My Thirty-Second Meeting with Jane Adams

Okay, my scanner is currently broken, so I can't scan the autographed photo. Doesn't matter much anyway; it's just the Elna/Harriet/WoodsKiss picture from Songcatcher with her autograph along the bottom, and I already have her autograph uploaded elsewhere on the site (see the main page, right above the guestbook link. The guestbook link that you're all going to click on and sign, of course.) Anyway, on reflection, I suppose the story behind the autograph isn't that amusing either; but since I'm already here...

There was quite a crowd gathered at the stage door after the show, enough that these big imposing bouncer-y looking guys kept poking their heads out and assessing the crowd with somber looks on their faces. This decidedly did not happen at Enchanted April; maybe that's what happens when high-profile stars from Mafia movies go Broadway, I don't know. Anyway, when Liotta came out the crowd thinned down some, and when Frank Langella (who, incidentally, was *amazing*) came out it thinned still more. (Both of them were very nice, by the way. Langella, in particular, was very friendly and amusing; he thanked us all for being such a responsive audience, as though the fact that he gave a stellar performance had nothing to do with that.) Still, about fifteen people had been impressed enough by her performance that they decided to stick around and wait for her.

And wait we did. March weather in New York is not particularly conducive to waiting, but we waited. We waited long enough for people to start speculating that she'd gone out the main entrance; we waited long enough for me to bond with the guy standing next to me, an English/music major who, like me, had an inevitable half-finished novel sitting on his hard drive and a yen to write plays someday. And, in my case, we waited with pens and photos held out anxiously for the autographing, all ready for Jane to make her exit.

So finally she comes out (by then we'd been told she was in an interview after the show.) She seemed kind of impressed, actually, that I'd bothered to bring a photo to sign. (I believe "Wow" was the exact phrase.) There was just one teeny snag: the pen wouldn't work.

She'd gotten as far as "Jan" when it stopped working. I blinked. I *knew* it had been working earlier. She made a few more useless swirls on the page, then turned back to me. "I... don't want to wreck it," she said. I nodded, and smiled, and thanked her. Safely out of earshot, I inquired of the friend who had come along with me just how much of a fucking moron I was, in her personal opinion. She laughed, but did not answer, I noticed.

Two blocks later, after it had been in my pocket for a few minutes, it was working fine. The ink, you see, had frozen inside the pen.

So, yes. In summary, when you are waiting for a long time in sub-freezing weather for an autograph, please keep the pen in a warm, safe place for the duration of your wait. That is all.