» Celebrities part II

Bait and switch ...
Last night I happened to go along to the fantastic "Evening WIth Kevin Smith" at the indigo2.

Now the seats in the audience were a cramped and tight affair, and at 6'6" and pretty bulky there was insufficient legroom, let alone arse-space so I figured I'd resign myself to an Evening Propping Up The Bar (at the back of the room, so I'd not miss the show).

Kevin Smith opens up with one of his stories that I reckon goes on for maybe about 30 minutes when he points out the microphones and that they're there for us to ask our questions and I figure I'll never get the chance to do this ever again so I saunter down and get in behind a couple of people on one side of the stage.

Mr. Smith then starts answering questions and it seems to take an age for him to get round to me, long enough for him to switch out of his hockey jacket top and into a robe, and when he does reach me the mic isn't even working. I'm wondering if it's a sign I should duck out but I decide (or perhaps it was the pre-show booze that decided) I was definitely going to do this...

The mic comes on and he asks me my question, and in front of a packed house I start to ask my question.



"As a fat, bearded, glasses-wearing Kevin, ..."


And then I pause for a beat and he's looking at me obviously unsure where this is going because I'm far from a small guy, and the crowd seems a little stunned, but I continue
"...I've had my share of abuse over the years and I wanted to ask you ..."


He cuts me off, looking somewhere between relieved and surprised.

"Hang on, is your name Kevin too?"

"Yeah"

"You should come up on stage!"

And I look around thinking he's joking but he's all "no, seriously, the guy will show you how to come up, and I'll answer the next dude's question while you're making your way round."

So I make my way around the back, up on stage and he's answering the question when I appear behind him, looming a little, and he turns to me and invites me to sit on his couch, slap-bang in the middle of the stage, while he continues to answer the next guy's question. He then comes over, asks me to take my jacket off and hands me his hockey jacket, and asks me to put it on and zip it up and then sit back down. So I do. He then gets me a spare mic and sits next to me and asks me my questions. So I finish up asking the question, which concludes with me asking him what he's had to face since he got famous, and we chat a little, and then a few other questions. And I'm thinking "ok, this is a sympathy spotlight thing". And then he says "Hey, do you wanna stay up here for the rest of the show?"

"If it's cool with you it's cool with me."


And that's how I spent most of an Evening with Kevin Smith, with Kevin Smith, on stage. Admittedly most of it he was up on his feet wandering around, and I was just sat there on the couch/sofa thing trying to remain relatively inconspicuous, answering a few things he asked me.



After the gig I got to pop backstage but he was obviously tired and, hey, as much as he knew my name I could have been anybody so I felt slightly out of place (and my wife was still out front), but he offered me a photo (taken with the shitty camera on my phone) - twitpic.com/lfmgo - and he and his crew were pretty cool about the whole thing and saying I was a good sport for sticking it out up there, and then I left him to do whatever he does when he finishes a gig.



So, I managed to sit in comfort throughout the whole show, and get bought beer (I had 3 beers from people in the audience randomly buying me some whilst I was up on stage), and sit as close to the man as was possible.



I call that a successful evening (with Kevin Smith), even if it isn't a successful QotW answer as I was never actually rude to the guy.


*pop*
(Wed 14th Oct 2009, 18:48, More)

» Narrow Escapes

Domestic abuse...
For a time I lived with a woman who tried to kill me on multiple occasions.

As most of you are probably aware, when you're in that situation it's very easy to think that it's normal. Or that it's somehow your fault and that you deserve to be treated badly.

Of course, it wasn't that she was always vicious. At times she could be very caring and considerate - doing things like my laundry and cook meals for me, even offering to help me with my essays (when I was a student) and so on.

But at other times she'd do all sorts of nasty stuff to me from the insidious to the outright vindictive and vicious. Some examples include:

She once told a car full of my mates that I was better than all of them and that the person that was provably better than me academically would "burn themselves out soon". Maybe it was meant in a "supportive of me" sense, but it just came across as rude and arrogant on my behalf and made me feel so embarassed and turned them all against me. (It was actually one in a long stream of similar barbed comments she'd made and refused to accept she'd said, but this one I actually witnessed.)

She once collected up all of the belongings I had left strewn across the floor of my bedroom and told me she'd thrown them all away because I didn't deserve thigns if I couldn't keep a place tidy. I was absolutely gutted. There were all sorts of irreplacable items including a family heirloom that had been passed down to me, some Lego models I'd invented and made and was trying to write down the design for others to copy, various books and so on. I was distraught for the best part of a fortnight before finally coming to terms with what had happened. On that day I got told they'd actually not been binned but had been put in black bin bags and hidden in the garage, but because I'd made such a scene over losing the stuff she threw them out a ferw days ago - setting me off again for another week.

She once actually threw me down the stairs, and a few other times just pushed me down the stairs, and then blamed it on me being clumsy when questions were asked. She was so good at lying and being manipulative she even managed to turn my own father against me!

She tried to attack me with a knife on several occasions - one notable time for "reading a newspaper in a way to deliberately wind her up", luckily only managing to slash the paper to pieces leaving me relatively unscathed.

She once start to drive off whilst I was only half-way out of the car after being given a lift somewhere. I only just managed to extricate myself and managed to only get one foot run over rather than being dragged along. For a while I had such a phobia of this happening again I refused to open a car door to get out unless someone had turned the engine off and had the keys out of the ignition. Luckily I'm over this now.

There were all sorts of other minor incidents, but for some reason the above really stick out.

Of course she wasn't just like this to me - everyone she was ever close to she treated just as badly if not worse. When her father died she didn't bother going to the funeral. Heck, she didn't even bother sending flowers. When her mother, who she never got on with and had told she wanted nothing to do with in any way, died she ended up contesting the will because she hadn't been left anythying. She had a daughter who she would send into floods of tears at night on occasion by making a big scene of leaving and not answering if she would ever come back - and I did what I could to soothe the daughter, and decided I'd rather take the brunt of her hate and anger than put the poor child through that again.

The list of examples really does just go on and on.


The thing is, I'd known her all my life and she kept on telling me she loved me and I didn't know what to do about it.



The lucky escape?


Well, I managed to sort my life out enough to manage to get a place at university and left the place we were living in. (By then the daughter had grown up enough to know how to look after herself, and whilst she still cared for the mother knew not to get too hurt by her.)
Whilst I was at university I managed to meet a wonderful person who fell for my charms. We fell in love, and I decided to drop out of university to get married and start a job I'd been offered.

As I made this decision I knew, then, that I'd never again need to see the psycho-bitch that had made my life a misery.


Especially as my dad was in the process of divorcing her.
I really am a lucky son-of-a-bitch.
(Wed 25th Aug 2010, 13:32, More)

» Terrified!

Coming second
Luckily I suffer from premature ejaculation!

And I don't even need a length joke.
(Thu 5th Apr 2012, 13:40, More)