At this point, we were pretty "warmed up". They kept delaying his arrival until the last second, when we had almost exhausted our "woo!" supply. But when he came running out, our "woo"s reappeared. There was great applause as Dr. Stephen T. Colbert D.F.A. AKA Myron Reducto AKA Phil Ken Sebben AKA Prof. Impossible AKA Chuck Noblet AKA Stephen Colbert entered the room. He immediately got to the Q_A, asking if we had anything to ask him before he went on to say horrible things.

The first question-poser asked him to appear as a guest speaker for some kind of teacher's convention. He asked where it was, she responded "Fort Worth, Texas" and he immediately said "Noooooo...." He seemed reluctant to put the show on pause in order to attend (understandibly) and I doubt the red state thing helped much.

I didn't hear the second question, but some aspect of it reminded Stephen of a song, of which he sang a few bars. It sounded like some kind of country song, but I wasn't familiar with it. Whatever it was, he did a good job. He's got some decent pipes on him.

The third question was from a nervous young woman who prefaced her question with "This is a really nerdy question, but..." We'll see about that, Brent and I seemed to vow. She went on to first ask what he was reading these days. I think he responded with "Franny and Zooey" by Salinger. He really seemed to love this book, so I might have to check it out. The young woman concluded by asking to shake Stephen's hand, which he did, warmly and without ceremony, saying that it was nice to meet her.

I believe that I was the fourth person to ask a question. While I believe I did the actual asking, for the record let it be known that the question was a combination of the efforts of Brent Hirose, and we both stood up while the question was asked. Stephen pointed slightly to the right of me, which made me think he was choosing someone else, so there was an initial moment of confusion. Eventually, however, I managed to ask: "Stephen, my friend and I understand that you used to play Dungeons and Dragons. We would therefore like to know the best way to roll a natural twenty on a twenty-sided die." He responded immediately with the Answer, which Brent and I promised to keep secret, then said:

"Did you guys have that thing where if you roll double zero, you get to roll again to see if you do more damage?"

We responded, sure, that's a critical hit.

"Right! I once had an 18th level paladin get killed by a goblin because of a critical hit."

We expressed sympathy, of course.

"You know, I met Gary Gygax," he boasted.

We looked briefly jealous and he scornfully stated: "Deal with it!"

He then apologized to the rest of the audience for this little tangent, certain that very few of them would understand what he was talking about.

Then he said "I was at GenCon 10! I took part in the very first aerial combat rules for Dungeons and Dragons!"

After this, he managed to tear himself away from the subject and move on to the next topic.

I was reeling at this point, as I'm sure Brent was. It felt like we were just in a segment on the Colbert Report, on a topic of our own choosing. This little encounter really "made" my trip to New York and has left me feeling pretty good since.

A little bonus note: After the questions finished up, Stephen took his place at The Desk. Here, he performed a few warm-up moves, like slicking back his hair, lining up his eyebrows, that kind of thing. The last move he pulled, however, was miming rolling a die, then acting very pleased with the result. He then pointed to Brent and I as we cheered. Good times.

Next post, I'll tell you what the actual show was like.