Other Stuff - Like Wil Wheaton

Yeah, I know I promised to relate some events of coolness. I'm going to try now...

Think all the way back to August 15. Just as I was grabbing the phone to ask for directions... Liz calls me and tells me she told me the wrong address for the bookstore... it's on Sunset, not Hollywood and Vine. By the time I get myself turned around and going in the right direction, I manage to pull into the parking structure right after Liz. After a yummy lunch of Baja Fresh, we walk next door to the bookstore to wait around for an hour or two until the book signing.

By this time I was really starting to do a pee pee dance and was really annoyed when I couldn't find someone to give me a bathroom token. After traversing the bookstore from end to end, I was successful and then went off to hunt down a Guide to Literary Agents. Liz was hunkered down in a chair so I then offered to go get our books from the cars. Liz had to buy her own copy of Dancing Barefoot, as she'd "stolen" mine and read it while we were waiting for HP3 to start.

Side tangent: I get really impatient when someone is sitting there laughing at a book. I want an explanation, dammit! especially if they are reading something I wrote. It's like torturous hell sitting there waiting while someone is reading your material and you aren't sure if it's funny where it's supposed to be funny.

Moving on. Wil Wheaton was cool. He seemed very modest and unassuming, even nervous. It gave him a sort of unpolished charm. He is an excellent reader and his little asides and sort of "yeah right" stares back at the audience were perfectly timed. He'd finished reading from Just a Geek when a guy wanders through the area and pauses to ask the ultimate question from his book. "Didn't you used to be an actor? Weren't you on Star Trek?" Despite just spending the past half hour describing how much this question drove him nuts, he was gracious and didn't miss a beat. The audience giggled and we all shared the in joke as we rolled our eyes in tandem.

Again Lizzie manages to have a longer and more interesting conversation with author at signing than I did (re: Jasper Fforde). She wore her Team in Training bracelets and they talked a bit about marathons. I just got tongue tied and asked if he'd met Neil Gaiman yet. No, he hadn't, but he wanted to. Trying to think back to Neil Gaiman signing in Canterbury... come to think of it, Mel had a more intriguing conversation with him too. Boogers.