Our town isn't accustomed to movie premieres, but on this particular day we got the movie premiere treatment. Jimmy Smit's movie "The Price of Glory" was going to hold it's premiere here instead of Hollywood and it was a really cool event. The only major star that was "supposed" to show up was Jimmy Smits himself.
At this particular event you could buy tickets to watch the movie, but it was at a steep $150 bucks a pop, so that meant going to the premiere was out of the question for us. We were still going to try for autographs and Earl arrived on the scene first and waited for Sterling to show up. You can read all of the juicy details in Jimmy Smits section, but to make a long story short we got free tickets to this expensive event, sweet.
After the film was over they officially announced to the crowd that Jimmy Smits and some other individuals involved in the project were going to be meeting everyone in a tent next to the theatre. Earl and Sterling quickly got up and were trying to beat the crowd to the tent. Boxers Danny Romero and Johnny Tapia were on hand to sign autographs as well, which was a nice extra. It was weird seeing that they are friends because in the ring it looks like they hate each other.
Romero, who is a newborn Christian, had a gang related life before finding Christianity. The fact that he and hometown arch-rival Johnny Tapia, now also a Christian, were involved with rival gangs and they were world champions at the same weight, during the same time, made boxing fans talk about a fight between the two long before it actually took place. So it was definitely odd to see they were actually good friends now. Both of them are extremely nice and we couldn't ask for nicer celebrities to come across.
One amazing thing Danny Romero try's to do is remember all of his fan's names when they meet him. For example, when we got his autograph he personalized everything for us. We didn't get a picture with him right away so when we eventually came back, after taking care of the Jimmy Smits situation, Danny remembered Earl's name! He tried to guess Sterling's but ended up saying the wrong name (which we didn't call him on). It's cool that a celebrity would try to store names in his head just for the sake of it. Besides this little signing fact, Danny was also a really nice guy and truly loves meeting his fans.
Sterling, friend Mr. Ao, and I were going to the Red Hot Chili Pepper/Foo Fighter concert and we made sure to bring autograph material in case we were able to meet them. We arrived a bit late to the event and we met up with fellow autograph collector JC. She had been there earlier and got Chad (drummer of RHCP) autograph on a Rolling Stone cover. We were pretty mad that we missed out on getting the 'graph, but all we could do was hope he would come back and sign.
As time passed JC looked over in time to see Danny "Kid Dynamite" Romero trying to get backstage with some girls. JC didn't meet him last time so she definitely wanted to go over and try. I figured I might as well join her and before I knew it we were standing in front of the boxer. He was once again a great guy and didn't mind signing a couple of index cards for us, which was cool. We thanked him and were off to hopefully meet the bands.