Tonight.

I thought I'd skip (i.e. watch over the weekend or at the end of the project) tonight's long-ish movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, because Ebert was signing his memoir someplace vaguely in my area. I got there early and lazed around, but I was expecting it to be like the last one I went to - in the upstairs part of the B&N, which it wasn't, so I didn't get into line until a bit later than I wanted to. It was really cool to see all the people who came out, it was a really diverse group.

Proof of the lazing.

It was pretty good - I'm always stoked to see someone I admire so much, and having books signed by him is really meaningful to me. It was a little disappointing, though. It felt really rushed - you sort of had time to say half a sentence and by that point, the B&N employees were giving him another book to work on. I had hoped to get a picture with him, but by the time I had explained that I was some dope from the intarwebs, he got handed another book and I didn't want to rudely cut into someone else's time, like "No! I'm important, I'm from the internet!" I feel a little let down, just because the other book signing I went to felt a lot more intimate and we all seemed to get more time to be chatty and goofy with him, and I was hoping to have that experience again.

Yay!

But it's ok. I didn't start this blog to get his attention. I did it because it means something to me. Because I wanted to take on a project and see it to the end (I can't count how many times I thought I'd do something different in my life and stopped after a few weeks or months). I wanted to keep learning about film, and keep myself writing and working while I was unemployed. And to connect, on some level, with someone I look up to. To be honest, doing this has changed my life. There are plenty of reasons why the signing could have gone how it did - maybe he wasn't feeling well, or hell, he's probably such a fan that he was a little embarrassed and star-struck about it. You never know, right?