(Continued from Part Three...)After the press conference, the cast was shuffled into a larger gymnasium filled with what the organizers said was 3000 people. I'm going to tell you this right now: the Cast Q & A was unwatchable.
This was because after every single thing any one of the cast members said, the entire audience of 3000 people would hoot and holler with almost religious excitement. When Darryl got up and kissed Kelly, I half expected the majority of those in attendance to fall to the floor shouting in tongues.
I understand the fan-love that was being shown -- I mean, how often do fans get to interact with a large chunk of the cast of their favorite show while it was still on the air? -- but it still annoyed me as an observer. I wanted to hear the answers to the questions, and that was impossible with even the tiniest joke receiving multi-minute applause breaks. It was kind of like making love to a woman who climaxes at every touch. At first you'd be really excited, but after a few minutes, you'd be yelling at her: "You know that was the cat and not me, right?"
So, instead of focusing on the Q&A, I focused on the local Scranton weatherman, Dave Skutnik, who was moderating it. In a feat of investigative journalism, I was able to uncover that the weatherman is very short and apparently has lifts in his shoes. Check out this picture, taken at extreme close-up.
You can clearly see that there is at least two inches of lift on each heel. You heard it here first, people. (I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that I was seated in the same section as a guy from The New York Times while I had these pictures taken. Let's see the Grey Lady take on a story of this magnitude!)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-31-2007 @ 1:55PM
anon. said...
Bill Simmons, you are not.
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10-31-2007 @ 2:17PM
Will said...
Wish I knew what some of those questions and answers were. Oh well.
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10-31-2007 @ 2:45PM
KMF said...
I've been known to play hookey from Q&A panels at conventions and go for a walk or heck watch Columbo in my room. They can get a little same old same old, or crazy with the questions and applause.
I once caused a guest, who was supposed to be interviewed, late to his own Q &A panel because we were sitting around gabbing about something.
You must have been really bored to focus on that guy's shoes. Once at a Q & A panel I fixated on the guy sitting in the seat one row in front of me. I swore he was actually someone kinda famous in the UK ( where the convention was.) I forget what the Q & A was about.
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10-31-2007 @ 4:24PM
OfficeFan said...
I think I would much prefer sitting through the cast question and answer session or even staring at that guy's shoes to reading any more of your absymal reports on The Office convention. Why didn't TVsquad.com send someone to cover the convention who actually had some interest in it or no one at all?
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10-31-2007 @ 5:28PM
Benjy said...
Really, Jay... Were you even there????
I'll bet you were really at your weekly Timothy Busfield addicts recovery group meeting and nowhere near Scranton!
Can anyone point me to a site that actually did comprehensive coverage of the convention?
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10-31-2007 @ 5:42PM
Jay Black said...
Hey gang:
I guess my attempt to find a funny angle on what was _not_ a very interesting part of the day has absolutely backfired. (The sad part of this is that as I was getting the pictures of the shoe, I mentioned to another reporter what I was doing. She said: "And your readers will like that?" I said: "Believe me, they'll like it a hell of a lot more than a report on the cast giving crowd-pleasing semi-funny answers followed by several minutes of applause.")
It's this kind of massive misjudgment that makes "anon's" assertion of my non-Bill-Simmonsness all the more accurate.
If you're looking for substantive answers to questions that would concern Office fans, I'd point you to the third part of this piece, reporting on the press conference. If you'd like an idea of what the Cast Q&A was like, I'd suggest that you take a tape recording of a huge crowd shouting and play it through for ninety minutes. That should give you the "you are there" feeling :)
(Confidential to OfficeFan: do you _really_ think that my reports are abysmal? Or are you just trying to prove Kevin's comments from the press conference 100% accurate? :)
As always, I'll try to do better next time!
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10-31-2007 @ 6:43PM
teenagertc said...
Jay, don't listen to them! You did alright (because I wish the Q&A gave some info). Also, please don't worry about being like Bill Simmons. If I have to read one more thing about the Red Sox or the Patriots...
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10-31-2007 @ 7:39PM
Officefan said...
Point taken. I should not have called your reviews "abysmal." Rather, I should have said that I found the tone of your reviews too negative for my liking. Better yet, I should have said nothing at all. Please consider my previous comment retracted. Your reviews are of the highest quality, and I look forward to reading many more. :)
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10-31-2007 @ 10:03PM
n.p. said...
this is the reason why the legit reporters hate bloggers. and they do hate bloggers; back when i used to write for a paper, writing as an observer and leaving my internal thoughts as my voice was a jump from writing personal stories. these series of articles are complete shit and abysmal.
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10-31-2007 @ 10:44PM
Peanut said...
Bloggers are undermined by the whiny douchebagginess of their commenters. Newspapers filter most of that crap out of the letters-to-the-editor section. I'm looking forward to Part Five.
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11-01-2007 @ 1:10AM
n.p. said...
if you think that's engaging writing, you must love dan brown.
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11-01-2007 @ 12:43PM
Kelly said...
In Jay's defense, the Cast Q&A thing was exactly as he described it. It was fun with the audience so worked up and excited but impossible to hear a lot of it. I think everyone THERE had a good time but in terms of a play-by-play, it was mostly a lot of the actors joking around, the audience quoting lines at them and them quoting lines back. Lots of "thats what she said" jokes and what not. The really good questions about the show happened at the Writers Block the next day.
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