You don't have to read my whole story if you don't want to, but this was the day I met Joel Mchale. Hes my second favorite person, Mika is first of course . i cried like a baby
Yesterday (jan 24 09) was the last day of the south beach comedy festival; Joel McHale was playing two shows that night. I could n' t get tickets because they were too expensive, soldout, ect. , so I (and Claudia) went down to Lincoln four hours earlier than his 8 o' clock function, hoping to meet Joel or something. I made huge posters yesterday, one reading: "WE LOVE YOU JOEL MCHALE" and the other one with The Soup logo painted on it. We went to the theater' s backstage entrance, which is ironically open to the public? and spoke to a nice man that didn’t even know who Joel McHale was or when he was coming, nobody knew. They suggested we wait outside until he comes so we waited right outside the backstage door. Event usually the owner lady of the Lincoln theater came out and very, very nicely told us we had no chance of seeing Joel just standing there . . She also said she didn’t think we'd get to meet him at all. At this point I start to (obviously) cry and she feels terribly sorry for me so bring s us some paper to write him letters and promises that she will make sure he gets them. I could barely write as I cry/ laugh / shake but we manage to get those written and also leave the giant WE LOVE YOU JOEL MCHALE poster for him to have.
After I’ve lost about 64% of the hope I had of meeting him, we waited in Starbucks, which was right next to the theater and we could see anyone going in from the back doors, and walked around for hours until we got picked up. My mom could tell how sad I was > so she let us stay longer with my aunt and her boyfriend who lives down there. we went back to Lincoln for like the sixth hour and asked the man in the booth if there were any extra tickets for the show. He handed us two tickets without thinking it twice and one of us asks how much it costs and in a very loud whisper he said " Theeeey' re FREEE ". My stomach has now dropped to my feet and i can' t believe what just happened but the man took our tickets back, said he could n' t give those away, and told us to wait around or come back later.
We got the 10: 30 tickets for free without asking any quest ions and just ran inside. We got the last two seats all the way at the top but I didn’t care AT ALL because I was so happy. The show went really well and Joel made jokes that nobody under stood because none of those fancy adult s watched the soup so none of them knew what he was talking about (except for me and any other person who went that actually knew who he was). Okay after the show and some intense mom- to- Claudia texts we went downstairs to see the shirt s they were selling.
You had to buy a shirt to get it signed and I was first in line but didn’t have any money for a shirt so I just waited around real nervous for him to come. After a LONG time with my aunt outside waiting for us JOEL FINAL LY CAME. He is SO much taller in person than he seems! I can' t even cry of how surreal every thing is at this point. My hands were shaking and I was laughing for no reason. I stare d at him the entire time believing it was real and he wasn’t on TV. And then it was my turn to take a picture! The first thing I told him was that I've been waiting for him since 4p.m, it was 1 in the morning then, and he's like "Wow that' s a long time", I didn’t really hear but I took a picture and asked to hug him and he said "Yes that’s perfect I smell!" or BUT I hugged him because I just had to and I was laughing a lot and almost crying. My aunt sneaked in from the door where she was watching us and insisted that Claudia take a picture with him, too so we went back to him and waited a while for other people to finish. Finally, Claudia took a picture alone and then we both took one with him. Joel recognized me and said " didn’t we already take one? Yea? Okay come one another one”, he thanked us both and then it was over.
I waited for Joel McHale for 9 hours and it was all one hundred percent worth it.