Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'd love to but there aren't any in my area. gonk

Bwhahaha! I now have my awesomely appropriate gift for LS. Will post pics when I get them taken. ^^ Any other plans for peeps to go?

Yeah, have fun. See what he looks like for us.. ninja

I would not be surprised if he sent someone to be himself while he stood in a quite corner and watched the events unfold.

Great, now I have to watch the corners of the room for a person who is constantly obscuring his face. xd Maybe I'll just ask if "D is representing L". But yeah, that'd be very LS-like. I'll look for rings from people not using coasters as well in case some not-so-noble villains show up as well. biggrin

Good Luck!

Well, I got back from my trip last night, and it was a lot of fun. biggrin Even though my group arrived a little early, the line to get our tickets was LONG. So seating filled up and we had to watch from a TV set, but ah well.

It is my unfortunate duty to announce that Mr. Snicket could not attend the meeting, so Mr. Handler and Mr. Merrit (of the Gothic Archies) had to make due (LS was billed as precussion). wink So after being introduced by the bookstore person, Handler and Merrit got up sheepishly (even looking being the banners and curtains for LS) and Handler said they were embarassed that LS didn't seem to be here. So Merrit started to play "Smile! No one cares how you feel" to stall as Handler called Snicket on his (old fashioned looking not connected to anything) phone. So with some very well timed yes and noes from Handler, it was concluded that Snicket couldn't make it.

Then, they played "This Abyss" with Handler on accordian and Merrit on ukulele. There was a amusing lapses when they'd being waiting for LS to provide precussion and then remember that he wasn't there, Handler would improv beat box drumbeats. xd

So next, LS was going to read from The End with percussion as audio enhancement. But since he wasn't there Handler enlisted the aid of two volunteers under two conditions 1) they must have arms and 2) they must be friends. Mr. Merrit was going to accompany them a phrase here which Handler explained meant "Mr. Merrit playing the same chords over and over and over, but who would want to listen to that?". Mr. Merrit abruptly stopped playing and very glumly packed up his instruments and left, most audience looking confused and nervously laughing. Handler watched him go and then said "Wait, don't go." unconvincingly. So Handler then proceeded to read from Ch. 2 of The End as the volunteers struck cymbals and drums etc to very loud prompting from Handler. (Merrit later showed up outside the store, peeking through the window at Handler)

After the reading was done, Mr. Handler played "Scream and Run Away", looping for a very long time on the opening notes as if waiting for Merrit to start singing. He said this was called "vamping" which was a very good way to drive people crazy. He then asked for some audience participation to "run" by stomping our feet on the ground, and "die" by "slumping into the position you hope to find yourselves in at your death" at the appropriate parts. He then sung it himself and with that I believe that reading ended. It was rather short in all, probably about 40 minutes or so, but given the general audience was childern, I wasn't too surprised. No Q&A for us older volunteers. whee

So next came the long wait to get LS's (I mean Handler's) signature, which was suppose to go by ticket lot (A-D etc). but ended being "people in the room" and then "mass of people outside the room". I ended up waiting at least 2 hours but it was worth it, even though by the time I got out of Snicket line, Mr. Merrit had left. While waiting in line, the book store staff would come around with candy and tons of ASOUE related goodies (paper masks, stickers, "I survived Snicket" pencils, shirt iron-on, postercards and madlibs)! mrgreen So the waiting people (including my group) DID have a silver lining as the people in the room probably didn't get all the freebies. So as we got closer to Handler (with many auditory indications (i.e. shouts to children) that would remind those waiting that "Yes, he's still there") we gleamed many amusing quotes.

"You're favorite book is the The Wide Window? A woman trapped in a cave, that's your idea of a good time?! You are in need of some organic advice." (holds up book entitled "The Complete Organic Pregnancy which he had randomly picked up earlier from the nearby shelves to tote as a book to read instead of ASOUE)

"Have you read this book? Do you have any pets? You have two dogs, good. When you get home, I want you to take this book, cover it in hamburger meat and feed it to your dogs."

And from a passing 8 year old "I can't believe you got him to sign your divorce papers!" eek (Perhaps it was a series of unfortunate events? sweatdrop )

So after a long journey, I finally got to see Mr. Handler and presented him with my gift: a sugar bowl, which I asked him to pass on to Mr. Snicket. I think he liked it, judging by the fact that he didn't really quip at me like most of the other children. (Didn't get a chance to snap a pic of me giving it to him, but ran back and snapped a pic of him with the sugar bowl) He also complimented me on my VFD attire, though I'm not sure if he recognized it as such. I got my Beatrice Letters embossed ("The Library of Lemony Snicket" it said) and it was dated and Mr Handler dated it and wrote it out to me "whose life seems miserable enough". (My friend got "with all due respect" surprised ) I totally forgot to ask if there was any chance we'd see Beatrice's book in the future. xd But we did get to congratulate him on his new movie deal for "Adverbs" (based on Handler's short stories) to which he replied "It's at that magical stage where nothing's gone wrong yet. It's going to be the best movie ever"

Over all I enjoyed my meeting, Handler was a riot and I throughly enjoyed my adventure out to see him. Will post pics once I get them developed and uploaded.