Ray Bradbury!!!

My general reaction when I see a celebrity/famous person is something like, "Oooh, I just saw [insert name here]." Sometimes it registers in my memory long enough for me to want to post it in my blog, but most of the time it doesn't rate at all. Thus, the infrequent updates on celebrity sightings.

Yesterday I saw a play of 'Farenheit 451' at the Fremont Center Theater in South Pasadena, and Ray Bradbury happened to show up and speak a couple of words for the show and sign books and playbills afterwards. I was over-the-top excited to meet him! I wanted to get this blog up a.s.a.p.!

Mr. Bradbury is 87 years old and still writing. Before the play, he introduced his friend Forrest Ackerman (who is 91 years old). Mr. Bradbury credited Mr. Ackerman with starting his career as a science fiction writer by asking him to join the 'Clifton's Cafeteria Science Fiction Club' and with giving Bradbury money to start a weekly and go to the Worlds Fair in New York. It was from essays and stories written during this time that got Bradbury noticed. To true hard-core science fiction fans, seeing Mr. Ackerman would be just as (or even more) exciting than seeing Mr. Bradbury since Ackerman is the original sci-fi fan and has the ultimate sci-fi collection in his house in L.A.

Mr. Bradbury also wanted to note that he was wearing a medal that he got recently from the French-- The French Order of Arts and Letters Honor. You can see it in the picture above where he is signing a copy of a book that I brought from home, "The Toynbee Convector". He was surprised to see the book because it wasn't one of the books on sale at the playhouse, and he said that the book was the first book that Ted Turner had ever published 30 years ago and that Turner was still rich ;) My book is actually a first edition published in 1992 story copyright in 1983, but I wasn't about to correct him.

I was intimidated by him-- not because he is scary-- because I have known his name for a big hunk of my life. I read Farenheit 451 in junior high school and really respected him for his ideas and writing. The people at the playhouse told me to stand next to him for the picture, and my sister said that I was really shy about it. I admit, I was shy, but I got the picture anyways:


I got a picture with RAY BRADBURY and me! OMG! I was giddy and happy in the car afterwards.

Who cares about those other famous actors, I met RAY BRADBURY!!!

Of course, not everybody would care about this as much as me. Apparently somebody showed up at the theater last night expecting to see the film, Farenheit 451. When they heard that it was a play and that the playwright was there, they left because they wanted to see a movie.