Friday, June 25, 2010

Thursday, June 24, 2010: The Day I met John Green and David Levithan




At the moment shown in the picture, John Green was talking about the shirt I was wearing. It featured him with a mustache with the word "PIZZA" under it. He thanked me for wearing his face on my body. It was funny. :D

Below I am going to go through the entire night in which I met John Green and David Levithan.

So we got the book store and went downstairs to the children's section (LOL). There were already about thirty people there and they had their seats and everything. Grace, Alexa, and I hung out in the back until they told us to sit down. Being stuffed with book lovers the place was extremely hot. I was clutching my copies of Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Paper Towns, sweating like a whore in church, craning over all of the beloved nerds to try and catch a glimpse of the entrance in which the two awesome authors would pass through.

When they finally did come out, I was so happy! I was just really happy to see John in person and not just in internet form. David too! I had only see him on one of John's BlogTv shows. I felt kind of bad because Alexa and Grace couldn't see anything. I offered to switch places with them for a little while but they just kept telling me that it was my moment, and looking back now, that was kind of cheesy and funny. :D. But I appreciated it.

The guys first read a scene from WGWG. Obviously, after finding that David was the character Jane, and John was Will, it was hilarious! The scene involved them sort of "professing their love for each other" but in a high school, young adult fiction way. And of course the scene involved kissing which made it even funnier. They did a great job in making everybody laugh. It was a good time.

Next, they let everyone ask some questions. Some people asked about writing processes, for both individual authors and for their collaboration. It was interesting to hear how they designed this novel (in the shape of an X :D) and how they wrote it and shared it with each other. They asked joking questions about how David's chapters don't have any capital letters ("was your shift key just broken or something?" ~funny nerd girl in front of us). Overall the questions were pretty good. I enjoyed them.

Now we are getting up to the climax of the night. They explained the process in which we were to organize ourselves for lining up to get books signed. No one in our area really heard these instructions so we just stood up and faced the front, inching along every so often as people got their copies signed. I was waiting in the burning, steamy hot line, sweating disgustingly, when I look behind me and BOOM! There was Elysa Montfort from the podcast Smartmouths! I craned around someone to see BAM! Penny Gershman from SM too! Two hosts from my favorite podcast at a signing for my favorite author! This remminded me of their episode where they discussed WGWG with John!

The line began to move and then they were right behind me! I heard them talking with apparently another listener. This made me regret not saying hi. I made up for it with a few @replies on Twitter this morning. Anyway, they are talking about NPR or something and they Penny says, "Could you look out there and see if Greg is there? He's wearing a yellow shirt." In my mind I am thinking, "GASP! A third host from SM!" I eventually saw Elysa talking to Greg Gershman, Penny's husband. This put icing on my nerdy fangirl cake.

About forty-five minutes later, we got about thirty feet away and started planning things we were going to say to them. We were going to tell them about a joke that we planned to put on a t-shirt for John but I guess we all just got a little star-struck and froze up. I'll send him an email later explaining it.

Between then and the time we got to the signing table, David made a rest room break and John anounced it standing on his chair. I took a few stalker, paprazzi pictures of him at this time :D. And then, the hallowed moment!

The women at the book store took our names down on post-its, sticking them on the inside flaps of the books so as to prompt John and David on what to sign on the book. Alexa was appointed to take pictures as we got our books signed. Grace stepped up. John told her that Grace was one of his favorite names! They both signed her book and she stepped aside for me. I gave John my big stack of books and he made a few witty comments about the pizza shirt and about how my copy of Looking For Alaska seemed like it had been read a lot. I told them about how I passed the books on to Grace and Alexa. I thanked them and stepped aside for Alexa. She talked to him about how different it was to see him away from the internet. David made a joke saying, "He really does have legs!" We thanked them more and headed out the back door.

And there is the story of steaming hot book signing lines, internet celebrity sightings, and conversing with great authors.

This night really made me happy and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to meet them and talk to them fort a minute or two.

Sorry this is so long. This post was more for me than for you, cupcakes if you're out there somewhere. I don't want to forget this!
Thanks for reading! Talk to you soon!

No comments:

Post a Comment