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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. In our 11:00 AM to noon fundraising party here on the show, we continue now with our look back at some of our most fun call-ins of 2023, our second edition ones. Few months ago, we asked those of you who were famous at some point, but now working regular jobs to call us. Now, that was a very fun call-in. We're going to expand it. We're going to broaden that net a little bit.

Listeners, here's the question for right now. Have you ever been the subject of 15 minutes of fame, that Andy Warhol expression, everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. Well, what were your 15 minutes of fame? How did they affect you? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

It could have been that you purposely placed yourself in the path of fame. Maybe you were a child actor or a young adult actor, and you don't do that anymore. Maybe you were in a rock band and people knew you for a while, but they don't anymore, or maybe you just ran into some fame because something happened that put you in the spotlight. Either way, what was your 15 minutes of fame? Tell everybody your 15 minutes of fame story.

Maybe it's a funny story, and how it affected you. 212-433-WNYC. Maybe as an actor, you were in a commercial maybe even as an extra that got traction, or you appeared on a reality show one time. Did your TikTok or YouTube video blow up beyond your expectations? Are you the subject of a widely spread meme, for better or for worse? Tell us what you've been famous for 15 minutes for. 212-433-WNYC.

I'll say to give credit where credit is due we got the idea for the original call-in from a Newsday article published back in March that featured John Hampson, the frontman of the rock band Nine Days. After 17 years of working as a musician full time, he went back to school, got a master's in English literature, and is now an English teacher at Wantagh High School on the island.

His past life is no secret. He's famous among his students for being the teacher who was a rock star before they were born. Does that sound at all like you? 212-433-WNYC. What was your 15 minutes of fame? How did it affect your life? 212-433-9692. Oh, look at that. Our board is all filled up already with listeners who have had 15 minutes of fame in one way or another. We'll hear your stories right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. All right. Now, to your stories of your 15 minutes of fame. We'll start with Angela in Hastings-on-Hudson. You're on WNYC. Hi, Angela.

Angela: Hi, Brian. During the first summer of COVID, when you couldn't go to baseball games or you couldn't go anywhere, the Mets ran this campaign where if you sent in a photo of yourself, they made a giant portrait and put them in all the stands. I bought it for me and my husband and my two daughters and their partners. On the first game, we were-- I don't know what the section that we were sitting in, but we will right behind where the camera is on the picture.

Pete Alonso was hitting a lot of home runs that summer. The camera was on our faces all the time. We were on TV, on every single game. People would text us and call us and say, "Didn't I just see you on the stand?" We have tons of video of us sitting in the stands and watching Pete Alonso in his home runs. My husband, who is the biggest Met fan of them all, was never on TV, but we all were. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: That is so funny. Do you know? I did that too. There was a placard of me somewhere at Citi Field, but it never got on TV that I know of. I never happened to see it while watching the Mets game. Nobody ever told me they saw it. I'm glad that people saw your 2020 pandemic-era virtual fandom at Citi Field. Angela, thank you so much. Great start. Lee in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lee.

Lee: Oh, hi. I used to be an influencer, and I walked away from that career four years ago and now I just do marketing consulting and copywriting, but I was like an Instagram influencer.

Brian Lehrer: What were you an influencer around?

Lee: Wellness and food and lifestyle and stuff.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you're doing marketing but not in public?

Lee: No, not in public. I do it behind the scenes. I just live a pretty normal life, but I used to put myself online all the time and be on video and stories and Instagram Live, full influencer stuff.

Brian Lehrer: What was that like for you?

Lee: I was in my 20s. I feel like it was a 20s thing. You just want to be out in the world. It was really intense. Then when I got into my 30s, I feel like I was like, "All right, I'm ready to slow down on that." I just didn't really actually like being that, like a content farm, and being that public all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Lee, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Michelle, in Garrison, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michelle.

Michelle: Oh, hi. I just love your show. Thank you so much for having me. In 1976, I designed a bed that was six feet long that looked like a sneaker. It was shown on The Dinah Shore Show where Don Rickles got inside of it and said, "Michelle Clifton, wherever you are, I love your sneaker bed." It was also written up by The Washington Post and syndicated across the country.

When I saw that it was getting so much interest, I took it to Bloomingdale's, and they put it in their designer rooms and had a little video that I had done it. That is my so-called My Sneaker is More Famous Than I Am. They were in right and left feet. I still have three pairs left. I sold them all around the world. It was fun.

Brian Lehrer: That is hilarious. What was the concept? Why a sneaker bed?

Michelle: I did a lot of soft sculpture. I thought that at the time that furniture was very boring. I did, starting in the early '70s, I did a whole series of furniture where I did a palm tree couch and palm tree lamps, and an alligator coffee table that was bought by the Jordan's Mini Labor Institute, and I had a show of some of my work at the Smithsonian in 1970s around the same time.

Then one day, it just came to me, "Why don't I make a bed that looks like a sneaker?" I will tell you I thought people are going to think I'm nuts, why am I doing this? I would sit there thinking, "This is such a waste of my time." [chuckles] Then it got all this attention. I have one that I look at now that you hang it up in the daytime, so it's a work of art in the daytime and then you take that out at night and you can sleep in it. It has a four or five-inch mattress inside the shape of the sneaker.

Now what I do, then I was a filmmaker and did things like that. Now, I play Tibet in singing bowls. Last week I played bowls for all the nurses in a New York City Hospital in the Bronx Lebanon Hospital for nurses Week. I put [unintelligible 00:08:56] on people and I play them. Anyway, that's my little fame.

Brian Lehrer: A different kind of fame. There you go. Michelle in Garrison with the sneaker bed.

By the way, I have to pass along a small correction from the history quiz segment. A few people called up to point out and we checked it out that on the question, is Grant buried in Grant's Tomb? We said he was buried in Grant's Tomb. He is buried in Grant's Tomb, his remains. A few people called up to correct us by saying that he is entombed there, not buried. His remains are there, but it's not buried. He's not underground. Just passing along that correction. I think the answer to the quiz question would have basically been the same. The true or false way that we asked it, but he is not buried at Grant's Tomb, he is entombed above ground so there.

Larry in Ridgewood, New Jersey you're on WNYC. Hi, Larry.

Larry: Hey, Brian. Nice to chat with you. As a long-time listener, I get so much information from you every single day of the week, so I really value your coverage and everything else.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Larry: I was a mall Santa Claus years ago. I did a one-day stint in a large mall here in New Jersey. At one point, they had asked me to walk across the mall to another section. As I was doing that, I was a major celebrity for a micro-second, and hundreds and hundreds of people pointing at me, kids running at me, parents wanting to take pictures. It was invigorating, yet a little disconcerting at the same time.

Brian Lehrer: But they didn't know you were you. They thought you were Santa Claus, right?

Larry: Indeed, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Very cool. Famous in that context. Larry, thank you very much. Joel in Nyack, you're on WNYC. Hi, Joel.

Joel: Hi, there. How are you today?

Brian Lehrer: Good, doing okay. What was your 15 minutes of fame?

Joel: Well, the 15 minutes extended itself to 40 years. Back in the early '80s, I was a roller skater in Central Park and just skating around, and then I discovered the inline skates, the rollerblades. From that moment on, I fell in love with the sport and created the first inline skate school in New York and expanded to books and videos. It's called Roll America and Kids on Wheels. The books and videos were sold internationally, and I've been doing it ever since. The skate school still exists in New York, and I'm still loving it. Actually, I had an interview with you about it within a year ago, during pandemic, about the popularity of inline skating.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I remember that [unintelligible 00:11:48].

Joel: My program still runs.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Joel, thank you very much. It's more than 15 minutes of fame, but glad you had it. Joel calling up to plug his business. I guess that's okay. Let's see. One more. Zach in High Falls, you're on WNYC. Hi, Zach.

Zach: Hi, Brian. Love the show. Long-time caller. I mean, long-time listener, third-time caller. I was on MTV when I was in high school back in the early '90s. It was a strange little documentary short that they made called Freaks, Nerds & Weirdos.

Brian Lehrer: I remember that title.

Zach: They came to my high school, and they interviewed me and two other high school students, and then they also interviewed Gwar and Tim Burton and Sandra Bernhard and Janeane Garofalo. It was an uplifting kind of a spot where they were trying to tell kids to believe in themselves and follow their own individualized paths.

Then, after that was over, I went to college, and people realized, "Weren't you that guy in that Freaks, Nerds & Weirdos show?" Then that morphed into, "Weren't you in that TV show Freaks and Geeks?" which I was not in, the Judd Apatow show. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Did it give you some kind of social currency in college that people recognized you from that?

Zach: Yes, it maybe lasted for about a month, and then it fizzled out, but what was notable about the whole situation in terms of the WNYC universe is that the interviewer for MTV was Alison Stewart.

Brian Lehrer: Alison Stewart. How about that?

Zach: Yes, she-

Brian Lehrer: Now you got to tell me one more thing.

Zach: -was an MTV VJ back then.

Brian Lehrer: That's right. That's how she first came to public notice herself. Zach, you got to tell me one more thing about this. Since you were in Freaks, Nerds & Weirdos, were you a freak, a nerd, or a weirdo?

Zach: That's a good question, and it's something that I've wrestled with ever since. It's one of those things that I talk to my therapist about, but I think it probably comes down to weirdo, and I've really dedicated my life ever since to the weird and the unusual.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for being weird and unusual with us. Listeners, there are your calls with your 15 minutes of fame. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

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