom Lehrer when I was fifteen years old.

You do realise that, at that age, I was still in (dramatic chords) high school?

That is all.
#222 PZ Myers
March 21, 2009

I got to be part of a routine with the television clown, JP Patches.

He made fun of the way I dress.
#223 sparkomatic
March 21, 2009

Dawn Wells…oh man she is so hot!
#224 Leigh Williams
March 21, 2009

Ken: “I like Scooter’s usage: to Kwok is the opposite of grok.”

Good call, o Saruman the White, and I hope we remember that one.

But I fear that after this thread, “to kwok” now unalterably means

1) to namedrop in a futile attempt to disguise your hopeless and well-deserved obscurity, esp. in an exaggerated manner for comedic effect
2) to issue ridiculous and empty threats based on imaginary “pull” with influential people
#225 Kaessa
March 21, 2009

PZ @222

I got to be part of a routine with the television clown, JP Patches.

OMG I met JP Patches when I was in fourth grade! I used to watch his show EVERY morning before school.
#226 scooter
March 21, 2009

#221 Tom Lehrer

That’s pretty goddam impressive, I play his stuff on the radio and it definitely passes the test of time, because everybody hates the Jews.

I once hung out with a guy who hung out with JP Patches.

I’ll see your Lehrer with a Zappa, fifteen minutes drinking budweisers and chatting in Erie Pa, now if that doesn’t sound like a set-up for a Mothers Song….

I have a pretty good list because I’m a small time media maggot, but Frank is the most impressive.
#227 Ken Cope
March 21, 2009

I ran into Ron Jeremy

Is it true what Nanny Ogg says about The Hedgehog?

I met and chatted to Tom Lehrer when I was fifteen years old.

Tom Lehrer? Doesn’t he teach math at Santa Cruz with a Schlafly?

I got to be part of a routine with the television clown, JP Patches

You should follow Scott Hatfield’s advice @198 and get your own blog! Oh, wait, never mind.
#228 Leigh Williams
March 21, 2009

Pharyngulette #221

Folks, we have a winner!
#229 Sven DiMilo
March 21, 2009

Zappa’s hard to beat, scooter.

I dunno. Once I did coke with Joe Farrell.
Wait, wait: my ex-wife was a close friend of Tony Dow (Wally Cleaver).
#230 Leigh Williams
March 21, 2009

Oh noes! Pharyngulette’s Lehrer was trumped by a Zappa!

I’m feeling an sudden urge to drop in on Scott Hatfield. I wonder where that came from?
#231 Pharyngulette
March 21, 2009

[says] “Thank you everyone! Yes, I like to take personal credit for the fact that my dad used to work at UCSC and was able to introduce me to Tom L one evening in the late ’70s.”

[thinks] “Fear my power to relieve lucky happenstances, bitches!”
#232 scooter
March 21, 2009

221

Pharyngulette #221
Folks, we have a winner

!WIN??!!! fuck that, we can’t have any winners, what about everybody else’s self esteem?

I hung out with Troy Conrad, (who is actually Jesus), Glenn Beck, the teletubbies, and the Beave two nights ago.

I have a recording to prove it:
The Bedwetting 9-12 Panic Attack from GlenBeckistan
#233 Pharyngulette
March 21, 2009

Heh. Relieve = Relive, actually.

Or maybe I’m just relieved?
#234 Leigh Williams
March 21, 2009

Wait, folks, wait . . . we’re getting a ruling from the judges . . .

And we find that Scooter’s kwoks lack the essential element of Connection to High School,

Thus, Pharyngulette’s Chat with Tom Lehrer While She Was in High School is still leading!
#235 Dust
March 21, 2009

Long ago and faraway I worked in a big casino near an even bigger lake. Sometimes, I would take the back stairs behind the kitchens to get to the employee areas before starting work. One time, there was Lawewnce Welk, lost on the stairs-I gave him directions to get out. I like to say I “told Lawrence Welk where to go.”

I blew my big chance though, another time when going through the doors at the employee entrance, Steve Martin was leaving and we did the, almost bumping into each other little dance, and did I say “Excuuuse Meeeeee!” No, I missed my line.
#236 LC
March 21, 2009

Awww, I was waiting for a cage match.

Two trolls fighting (typing?) it out with the loser being banned. With of course, rotten fruit being thrown from the stands.

PZ could even have done the Roman style ‘Thumbs up/down’.
#237 Bride of Shrek OM
March 21, 2009

I jumped a barrier outside of Buckingham Palace to cross a road and nearly got my foot run over by some dickhead in a blue sedan. It was only on passing I realised I had given the finger to Prince Edward….and he well saw it.
#238 Pharyngulette
March 21, 2009

PeeZed, I’m getting a vision:

You must either renounce your evil ways with (____ remind me to fill in this blank later ___), or I will use my one-off highschool-age chat experience to influence Tom Lehrer to write and perform satirical tunes about you.

To. Your. Detriment.
#239 scooter
March 21, 2009

If you met Tom Lehrer in High School during National Brotherhood Week` and John Kwok wrote a novel about it, that would be so powerful, the Universe might implode.
#240 JCfromNC
March 21, 2009

Hm, name-dropping. Guess the best I can come up with is…

My son got pulled on stage to assist with an illusion when Penn & Teller came to town, and I spoke with Penn & shook Teller’s hand afterwards. But then, so did probably about 75% (at least) of the audience. Darn. I fail so hard.
#241 Tabby Lavalamp
March 21, 2009

http://www.cair.ca/

Yes, I’d be afraid of the Canadian Association of Interns and Residents if I were you.

(Before anyone corrects me, I’m aware it’s not that CAIR.)
#242 Rick R
March 21, 2009

Ichthyic- “I had drinks with Sastra, in a bar in downtown LA.”

Dude, I’m so fucking jealous.
#243 Rick R
March 21, 2009

Oooooh, so we’re name-dropping? OK!

Well, I’ve worked in the movie industry for 25 years, so I’ve seen plenty of celebs, and shit like that. And I’ve worked for a lot of famous directors. Coppola. Tim Burton. Jim Cameron. Sam Raimi.
But I work in visual effects, so nary a single one of em even know who I am. Meh.

Biggest highlight? Seeing Bruce Willis in the flesh in 1987. That experience removed for all time any doubt in my mind that I was, indeed, gay.
#244 Bride of Shrek OM
March 21, 2009

Rick R

To think, if you had seen Bruce Willis in the flesh circa 2008 your life may have tread a whole different path.
#245 me2
March 21, 2009

I haven’t been on facebook for over a year but I had to be added as one of PZ’s friends just to irritate the Kwak.

BTW, can anyone tell me what John Kwok’s facebook profile picture is supposed to be, because it looks like a giant booger to me – even with my glasses on.
#246 Cath the Canberra Cook
March 21, 2009

Kel: yes, the Canberra Times.
#247 Kel
March 21, 2009

Good effort there Cath, the CT is possibly the only newspaper in Australia worth reading.
#248 Peter Ashby
March 21, 2009

@Pete Rooke #66

Have you had a sense of humour bypass? His little ditty: I Will Not Look At Titties For A Year is a masterpiece. Based for all you Americans on the stat that the amount the US spends on making, distributing and purchasing porn in a year is more than the national debts of the whole of sub Saharan Africa. Only Mitch Benn can match him for musical comedy. Though you perhaps wouldn’t have got the ballad if you have never listened to any Hawkwind or The Scorpions. I’ve seen it many times before but I still cracked up at “The duck lies shredded in a pancake”.

Mind you that you don’t find him funny explains a lot.
#249 Peter Ashby
March 21, 2009

Oh and for those who have not encountered the wonderful Bill Bailey, here are the items in question.
I Will Not Look At Titties For A Year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXsAiyr-Im8

And Love Song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKKMLcGJ9EU

From the Part Troll DVD
#250 Rick R
March 21, 2009

Bride of Shrek- “To think, if you had seen Bruce Willis in the flesh circa 2008 your life may have tread a whole different path.”

Nah. He’s still got it.
#251 Der Bruno Stroszek
March 21, 2009

Bah, some people’s name-dropping is far too impressive to be a suitable tribute to The Kwok. It needs to be more pathetic, like: I humbly submit that one of my great-uncle’s cousins played the First Doctor in the 1983 Doctor Who episode The Five Doctors. So watch out, PZ! All around the world, fans of Richard Hurndall are de-friending you, probably.
#252 Raiko
March 21, 2009

Reminds me of the reading I heard from a female book author who put her own daughter in one of her novels, changing only hair hair color. Her daughter got really upset, worrying about what her friends might think, but in the end – NOBODY recognized the fictional character for the author’s daughter.

Even the ~slightest~ modifications make a fictional character in a book unrecognizable to unsuspecting readers. And since the personality John Kwok describes is nothing like you, this may just be the emptiest threat in the history of the internet.
#253 Warren
March 21, 2009

I will use my vast powers capriciously, and with malice

And this makes you different from “god” how, exactly?

Hee hee.
#254 A. Noyd
March 21, 2009

AnthonyK (#136)

I predict he won’t get far with it. I mean, what will his characters do when they leave school? It doesn’t matter anyway though, because he would have had furious rows with them all by page 20, and would probably have been banned from his own book well before Chapter 6.

God damn, I laughed so hard at that I ripped open a cankersore in my cheek. Ow.

~*~*~*~*~

Speaking of celebrities, my friend sat near Mandy Patinkin on a plane and recognized him as Rube in Dead Like Me but didn’t realize he had also played Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. WTF kind of geek kid grows up watching Princess Bride and can’t recognize Inigo fucking Montoya?!

As for myself, a decade ago I used to know a few comic book artists and writers beyond the “comic god”/”drooling fan” sort of relationship, but not much past it. One or two might remember me still, but I haven’t been to a convention in ages. I prefer to dream that, at some point, I will make something of my life such that people will drop my name. But that involves effort. Feh.
#255 Warren
March 21, 2009

Re me @253

Oh, right, I figured it out. You actually exist.

Re this:

if you don’t behave with the Muslims, I might do a “Pontius Pilate” act

Is it OK to refer to JK as a Kwok of Shi’ite from now on?
#256 DLC
March 21, 2009

Name dropping, are we?
I once rode in the same elevator as a famous author, shook hands with a famous boxer, and ate dinner with a quasi-famous basketball player. Oh, and I’ve seen Morgan Fairchild naked!
So there !
#257 Mari
March 21, 2009

Name-dropping huh?
Not many celebrities around here that are known outside my country, so the only ones I can come up with are:
I stood in line at a clothes store behind Alanis Morissette once. I ran into Forest Whitaker at a voodoo store in New Orleans whom I wouldn’t have recognized if my friend hadn’t almost fainted (but darn, the man is tall). I worked in catering at a festival where Green Day, Beck and the Foo Fighters played.

But my number one run-in with a celebrity was when I almost got run over on a crosswalk by Tina Turner’s driver and Tina herself was sitting next to him. I don’t know who looked more shocked, me or her… So can I now say that I almost appeared in a newspaper under the headline “Run over by Tina Turner’s driver”?
#258 Logicel
March 21, 2009

Like others, I do not watch reality shows, but this version by PZ was great fun and very creative. PZ turns dross into boss.

Wish I could say that Kwok is trite, but I can’t because he is just incoherent (at least from the quotes PZ included in this blog post). Perhaps PZ banning Kwok is similar to his telling Nisbet to fuck off after Nisbet told PZ not to discuss science with the layperson. The similarity is Kwok’s demanding for PZ to stop saying certain observations about Ken Miller. Nisbet hardly ever posted at this blog, while Kwok does, so banning him is saying fuck off with your censorship demands.

Miller is certainly is not an IDiot, but still, extraordinary claims like that an unseen entity created everything, using evolution, requires extraordinary evidence, and all Miller has is non-evidential faith. Miller is a creationist, just not an Idiot or YEC, because he does accept evolution and the age of the earth.

So besides being into censorship, Kwok is wrong. And we won’t even mention his obsession with his HS (being a native New Yorker, I know many graduates of the 3-4 specialized-in-science NYC public high schools, including my brother and his buddies, and this is the first time I ever witness an graduate of that kind of school drop names and be obsessed with their HS to this degree. Very odd.
#259 DebinOz
March 21, 2009

I know another person didn’t like Kwok being referred to as an Aspie, but I have an Aspie son, and Kwok’s insistence re his high school really does remind me of my son’s repetitiveness in the face of certain punishment.

My claim to fames:

My ex-husband designed the exercise yard at San Quentin in 1980.
I sat on Sir Edmund Hillary’s lap when I was a baby.
I am a published author, if boring scientific articles count.

FWIW – I used to use Barb’s post as a learning tool for my kids – “See kids, people really do think like this!”
#260 DebinOz
March 21, 2009

Doh – that would be claims to fame!
#261 Logicel
March 21, 2009

Name dropping contest? Goody! Living in NYC for decades which is in essence a continuous movie shoot, I have served oysters to Pacino on the godfather set as a movie extra, which happened to have been the block on which I was living (shoot went on for months, the loudspeakers were attached outside my tenement’s window, and I was woken up to, hey, move those sheep over there, moron!) Saw Robin Williams in another tenement’s hallway sweating profusely (think he was doing cocaine at the time) discussing with his director how shitty his acting is (for Moscow on the Hudson). I could go on for hours but I won’t (I did stride across the wide circle the crowd had formed at Astor Place to allow Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton to argue in public).

However, I think I became a person whose reference was most likely dropped. I strode across a low lying, non-cordoned-off public sculpture in the Tate Museum, thinking it was the floor, realized in the middle of it that it was indeed a sculpture, decided to make the best of the situation, grimaced in great disdain at the mundaneness of it, and continued stomping on the sculpture, off it, and mercifully finally out of the sight of the horrified public to another viewing room where I watched my feet until they were safely out of the museum and onto the street. One of the horrified on-lookers had stared for a moment at my face, and I do believe that he thought I was Jackie O (I am a turkey version of her), and his look of horror turned into admiration, thinking that Jackie O just staged a protest for good taste. I can imagine him saying at many a dinner party, I saw Jackie O stomping on a sculpture in protest!
#262 Laura
March 21, 2009

Speaking of Bill Bailey and name-dropping, I met Bill after a show in 2007
#263 Sili
March 21, 2009

Namedropping? Vague credentials?

I’ve taken a medal in the International Chemistry Olympics (along with 60% of the other participants).

Helmer Fogedgaard, the coiner of “homophile” and prominent gayrights advocate, was my … seventh cousion once removed, if I recall correctly. (Been yeeeears since I discovered the connection.)

Oh, and I was one offered a post.doc. by Judith Howard.
#264 photon
March 21, 2009

I met and chatted to Tom Lehrer when I was fifteen years old.

I went to the same high school as Tom Lehrer – admittedly he’d graduated about 30 years earlier.

I really can’t stand people who drop names, as I remarked to Her Majesty recently.
#265 robhoofd
March 21, 2009

I can picture a certain bannee sitting in a corner of his house, suspiciously eyeing the cat, whispering to himself “They’ll pay. THEY’LL ALL PAY when my book comes out and I’ll have incorporated unlikable characters that resemble them.”
#266 photon
March 21, 2009

Kwok reminded me of some of the first year university students I’ve known – most of them work out within the first week that nobody gives a shit about where you went to school or how well you did on the entrance exams, but there are always one or two who think that being the smartest/most popular/whatever kid at school means something (or should mean something) in the real world (or even at university).

Who cares if he’s an Aspie or not – his main problem is that he’s a boring dickhead. Good riddance.
#267 Monado in Toronto
March 21, 2009

And here I thought The Diviners was a piece of famous Canadian lit’ra’chur by Margaret Laurence.

There must be another book of the same name.
#268 Monado in Toronto
March 21, 2009

He’s going to sic the Canadian Association of Interns and Residents on you? You must be trembling in your boots at the thought of dealing with so many potential sycophants at one go.
#269 Lee Picton
March 21, 2009

Oh all right. I can name drop, but only a little. But it goes back to the days when I was young and semi-hot (early to mid 60′s). I waited tables at really nice restaurants in Atlantic City, and the occasional recognizable person came to eat, and I waited on several of them. Chet Huntley (quite, polite, OK tipper). Walter Winchell (kept his hat on, ate by himself, did not seem to be a nice person, said little, lousy tipper). Stuart Udall and family (well behaved kids, lovely family, good tipper). The most interesting was a dear tiny man who sat with his back to the wall, surrounded by three hulking types who spent a lot of time flirting. Did not find out till later his name was David Dubinsky (google is your friend), and the young studs were his bodyguards.
While floating in the surf off Oahu, head collided with stomach of very attractive athletic type, who was lounging with two friends. I did not recognize any of them and we spent some time chatting (hey, I looked good in a bikini then), and they eventually introduced themselves. Jerry West (a basketball player), Paul Hornung (a football player). I had heard of them and they sounded pleased I sort of knew who they were. So I asked the third guy what he did for a living, and he said he played hockey. And I said “For a living? Who can play hockey for a living?” (I was REALLY not knowledgeable about sports). He seemed quite amused by this and asked me to go out with him.
Spidy-sense told me this was maybe not a good idea, so I turned him down. He did have a gorgeous bod and a face that was once quite handsome, but seemed to have had various bones broken in it. The three of them were in Hawaii shooting a swimsuit commercial for Jantzen, which I saw later in several magazines. Now that I am old, I think maybe doing the horizontal mambo with Bobby Hull might have made for a more interesting memory of my salad days.
#270 alias Ernest Major
March 21, 2009

Thus, Pharyngulette’s Chat with Tom Lehrer While She Was in High School is still leading!

While in high school I participated in a just-a-minute debate with a to be (and now retired) head of government; does that count?
#271 Lee Picton
March 21, 2009

Oh, I forgot. As an audience participant, Kreskin tried to hypnotize me. This was several years before he had his fifteen minutes of fame. I was not a good subject and was asked to leave the stage. The others did impersonations of trees and other inanimate objects. It was a fun act.
#272 AdamK
March 21, 2009

Erich von Daniken used to come into my practice room and listen to me play the piano. He was quite charming and never said anything stupid, as far as I can recall.

(I could mention lots and lots of famous people I know, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of them.)
#273 'Tis Himself
March 21, 2009

I am a published author, if boring scientific articles count.

That’s nothing. I’ve been a co-author of two (count ‘em, two) economics textbooks, one of them a graduate level book that’s gone through three editions and is still in print.
#274 CosmicTeapot
March 21, 2009

Name dropping eh!

There used to be a comedian from the 70s named Duggie Brown, who used to frequent my local fish and chip shop when I lived in England.

One day I stood behind him while he was talking to the owner.

When I was given my fish and chips (with mushy peas, naturally), I went to put vinegar on my chips. But the vinegar overshot my culinary delight and disappeared into his pocket!

He didn’t notice, and I left quietly.

Beat that!
#275 Pete Rooke
March 21, 2009

Well I am a qualified life guard assistant.
#276 the chiggler
March 21, 2009

I danced with a girl who danced with a man who danced with the Prince of Wales. No, sorry, wait a minute that’s a song someone I was at school with used to sing.
#277 the other Adam
March 21, 2009

Re. Buruno @ 251, my name dropping is exceedingly pathetic and mostly meaningless outside Canada. The lowlights: half the Barenaked Ladies lived across the street from me briefly. The summer after university I kept ending up at parties with Margaret Atwood. As a child I was an extra in a Michael Douglas movie filmed on my street (Running) but I never saw myself when it was on TV so I was probably cut. There may be more, but my memory of the 1990s is patchy.

I’ve been kicked out of high schools with more Nobel laureates per graduate than Stuyvesant (but where the gym teacher also taught math), and graduated from Alex Trebek, Kiefer Sutherland and Glenn Gould’s old school. Nobody I knew while I was there became famous.
#278 AnthonyK
March 21, 2009

Well I am a qualified life guard assistant.

Please, if you must comment here, note that while a minimum requirement is that you not wank for Jesus, a sufficient requirement is that you say something interesting, or clever, or witty.
Do try to keep up, Rookey, you may bore Jesus with your thoughts but please consider that people her have no such contractual arrangement with you as the deity does.
Have you really, apart from nearly getting banned from Pharyngula, done nothing with your life?
Is so, please don’t bother telling us about it here.
#279 recovering catholic
March 21, 2009

Not knowing anything about Kwok, I was a little surprised to read that the usually mild-mannered PZ had replied to Kwok’s posting that he hoped PZ got home safely by saying “Get bent, John.” After following the survivor threads these last few days, though, I realize how annoying and peurile (ooh–I’ve always wanted to use that word!) Kwok really is.

Good riddance to John Kwok.
#280 NewEnglandBob
March 21, 2009

Name dropping:

I did meet Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop in the late 1950′s and I have been quoted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980′s.

The funny part about being quoted is that I never said what they quoted me as saying. I have refused to speak with journalists ever since.

/name dropping
#281 Nerd of Redhead, OM
March 21, 2009

The interesting thing about reading the name dropping by people other than Kwok is the varied background of the people who post here. Quite impressive.
#282 AnthonyK
March 21, 2009

the varied background of the people who post here

Quite so, although I personally find a varied background to be something of a disadvantage; no doubt that’s mostly because I work in the camouflage industry.
#283 'Tis Himself
March 21, 2009

I did meet Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop in the late 1950′s

I met a lamb chop last Sunday. There’s a couple more in the freezer still.
#284 bastion of sass
March 21, 2009

Pete Rooke wrote:
at #32

There are no two Pete’s. Someone dragged up a page by a paster of the same name. I was happy to take up the mantle. I have no children. Why this should matter, I am unsure.

Why it matters is that your pretending to be someone else is dishonest. Did your moral education somehow miss that?

You are judged by what you’ve written on this blog, and your dishonesty is another reason for other readers to distrust and dislike you.

At #145

the analogies, and much else in sentiment at least, are of my own construction and I stand by them despite their OTT nature. They stand in the context in which they were written however. It is easy to mock in hindsight.

Hindsight alone doesn’t made them mockable. They were mockable the moment they were posted.

The fact that you couldn’t, and apparently still can’t, see how utterly inappropriate, inapt, and creepy they were, reinforces my belief that you need to avail yourself of some mental health services. Soon.
#285 CSue
March 21, 2009

Sounds like Kwok has a bad case of Internet Tough Guy Syndrome.

Pity he isn’t smart enough to notice that it’s never worked for anybody else, either.
#286 KI
March 21, 2009

Hey! I tried to start a name-dropping theme a couple days ago and no one bit!

I do have to thank the Kwokster for getting me to dig out my high-school yearbooks and go through them to find famous people I went to school with that I didn’t necessarily know (except for Oskar Eustis, director of the New York Public Theater-we were in “Waiting for Godot” and “Happy Birthday Wanda June” together-our high school theater was pretty out there).
#287 baryogenesis
March 21, 2009

This will show my age. Name-dropping, eh? Have seen several Hollywood types over the years. Once saw Elliot Gould jogging along side parked cars on a main street and my son pointed out Vin Diesel doing the same, years later. Was part-owner of a restaurant when my son was a toddler. He ran up to someome eating alone and pretended to shoot him with his pointed finger. I ran over to pull him away and realized it was Alan Arkin. He smiled and said it was OK. Hung out with pianist Stanley Cowell while he was gigging here–this was in the 80′s–after I introduced myself as being from the same home town. And finally, in the 60′s, got to know Vern Martin quite well, who was playing bass for Roland Kirk at the time. We shared much green substance with some of the band members.
#288 Moses
March 21, 2009

Posted by: David Marjanovi?, OM | March 20, 2009 9:46 PM

Ha. There’s a guy with my full name here in France at the same bank! And except in Poland, where it’s spelled with w, my first name is pretty rare outside of English-speaking countries.

I have a NY relative with the same name. (Sucks to be from a big family.) He writes CHRISTIAN CHILDRENS BOOKS! Well, Catholic books. Which, depending on your Christinista-intolerance level, may-or-may-not be Christian….

But at least my first name isn’t John. Or Joseph. Holy crap. There are probably scores and scores of us named John or Joseph. Damned popular names in my family. Sometimes there’ll be two Johns and/or Josephs by the same father, only different middle names. Like John Daniel and John Stephen… Or Joseph David and Joseph Daniel (real funny that one…)

But as for me, I’m not sharing too many, though there’s another who is a Doctor in PA. Besides the aforementioned Catholic children’s book writer…

And, obviously, they’re both more important than me because I don’t show up until Page 3 on the Google search of our common name. But I’m more important than my brother… HE doesn’t show up at all on google, though his son does…

If I actually talked to my rapidly-turning-wing-nut family, I’d call him up and laugh at him… But, except for my parents and one aunt, I don’t…
#289 AnthonyK
March 21, 2009

re: Name-dropping.

It says nothing about your acquaintances and everything about your own insecure personality – avoid it. At least, that’s what Perez Hilton told me.
#290 Moses
March 21, 2009

Posted by: Pete Rooke | March 20, 2009 10:11 PM

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury if we are to name drop.

So, one of my wife’s Aunt’s met the Pope. John Paul II, not the Nazi. She is Polish and, when she lived there, was director of public relations for Fiat’s Polish operations. (Which I find damned amusing on many levels.)

Anyway, she’s also big in some Catholic women’s’ organization. And there was some function and she got in line and got to shake the Pope’s hand or got blessed or something. We have the photo.

None of this happened when she was a relative. It all happened before. She didn’t become a relative until she immigrated to America and married my wife’s uncle after his first wife died.

The point is, none of this makes me important. It’s just a a matter of circumstance. It should not accrue even on iota of respect of my opinions beyond the worth and logic they contain.

Something John Kwok, and most name droppers, never learn. Having famous and/or smart relatives means nothing when you’re dealing with people who only respect merit. And something, btw, the right-wing here in America doesn’t understand when people like me bash their idiot “leaders” who are leaders because of circumstance instead of merit.

Take Bush, Bush was a fucking idiot and was only President because certain parts of our dysfunctional society still respect and enforce some of this feudal privilege-mindset and trappings. The bottom line is that Bush became president solely because of to whom he was related, not his merits. He was a loser that got pushed through Harvard and Yale as a legacy. He was a loser that failed at every business he tried. Yet he had the connections, solely part of his birth, and ended up a multi-millionaire ex-President.

All because he was born to the manor. Because if it were merit, he might be the night manager at a McDonalds…

Anyway, I ramble…
#291 heliobates
March 21, 2009

My Fundamentals of Corporate Finance instructor is the forensic accountant responsible for monitoring salary caps for the Canadian Football League.

[crickets]

Boy am I playing to the wrong crowd.
#292 gb
March 21, 2009

True Bob
“I hope that the recent doom of some trolls, and more importantly the survival of other trolls, will evolve a better form of troll.”

Will never happen! Trolls don’t evolve….they simply redefine what a troll is.
#293 Iain Walker
March 21, 2009

Stephen Hawking once nearly ran me over.

Alan Moore once let me buy him a pint.

Not Kwokettish enough? All right then, the Liberal Democrat Housing Spokeman Lembit Opik is an old school-friend of mine. And his grandfather, the astronomer Ernst Opik, once asked me to feel his biceps.
#294 FlameDuck
March 21, 2009

I might do a “Pontius Pilate” act and give my cousin Jim and his CAIR buddies carte blanche to deal with you as they see fit.

You know that a “Pontius Pilate” is a chrisitan synonym for a rusty trombone, right? I’d be afraid.
#295 Menyambal
March 21, 2009

My best name-dropping is vehicle related. I several times rode in a pickup that used to belong to Carrol O’Connor (Archie Bunker). One of the Apollo astronauts *asked* to drive a car my dad built, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Jimmy Carter drove a vehicle that my dad and I built. Never saw any of those people, in person, though.

Otherwise, I once saw John Goodman in the hallway of the theater department of *our* college. After he became famous, I mean.

I once dated a girl who’d dated one of the the Flying Karamazov Brothers. She said we had preference in common.

I commented on PZ Myers’ blog, *before* he became a well-known terrorist.
#296 The MadPanda
March 21, 2009

The Rookester has apparently mistaken his continued survival as some sort of sign that he’s favored. No, lad, some other gits just made themselves more annoying at the right time. You’re still on notice.

Name-dropping? Can’t do a lot of that…

But Benjamin Franklin is a distant cousin of mine (along with just about everyone else in New England, given how he got around).

President Herbert Hoover is a not so distant cousin of Mrs. MadPanda’s, but they don’t like to talk about him for some reason. There’s also a vague connection to the Stuarts (yes, those Stuarts) in there someplace, but not enough to get us an audience with Prince Michael of Albany.

I once stood in line about six people behind Iggy Pop at the Tivoli in Stockholm. We were queued up for a ride after a concert. Who knew Iggy liked roller coasters?

I have seen the Imperial Bedchamber in the Forbidden City and have enjoyed a tea ceremony just outside the boyhood home of the Father of the War on Drugs, Lin Zexu. (He started the First Opium War by burning down a bunch of warehouses filled with opium.)

I marvel at our host’s tolerance–a mass purge of the indicted would seem to be in order. They’re all on the list for a reason. None of them learn, none of them listen, none of them care that it is their behavior and not their opinions that gets them on that list. Let ‘em all drop. That’s my .2 yuan.

The MadPanda, FCD
#297 Guy Incognito
March 21, 2009

I once slow-danced on “the Titanic” with Richard Dawkins…

If I ever find myself in da club again, I’m turning “slow-dance on the Titanic” into a pick-up line.
#298 Kseniya
March 21, 2009

I’m shocked. Kwok’s delusions of grandeur are more troubling than amusing.

As for Simon, well… good riddance.

As for the Survivor: Pharyngula concept, well… while it’s been interesting and revelatory, the mob-rule aspect does trouble me a bit. Not profoundly. But a bit. FWIW.

My claim to fame? I once met a guy online who claimed to be writing a history book. But then it turned out he was just trying to impress me. Does that count?
#299 AnthonyK
March 21, 2009

the mob-rule aspect does trouble me a bit

BURN THE HERETIC!
#300 bastion of sass
March 21, 2009

Name dropping:

I ate dinner in a restaurant and sat a few tables away from Oprah.

I once talked to John Waters’ secretary on the phone.

Nicholas Cage filmed scenes from one of his movies on the next block.

Jodie Foster filmed part of one of her movies in the home of someone whose kid had gone to the same nursery school as one of my kids.

Barry Levinson filmed scenes from one of his movies one street over from mine, and I saw part of the night shoot, but didn’t get close enough to identify anyone famous.
#301 abys
March 21, 2009

I’m a little scared that Kwok’s going to go on a shooting rampage now — he seemed genuinely delusional, especially if he felt compelled to threaten you from being banned from your blog.
#302 Foggg
March 21, 2009

Fall on your knees before my Kwok and tremble.

I talked with and touched the first human to stand on an astronomical body beside earth, Neil Armstrong.
My undergraduate advisor was the closest human to humanity’s first nuclear explosion, H.H. Barschall.
But Armstrong & Barschall never met.
Since 10,000 years from now both these events, with a few others of the last 1000 years, will be in histories, should histories stlll exist, I claim Kwokification far beyond Kwok himself. a Kwokification beyond all living mortals, a Kwokification only achieved in the minds of fictional characters, like say, Stewie Griffin.
Oh, yes. My Kwok is huge as Behemoth’s and sways Job-ishly, like the cedars.
#303 Blake Stacey
March 21, 2009

Ben Affleck’s mother lived across the street from the apartment near Central Square where I lived for two years. Whenever the Red Sox were doing something particularly impressive, Ben would come home and the street would fill with gawkers and paparazzi.

Years later, I got to see Matthew McConaughey filming a movie in the Back Bay. He bade good night to the girl, she climbed the steps up into a townhouse (cue extras walking past on the sidewalk), she turned and said something coquettish, then went inside and closed the door, after which he let out a yawp of delight. Lather, rinse, repeat. We wondered if the DVD bonus features would include all the alternative versions of the yawp.

Neil Gaiman once commented on my blog (we’d met twice in real life).

In Vegas, I got up to some shenanigans with Ben Goldacre and an IRA terrorist, but Ben has all the photographic evidence and you’d never believe the story without it.
#304 Spidergrackle
March 21, 2009

I once had a beer with an extra from the movie Gladiator.

PWND, ALL OF YOU!!!!!
#305 Shelly
March 21, 2009

Hmm. I met Al Gore at work. He wasn’t really impressed, course I wasn’t either.
Benedict Arnold is my cousin- 7 or 99 times removed. That’s all I got.
You guys have really helped during my recovery from a near fatal cold. Thanks!
#306 Mezzobuff
March 21, 2009

Anyone for some opera star name dropping..? Awwwww… I didn’t think so.
#307 Fernando Magyar
March 21, 2009

Posted by: Dahan @ 60

So PZ, when do the “I survived Survivor: Pharyngula!” T-Shirts come out?

Do you mean something like this perhaps? Maybe PZ can get the rights to the moray eel image.

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll225/Fmagyar/SurvivorTshirt.jpg
#308 Sven DiMIlo
March 21, 2009

Those who just don’t understand why a well-spoken anti-creationist like J*hn Kw*k would ever be banned should take a look at this thread. You have to read to the very end to grok Kw*k in fullness (ignore the ~~Bernoulli~~ VMartin crap in the early going…soon it’s all Kw*k).
#309 BMS
March 21, 2009

Name drop…

I was housemates in the late ’80s with one of Colin Powell’s daughters (we’d gone to college together, same department even). On many occasions I answered the phone to hear, “Hi, this is X’s dad; is X there?”

I always felt like I should salute or some such.

I worked with the guy who won an Oscar for special f/x innovation – for Showgirls. He’s pals with Gina Gershon. (2 degress of separation?). He had a friend of his draw up a caricature of me. It involves cat-eye glasses, thigh-high boots, and a cat-o-nine tails. They conspired it was my alter-ego . . . little do they know.

My limbo-wife and I are friends with another Oscar winner (and multiple nominatee) for sound on a little movie called Jurassic Park. Last Spring we spent 4 or 5 days with him and his wife at their home in WA. He has Sir John Williams’ home phone number on his cell phone.

Anyone for some opera star name dropping..?

I worked 2 seasons each at the Santa Fe Opera and the Glimmerglass Opera. Worked with Sir Jonathan Miller on one of the productions. Have also worked with John Conklin and Robert Wierzel (the latter both on operas and on small ballets).
#310 BMS
March 21, 2009

I would like to point out the “Fuck the Homophobes” voting strategy produced spectacular results in this competition.

I met Evan Wolfson and shook his hand at a talk he gave in San Diego last October.
#311 mezzobuff
March 21, 2009

@BMS I was at Santa Fe Opera for 2 seasons, too! ’94 & ’96 apprentice artist. Small world!
#312 JeffreyD
March 21, 2009

Name dropping, well other than those I already mentioned, I guess I could talk about my days in the porn industry. I was a stunt penis, not always a big part, pretty much why I got out of the business.

Ciao y’all
#313 Knockgoats
March 21, 2009

I humbly submit that one of my great-uncle’s cousins played the First Doctor in the 1983 Doctor Who episode The Five Doctors. – De Bruno Strosek

Ha! If it comes to Doctor Who connections:
1) I was in the same department as Richard Dawkins (who subsequently made a name for himself by appearing on said programme) for 2 years, and spoke to him several times.
2) My dad served on the same ship as Patrick Troughton during WWII.
#314 Ben
March 21, 2009

I’ve had dinner with Lee Child.
#315 BMS
March 21, 2009

mezzobuff-

Small world indeed! I did SFO stage crew apprentice one summer and scene shop carpenter later, for about 6 or 7 months.

I miss green chili cheeseburgers at Bobcat Bite. Best. Burger. Ever.
#316 Matt Penfold
March 21, 2009

If we are going to be name-dropping, I have met Patrick Moore on several occasions, including visiting his house and being allowed to do some observing with him.

As a result I can lay claim to having observed every planet in the solar system, except Earth.
#317 khan
March 21, 2009

(Oh! And I got to hug James Burke, author of “Connections” amongst other things, when he did a talk here.

Same for me.

I sat at the same lunch table as Paul MacCready.

Had Carl Sagan autograph his book.

Sat next to Paul Kurtz on a flight from LA to Chicago.

Once saw Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis at the Boat Show in NYC.
#318 Katrina
March 21, 2009

Nearly name dropping:

We stayed in a hotel in Madrid, Spain that was used by Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War. And I’ve been to his memorial in Ketchum, Idaho.

One summer, I worked on an excavation in Jordan and I saw the late King Hussein’s forearm as he waved to the crowd from his limo.

Come to think of it, I saw just that much of the late Japanese emperor Showa (Hirohito) in nearly the same situation.

My mother met Mr. Rodgers when I was in junior-high.
#319 Stephen Wells
March 21, 2009

I went to the same high school as William Shakespeare.
#320 kevinj
March 21, 2009

i was going to delurk to vote for kwok so now on the on the random famous people bit
i stayed in the same hotel including floor and wing as the Dali Lama. he might be a man of peace but there were a lot of people around him who are more flexible in their approach judging by the number of guns badly hidden under jackets (in the middle of Delhi’s summer).
#321 Fred Mounts
March 21, 2009

I shook Bill Clinton’s hand when at the Acropolis in Athens. I may have met Johnny Depp at The Accademia in Florence; for purposes of this thread, I definitely met him!
#322 John Phillips, FCD
March 21, 2009

Well, I would Wok but many of my kwoks, while important to me in that many were friends and people I generally thought highly of as people, would have little or no meaning to USAians. Unless of course you were into Welsh rugby and its history so no Kwoking form me.
#323 John Phillips, FCD
March 21, 2009

DOH Wok=kwok.
#324 Cath the Canberra Cook
March 21, 2009

Hey, I liked Rookie’s claim to be a lifeguard. It’s beautifully irrelevant and minor: it fits right up there with Kwok’s published author schtick. Nice lampoon.
#325 Don't Panic
March 21, 2009

Guys, I’m disappointed: not enough emphasis on your High School or College connections. Okay, my turn, (mostly, except the parts that aren’t) true name-dropping:

In that mid-70′s I worked with some a computer equipment that these two cool cats named Steve and Woz conned HP into donating to my High School. They dropped by a couple of times and showed us this bit of electronics in a wood box they were working on; called it an “Apple”. We had deep meaningful discussions about their future plans. It was kind’a wonky — I wonder if they ever got anywhere with it.

In college I took honors freshman physics, from a very famous school which I’m not at liberty to name, from the Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of the antiproton (Chamberlain). He was a bit old by then, and we always felt that if we startled him he’d fall over dead. I think his co-discoverer (of the anti-proton for which he got the Nobel Prize) glared at me once when I laughed too loudly in the Physics library.

Later, my (now) wife an I snogged in the back of a Senior quantum mechanics class taught by our current Sec. of Dept. of Energy. [Okay, that would be a bit out-of-character for Kwok, since I don't think interpersonal relations are his thing.] I spent some boring night shifts with Jerry Friedman
and Henry Kendall; helped Henry install his “water works” (a levelling system) into my thesis experiment. Leon Lederman dropped into my lab once when I was a grad student and we discussed neutrino physics.

As for family relations, I’m a distant descendant of John Adams. Perhaps that’s why I’m obnoxious and disliked.
#326 Britomart
March 21, 2009

Oh wow, another thread where us mostly lurkers can pop in and contribute!!

Panda, we are probably related. One of my mothers fathers ancestors ran the iron mill in Saugus in the 1640s and the family moved in to Boston very early on. This fellow has a clear line back to the armorers of Owen Glendower and a muddy one back to Vortigern. He made the first coin in the new world, holds the first patent, and cast the fist pot. Interesting fellow all around.

Grandpa knew Lindbergh and Eddie Rickenbacker but he loved cars more than planes and owned a few cars that raced in the early European races. Lost it all in the depression, alas.

On her mothers side, my mother is a cousin to Yvette Chauvire. In her day she was the star of the Paris Opera and she holds the L�gion d’Honneur.

Dads fathers side is less exciting, there is an uncle who was curator of the Harvard museum and an aunt who was one of the earliest female doctors in the country.

I knew John Shea (Lex Luther in the TV superman) when we were toddlers, our parents were friends. Mother still has pictures of us in playpens on the beach. I have all the toys.

Did some folksinging for a while. Hung around Cafe Lena in Saratoga and met a long list of folkies in those years. Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrels, Jean Redpath, Steve Gillette, the folk who did the soundtrack to the Ken Burns Civil war series….

I dated a fellow who’s uncle was the last president of the Duma before the revolution. He went off to marry into Grace shipping lines, last I heard. I then dated a fellow who had just dumped by the woman who became Maggie Trudeau. He was a wreck tho and I went on an married some one else.

The now-ex and I were invited to breakfast in St Andrews with Charles and Diana on their honeymoon tour. I forget why we didn’t make it, the ex worked in the ER and I expect it was a scheduling problem.

I met Stephen King several times in those years, I was somewhat active in politics as was he.

After we moved to Massachusetts my daughters math teacher was Meg Ryan’s dad for a while. One sees a lot of famous people on Cape Cod but I don’t recall speaking to many tho.

A few years ago my now husband (Scottish doubles pool champion of 1992) were in Vegas for a pool tournament and we were escorted out of a store at Ceasas palace so that Bill and Chelsea Clinton could shop.

Can we play 6 degrees of separation now ?

thank you kindly
#327 mayhempix
March 21, 2009

Name drop kisses…

Kissed by singer/actress Jennifer Lopez just prior to the release of her first movie, Selena.
Kissed backstage by Brazilian singer Flora Purim.
#328 Britomart
March 21, 2009

Oh high school luminaries ?

Outside of Cincinnati either only two people in my class; a murdered cheerleader and the fellow who was dating her at the time. He was put on trial almost 40 years afterward and was found innocent. 48 hours did a piece on it. I knew her but not well, our lockers were side by side due to alphabetic assignment. We moved in very different circles tho.

In Cincinnati of my classmates was instrumental in the Underground railway museum there and another was a cheerleader for the ‘Bengals for a while.

I don’t think the school has anyone else famous.

Jimmy Carter took a course or two at the college I went to. Not when I was there tho. I don’t know of anyone to name to drop from those years, I should go back now and see whats become of the people I knew back then,

PZ do you need any more facebook friends ?
I will send you a link and then you will know people who know people !

thank you kindly …
#329 The MadPanda
March 21, 2009

Izzat so, Britomart? Small world!

Many, many moons ago, when I was working my way through university, I chanced upon an older co-worker (she was about my grandmother’s age) with an interest in geneology. We got to chatting, and some of the names she mentioned were awfully familiar…Turns out we were indeed cousins, about eight generations back. (This is what happens when one side of the family goes back to the Mayflower–you end up related to most of New England!)

The MadPanda, FCD
#330 Dan J
March 21, 2009

Stardrake: Love the Karamazov Brothers. Got to juggle with them after a show in Ann Arbor years ago (juggling festival concided with their performance).

Ken Cope: Love the photo. My hair’s about the same length, but the grey isn’t coming in that much (give me a few years).

I might as well join in the Kwokabration!

I went to school with Axl Rose (He was still “Billy” then, and a couple years older than I). I got to introduce “The Week in Rock” on MTV while juggling flaming torches (must’ve been 1987 or so). And on a scientific note, my wife is related to Edward Charles Pickering, and his brother William Henry Pickering, both eminent astronomers.
#331 Mezzobuff
March 21, 2009

I can claim Nick Sparks from my alma mater! Hail Bella Vista High…
Ahhh @BMS, green chili cheeseburgers… after a few months of those I started to look like a true opera singer…
#332 Menyambal
March 22, 2009

Dan J: Torches, eh? I’ve still got mine out in the garage, but haven’t had them lit for a long time. My peak juggling years were back in the ’80s. I attended the IJA convention when it was in Akron, and met Owen Wilson, the guy who did the juggling in one of the Addams Family movies. I attended juggling festivals in Columbia, Missouri, mostly. I did juggle in front of President Bush the Elder, once–I was in a parade he was watching, but so many Secret Service men were watching me that I just unicycled past as fast as I could without dropping my clubs.

My mother is distantly related to the Hershey’s chocolate family.

My dad may have less than 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, but that’s a dark family secret.

My high school was the only one in the biggest US town without a railroad or interstate highway. Yay.
#333 Nessa Z
March 22, 2009

Speedwell,

I can go one better – I sat on Isaac Asimov’s lap and was moderately groped – while at a sci-fi convention.
#334 JB
March 23, 2009

I, myself tried to add PZ as a friend on Facebook. However, I was greeted with an error stating that PZ “already has too many friends.” I would say this might put the damper on Kwok’s threats. By the way, PZ should start a “page” on Facebook. Therefore eliminating the friend cap (to my knowledge, at least).
#335 Knockgoats
March 23, 2009

Guys, I’m disappointed: not enough emphasis on your High School or College connections. – Don’t Panic

OK then. I went to two high schools. At the first, Mick Jagger’s younger brother (who looked very like Mick) was a few years ahead of me. Bill Wyman had attended the second.
#336 WRMartin
March 23, 2009

Name-a-drop-a-thon-a-little-too-late?

Dr. Wernher von Braun had dinner at my neighbor’s house every once in a while.

I was a lifeguard back in high school and trained under an instructor that also trained with Mark Spitz. I have ‘saved’ two people:
A child and poor swimmer who decided that removing their mask, snorkel, and fins in the middle of the pool was a good idea. They held onto that gear for dear life (almost).
And a drunk that fell off the ferry just as we pulled back into harbor.
I have no idea if either grew up to be famous or I would be using their names today.
#337 catgirl
March 23, 2009

Here’s my entry for the name-dropping competition:

I went to the same college as Bernard Silver, one of the inventors of the bar code (although not at the same time).

I was also an extra in the movie Girl, Interrupted. I got to see Whoopie Goldberg, and some of the scenes were filmed in my neighbor’s house.
#338 Dan J
March 23, 2009

Menyambal said:

My peak juggling years were back in the ’80s. I attended the IJA convention when it was in Akron, and met Owen Wilson, the guy who did the juggling in one of the Addams Family movies. I attended juggling festivals in Columbia, Missouri, mostly.

The only IJA festival I made it to was in St. Louis. My roommates and I did make it to a couple festivals in Columbia (about 1987/88). I recall that we had a wonderful time. We put on our own festival at Purdue University every year as well.

I haven’t had my torches out in quite a while either. Now that the weather’s warmer, I may have to dust them off and pick up a can of Coleman fuel.
#339 Steve_C
March 23, 2009

PZ has a page where he can have unlimited fans. I posted the link in revenge of the kwok.