“I’m just saying, UT Law School is one of the best in the country. You always liked that Ally McBeal show . . .”
“Dad! I’m doing great! Honest . . .”
“Hey! Are you . . . Codex?”
We had stopped to have our earnest Lifetime moment in the linens section, and a guy in his early twenties wearing a polo shirt peered out at us from behind a stack of flamingo beach towels.
I smiled. “Uh, yeah! That’s me.”
“Wow, this is so cool!”
He walked over, and my dad looked at the guy skeptically. I had a feeling he thought the guy was a plant.
“I love your show! I’m working, so it’s not technically allowed, but think I could get a picture with you?”
“Sure!”
As we posed in front of a stack of “As Seen on TV” items, my dad took the photo, then handed the phone back to the kid.
Dad had a weird look on his face. “You’ve really seen her web show?”
“Yeah! Me and my roommate love it. We’re gamers. Bought the DVDs!”
“That’s awesome, thanks for supporting!” I smiled and high-fived him. For many reasons, I’d never loved a stranger more than in that moment.
The guy waved and started to leave. “Nice to meet you! The roommate is never gonna believe this!”
As he walked away, my dad looked at me, and there was something different in his eyes. Surprise. Shock. And more than a little bit of admiration.
“That was pretty cool.”
“Yeah.”
“Ahem.”
There was an awkward beat between us. Was he gonna bring up the law school thing again? Ask me more about my show? Talk to me about my pension benefits?
“Let’s go get some pancakes.” He put his arm around me, and we pushed the cart toward the checkout. A few aisles later I had to pretend to look at ShamWows to wipe away a few tears.
Yeah, that moment near the flamingo beach towels was my sweetest Guild victory of all.
-?9?-
Convention Fevah
I have a cabinet filled with dolls of myself in my office. But I didn’t MAKE any of them, so that makes it less creepy, right?
In the summer of 2008, I walked onstage with the cast and creators of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a musical web series released on the internet just weeks before, and was greeted by the screams of more than five thousand people. We were at San Diego Comic-Con, in Ballroom 20, the second largest hall at the biggest nerd event in the world. With me were Nathan Fillion and Simon Helberg and Neil Patrick Harris, my Horrible costars, and Joss Whedon and his siblings, Zack, Jed, and Jed’s wife, Maurissa, the writers. Joss Whedon was also the director. You may be familiar with him from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and The Avengers. (Whew, that was a lot of name-dropping.) As I smiled and waved to the audience, gazing out on the huge room filled with thousands of faces, I suddenly knew what it felt to be a rock star.
And my inner dik-dik didn’t want any terrifying part of it.
Nathan and Neil and Joss were extremely witty onstage during the panel, bantering with one another like the superstars they are, and the only thing I could do was stare down at the iPhone 3G in my lap, frozen in fear. After the initial semi-thrill of walking onstage, five thousand people staring at you comes with an intimidating amount of eyeball reflection. At a certain point, a question got thrown to me, but there was an awkward beat of silence on stage because I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy staring at my lap. Nathan leaned forward to cover for me as I looked up and blurted out, “Oh! I’m sorry, what was the question? I was . . . Twittering under here.”
This was 2008. Not a lot of nontech people were on Twitter at that point. So it sounded . . . suggestive.
Yup, people thought exactly what you’d think “twittering” was if you didn’t know about social media: they thought I was masturbating under the table. And so did Nathan.
“It’s hot in here,” I said, flustered by the roar of laughter from the crowd.
“And wet,” said Neil. Which made me turn as pink as my borrowed designer sweater.
After that, a lot of fans joined Twitter.
Once I recovered from hyperventilating in shame, we finished the panel and went to sign posters. Hundreds of fans shuffled through our line, jostling one another and the table, with security guards struggling to hold the crowd in check. When my hand started to cramp from signing and I developed a crazy tic over my right eye from smiling too hard, I wondered, How did THIS become part of my life?
[?Fan by Fan?]
I attended my first fan convention during college. It was the South Texas Amphibian and Lizard Show, held in the run-down ballroom of an Austin Hilton. No, I wasn’t a toad collector at any point (although that wouldn’t surprise you, would it?). I was there on a first date. I’d planned the whole thing myself and thought it was a creative way for two people to get to know each other. Afterward, we went to a staging of Antigone performed in ancient Greek, and for dinner I found an Ethiopian restaurant where, per cultural tradition, we ate a feast only with our fingers.