I encourage everyone with fingers to visit Sarah’s Con Memories post and type out their most embarassing, exciting, and just plain WEIRD con experiences.
However, there is a tale I must share alone, a story that has long been fabled in Alert Nerd lore. I’ve decided it’s time to reveal…the time when Jonathan Frakes called me an asshole. And I probably deserved it.
Quick show of hands: How many of you out there in Readerland spent your Saturday afternoons in high school banging cheerleaders and/or football players?
Okay, now how many of you spent your Saturdays at low-rent Star Trek conventions held in the dingy ballrooms of local Holiday Inns and Ramadas?
I thought so. The latter experience played a critical role in shaping My Geek Life. The former…not so much.
(The closest I ever came to “banging” a “cheerleader” in “high school” was the time a pretty young theater nerd named Candy tried to get me to drive home with her. She pressed her body close and whispered, “Are you afraid of me?”
(“I’m afraid…of ME,” I replied.
(Shit, I should still be serving a lifetime ban on sexual interaction based on that bonehead move ALONE. I don’t even remember WHY I said it. Was it my penchant for drama? My over-developed religious convictions? Or was I just looking for an excuse to rush home so I could catch up on my letter-writing to Bat-Signals and Detective Comments?
(Who the fuck knows. I did later learn that Candy had entered into some kind of “wager” with a few of her friends that involved whether or not she could pluck away my virginity. Let me assure you–though she was slutty and strange, I would have gotten the better end of that bargain, simply due to my acne-scarred visage and my gawky awkwardness when it came to anything but writing for the school paper or performing “original” “comedy” pieces for my fellow high school speech competitors.
(ANYWAY! Jonathan Frakes.)
Once I realized such a thing as a Star Trek convention existed, you couldn’t get me there fast enough. I went to quite a few of them throughout high school, so many that I don’t even recall which was my first.
The one that pertains to this story took place in Harvey, IL, in a stand-alone convention center that didn’t even have the distinction of sharing immediacy with a low-end motel. No, the low-end motel was across the parking lot, and of course, now the convention center is a furniture store.
Somehow, I had convinced one of my speech team buddies to join me at this convention, as he was a fellow fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which at the time would have been about midway through its seven-year run. He was NOT a fan to the degree that he would ever consider attending a convention, but somehow, I convinced him it would be “great fun.” The guest of honor for this particular show was the aforementioned Jonathan Frakes, known to Trekkers and Trekkies alike as the actor behind Commander Will Riker.
To help set the scene, let me take you into this particular brand of convention, cause I know by now that there’s lots of kinds of cons. This was a two-day show run by a national promoter (maybe it was a Creation show?) occupying a cavernous convention hall space. A large portion of the space was taken up by a stage and row after row of cheap chairs; this section was divided from the rest of the hall by thin portable walls. The rest of the room was all dealers, all the time–folks from near and far who had gathered in this space to peddle their geeky wares.
This was not a high-end, shiny convention experience, like those that Creation would put on today. Nor was it a grass-roots ragged fan-run con where the happenings may not be very polished, but you have to love the passion and creativity.
No, this was a dingy cash grab, and I was first in line to fork my hard-earned dollars over.
So we show up, and we wander around, and we sit through V’Ger-knows-who on that convention stage, until it’s finally time for Jonathan Frakes to take the stage. He gets up, he does his schtick, he opens the floor to questions. I raise my hand.
For full context, I should share that our high school speech team had a distinct way of registering its approval, which involved snapping one’s fingers like a beatnik. And I believe at some point during the week leading up to the con, one of our assistant coaches (yes, Steve, I think it was YOU) suggested that it would be quite a GAS if Jonathan Frakes–Commander Riker himself–were to snap in our general direction, emulating our team’s preferred method of “applause.”
He calls on me, and here’s what I say:
“Mr. Frakes, would you mind doing me a favor? Would you snap at me, just like this?”
And I demonstrated the snap.
He took me in, my pathetic high school geeky self, within a second. A mild sneer–disgust? boredom? annoyance?–played across his lips. Then he replied:
“What do you mean? I don’t get it. Am I the asshole here? Is it me?”
People laughed, and maybe hooted, and perhaps there was a “boo” or two, because it may have been believed that I was not demonstrating the proper “respect” for Mr. Frakes. And maybe I wasn’t. But hey, even as a bratty teenager, I may have loved my Star Trek, but I still knew these people were kinda jokers.
“Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”
And he snapped. And we snapped back.
And that’s when Jonathan Frakes called me an asshole…or when I behaved like an asshole toward Jonathan Frakes. YOU make the call.
NAME: Sarah
NAME: Matt
NAME: Jeff
NAME: Chris
Major *snaps* to you for this story. I’m sure he’s encountered way stupider requests. Also, I have way more affection for Frakes since he got fat. Also, way too many of these type of “cons” took way too much of my money as a jr high/high schooler.
Much like the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Matt, I have “no specific recollection” of my involvement in the events you describe.
However, I can say–under oath, if necessary–that I have total confidence in your ability to be an asshole without any help from me. Then, and now. You’re really much too modest.
I’m late to the party here (I just got over my work backlog from getting back from San Diego… my life is like DC’s business plan – all post-crisis aftermath and pre countdown to infinite catastrophe) but I thought I’d chime in. I never really tell con stories because most of mine are either boring boring (suggesting a forensic pathology textbook to lifetime favorite Larry Niven – woo hoo.), awkward boring (almost all of my con stories are like this… one never quite knows what to say when meeting Penny from Lost in space or Deborah Van Valkenburgh), pleasant boring (having the best time at the only DragonCon I ever went to just hanging out with Al Simmons, the minor league baseball player Spawn was named after), or interesting only to me (yay! I met Jane Wiedlin and she told me she fell off the no-meat wagon!). But one sticks out as awkward enough to tell:
I was at a panel at San Diego a few years ago about going to Mars in fiction and in actuality (or it may have been the other SciFi panel I went to that year… I can’t remember) and Kevin J Anderson was there. Now, I’ve never read anything that this guy had done. I think he’s a guy who has written like a hundred books, going from licensed properties (like D&D books – I really don’t know for sure), to low circ work of his own, to building a mid level reputation, to being the “help” on the newer Dune books cowritten with Herbert’s son (or whatever – I really don’t know the guy). But during the panel, he says he has a physics degree.
Now I have a physics degree and wound up going into med school and med-grad school, which is sort of like being a traitor to the realm (physics geeks make fun of MD’s a lot – after a while you’ve met a lot of really stupid pre-med students). Also doing a physics program is like herpes… you never really get rid of it (NOTE: back when I used to ask questions at panels, I asked Grant Morrison how extensive his physics knowledge was… did he just keep up enough to jazz up his supercontext BS, or did he, like, read the latest journals so he could really understand the Casmir effect – he looked at me with one of the only true looks of contempt I have ever received and said “I don’t really keep up that deep with itâ€). So I became more interested in this Anderson guy… he was someone else who had left mother physics to pursue something else. During the panel several other similarities sprang up, and I thought “wow, I’d like to talk to this guy.”
You can probably write the rest yourself. I approached him after the panel and opened with something like “we have a lot in common, you and I” (which, on the spectrum of things, is nowhere near as good as “I’m afraid of MEâ€). He looked like I had poked him with a sharp stick, and he slunk back with a look of terror on his face. I don’t know if he had been shot by a tribble-costumed fan in the past, or just had seen Single White Female the night before, but I think I struck a big ol’ nerve. He said, “I can’t talk to you right now,†as he grabbed his pile of papers from arms length from the table between us. “I’m signing later†and rushed off. “And there is better security in the autograph area,†he didn’t say, but he didn’t have to.
It’s not great, but it’s better than hearing about the time I took second place in the Valiant trivia contest.