Celebrities on Campus: Common & More

Earlier this school year, I was fortunate enough to meet Full House star Dave Coulier on the campus of my college. A few weeks ago, my school booked Academy Award winner Common to give a speech on campus as part of the Black History Month celebrations.

I'm not a big music guy, but once I heard Common was coming, I knew I had to be there. He won the Academy Award for this song from the movie Selma.

I got to the speech just in time to see him get introduced by a professor. He talked about many different aspects of his life, including his time as a Chicago Bulls ball boy, how he got into music, and his recent award wins. Here are a couple pictures I took of Common during his speech.

His speech lasted an hour, and I throughly enjoyed. After meeting Coulier months ago, I knew pretty much exactly where Common would walk in and out of the building and where his car would park. 

After standing outside in the cold for a few minutes, Common walked out the exact door that I thought he was going to. With an entourage that seemed like a dozen people, Common came right over and signed a couple photos for me and another photo for someone else. He originally was only going to do one photo, but he saw the Oscars photo and said he liked it, so he signed that one too. He has played in the NBA Celebrity game the last few years and is an avid basketball fan. I told him he was a great speaker, then he thanked me for that and left. Here are the photos. 

He then went back to his car and drove away. One member of his entourage tripped walking up the steps, which tends to happen often in icy Albany.

Also, I got another couple of autographs in the past week.

On Friday, my college was hosting the women's basketball conference championship game. It was a great game, and I got to cover it for the student media. It turns out that there was a celebrity sitting behind me the whole game. Actor Brandon Jay McLaren, a former soccer player and alumnus at my college, had court side seats to the game. Click on his name to see what stuff he was in. After the game, a friend introduced me to him and I took a picture with him while chatting for a minute. Before he left, he signed my program for me. I had nothing else to get signed, so I figured it can't be bad. The photo with him is on the right.

The announcer of that game for ESPNU was Sue Bird. Her resume is impressive: 2 time WNBA Champion, 1st overall pick in the 2002 WNBA Draft, 8 times WNBA All-Star, and 3 time Olympic Gold Medalist. After the game, I went over to her and she also signed the program for me. She was very nice. She took photos and signed autographs for everyone who wanted one. Below is the program, with McLaren's signature on the top.

That does it for this entry. Thanks for reading and good luck graphing!