If you have ever met Adam Baldwin, or if you know him personally and would like to brighten my day (and many others) with your story, please e-mail me here. Thank you very much.
OR if indeed you ARE Adam Baldwin, any feedback is more than welcome :)
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June 1996, Tona Vista Golf Course, Wendover, Nevada.
As written on 18th February 2002 by David Kendziora who has my eternal thanks!
It was a hot sunny day in June of '96, place, Tona Vista Golf Course, Wendover, Nevada. I was playing a practice round for a tournament to take place the next day. I played horrible golf, but had many cocktails and it was well worth it, anyway, I had just completed my round and proceded to the bar to grab a cold one. I sat down and ordered a Michelob. Ahhh, hits the spot. As I milk my brew, I turn to my left and notice a guy that looks very familiar, I say hey, whats up, he returns the hello. I ask if he went to Ogden High School cuz I swear I knew him, he laughs and said "no", I'm from L.A. I said he looks so familiar to me, are you sure your not from Ogden? He laughs again and says, "Oh yea, I know you from San Quentin, Cell Block 7". I play along and say ohh yes, I remember now, mind you I was pretty tipsy at this time. We continue to chat, he asked how I played, golf that is, I reply horrible, he agreed the course tore his ass up too, we laughed together and had a few beers and I left. Later that night, I was resting in bed and I popped up. "Holy shit" "My Bodyguard" Ricky Linderman, that was him!!!!! It all came together when I realized that Independence Day was being filmed in the remote desert area which is Wendover, I was so shocked and kinda disapointed that I didn't remember when we had met, I really would have enjoyed an autograph, but then I realized, he was really cool, he didn't treat me like a pee-on nobody, some actors seem to have a big head, he was really down to earth and it was totally cool. I visit Wendover about 5 times a year, maybe I will meet him again in the future? If so, it will be fun to recall that day, it was cool. That is my encounter, I hope you enjoy it, take care and peace always.
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26th June 2005, The London Film & Comic Con, Earls Court 2, London.
As written on 16th July 2005 by Leafan.
This was it, my chance to meet the man I'd spent so much time watching on-screen - Adam Baldwin! Me and a friend I'd dragged along had stayed the saturday night in London in order to be bright and early for the coming day at the London Film & Comic Con. We spent saturday night in the local pub talking about what we'd say to him when we met him and how we hope nothing went wrong.
The following morning we headed out through the spiders-web that is the London Underground and came to Earls Court where we qued for over an hour. When we finally got inside, I signed us up for 2 tickets to the Adam Baldwin/Firefly talk at 2:30pm (I couldn't believe it was free!).
At the rear of the great hall, past all the traders, were pictures of the celebrities that were attending that day, I couldn't see Adam's pic. I rushed towards the back of the room and saw it - his picture that is (Adam was supposed to be signing below the picture) - but I realised that I needed to go the toilet and didn't want to be queing for ages if I needed relief - so I went. But as I walked along to the toilet I saw the top of what I thought was Adam's head, signing autographs for people. I was more than a little excited and almost didn't make it to the toilet :)
I finished up and rushed back. Needless to say it wasn't Adam's head that I'd seen, but rather some organiser. Adam wasn't there yet, so I signed me and friend up for the Virtual Queing system that was in place and headed out to see what the traders had got. One trader had a DVD player and was playing a high quality version of the Serenity trailer, which had built quite a crowd. There was no sign of the promised Serenity booth.
A while later we headed back to see if Adam had appeared yet, it was looking good because we'd seen that people were waiting in-line to see there choice of stars. Adam's line was so full we couldn't see to the front straight away, so I positioned myself better and there he was!!!! I have just seen ADAM BALDWIN with my own eyes!!!!!! I stood in stunned silence for a minute or two. Even my friend whom isn't an Adam Baldwin fan was kind of taken back. My Virtual Queing ticket hadn't come up yet so I watched for a while then left to wait for my turn. We did however see a few other stars on the way toward the crappy cafeteria. We saw Garret Wang, Sarah Clarke, Xander Berkeley, Matthew Wood, Warwick Davis, Lou Ferigno (who had nobody queing, we felt so sorry for him, but I certainly wasn't gonna have a £15 pity autograph) and Billy Boyd.
I came back later and qued up. The que moved pretty fast and I was worrying what to say to Adam. I payed for 2 autographs and handed my ticket to some lucky girl who had gotten to sit next to Adam all day collecting tickets. My turn came.
Adam said "Hi" to me...oh shit...what do I say? "Hi!" in a high pitched tone I replied, handing him the two photographs and asking him to sign them for me. "Sure," he said, "who should I make them out to?". I told him my name and we started signing them with the words "Serenity, Adam Baldwin". I knew my time had come so I spoke...
"I thought you were great in The Keyman" I said. "Not many people saw that film" Adam replied (looking impressed I'd seen it). "Yeah I got it sent to me by the director Daniel Millican, he's a really nice guy", at that point I didn't think he'd heard me correctly so I repeated "...the erm...director sent it to me". "Yeah," he replied, "Dan Millican". At this point I'm starting to get VERY self conscious. I started again, "You were excellent in that film and so was Tom Wright whom is working on The Inside I think isn't he?" "Yeah and I think he's working with Dan again on his new film."
I knew Adam was almost through signing so I asked one more thing. "So have you got anything new coming up?" to which he replied "Yeah I'm working on a new show called The Inside for Tim Minear". Now before you say it, yes I know I'd already mentioned that show in conversation. We finished talking and my friend took a high quality digital photograph of me and Adam together. Adam had to lean over the table and I had to lean backwards to get into shot. He put his arm around my shoulder and I forgot to smile (I was too nervous!).
Click here to see the picture of me and Adam at that moment.
My friend quicky got his autograph signed by Adam and we left for the time being.
The next event to come along was the Adam Baldwin/Firefly talk. We qued for about 15 minutes while Mathew Wood finshed up his talk and went in. The plan was to get near the front so we could see Adam better. Instead, a ton of people that had left the Mathew Wood talk and some others that DIDN'T QUE rushed in ahead and left us with crappy middle row seats half way back.
After some sound-checks and an introduction, Adam came out. This was all being filmed by some guy in the corner and people were asking questions, sometimes silly questions like "what show did you like working on better, Angel or Firefly?"....duuuuur! Some strange Corin Nemec fan club also got Adam to sing a few lines from "The Hero Of Canton". The Q&A was coming to an end so I thought that it was now or never, so I asked the guy with the microphone for a go. Now let me tell you, the few minutes that passed between me taking the microphone and me standing up to ask a question seemed to last forever!
Adam finished answering some person's question and looked around the room for another. It was my turn....oh my god! I stood up and asked "I think the scene in The Patriot where you have to burn down the church with all the people inside is one of your best ever scenes. Infact Roland Emmerich said on the DVD commentary that you could literally see the soul leaving your body in the performance. How did you prepare?" Well kinda like that, except imagine that same question 50 times faster, mumbled and in the wrong order. Now you have some idea what I sounded like. I could tell Adam didn't hear me properly (especially with my Brummie accent that comes on really heavily when I'm nervous) so I summed it up by repeating the last bit..."How did you prepare?"...hoping he'd heard the first bit -- He hadn't.
After I sat down, Adam answered in a very round about way (who could blame him? I was a wreck) about how he'd trained on horses and stuff. To tell you the truth, I didn't hear most of his answer because I was too busy shitting myself and having a near heart attack. My heart was beating so fast I must have lost a stone in those few minutes. All the time Adam had his eyes fixed on me.
Time ran out too quickly and we left the talk area. We headed back into the traders quarter. This time I got myself some nice Adam Baldwin photo's of my own to get signed and headed back to the que (which was now an open que, meaning I could que straight up instead of waiting). It came to my turn again and I went through the same procedure. I told him that I'd been very nervous during the question & answer session and asked him if he'd pose for a photo which he gladly did. He put his arms out and looked great, I took my photo and left.
My friend was waiting for me and we checked the picture. There was a lens flare and it hadn't come out!!! Damn the lighting in Earls Court! Damn you!
We headed back to look around the stalls for one last time and I got some more prints. I told my friend that I had to see him one more time before we left so we went and looked. I didn't want to leave but I could tell my friend was getting a bit tired and frankly so was I! My bag weighed a solid ton, so we headed to the toilet one more time for the road when I shocking realisation hit me.....
.....OH NO!!!!! Where is my camera??? I'd been carrying the camera around all day strapped around my wrist and it had gone! I ran out and headed straight to the last booth/stall I'd visited, but the guy hadn't seen it. I wasn't so much bothered about the camera, it was the precious photograph of me and Adam that was stored on it that I was worried about. We headed to two more stands that I'd been to, I took the first and my friend took the second (it was like a military operation by now). My guy hadn't seen it either but luckily (and here's your happy ending folks) I heard my friends' guy say "Was it a small gray camera?", I rushed over. "YES! It is a small grey digital camera!", "What make is it?" he replied, trying to see if I was the type of thief that went around every stool looking for a small grey digital camera ;). I couldn't remember the make but I managed to convince him that I was the owner and he gave it back to me. My heart be still.
And so my story comes to a close. We walked of into the sunset with the convention bug firmly lodged in our brains.
Just over one week later terrorists decided to blow up King's Cross station (among others) - a station we'd travelled through the weekend we were in London.
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