My Encounters With Howard Stern, Melissa Etheridge, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Murphy, John Callahan, And Other Famous Celebrities

Ralph Haselmann Jr editor.
Lucid Moon Poetry Website Archives and Newsletter
Lucid Moon Poetry Website www.lucidmoonpoetry.com

     I have had brushes with 8 famous celebrities and it was fun meeting 4 of them. It’s fun meeting celebrities on the whole but they may disappoint you. Better to “trust the art and not the artist” as Bruce Springsteen said.

      I have had brushes with 8 famous celebrities and it was fun meeting 4 of them. In 1980 I went with my eighth grade class into NYC to get my third class lifetime broadcast license and to visit WCBS FM/AM Radio Stations where I got broadcaster William B. Williams’ autograph. Even at that young age I thought that collecting autographs was a silly hobby.

      I have gone to only 8 rock concerts in my short lifetime (I’m 37), including Simon and Garfunkel and Yes in 1983, Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1986, John Mellencamp and U2 in 1987, Melissa Etheridge and The Pogues in 1990, and The Rolling Stones in 1994. I haven’t scored tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert yet because the demand is so huge and the scalpers snap up all the good seats, but I hope to see him live in concert some day. That’s why I keep hoping that Bruce releases a complete concert on dvd, cd and companion video. I think the three live cd sets and one live ep he’s released are compromised because they are edited and are not the full show. Bruce, if you happen to read this article some day, please release two complete live concerts from each tour on dvd, cd and video! Why not hire me` to help oversee live concert releases?!

      In 1986 I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan in concert at Rutgers. As my friend and I were exiting his concert, we saw Stevie's white limo at the back door. My friend said let's go meet him, but I didn't think we’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in to see Stevie. It was rainy and midnight and I was drunk and exhausted and I fell asleep in the car. After knocking on the door for forty minutes in the rain, they finally let my friend in to see Stevie. My friend got his autograph for me and Stevie said he was mixing his new live album. I could kick myself for not meeting him. His autograph was beautiful - a large, childlike, circular scrawl of the initials SRV. My mom threw it out because she thought it was a scribble! I retrieved it and put it on my shelf. The morning of Stevie's fatal helicopter cash in 1990, the autographed piece of paper fell from the shelf onto the floor, coincidentally. I cried a lot when I heard of Stevie's death. Stevie Ray Vaughan was the most brilliant guitarist since Jimi Hendrix, and now they're both gone. It's as though whenever a genius appears in this world, God snatches them back and says, “No! You can't have him”.

      I met shock radio DJ Howard Stern before Howard was a super star in Manville N.J. in 1989. I was video taped for Howard's archives inside Dave's Clothing Store in Manville, next door to Ralph Sr.'s then Arkay Video Productions Company. Howard came up to me with a Penthouse Pet on each arm, and said all childlike and ego-hungry, "Hey, have you seen my television show? Have you heard my radio show"? I had heard his radio show only a couple of times, but I knew who Howard was. I was so amazed that Howard was a celebrity in town that I froze up and couldn't speak. Howard got mad and went onto the next person. Naturally I thought of something funny to say later like, "Hey, it's Don Imus (rival radio personality)! Is that your beautiful wife on your arm?!", but Howard would have gotten mad if I said that.

      I’ve never met rock singer Melissa Etheridge, but I have several amusing anecdotes about seeing her in concert, dreaming about her, and how her music brought me out of a coma. I dreamt that Melissa Etheridge and her girlfriend were giving a concert and after the concert we had dinner. Melissa came up behind me and rearranged the silverware into a cryptic message and II knew it was her behind me. She put her hands over my eyes and said, “Guess who?” and II blurted out “Melissa!” The next day in my dream I was getting on a bus and she and her girlfriend were sitting on a bench and Melissa called out to me “So, have you figured out whether or not you’re a girl or a boy?!” and I felt like throwing all my cds of her at her! I hope she’s not mean in real life!

      I went to a concert of hers in real life in 1990 in Waterloo Village, Stanhope, NJ. It was raining and dreary and the concert was being held under a small tent maybe 1000 people in attendance. My girlfriend had just dumped me so I had no one to go to the concert with. As I stood alone and watched the crowd stream in at the outdoor concert, I thought of scalping the other ticket, but I was too scared of getting caught, because scalping is illegal. Just then I saw a girl from my graphic design class (I was a senior at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, New Brunswick, New Jersey). II said “You have good taste in music!”

      Throughout the concert several dykes in front of me held lit cigarettes up in the air with their fists, pumping the air in solidarity with Melissa, it was funny. This was a few years before Melissa came out, but even then Melissa had a strong gay following. Gays just know when other people are gay! I strolled around to the mixing booth in the center aisle of the tent and decided to stay for the encore as it continued to rain and people were getting up to leave. The concert had been great with many highlights, including the fantastic seven minute guitar/drum/harmonica jam Royal Station 4/16 (on the studio version, Bono played the harmonica part). Another highlight was Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On. Marvin is my favorite singer of all time, so this was a treat. Then came the most special moment of the concert, when Melissa sang the exquisite ballad I Will Never Be The Same, which was in the movie Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael but did not appear on the soundtrack cd or on one of Melissa’s cds until three years later, when it finally appeared on her fourth cd, Yes I Am. The movie starred Winona Ryder as a teenager who believes her long lost mom is the famous and mysterious Roxy, who left town to make it big. There is subplot hinting that Roxy is a lesbian, so the subject matter of thee film is perfect for Melissa. The song was beautiful, and she closed her eyes as she sang it, and as I stood in the aisle smiling in the dark, it was as if she reached out to me like in that famous photo of Janis Joplin touching a fan’s hand at the edge of the stage with her eyes closed as if she felt the fan’s presence, and it was as though Melissa was singing the song just for me.. That was a special moment I’ll never forget. I was right in her viewpoint, I wonder if she saw me standing there, I was only about 70 feet from the stage.

      II was a horrible, serious, near fatal car crash in October 2001 and was in coma for three months, until the end of December. I only came out of the coma when my bright sister Camille blasted my favorite Melissa Etheridge CD, Yes I Am. I recognized the five hit singles, I Am The Only One, Come To My Window, I Will Never Be The Same, Yes I Am, and The Ruins. My eyes fluttered and opened, and my mom screamed and jumped up for joy that I was alive! It’s a scary thought, but my parents were already starting to make funeral arrangements.

      Bruce Springsteen has acknowledged me twice. I have been a subscriber to Backstreets magazine, a Bruce Springsteen fan magazine, since 1984, at the beginning of the Born In The USA phenomenon. Bruce is also an avid reader but doesn't endorse the magazine and he is not connected to it probably because they review bootleg CD's of his concerts and studio out takes. In one issue they show a photo of him holding up a copy of the magazine. In the Fall 1986 issue they printed the results of a contest where they asked the reader to come up with a top ten list of anything related to Bruce Springsteen. My list was called Top Ten Books For Bruce Tramps. In it I included obvious choices like Dave Marsh's biography, Born To Run, but I also included red herrings like Bob Dylan's book Complete Lyrics 1962 - 1985,. Bruce Springsteen was mercilessly compared to Bob Dylan when Bruce first started out in1973, and Bruce hated the comparisons. Bruce probably thought that I was being a wise-ass with the reference

      So after my list appeared in the Fall 1986 issue of Backstreets, Bruce played at Neil Young's Acoustic Bridge Benefit Concert in October 1986. Everyone in the audience was chanting "Bruuuce!" like they always do at his concerts and it sounded like they were booing him. Bruce laughed and said “ What if my name was Ralph! That wouldn’t work too well, now would it!". And everyone started chanting “Raaalph!” I nearly fell out of my Barcalounger chair laughing when I realized that Bruce was most likely talking about me. I felt as though my tape of the concert was personalized. A few people told me I was delusional when I told them this anecdote, but it’s not my problem that they have little faith in me or the truth. This really happened. Deal with it!

      Bruce Springsteen has acknowledged me a second time. In the summer of 1995, I sent Bruce a poignant, personal letter telling him how I felt like a ghost or an angel now that three people I loved and admired had died, including my best friend Mark, my favorite actor River Phoenix, and my beloved grandfather. I included poems about them, and I included their birth and death dates and the day I wrote each poem. Bruce acknowledged my poems and letter by sending a copy of The Star-Ledger with the article about him, and saying he was about to release a new album on November 20, 1995. The press release was on 10/17/95, the anniversary of the date I wrote the poem about my grandfather. The album was to be released on November 20, 1995 the anniversary of the death of my friend Mark. Record companies traditionally release new CD's only on Tuesdays and as luck would have it, this November 20 fell on a Tuesday. I don't subscribe to The Star-Ledger, so I know that Bruce arranged with the music journalist, Jay Lustig to send me a copy of the paper with the story. Jay was my floor rep at my dorm at Indiana University when I was a freshman in 1984, before I transferred to Rutgers later in 1985. So, Jay recognized my name from when I was there in Indiana. In 1984 Jay was happy that he scored some tickets to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. Jay also said that he was going to move to NYC to try his hand at music journalism. He’s been the music journalist for The Star-Ledger for over 10 years, so he’s had some measure of success.

      I would have preferred a personal letter from Bruce, but I was happy that he acknowledged me. The album was a joy to listen to, especially the title track. I wonder if Bruce was influenced by my theme of ghosts in my poignant letter to him, but the cd booklet to his album The Ghost of Tom Joad said Bruce had been working on the songs for three years. I have an open policy that anyone can borrow ideas from my writings as long as they don’t plagiarize and they credit me at the bottom of their work. And anyone can reprint a writing or drawing of mine as long as they send me a copy of what it appears in or tells me the address of the website my writings are posted on. William Shakespeare, Bruce Springsteen and Bono from U2 borrow all the time from other writers so I don’t mind if they borrow from me! Naturally, if publications have a payment policy and want to pay me for my work,, I’ll jump at the chance to get paid, I’ll jump at the chance because I have almost no income due to my debilitating car crash. November is a rough month for me with the anniversaries of the deaths of my friend and grandfather, so a new Bruce album was welcome even if it was sad and serious. As Bruce joked about the album , “It’s fun for the whole family!”

      I met PBS commentator Bill Moyers in the summer of 2000. He was having a book signing at the Clinton Book Shop in Clinton, N.J. He was there to plug his book, Fooling With Words, a book length essay on poetry, with 11 interviews with 11 poets at the 1998 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Stanhope, N.J. There were about 100 people standing on line, and when I got to the front I handed him an 8 page printout of my homepage on my website www.lucidmoonpoetry.com. He read a few lines of my opening poem Lucid Moon. He liked it and smiled and wrote " To a Kindred Spirit" in my copy of his book. As I headed out the door, I realized I had a big volume of his interviews with Joseph Campbell and other artists and intellectuals at home. My grandmother had loaned me the book and was asking for it back. I thought I would surprise her with his signature since she liked him. So, I sped home, retrieved the book and sped back and got back in line at the bookstore. The line was much shorter and he did a double take when he recognized me from before. The store gave you a little piece of paper for you to write what you wanted him to inscribe in your book. I wrote in my chicken scratch, Dear Opa and Grandma, but he couldn't read my writing so he wrote Dear Opa and Grandpa, which would mean that my Grandfather had a boyfriend! My grandmother laughed when she read it, but she was happy to get his autograph when I mailed it back to her.

      I also can’t believe this, but my night nurse in Morris Hills Nursing Home in Morristown, NJ, from August to November 2002 may have been SNL comedian Eddie Murphy, I kid you not. My parents and sisters met him and found him to be charming and likable, but they don’t believe it is really him. He has a gap between his top front teeth and a mischievous laughter just like Eddie.. Eddie doesn’t smoke, drink, take drugs or frequent Hollywood parties, and he may keep himself centered by working as a nurse’s aide two nights a week. Alexi/Edddie is from the East Indies and speaks Creole, and his real name is Alexi Louis. When he first came into my room, I immediately pumped my fist into the air and chanted, “Eddie, Fddie!”,, but he probably had no idea wh I was referring to! He was serious around me until I tickled his forearm and kissed his hand and told him some religious jokes. He opened up to me, and he would smile and shake my hand and call me Mr. Ralph whenever he’d come into my room. He fed me dinner and a midnight snack. He has offered to come to my house on the weekends to take care of me and to give my regular nurse a break. So that might be an option. The funny thing is, he said he would have to take a bus to my house, when I know damn well he has a Porsche with 17 speakers because he showed it off on a Barbara Walters tv special! He really plays up being a poor immigrant

      I should note that I was in a serious, near-fatal car accident on October 8, 2001 (my Dad's birthday). I am paralyzed below the waist and in the right writing hand. We are desperately trying to find a nurses' aide but Medicaid said there is a shortage. I am currently at John L. Montgomery Care Center in Freehold, N.J., Bruce Springsteen's home town. My family has a connection to Freehold, too. My Dad grew up on a farm in Freehold, and worked at the same rug mill as Bruce's Dad did, probably at the same time in the late 1950s. Bruce has visited here at John L. Montgomery twice, to see his high school classmate, David. Bruce visited some other patients here and gave them tickets to his concerts. I don't know if Bruce will visit here a third time while I am here. I would be afraid to meet him -- I might say something dopey!

      John L. has the best computer lab in the state. I'm at the computer lab 3 to 5 hours a day. We have cooking every Thursday and poetry readings every other Tuesday. So it's not so bad here. I'm busy doing my poetry website and doing my quarterly Lucid Moon Review Poetry Newsletter. If you would like to read my poetry newsletter, it’s free and is posted on my Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website www.lucidmoonpoetry.com. If you would like to correspond with me please e-mail me at: ralphylucidmoon@yahoo.com . I am rededicating myself to promoting and publishing the writings of others and myself. I would rather be paralyzed for life than dead! Now I can get my poetry projects in order rather than having them come out in inferior form.

      Over the years I have written letters to Bruce Springsteen, Melissa Etheridge, REM, Pearl Jam, David Letterman, Howard Stern, Camille Paglia, and cartoonist John Callahan, but none of them have written back, so I think I will cool it with letters to famous people. I would like to meet Bruce eventually, but it's okay if I never get to meet him -- he knows I exist. Right now I'm centered on working on my poetry website and books. All in all I've had a charmed life, meeting a few famous people!

      In July 2004 I moved into what I hope will my permanent residence, a nursing home in Morristown, NJ. I had been a wandering nomad, going to 5 nursing homes in the three years since my car accident in 2001. Alexi Lewis, the nurse’s who looks amazingly like Edde Murphy, and who works on the 4rth floor where I live, came by to visit me. He looks amazingly like Eddie, but he is not him! I guess in my heavily medicated state of mind two years ago, I thought alexi was Eddie! I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t ask him if he wanted to ask all of wealthy Hollywood celebrities to raise money for the charity I wanted to start! He has offered to take care of me here on the weekends.

      The latest famous person that I have had contact with is the hilarious politically incorrect cartoonist John Callahan. I’m was readying my cartoon manuscript for publication, and I wrote to his agent and mentioned that he was a big influence on me, and included my two best cartoons, Jesus Christ Wore Khakis, and a parody of the Frank Sinatra Duets cds, where he duets with Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop to Nine Inch Nails! I also included an excerpt on a history of my cartoon influences, everyone from Dr. Seuss, Peanuts, Mad Magazine, The Far Side, B. Kliban (Cats), The Simpsons and John Callahan I think features like this will make the cartoon book memorable and special. His agent forwarded my letter to him, and I was so surprised when he called the next day. We talked for about 10 minutes, about creativity, living arrangements (we are both paralyzed from car accidents), cartoon influences, and his meeting Bob Dylan (Bob has a daughter who likes John’s cartoons).

      Due to the sensitive nature of our conversation, I cannot reveal anything further that we spoke about! John is a quad from a drunk driving accident, so we are learning to share our pain!!! We exchanged email and snail mail numbers, and I sent him my cartoon manuscripts. He wrote a blurb for my cartoon book, “Ralph Haselmann Jr.’s cartoons are quirk and infectiously amusing!” My cartoon book is called So You Wan To Be A Cartonist?! And is 8 ½ by 11, 200 pages over 300 cartoons.. It will be published by Authorhuse, and will be available at www.Authorhouse.com , www.Amazon.com www.BarnesandNoble.com , and www.Borders.com for about $20 (cheap!) Hopefully it will sell well, better than my poetry books, which didn’t sell anything. John Callahan is the most down to earth of the celebrities that I wrote to, the only that bothered to write back ,and the only celebrity I care to one day meet. Thanks, John for being human.

Ralph Haselmann Jr.’s Bio Ralph Haselmann Jr. was born on October 4, 1965 and lives in the lush rolling green hills of Morristown, NJ. He graduated from Mason Gross School Of The Arts, Rutgers (New Brunswick, New Jersey) in 1990 with a BFA in Graphic Design. He proceeded to paint houses for 11 years after school because it paid much more. He edits the critically lauded Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website, www.lucidmoonpoetry.com, which has been called the best poetry website on the internet, a valuable resource for poets, and is highly rated by Google. His first two poetry books, Wounded Heart, Naked Soul and Scattershot Haze, are available at Xlibris at 1-888-7xlibris, www.Xlibris.com , www.Amazon.com , www.BarnesandNoble.com , and www.Borders.com . In October 2001, Ralph was in a horrible, serious, near-fatal car accident, which left him paralyzed below the waist and in his right writing hand. Ralph is not wallowing in anger or self-pity, rather he is rededicating his life to promoting and publishing the works of others and himself. Remarkably, he can type with an adaptive keyboard and use a mouse pad to work on his website. Ralph is a member of The Writer’s Bridge, a group which will help place his writings in magazine markets that will pay him. Ralph is also a proud member of Peta, not People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals, but the other one, People Eating Tasty Animals! Ralph has given poetry readings at The Shaker Café in Flemington NJ and The Back Fence in NYC. If you would like to reprint his writings or correspond with him, he can be reached at:

Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website and Newsletter, Ralph Haselmann Jr., editor
Morris Hills Center, Room 427 W, 77 Madison Ave., Morristown, NJ 07960
(973) 993-9744ralphylucidmoon@yahoo.com, www.lucidmoonpoetry.com.

© Copyright 2005 Ralph Haselmann Jr. and Lucid Moon Review Poetry Website www.lucidmoonpoetry.com