The first night of the film festival, was a mixed bag kind of experience. The first feature, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, killed. We had almost 80 people show up which was beyond our expectations. One of the co-producers of the second feature (A Four Letter Word) was in attendance and we were excited that we had so many people given how last-minute we were with a lot of the planning this year. When it was time for A.F.L.W. to go on it kind of tanked with only 13 people in the audience. We figured it had something to do with the opening of Hairspray that night at Canal Place. It still went well, regardless. Everyone seemed to enjoy the film and a few even stayed for a brief Q&A with the filmmaker. Fun.

That was not the end of my excitement for the night; not by a long shot.

First some back-story: Thursday night, I had visited the bars to market the festival a bit and wound up talking with some great guys in the process. Ray, who was really quite cool owns a nightclub in Atlanta called Blake’s on the Park and was enjoying his first visit to New Orleans.

But this blog is about me, not Ray – so back to Friday night :)

I arrived at the bar after the festival – around 11pm. I walked around for a bit and talked to some friends when I spotted a guy that was kinda cute on the other end of the bar. After a few drinks minutes I managed to get a little closer and thought he looked a lot like Ted Allen.

For those of you who haven’t read much of this blog, Ted Allen is pretty much the archetype of cuteness in my eyes. Not like in a stalker I have a Ted Allen Shrine kind of way – that’d be scary. This is in more of an harmless I want a uterus implant so I can have his children and name them after him kind of way. So anyhoo, I figure I’ll try to position myself a little closer to this guy.

Wait.

Holy shit.

It WAS Ted Allen.

I ran back to my friend and regressed into a 13 year old girl, giggling and pointing.

In the middle of all this, Ray from Atlanta walked up next to me and was like “so who are we talking about?” I was all “Ted Allen from Queer…”

“Oh, I know Ted!” He says, sending my foot deep, deep into my mouth.

I proceed to shit on myself as Ray walks over and started talking to my fucking husband.

My other friends start cheering me on: “GO. TALK. TO. HIM.”

I eventually built up enough alcohol nerve and walk over to Ray, pretending to not notice the white elephant next to him and say something stupid like “oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

Meanwhile, Ted is talking to one of our asshole local lushes named K@-l. K@-l is kind of cute so people let him slide. K@-l walked away and I overheard Ted say something like “well, that was a personal question” as Ray introduced us. I shook his hand and never missing an opportunity to be a catty bitch said, “On behalf of the City of New Orleans, I would like to apologize for the entire conversation you just had with him.” Ted laughed and said there wasn’t enough apologies in the city. I laughed.

Anyway, that was pretty much it. He seemed like a really nice guy, but I didn’t want to be all in up in his shit (no pun intended) when he was just trying to have some fun.

Later in the evening the bar’s VJ, Brendan, yanked me back over next to Ted and took an awkward picture of us using Chris Owens‘ disposable camera – covered in makeup and false eyelashes I’m sure.

Photos to come when I get them.