This is the thread where we gossip happily about Noam Chomsky
(Since not even Noam Chomsky is like Noam Chomsky.) I'll start! My syntax guru calls him Uncle Noam, and in our "It's Syntax And Wizards All The Way Down" class (id est, Language and Cognition) he has an endless font of exciting anecdotes and quips about him. Among them:

~Chomsky is a super common name in Belarus and thereabouts, and it's a common public misconception that there's only one Noam Chomsky working and writing in the US. There are actually roughly two (and a half): the syntactician, whose latest work in the Minimalist Program is driving us all bonkers but it's so pretty that we can't bear to tell him so; the political thinker, who used to get arrested as a hobby; and the cognitive scientist, whose concept of Universal Grammar is the best way to piss a room full of psychologists and phonologists off.

~This one time, my dad bit the knee of at least one (1) Noam Chomsky. (He was four. My dad, not Chomsky, I mean.)

~The last time my syntax guru saw Uncle Noam, he (Chomsky) gave him (my teacher) a big hug while wearing a really silly Peruvian sweater. He is also officially disallowed from calling him Professor Chomsky to his face.