Thought this was a great article. He has been a booster for so long, and I still have dreams of the stadium post-game with small town blasting after the CCG.
@hoosierdaddy I know from first person accounts he is/can be kind of a dick...a lot of people in my personal orbit (my wife, my dad, wife of one of my best friends and myself) have had some sort of interaction with him over the years. My interaction was pretty cool (I was probably 12 years old) but the others were as adults. I'm not bashing the guy by any means, but leaving no tip at a restaurant is kind of telling.
Edit: I bagged his former wife Elaine's groceries a few times in the mid 90's...she was always so nice.
I bagged his former wife
Congrats!
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. - Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and likely Hoosier basketball fan.
POTFB
@bcbranimal my point isn’t on if he is a dick celebrity or not, it’s that he backed IUFB when none of the “new money” like Cuban did. We have a dedicated practice facility only because of him. So I am happy to see he gets some flowers, imagine spending tens of millions on decades of IUFB pre cig LOL
@bcbranimal and I have to admit. I love mellencamp
I grew up in the city of Chicago but my relatives grew up in rural Louisiana / Michigan. And I would spend all my summers staying with them as a kid through college. Some of them live in towns of sub 200 people. I am still unconvinced Bloomington isn’t the best college town of all time.
Mellencamp is an authentic celebrity, for being a celebrity, if that makes sense?
@hoosierdaddy I meant no ill-will with my initial response...he's certainly been a supporter of IU thru thick and thin (seeing him in Assembly in the cameo shots thru the years proves it). Perhaps it was my fault for bringing in the personal things. He's certainly been a long time supporter of IU. His work with the Farm Aid concerts is certainly commendable as well.
My experience with him was shortly after he was filming "Rain on the Scarecrow" at the church near my house. My buddy and I were "playing army" along the road and the guy drove by in his convertible, came to a screeching stop, pointed two finger guns and shot at us. I've looked up the timelines, and I was 10 when it happened, not 12...and I can see it like it was yesterday, and it was awesome.
@bcbranimal you are pretty close to my age. My interactions with him weren’t great and lots of stories about him are not great. His second wife was very nice too. He used to ride his motorcycle down 45 east quite a bit. We used to see him ride past as we played basketball at the Benton twp fire department.
@d-b-cooper There's a recent (I think; someone sent it to me) Rogan interview, and it seems he's mellowed, but pretty much by his own accounts he was a dick when younger. I knew a girl who worked at a studio he was recording at, and she was super nice, and she said complete A-hole. Heard similar from a friend's sister who ran in some of the same circles in Btown in the 70s. Hopefully he's learned, and I loved his music, but always turned me off to him. Nothing bigger than how you treat others, and I'm hoping he's learned that over the years. Appreciate his support for the program and hope he has mellowed, but I won't be buying tix to his Greatest Hits tour.
I stopped being a fan long ago. The lecture on Hoosier Hospitality and apology to Knicks fans reminded me why I started ignoring him.
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. - Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and likely Hoosier basketball fan.
POTFB
He’s a complete jackass.
- Where’s the Mellencamp statue?
Where’s the Mellencamp statue?
Pretty sure I saw it in an inner city front yard...next to a black cat and the interstate. Though it could've been outside a Tasty Freeze or next to a scarecrow in the rain, it all runs together these days.
A good friend will bail you out of jail, but your best friend will be sitting next to you in the cell saying "that was f***ing awesome"