he yelled (so to be heard) asking if anyone knew how to play. someone offered, he said great! and went back to his fan. all of a sudden the wait didn't seem too bad, cuz the piano guy was playing how to disappear completely but, it was the live piano version that makes me go weak in the knees.
it seemed fitting, really, to be hearing my favourite band while waiting in line to meet my favourite author.
when it was finally our turn, dom came with me. dom has only read one of his books (microserfs); he tried and never finished a few others (gen x, miss wyoming). he didn't even want to go to this thing, i had to drag him along in the minus forty degree weather. so, while i had brought along my copy of hey nostradamus! to get signed (my absent-mindedness having left eleanor rigby at home), dom had brought along his king kong notebook, which i had randomly purchased for him at whim
("it reminded me of you."
"so i remind you of primates?"
"no, it's just.. "
"no, c'mon, you think i'm an ape!"
"that's not what i meant! i-"
"it's what you essentially said!"
"fuck you!")
and he hadn't brought it along to get it signed, it was rather to jot down ideas if they came to him (dom had justified his going as "well who knows, maybe i'll come up with a bit".... uh huh).
we walked up to dougcoup, shook hands with him, got formalities out of the way, blah blah. he was still, even after two plus hours of signing autographs and talking to his painfully geeky fans, very friendly, energetic, approachable. i didn't know what to say, of course, so i asked if i could get his signature AND the ever-so-ironic-personal-yet-impersonal stamp of his that he had made fun of during the reading (see below).
"of course!" he responded, flipping through book, opening it up to the first page, where my friend jessie (who had purchased it for me), had written a rather snarky comment.
dougcoup started reading it, and realizing it would be rude, moved on to sign it. before i could realize that he'd stopped though, i just had to open my big gab and say:
"oh sorry, please ignore that.. my friend jessie is unfortunately not a fan of your stuff."
dougcoup was not impressed by this, and went back to actually reading the comment.
"that's ok," he said. "i just don't get those people. like, how could you not get my work?"
i smiled, quizzically at first, but then started nodding like a robot, not knowing what to do or say.
he continued. "it's like, did you not grow up in the same era or culture as me? did you not watch the same shows as i did? anyways" he smiled politely and comically flipped the page in hey nos!, dragged his permanent marker across the paper, signing it in a rather childish fashion. i guess that, after your first coupla book readings, you learn to change your signature to make it as easy as possible.
dom gave him king kong and said "how about me, i understood one of your books but not your others."
dougcoup just grinned and asked him to touch the obviously fake tulips planted a few feet away from us, to see if they were, indeed, fake. then he said "isn't that the weirdest thing anyone's ever asked you?" dom went and checked, affirmed they were fake, and responded with "no, not really."
it's amusing that dougcoup drew this, not even realizing that microserfs was the book dom had really liked.
we thanked him and left.
as egocentric as he may have sounded in person, dougcoup was actually rather pleasant during the reading. someone in the audience had been unlucky enough to drag along their bébé, who would occasionally interrupt dougcoup's reading with cries and whimpers. instead of ignoring bébé, or being awkward about it, or saying something snide, he acknowledged the banshee, made a few (nice) jokes, asking how old it was (four months) and its name (amelia). she had calmed down at this point, so he continued reading.
he also did something i didn't expect. instead of only reading from his most recent work which, from what i understand, is conventional, dougcoup fished out a manuscript, part of his current work, jpod, but which he referred to as "microserfs 2". he spent the next fifteen minutes reading an excerpt, about these coworkers who decide to write love letters to ronald mcdonald. they were so funny even dom laughed!!!1 like, omg.
vanessa's sex slave, kyle, had come with us. after dom, vanessa, and i were gathered in the lobby, putting on our coats and being stupid, kyle was still talking to him like five minutes later. i was jealous. i knew kyle had a few questions for doug, one of which kyle had told us about while waiting in line. apparently there's a book out there, with, i'm assuming, an unknown author (the use of a pseudonym was suspected), the style and content being outrageously similar to dougcoup's in every way, shape and form, and it had been found in a coffee shop in vancouver, a place dougcoup had apparently visited countless times.
kyle had wanted to ask him if dougcoup had indeed, been the author.
"so what did he say?" i asked as the four of us stepped out into the biting january air.
"he said he'd never heard of it."
and that, my friends, is that.
