A couple of days ago, I was scrolling through social media, as you do.  I spotted a photo of a friend with Cary Elwes, none other than Wesley/Dread Pirate Roberts of Princess Bride fame.  I did what most mature adults do.  I went into a jealous rage.  Nah, I’m kidding.  But of course I also wanted to meet Cary Elwes.  A few minutes later, another friend chimed in that Cary Elwes would be at Comicon, which I had already bought a ticket to attend.

The Princess Bride is a seminal movie for people my age.  I was ten years old when it came out and it was the first movie I was allowed to watch that wasn’t a cartoon.  Naturally, I was obsessed with this movie, as most people in my generation are.  I remember a very long conversation with one of my cousins about how she preferred the evil Chris Sarandon as King Humperdinck to Wesley.  I argued that I preferred Wesley because he was cute as a button.

As the years have gone on, I have further fallen in love with the movie.  There’s the incomparable Andre the Giant, whose size is legendary but warm side was less well known.  Robin Wright told this sweet story about how he used to protect her from the rain by putting his hand over her head.  I also always love Miracle Max, the bitter miracle maker and his shrewish wife.  I spent most of my junior high school years yelling Miracle Max’s lines at random people in my school.  Completely unrelated is the fact that I wasn’t terribly popular and I got in trouble for being too loud a lot.

And Vicinni.  Oh Vicinni.  The annoying know it all!!!!!!  The leader of the rag tag group of sword fighter and giant.  Into adulthood, I have continually repeated his character’s quotes.  I have a former professor who I actually refer to as Vicinni because he’s Sicilian.  And I challenged him when death was on the line and he was not about to die!!!!!  My former professor as far as I know has never tried to start a land war in Asia, although there is still time!!!!!!  I cannot count the number of times I have randomly yelled out “INCONCEIVABLE” when something really obvious has happened.  Lastly, a magnet featuring Vicinni’s smiling face has graced my refrigerator for the past eight years.  Oh and when I go to New York, my favorite Sicilian pizza has Vicinni’s face on it.  So yeah, the man might be kind of an obsession for me.

Anyway, we’re already at paragraph five and I haven’t even started saying why I’m telling you all of this.  So I did in fact attend Comicon and I did get to see the one and only Cary Elwes at the event today.  Did a middle aged Boston school teacher yell out “I Love You” when he took the stage??  I don’t know.  Maybe?

Cary Elwes kindly sat and told wonderful stories about his career.  He described being chided by Al Pacino early in his career for not acting enough and not keeping his career momentum going.  Of course he had his own anecdote about working with Andre the Giant.  It involved Andre the Giant cracking off a fart that probably registered on the Richter scale.  I don’t usually laugh too hard at fart jokes because I generally do not find them funny but when Cary Elwes tells a joke about Andre the Giant farting I mean you kind of have to laugh, so I laughed.  OK because this time it was funny.

Here’s some shots of the man himself at the Q&A:

Cary Elwes also told very charming stories about such INCONCEIVABLE things like learning how to sword fight from the same people who taught Errol Flynn how to sword fight.  And then the session ended with Cary Elwes going off to his next destination.  I would have to live without a selfie with a member of the cast of the Princess Bride.  Or would I?

So my friends and I went off to get lunch and relax.  We walked around a bit afterwards.  We spotted some actors from Back to the Future and other movies.  Some actors had crowds next to them, others not.

AND THEN I SPOTTED NONE OTHER THAN WALLACE SHAWN.  Neither of my friends were as obsessed with the Princess Bride or the man himself.  So, I approached Mr. Shawn calmly and told him how much I love his work.  Nah, I totally turned into a teenage fangirl and told him I’d been a fan since Annie Hall!!!!!  (Actually it was Manhattan).  He goes “Annie Hall, you weren’t even alive then!!!!!  Then I did tell him about how I had a magnet with his picture on it on my fridge, about nicknaming a professor after him and how much I loved his character on Young Sheldon.  OK I mean I might have overwhelmed the guy a bit.

Then we started talking about what I did and I told him I was an ESL professor and that I worked at different colleges around Boston.  We had a quite enjoyable conversation about that and then we took our photo.  Per usual I would have just taken a formal, well composed picture of him from far away, but the meeting was so much fun that I decided to put in our picture together.  I know.  I look like Andre the Giant standing next to him:

Another picture of me up here in the 11 years I’ve had this blog???  INCONCEIVABLE!!!!!!!!