It's Weird Being Me

Okay, as you know, I've been on the road a bit over the past few weeks. Here's a couple of odd stories of my adventures.

Two weeks ago, my lovely wife Christine and I went to Chicago for the C2E2 Convention (the only con I know of that is apparently named after a droid).  Anyway, I was checking in at the front desk of the Hyatt when the desk clerk told me they had a lovely room with two double beds for us. I reminded the desk clerk that we had ordered one king-size bed instead and he said it would take a new seconds to fix the mistake. He did what he needed to do, told us he now had a lovely room with a King bed for us, and printed out the keys. Then he checked his computer and said that a welcoming gift had already been delivered to the original room for us. He told me he would have a bellman deliver the bag to the new room. I thanked him, collected our baggage and went up to our room. While I was up in the room, unpacking (Chris had already gone down to the lobby to meet an old Law School friend of hers), the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find a young bellman standing there, holding a gift bag in one hand. Before I could say anything, the bellboy looked at me, did a double-take, and said, incredulously, "Len Wein?" Equally incredulous, I stammered back, "Y-yes. B-but how did you know?" The bellboy smiled, handed me the gift bag, shrugged, and said, "Wikipedia." Welcome to the 21st Century.

Last week, I went solo to the first annual Vancouver Fan Expo. On my flight, among others, were Kevin (Hercules) Sorbo, Lou (Hulk) Ferrigno, Marina (Councilor Troi) Sirtis, Nicholas (Xander) Brendon, Michael (Worf) Dorn, and a few others I'd sadly forgotten for the moment. When I got to customs, I handed my passport to an amiable young Customs agent, who took the document, read my name, and said, "Now why is that name so familiar to--?" and then the penny dropped. Suddenly, he started treating me like royalty, thanking me for creating Wolverine, thanking me for honoring their country by coming to the convention, so forth and so on for several minutes. I thanked him in return, got my passport stamped, and went on about my business.

For the rest of the weekend, as I sat at my table at the convention, signing autographs and greeting fans, people kept coming up to me, saying they'd had the weirdest experience at Customs with a young agent, that when he found out that they were coming to the Convention, he would go on and on about how he had stamped my passport, shaken my hand, and so on. To him, it seemed, I was a bigger celebrity than the others I've mentioned above.

The older I get, the more absolutely bizarre my life seems to become. Well, at least it's never, ever boring.