Last night I attended a book signing at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble. They have a great events space on the third floor, which I didn’t even realize was there until I showed up.
The book signing was for Christopher Moore, one of my absolute favorite writers. He wrote my all-time favorite comedy, [i]Lamb[/i], and he’s got a few other doozies, including his vampire comedy [i]You Suck: A Love Story[/i], and his latest book which he’s promoting, [i]Fool[/i].
I saw Christopher MLast night I attended a book signing at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble. They have a great events space on the third floor, which I didn’t even realize was there until I showed up.
The book signing was for Christopher Moore, one of my absolute favorite writers. He wrote my all-time favorite comedy, [i]Lamb[/i], and he’s got a few other doozies, including his vampire comedy [i]You Suck: A Love Story[/i], and his latest book which he’s promoting, [i]Fool[/i].
I saw Christopher Moore a few years ago at a signing, and he’s great. He doesn’t do a reading, but gives a talk and then takes questions. Well, for anyone who’s never seen him in person, he’s hilarious. Wow. I mean, he’s just loads of fun. He’s really not so much a writer of humorous books, or an absurdist, which he is, as he is a true comedian. He’s that funny. He should be on Leno. This guy can hold court for an hour and have the room in stitches. He’s actually so good at entertaining his crowd that I’m more than mildly jealous.
(Okay, okay, enough with the fawning over him …)
Having been to one his signings before, I knew that he draws a big crowd. I expected at least 100 people, maybe more. In fact, I think more than 200 people finally showed. But I was prepared. I showed up at 6:30 for a 7:30 signing. I figured that was plenty of time to get a good seat, and, more importantly, be close enough to the front so that I wouldn’t have to wait too long to get my book signed after his talk.
Herein lies the problem. They way they had the space set up is that, when you first walk in, there were six rows of chairs–about a dozen across. But adjacent to those rows were another six rows of about 20 chairs across, and these rows were situated on an angle, so it was really hard to tell which set of chairs was going to be considered [i]up front[/i].
I guess I don’t have to tell you which section I was in.
%$#@!
Taking a chance, I sat in the first seat of the third row–of what turned out to be [i]the second set of chairs[/i]. So in reality I was in the ninth row, which meant that there was about 100 people ahead of me, even though I was there before most everyone else!
But it gets worse. In the second row of the front section, there were four empty chairs, with paper signs on them saying RESERVED. There was a musical event before the signing, so nobody seemed to know if the RESERVED chairs were from the previous event, or for the reading. Well, after awhile I decided that I was going for it. And, one of the chairs didn’t have a sign on it, so I said, "that sucker’s mine."
Not so fast. The event organizer–typical organizer ball-buster type–tells me no, no, no that’s reserved, you can’t sit there. Annoyed, I said okay, fine, not wanting to be the guy who makes a public stink about his seat (although I was really tempted). And back I went. But then …
The room was completely packed so that there people standing outside the event space because all 200 chairs were filled. And yet the Ball Buster let in four people–who got there [i]way[/i] after me–and put them in those empty seats in [i]the second row! [/i]I was so pissed! So naturally I said to the Ball Buster, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not right. I’ve been here an hour and you already kicked me out of those seats."
And she said, "you’re right, it’s not fair, it’s not right," and then dropped off those four late comers, essentially telling me to stick it.
Well … Chris Moore was a great speaker, as always, and it really was fun. But underneath I was fuming the whole time, and when he was done, the line was just too long for me to wait, so I never got my book signed after all.
Post edited by: rcolchamiro, at: 2009/03/03 10:22
