Mike, I ran into this problem with my name as well. There's a famous playwright named David Mamet who just happened to write a movie starring Matthew Broderick, so the term "Matthew Mamet" produced pages and pages of search results that had nothing to do with me.
As my online marketing career started to take shape, I purchased MatthewMamet.com and started producing lots and lots of content under that blog, as you suggested in your post. That helped. I made sure to leave comments on blogs like yours and post my full real name. That helped too.
Finally, the rise of social sites has had a huge impact. Use your real name to create profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Google Profile, MyBlogLog, Mashable, etc etc. I even had a Yahoo Mash profile for awhile . . Then, keep those profiles updated early and often. You can use tools like Ping.FM to help update multiple profiles at once.
It's safe to assume that basketball players and playwrights will NOT be able to keep up with you as you produce prodigious amounts of content on these profile sites, and you'll eventually push them down the search rankings as I have.
Unless, of course, you're name is Michael Jordan or something like that. Then, let's hope you have a great middle name!