{"id":594,"date":"2007-07-26T06:54:27","date_gmt":"2007-07-26T13:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alertnerd.com\/blog\/?p=594"},"modified":"2007-07-26T06:54:27","modified_gmt":"2007-07-26T13:54:27","slug":"con-memories-i-am-the-asshole-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=594","title":{"rendered":"Con Memories: I AM the Asshole Here."},"content":{"rendered":"

I encourage everyone with fingers to visit Sarah’s Con Memories<\/a> post and type out their most embarassing, exciting, and just plain WEIRD con experiences.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

star_trek_tng_05_jonathan_frakes_150_176_paramount_pictures.jpg<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

I thought so. The latter experience played a critical role in shaping My Geek Life. The former…not so much.<\/p>\n

(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?”<\/p>\n

(“I’m afraid…of ME,” I replied.<\/p>\n

(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?<\/p>\n

(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.<\/p>\n

(ANYWAY! Jonathan Frakes.)<\/p>\n

jonathan_frakes8.jpg<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

No, this was a dingy cash grab, and I was first in line to fork my hard-earned dollars over.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

He calls on me, and here’s what I say:<\/p>\n

“Mr. Frakes, would you mind doing me a favor? Would you snap at me, just like this?”<\/p>\n

And I demonstrated the snap.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“What do you mean? I don’t get it. Am I the asshole here? Is it me?”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”<\/p>\n

And he snapped. And we snapped back.<\/p>\n

And that’s when Jonathan Frakes called me an asshole…or when I behaved like an asshole toward Jonathan Frakes. YOU make the call.<\/p>\n

200612041112_frakes1.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,197,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fandom","category-links","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}