One year to the date after his untimely death, there is a documentary about Douglas Adams, one of my all time favorite authors. I had an opportunity to meet the late Mr. Adams at MacWorld New York in 1998, along with my friends Mike and Joe. He was autographing copies of the strategy for Starship Titanic, his latest video game release. We waited in line to meet him in person, but we weren’t really interested in the game, so we asked him to sign our original iMac posters (actually I think Joe did the actual asking). He looked at us rather strangely, but obliged. When I finally had the chance to tell him face to face how much his writing inspired me in my youth, all I could do was stand there like a blithering idiot, spouting off random syllables. Not words — syllables. It was humiliating. So at least one of my heroes died thinking that I’m a complete idiot.
Because of that experience, I don’t think I’ll ever try to meet Ray Davies, Joe Walsh, Paul Simon, Darren Clarke, Steve Jobs, Bruce Momjian, or any of the guys from Jars of Clay in person. Why risk it?
[By the way, Adams died on May 11, not May 12. I tried to post this last night but hit a few snags for some unknown reason.]