Cap'n Tightpants in Person

The author stalking took a new turn tonight in that the "author" is Nathan Fillion, aka Captain Mal, aka Castle. "Team Castle" put out a novel and he was at an LA B&N to sign it. I'm pretty sure I brushed past some people that are pretty important and/or talented, but I already mentioned how Hollywood is wasted on me. (Some dude named Seamus was there and my friend's son asked directions from the police captain on Castle before realizing who it was, so I'm not the only one.) I at least knew enough to know I shouldn't ask a question in that crowd or worse, make a statement or try to instruct the writing team what to do.

Ok, snark aside, NF is hot and charismatic in person. Totally worth the drive for the sneak peek and Q&A. He had some other guy (presumably the main author) come answer some of the questions and the difference in personality and presentation couldn't have been more different. The other guy had this self-important tone to his voice that made me want to (a) ignore him and (b) punch him. I'm sure his mom loves him very much but I did not take to him. But then Mr. Fillion stepped back to the mic and handled both the questions and the crowd beautifully. I could have handled another half hour or so even though the questions started to devolve into annoying things. I tried to take a picture but my flash and shutter didn't cooperate. If you want to see how it went, I'm sure something will pop up on youtube tomorrow.

Speaking of which, that was just about the worst run booksigning I've ever been to. I've been to all kinds of booksignings and I know from booksignings and this was not good. The signage was insufficient, incomplete, and bad. The customer service lady was both surly and wrong. They claimed to have run out of books, but they had plenty on the focus wall behind the podium. They made people with books get in a line that snaked around all over the third floor so they had a choice of watching the Q&A or being in line and they mostly chose the line. While this meant I had a great view (except for the only tall people in LA who turned out for this event) it's not like they wired the image or sound over there for the more hard core fans. The bookstore down the street can fit about 40 people at once if everyone has showered and they dealt with a 500 person signing better than freaking downtown LA B&N did. It's also strange that they ran this against his show. I was glad I went, but I don't think I'll go back for the Kathy Griffin booksigning next month if that's what it'll be like.

My book club friend, her son, and I were happy to skip out and get dinner elsewhere in the mall and chat about stuff. Hopefully she'll be getting a new supervisor at work soon which will make her life more pleasant. Me, I have to get up early tomorrow to figure out some stuff for work. But in the meantime, I'm going to go finish watching Castle.