The Artist Formerly Known as sweetafton23

On the day before my 8th birthday, I rolled up into a ball on my bed and cried hysterically because I wasn’t going to be 7 anymore and there was nothing I could do about it. (I guess I really liked being 7, but I can’t account for it now.) My mom told me that it would be ok, that soon all my friends would turn 8 and we could all be 8 together; and that she had really enjoyed her 8th year, it was one of her favorite years in her childhood. This helped me.

I was born mid-morning on Thanksgiving. I share my birthday with Harpo Marx, Billy The Kid, Boris Karloff, Miley Cyrus, Chris Hardwick, and our 14th president Franklin Pierce. I was born exactly 2 weeks after the Berlin Wall fell.

In my family we lump all the aunt/grandchild birthdays into one monthly party at my grandma’s house, so all the June-August birthdays or all the January birthdays will be compressed into one shindig, and each gets their own cake and each gets their own presents. I was born on Thanksgiving, and so my birthday was always celebrated when we went up to grandma’s on Thanksgiving day. We’d have a big turkey dinner, and then we’d have cake and presents. I’ve never told my parents this, but until I was in the 2nd grade I thought that my birthday WAS Thanksgiving, and it, too, shifted around from year to year. I mean, I absolutely knew that I was born on November 23rd, but when you’re ever asked your birthday, they usually ask for the year too, and in 1989 Thanksgiving fell on November 23rd.

My dad used to tell me that “the whole Thanksgiving thing” was kind of dying out, and year after year people would sit around the turkey going “well, this is lame, what are we supposed to be thankful for?” But then I was born, and everyone went “MOLLY’S HERE!” and Thanksgiving was saved.


I still don’t really know where I sit on the subject of age, exactly. I heartily subscribe to the “age is just a number” principle, but I’m also fascinated by the half+7 rule of non-creepy dating. My friend Leslie said that I’m a score old, which made me feel REALLY old. Paul & Storm mentioned once that some people were incredulous that I was “only 19.”

I spent the last day of my 19th year watching New Moon (which life is too short to even talk about) with my floormates, and then sleeping to try and get New Moon off my palate. I will close it out by finishing a paper about Ben Franklin’s “The Speech of Polly Baker” and eating Smarties and Snapple. This paper is due in my 10:00 AM American Literature class, and I was born at 9:59 AM… There’s some meaning to be inferred there, but I don’t know what it is.


The idea of turning 20 freaks me out, moreso than the idea of turning 21. I spent Saturday in Seattle, and at the end of the day my back hurt from carrying my uke and my books and CDs, and so I crashed on my bed as soon as I got back to my room. I was laying there with my legs hanging off the side of my tiny dorm bed, both my shoes on, and the bottom of my pants still wet from puddles — when a thought hit me, and compelled me to roll out of bed and zombie-walk across the hall to my friend Lyanna’s room.

“I’ve been thinking this whole time, ‘Oh, last day I’ll be 19, on Monday I’ll be a different age, how weird,’” I said to her, “but it never occurred to me that tomorrow is the last day of my teenage years. It’s my last day as a teenager.”
She nodded, “According to my calculations, yeah.” I stood there for a moment, letting the idea steep in my head.
“I feel like I need to go start on some wacky teen movie romp, you know? Like, I have to go on some legendary hilarious sexy one-night-only hijinks, and then Snag My Dream Guy, or SOMETHING. It’s my last day as a teenager, I feel like I have to make it count.” Lyanna shrugged.
“Well, we got you a cake.”
“…I like cake.”

Every day I check here and here to see if any new pictures or video have gone up.
And so far I don’t have PAXflu. [knock on wood]

I ended up falling heir to an unused PAX badge about a week before, so I already knew I was going to show up and sort of planned to surprise Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm at their signing table. Maybe. Or something. But they texted me in the 24 hours leading up and asked if I wanted a badge, and when I said I already had one, they told me to bring my uke. Not wanting to go into the city by myself, I asked for the extra badge anyway and offered it to my next door neighbor Chris, who is a gamer and Coulton/Paul&Storm fan himself. My original plan was to use the 3-day pass for myself on Saturday and then let him use it on Friday or Sunday, but when I was offered an extra pass it was only logical to give it to him.

I’ve joked with Chris and my friend Jeannie about how JoCo is giving me less and less notice on performing with him; I had about a month of notice on the show at the Triple Door, about 3 weeks notice on the Moore/Aladdin shows, about 48 hours on the Largo show, and roughly 24 hours notice on this one. Predictably it will keep halving, and I’ll get 12 hours notice, and then 6 hours, until one day I’ll get a call, “We’re outside. There’s no time for questions, just grab your uke and get in the tour van.“

I can’t find a word to describe how enormous the theater is, other than “enormous.” Because it was enormous. Enormously enormous, even. There were chairs for maybe 300 people in the back, and then standing room from there all the way up to the front. There was about as much floorspace as there is grassy space in a football field. Evidently it fit about 6,000 people that evening, comfortably, safely. Paul met us and led us into the hall as JoCo was testing Mr. Fancy Pants on the ZenDrum. “They are going to flip their shit when they hear this remix thing he’s doing,” Paul kept saying. “They are totally going to go nuts.”

After soundcheck was through I asked Jonathan what time I should be back, and he said “Well, my show starts at midnight…” It was 10:30 in the morning.
“So I have 13 hours to kill, huh?”
“Yeah, sorry. Paul and Storm should go on around 10:30, so you could show up then… I’m going to take a nap.”

Since Chris and I had a crapton of time to kill we decided the best thing to do was go to the actual expo. On the way there, I stopped to take a picture with the Prince of the Cosmos, and got recognized by a woman in a kickass GLaDOS costume and another guy in a Swedish Chef costume – simultaneously. We had a mutual admiration society for a minute, and I got sort of punch-drunk off it for the next hour or so. The coolest thing about getting recognized by people was that about 5 minutes later they would Twitter about it, and I would see it because they would say something like “Just met @Molly23, huzzar. #PAX” or “Passed @Molly23 in the other direction on the escalator.” and it was like a nametag on whomever said hi to me.

The expo hall was rows upon rows of booths and displays and vendors. There was this huge rumbling sound from one of the games as soon as you walked through the doors, and it was this rush of people and colors and lights and gunfire foley and free crap. We ended up playing Tekken 6, in which I chose to play as both a bracelet-wearing panda, and a kangaroo+joey with boxing gloves, while Chris chose the standard Tekken-type characters – a man with a leopard head, a black man with a bad haircut, etc. Pfft. Boys.

When we went to grab lunch, we noticed an abnormal percentage of men wearing kilts. It was exactly noon, and so I pulled a notecard out of my bag and started keeping a tally that I would call “KiltWatch.” About an hour later I would start “CorsetWatch” for comparative purposes, and would maintain a steady 3:1 kilt:corset ratio all day.

Chris had a pretty dense schedule of talks for himself, so I knew I would have a lot of time to kill on my own. I wandered around by myself for a while, played Beatles Rock Band and peoplewatched for a bit before I’d had my fill. They had what they called the “handheld lounge,” which was 2 rooms carpeted wall-to-wall with beanbags, in which you could sit and play DS or whatever else. I crashed in one of these for about an hour and solved my Rubik’s cube, and felt VERY heretical and naughty for it.

Around 4:00 I got tired of wandering, and so I left and went to the movie theater across the street to hopefully kill 2 hours, but all the movies were rated R except for The Proposal, Ice Age, and Harry Potter, and I still have no ID with my birthday on it (except my passport). I decided to go to the Gameworks on the same block, put $10 onto a token card, and played Galaga and cheap shooter games to my heart’s content. At Gameworks each credit is worth $.25, and each shooter game cost 1 or 2 credits per player, so I kept entering credit for two players and playing in what I call “Lara Croft mode”, putting a gun in each hand and shooting at two different screens at the same time. Chris called me to let me know that he was done with his panels, and I answered with “Can I call you back?! I’m playing House Of The Dead 3!“
“Uh, ok, I guess I’ll—”
“AAAAAH!” [click]

It was nearing the dinner hour, so I told him to come to Gameworks so we could use up the credits on the card faster, and spent it on skeeball and more expensive/realistic shooter games. (Did you know that there’s an arcade shooter game version of Rambo? You’re welcome.) In the middle of a game of skeeball, the little boy next to me stopped his game and stared at me bewildered for a few seconds. “Are you wearing a wig?” he asked. I laughed and said no I wasn’t but I’d just gotten a haircut. His dad wasn’t as apologetic as I would’ve been were I in his shoes, and I wanted to lighten things up by making some joke about how bald his dad was in comparison but I figured that wouldn’t be appropriate.

We had to walk a ways to get food because there weren’t a lot of vegetarian options for him, and on the way we passed the Triple Door, where I was a guest of JC and Paul & Storm for the first time almost a year and a half ago. With Chris there I didn’t have time to wax nostalgic about it, or reflect on how much I’d matured as a performer since then, or how I hadn’t expected to ever EVER have a day like that again — but I did stop to take a picture and send it to my dad.

When we got back to the convention center, I went back to the handheld lounge and flopped into what beanbag I could find, and took a nap. Around 9:30 I found Chris again and we went to the main theater, where Freezepop was playing. I sat and watched until about the middle of their set, and then I wandered up the perimeter of the room towards the stage and sat down in a folding chair at stage left. Paul was running back and forth trying to organize t-shirts and write a set list out, and after about 20 minutes of that he said hi.
“Man, it’s so loud in here!” I said.
“WHAT?! (Get it?)” he said, and pointed towards the back of the room. “Go through that door, it’s quiet outside!”

I was standing outside with Paul and Storm when the door opened and Wil Wheaton came out, accompanied by the winners of some contest earlier that day. At the Largo show I had grabbed my uke and run like a scared rabbit when Wil Wheaton entered the room and I was determined to redeem myself this time, so I looked him in the eye, said “Hi, Wil!” and received a hug. I asked him to also sign my badge, which he did, and took up a generous amount of space. I said “ohh, you didn’t leave room for anyone else…” He raised his eyebrows at me as he crossed his T. “I’m kidding,” I added.
He said, “When you grow up in a large ensemble cast like I did, you learn to take up a lot of real estate whenever you sign things first, so that all the others have to cram in around you.”
“They call that the Hancock complex,” Paul said.

At the top of Paul & Storm’s set, Wil Wheaton issued a proclamation that named Jonathan the 2009 recipient of the Presidential D20 of Geekdom, which Paul and Storm received on his behalf. Paul & Storm played a wild and crazy set, including the song about Frogger with which they challenged me in the final round of Song Fu. They mentioned in the introduction that they had written it for the Masters round of Song Fu, and that they had lost. (“Awwwww.”) My dad always asks if they mention that I’m the one who defeated them in Song Fu, but I don’t really think it’s important.

I always get a little jittery before I go onto any stage, but this time I wasn’t at all worried about getting up in front of 6,000 people, I wasn’t worried about forgetting words or chords or anything. I was worried because geek darling Felicia Day was the guest performer the year before, and I was afraid that JoCo would say I’d like to invite another guest to the stage, she’s from the internet, and everyone would go Can it be?? I thought she was at DragonCon! and then be intensely disappointed when short, not-Felicia me popped up from backstage. I was completely prepared to disappoint a lot of nerds.

So then Jonathan went onstage, he played for a while, and then Paul and Storm went up for a few songs, and then I was introduced, and heard a fair amount of “YAAAAAAAA” from the crowd when my name was called. Ha! Not-Felicia triumphantly takes the stage!
And then this happened:

We played My Monkey (Wil Wheaton), Bills Bills Bills, and Always The Moon. I came back up for Sweet Caroline, the encore, but then there were 2 more encores for which I was unprepared.

After the third encore they shut the curtain, and Paul said “You’re signing things with us.” They went out and took their places at their respective tables, but I felt uncomfortable seating myself at either table and so I stood near where the lines spat out once their stuff had been signed, and caught a few people. In a lull as I was standing there Wil Wheaton stopped by and thanked me for being part of his serenade, that it was by far the peak of his PAX experience.
“Are you going to get up there and sign things?” he said.
“I think I’m just going to loiter here awkwardly by myself…” He nodded. “…because that’s what I do.”
“Good plan. And then occasionally people will gravitate over and loiter with you for a bit.”
“Exactly,” I said, “and then I’m not quite as awkward.”
“Exactly. I would join you myself, but it is way past Wil Wheaton’s bedtime.” I shook his hand and then he left.

It was almost 4 in the morning, so I said goodbye to Jonathan and Paul and Storm. Jonathan said thanks for showing up as he does after each of these shows, which always feels really backwards to me. (Thank me? Thank YOU.) I called a taxi to get back to campus. As Chris and I went down the huge dramatic line of escalators to find it, I was hopping up and down and taking the steps two at a time. “I’m excited,” I said.
“About what?” asked Chris.
“Just – everything.”

The final count on KiltWatch was 37 kilts, 10 corsets.

On Saturday I flew home from bonny Tacoma for the summer, and on Sunday I played with Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm at Largo at The Coronet… and boy are my arms tired.
I’ve seen Jon Brion at the Largo twice, and so being able to crawl around backstage and stand next to his piano was enough for me; Largo’s “no talking, no electronics” policy during shows makes the venue feel strangely church-like to me anyway, not even considering its somewhat golden roster of regular players.
But I got to play there. Excuse me? No. NO. That can’t be right.

There was a 5.0 earthquake apparently (which I will interpret as the state yawning open to welcome me home??) but only a few people in the venue claimed to have felt it — the fact that so many people casually Twittered about it at the break is a testament to either (1) how jaded Californians are when it comes to earthquakes, (2) how intensely Paul & Storm rocked, or (3) both.

Also met Weird Al [who needs no hyperlink], and Wil Wheaton*, and saw the back of Felicia Day’s head. Met @lonelysandwich, though I didn’t realize who he was until I’d gotten in the car and the boyfriend said “So I noticed you met @lonelysandwich too,” and I was like “WHAT.” @JadeSnake made me some startlingly awesome sets of self-referential SweetAfton23 pins, I recognized fellow Song Fu-er Jarrett Heather on sight (as much to his surprise as mine, it seems), and assured @Colleenky that she is in no way creepy. (If I ever gig for myself, I am going to distribute “Hello My Name Is” stickers at the door, upon which you write your name AND your Twitter/YouTube handles if applicable, because I know that there are more of you whom I met but I couldn’t put faces to [user]names.)

I’ve been a guest of the trio thrice before and so I thought I’d be used to it by now, but half of the internet was there. (I’m surprised that there was no State Of The Union-type designated survivor to remain behind, given the convergence of important geeks at this event. What if the earthquake had taken out the venue? Who would lead the geek masses?**) I was less talkative and more nervous than I’ve ever been at one of these things — My mom says I did “Road Trip” in double time, and I will not disagree — but in spite of my withdrawn awkward teenager-ness I had an amazing time. I’m told that one day I’ll get savvy and start selling CDs and t-shirts and that, but even then hopefully it will still be this surreal to tag along behind my betters like this; I hope I never get used to it, and that these shows are always as overwhelming and humbling as they are now… and if my head does get too big one day, I hope it’s long after JoCo and Paul&Storm have gotten sick of me and left me to fend for myself.

Speaking of selling shirts…. Though we discussed it briefly on Sunday, Paul & Storm have now publically nudged me via Twitter/Minions towards selling shirts. I’ve taken preliminary steps towards opening up an online shop, but scary EIN-dealings aside, I’m not sure how I feel about selling swag on the whole. It feels weird to sell shirts without touring, but it feels weird to tour without an album. So basically I have to release an album, which I already knew. Could I tour on an EP? I could stitch together an EP at this point. But how could I afford to tour without the profits from t-shirts? But how can I sell shirts without touring? It’s the Grandfather Paradox of merch.

N00B.

I’m not good at blogging. There are so many characters, and me with so short an attention span. I suddenly have to construct whole cogent paragraphs, instead of just snappy fragments. You can’t make a twoosh out of a blog post — Where’s the sense of efficiency and accomplishment?

*Respective anecdotes:
1. Weird Al’s was the first musical concert I went to. Ever. It was on March 3, 2000 at what is now the Grove Of Anaheim, and I went with my best friend since pre-school for her birthday. It was pouring rain that evening, and on the freeway on the way to the venue our car got struck by lightning, killing our car radio but thoroughly amping our 10-year old selves for the show.
2. I confess, I was probably the last geek on earth to follow Wil Wheaton on Twitter. I did not know who he was before I went to a David Sedaris reading at UCLA, and after I Twittered about it I was bombarded with @-replies to the tune of DON’T YOU REALIZE THAT @WILW IS IN THE SAME ROOM AS YOU RIGHT NOW? So when the show was over I followed him. …No, that sounds creepy, try again: When the show was over I drove behind his car until he got to his house. There, that’s better.

**Well actually, I guess the designated survivor was Nathan Fillion?