Sunday, November 14, 2010

I'm no longer a creepy stalker fan

Remember when I was in Maryland and I found out Kat von D was doing a book signing 5 minutes away? And we went to see her and my brother-in-law snapped shots over a bookshelf of her with a random fan? Well, I decided to do things right this time and actually went to see Kat for myself at her book tour stop in Phoenix.

My awesome friend and tattooer, Melissa, really wanted to go see her too. On Friday, she went to Barnes & Noble to get our number wristbands that would also be our place in line. It's amazing; they opened at 9 and Mel got there at 10:30, and we were numbers 432 and 433 (we heard that there were over 800 wristbands given out for the 3 hour signing). After work, I headed to the bookstore and got in line.

You can't even see Kat in this photo, but she's waaaaay in the back, near that blue speck past the bald guy's head. Yeah, far away. We waited for 2 hours and then finally found ourselves close to the front of the line. We were very excited.


It's so funny - the whole "meeting Kat" experience was like 5 seconds. I told her it was so cool to meet her, she thanked me for waiting in line. She signed my book, I turned around for a photo, thanked her, and that was it. I wanted to hang out with
her! She's so freaking tall and has such a presence, I feel like a complete cheeseball in this picture.

I've been following Kat on Twitter and already read the book from cover to cover and I have to say that I really like her. She seems very level-headed and sincere. I think she's actually in awe of the fact that she has the fame that she does. She said something in her book that really hit home for me - she commented on how she sometimes catches the rude comments people make under their breath about heavily tattooed people. Comments like "she must be a hooker," "I feel bad for her parents," and other hurtful things. When Dan and I were dating, he went to a customer's house and the old man asked if Dan was married. When Dan said he wasn't, the guy said something along the lines of "I thought not. No one would want to marry you with all that shit on your arms." I remember thinking, "but I want to marry you!" as well as being blown away by the rudeness of a complete stranger. It's been eye opening to be with Dan and hear people's ignorant comments and see them react to his heavily tattooed body. When Kat wrote about this in her book, it really built a connection for me. Even though I'm not the recipient of comments, I still am faced with and affected by people's misconceptions because I love someone who is the target of comments.

Anyway, I like Kat and going to see her was a really fun experience. If nothing else, I also got to spend time with Melissa, which is always fun.

1 comment:

Amanda @ It's Blogworthy said...

That's still one more celeb that I've ever had sign a book! Glad you got to meet her.