ENCOUNTERS

Send your encounter/pics here. Amber's Encounter Ok, before I start here are a few facts about me that will help you understand this. I’m a junior in college and my roommate and I had decided that we needed to do something crazy before we graduated. We had no idea what it would be or when we would do it. Our college is in Virginia, which is also where my roommate and I are from so we traveled quite a bit to meet James. In January of this year, I was browsing through Wizard’s website (f.y.i., they put out several magazines that relate to comic books, games, and toys). Anywho, I’m looking at the guest lists for the convention in LA and James was on it! There were a lot of other cool people on it as well, but I kept coming back to James’ name. I told my roommate and we were joking about going and how we’d react if we actually met these people. We were telling our friends that we were going to go to this convention, but we were still joking around. One night, we both mentioned it to mothers because we wanted to see how they would react. My mom said that she trusts me and that if I wanted to go she couldn’t stop me. I was completely shocked! I told her about the convention and who would be there and she said it sounded like fun. Then my roommate, Irene, mentioned it to her mother and she said that if we do go, she wanted to come to! Irene’s brother was looking into the University of Southern California as a college choice and if we went, they would come with us and go visit the university. Both of us could not believe our parents wouldn’t mind us going. Right after those conversations, my roommate and I just stared at each other and that’s when we realized our plan to go to the convention was no longer a joke. We were really going to go! Now fast forward to Long Beach, California on Saturday, March 20th which is the place and day we actually met James! Unfortunately for me, on Friday I stupidly sunburnt my face! I can not tell you how idiotic I felt especially when I realized that I was going to meet James Marsden while looking like Rudolph. (You can really see it in my picture with him.) At noon, there was going to be a Q&A with James and Irene and I were the first ones in line for it. She’s not crazy about him like I am, but she thinks he’s hot. When they open the doors, we ran toward the front and got seats in the first row! We had to wait for a while because he was running late or so they said. Well, one of the staff members came onto the stage and welcomed us and said that they have some special guests along with James. First to come out was Mike Dougherty, one of the screenwriters, then Tom DeSanto, producer of both X movies, and last but definitely not least, JAMES MARSDEN!!! Man, was he looking good! He was wearing black shoes, jeans, and a white, long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned at the top with a white shirt underneath. I could actually see his chest hair over the top of it! J Whew, I’m making myself hot just thinking about it! If you’ve seen any of the articles that were written about this session then you know what was discussed, but I’ll give you a few more details. When he was doing his “Bill-Cosby-doing-Eddie-Murphy-jokes” impression, he said something about jello pudding pops and then he said “You know when you’re on top…Oh, I better not finish that one!” and I so wanted him to finish what he was saying! When someone asked him about Hugh Jackman, the first thing he said was, “Oh God, that man is a bastard!” He was kidding but it was really funny. They also showed us some bloopers from X2 and we were all laughing so hard most of us were crying. There was a lot of kissing, a lot of sexual references, and a lot of swearing in it. It was fantastic. I hope they release it on DVD because they only showed us a 15-20 minute clip and they said that the whole thing is about an hour and a half long! Well, that was the end of the Q&A and because we had nothing better to do until the signing, a group of us tried to follow James. We were just hanging around the exit pretending we were cool, but there was going to be another panel held in that room, so we had to leave right after James went. After that we went out to relax before the signing. Now onto the signing! When I was in line, my roommate and I were talking to some people around us. There was a girl in front of me and she showed me some pictures that she took of James in the green room! It turns out that the windows of the green room looked out onto the main convention floor where all the exhibitors are. I can’t remember her name, but she was standing around and she looked up and saw James! She started taking pictures of him and he was laughing at her and pointing! She started waving and he waved back and she showed me the pictures that she took of him (she had a digital camera). Right after she told me about that, James came out and started signing! Some people had tons of stuff for him to sign and he was so cool about it. He was just signing away and chatting with people. I think some of that stuff will probably end up on eBay or one of those Hollywood stores. Anywho, right before I got to him I started to get really nervous and I started shaking. When the girls in front of me left (one of them was the girl that got the pictures of him in the green room), I walked up to him and he looked up at me and smiled and the first thing out of my mouth was “Oh my god, I can die happy now!” He said, “Aw don’t do that!” I shook his hand and I got him to sign two pictures that I bought at the convention and I also had an autograph book that I got him to sign. Before he signed my book, I asked him if he would write “Help Me.” (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, in the X-Men 1.5 extras DVD, there’s a scene of James where he’s in pajamas and he’s writing on a clipboard and he holds it up and he’s written HELP ME!!! on it). I asked him to write that and he looked at me with a confused look and said, “Help you?” I told him where I got that from and he said, “Oh yeah! You know, I got in trouble for that!” I said, “Are you serious?!” and he said, “Yeah I am!” I thought that was a really weird thing to get in trouble for. He signed my book and then I got my picture taken with him!! I put my arm on his shoulder and he put his hand sorta on my waist! After that, I said it was awesome to meet him and I went over to the side where I took several more pictures of him. I hung around him for a few more minutes because I didn’t want to leave! Well, that’s my story of meeting James Marsden and I sincerely hope that I can do it again. Pics: