Seattle, KOMO TV, November 27, 1998
I met Ana Voog...finally
Or, How to meet a celebrity.
I was hanging out on IRC in #analove (that's Ana Love, not Anal Ove) when Ana came in and announced she would be on Northwest Afternoon. Most people immediately ask, "What the hell is Northwest Afternoon"?
A bit about Northwest Afternoon
Northwest Afternoon is a local talk show aired weekdays at 3pm from KOMO TV in Seattle, WA. The show has a tendency to be very...nice. The hosts are...nice. No one has ever described anything even remotely associated with this show as "gritty".
The show starts out every day with a fifteen-minute monologue by Cindy Reinhardt. She is more famously known by her other name "Satan". Cindy gives a recap of the day's soap operas so quickly, it sounds like a 33rpm record set on 45. You have absolutely no chance of understanding her sentences unless you ALREADY KNOW WHAT SHE IS TALKING ABOUT. Which seems to defeat the whole purpose. Anyway, Satan gets quite a bit of airtime, which is unfortunate since she rates up there on the annoyance scale just below "Hot Pepper Juice to your Genitals" and just above "Tear Gas at a Marilyn Manson Concert".
On top of all of this, she disparages Ana TWICE during commercial breaks.
Then there is Elisa...something. I can't remember her last name. Now I THOUGHT she was a very strait-laced teetotaler. I was wrong. She is actually pretty darn cool. She has black hair and she recently got blond streaks put in it so she looks fairly hip. When Cindy got done making fun of Ana's bald head, Elisa said, "If I wasn't on TV, I'd do it, man." Elisa completely changed my impression of her.
Finally, there's Kent Phillips, a man who could challenge Pat Sajak for the title "Most Decent Man on Television", but Pat is a former weatherman and Kent is still a morning disc jockey. The Pat Sajak campaign would have a field day with that. And Pat has better hair. So after Cindy gets her airtime, Elisa and Kent take over and fill the other gaps between commercials for denture cream and the Rosie O'Donnell show that airs at four.
Who's going?
Armed with the date of Ana's appearance, I e-mailed KOMO TV and asked for free tickets to the show. I got a very short reply:
Thank you Will. Please be here at 2pm on November 17th. We are located at 4th Ave. N. and Denny Way across from the Space Needle. See you then.
I talked a few friends into coming, exchanged phone numbers with a guy named Parker, and agreed to meet Yummyfur and his friend at the station. We were all set...almost.
Yes, They're Fake
I wanted to make tee shirts. Judging by the
aforementioned grittiness of Northwest Afternoon, I wasn't sure if they
would be keen about a bunch of punks wearing white tee shirts with
"Yes, They're Fake" across the front, but I had to try. I stopped by
Fred Meyer on my way to work and bought a three pack of undershirts and
a black permanent marker. Apparently, I bought the cheapest shirts
known to man, because I've seen cheesecloth with more cotton. Coffee
filters are more durable than these shirts. I printed the phrase on the
shirts in block lettering, trying to replicate the one that Ana wore on
her plane ride to New York. I tried one of them on and it looked ok,
but Ana's was definitely better. At this point, the fumes from the
permanent marker started to give me a headache and made me slightly
nauseous. I took the shirt off, but I could still smell it. This would
haunt me for the rest of the day. I gathered up my Ana Voog CD's, threw
the (smelly) shirts in a plastic bag and headed out the door.
Waiting, waiting, waiting
I grossly overestimated the amount of time it was going to take me to get some lunch, drive from Bellevue to Seattle, find the station and then find a parking spot. I estimated an hour. It took about twenty-five minutes. I thought about sitting in my car, but I got that twinge of fandom and decided I'd stand outside the station and hope that I'd see Ana as she went inside. She mentioned in an e-mail message that she had to be at the station fairly early, so I thought that I'd already missed her entrance, but I thought I'd wait anyway. I waited.
Kids
There was a group of teenagers waiting to take a tour of the station before the show. It was at this point that I decided to draft legislation banning groups of teenagers of four or more individuals. They are loud, rude, obnoxious and for some damn reason one kid kept spitting on the sidewalk. As far as I could tell, this kid did not have a glandular condition that make him overproduce saliva and I feared that unless he got some water soon, he was in danger of dehydrating. We stood around outside in the cold and the kids complained because most of them were only wearing tee shirts. I wished the station would let them in so I wouldn't have to listen to them complain and to let the river of saliva on the sidewalk evaporate.Parker
A thin man with short hair and a nicely trimmed beard walked straight up to me and asked, "Will"? It was Parker.
Parker is a rising star in the circles of Ana Voogness. He creates digital collages from the piles of images of Ana. He is a very nice guy. He brought me some apples.Keenhan and Elias
While I was chatting with Parker, two more young guys showed up and appeared to be talking about some of the other talk show guests. Parker and I asked if they know who else was going to be on because we only knew about Ana. They said, "Right on!" and said that they were there for Ana, too. It turned out that it was Yummyfur and I'd called him earlier to tell him that I would meet him at the station. Keenhan asked me about the shirts and I explained that the ink was making me sick, but I gave both of them a shirt and Elias promptly put his on.
Ana makes and entrance
We stood around outside, slowly freezing, waiting to be let inside when a yellow cab pulled up. I could see the passenger and I tapped Elias on the shoulder. "Look, it's Ana."
I've heard descriptions of Ana before and they are all correct. She is very easy to spot. The first thing is that not many people walk around with jewels glued to their head. The second thing is, not many people are that damn charismatic. Ana stepped out of the car, all five feet of her. We immediately shouted, "Ana!" and she turned to us with a smile on her face, her head tilted slightly back. She wore a black skirt that was long, but so thin, some people would have trouble pulling it over one leg. The very thin, short, faerie queen immediately tried to complete three tasks simultaneously: retrieve her gear from the trunk of the car, give the cab driver a voucher and say hello to a group of fans. Somehow, she managed little bits of all three like a CPU multiprocessing parts of each task, and made it all look graceful. She walked up to the group and said, "Is Will here?"
Rewind
There are times in you life when you really wish you had a rewind button. At that moment, I would have given anything to see the look on Parker's face. Another good reason to use a rewind button is to edit what you say. For some reason, I would only think of two things: Ana has the biggest, prettiest eyes on the planet and "You're late." So, of course, she went inside.
Waiting again
I held the door open for Ana and she disappeared as I walked back to my place in line. I think Parker snapped a few pictures while I was trying to think of something witty to say. We talked about her entrance and how much smaller she seemed in real life, when finally, the security guard walked out. We went inside.
Waiting inside
We walked through a metal detector and went down some stairs to wait in a room showing a soap opera one wall. There were some pastries and the teenagers in the tour group showed up. Everyone got a nametag and we sat around for a while longer before they led us to a hallway outside the studio where we...waited.
Studio
The studio is much smaller than it looks on television. The audience is much smaller than it looks in television. The audience seats must have been designed by Cindy 'Satan' Reinhardt.
The hard plastic seats are designed for third graders and have the plenty of legroom if your legs are six inches long. As it was, my knees were buried in some guy's back and my shoulders rubbed against Elias and Parker. We were packed in like sardines. A stage manager had a little orange flag and instructed us on how to smile when the flag was up, clap when the flag was waved, and make "woo-hoo" sounds along with clapping when the flag was waved around in big circles. Lovely.
The show
We sat through Cindy 'Satan' Reinhardt and finally Ana was brought out. She looked around the audience and we waved. She spotted up and smiled, charisma flew around the room. Most of it that landed in the audience was immediately dissipated by the surly teenagers and the frightened geriatrics. Ana looked wonderful.
Elisa and Kent asked her the usual questions about sex on cam and what her parents thought and she answered it all with style. When asked why she did it she said, "Well, I don't get off on it. I mean, if I got off on it twenty four hours a day, that would be exhausting."
So they asked, "What does your boyfriend think. Well, we have him on the phone. Go ahead." Somehow fetik3 kept a very serious tone in his voice when he said, "I disapprove and we are going to discuss this when she gets back." I think some people believed him. He answered their questions very thoughtfully and I got the impression that people asked him the same damn things over and over again. Time for a commercial break.
Rewind again
It was time to get the weird woman off the stage and talk to some former "Real World" cast members. But, Ana was allowed to sit in the audience because they were going to bring her back later to answer some e-mails. She looked at the audience, pointed to us and said, "Can I sit by Will?" Again with the rewind button. Alas, they made her sit in the front row. I watched the video tape later and I think they had her sit there so they could aim a camera at her. I blame Satan.
Yawn
The "Real World" kids were fairly interesting but we were there to see Ana. When she came out again, they simply read her a few e-mails, two of them were nice and one bitched about the freak on his television screen. Elisa scored more points in my book by saying, "Click!" indicating that if the guy didn't like it, he could simply change the damn channel. The show ended and we went back outside.
Goodbye
We decided to wait and see if Ana was going to come out the front door. Parker had to make a run for the monorail to catch a train so he handed me the cover of his copy of anavoog.com to get it autographed. Keenhan wished he had a camera and I suggested that they could get a disposable one at the Seven-Eleven across the street. Elias ran over and back with a camera and Ana made one last appearance. She walked out of the doors and straight to a waiting car. Keenhan, Elias, and I were standing there trying to get her attention but she didn't even see us. Finally, she looked up and said, "Oh!" Her smile returned and things seemed to get chaotic again. I think a Kit from "Real World" was waiting in the car when we all accosted Ana for her autograph. I started handing her CD covers and Keenhan whipped out a stuffed lizard named Mr. Bigglesworth that, the story goes, seems to get his picture taken with a lot of celebrities. Ana signed CD covers for Parker and me. Then Keenhan handed Mr. Bigglesworth over. Ana promptly put the lizard on her head and struck a pose that would put Madonna to shame. Elias snapped a picture and asked Ana to sign his back. Hilarity ensued when Ana tried to sign his skin and not his "Yes they're fake" shirt, but she signed, "Ana Voog Approved" on the shirt. Into the car she went. Elias played paparazzi and snapped a few pictures through the window as the car pulled away.