Paying off a 'Six Million Dollar' debt?

October promised to be very conventional for me, with Comic Con at the beginning of the month and Chiller Theatre at the end. The former turned out to be a bust as I walked around in an ill/semi-conscious state. (I did attend the Christopher Lloyd question-and-answer session to hear him talk about "Clue"; chilled out in Peter Davison's entertaining Q&A even though I'd never seen his "Dr. Who"; and saw one of my favorite '90s bands, Ben Folds Five, live.)

But that meant hopes wound up being that much higher for Chiller Theatre, particularly after having so much fun at the spring edition. I met up again with one of my favorite online friends, Carol, and her amiga, Linda. We were well prepared in terms of who we wanted to see. (Read: Who we wanted to spend our bucks on, since everyone has their own pricing structure for photos, autographs and the combination of both).

The gameplan was to get on the big "living room" line with the upper-echelon celebs first, and then work our way to the others after that. But there's always room for improvisation as Carol informed me after Mark and I arrived that Deborah Foreman was tucked away in a little room and there wasn't a line for her at all. So Linda and I headed down another corridor so I could meet her.

Deborah is probably best known from "Valley Girl," but my personal favorite is "April Fool's Day," a-more-comedy-than-horror flick from the mid-'80s. In it, she plays the main character Muffy, who wants to set up a mystery vacation spot at the home she inherited. She's using her friends as guinea pigs to see if it'll work out, only problem is that someone's offing these people one by one.

As Muffy begins to act more and more suspicious, her remaining friends come to realize that they might be dealing with her murderous sister, Buffy. So when I had my picture taken with Ms. Foreman, I put my glasses on top of my head like she had. The person taking the photo for us said that we looked like twins -- Muffy and Buffy. (We look about as much like twins as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito did, by the way.)

Now Chiller is kind of a B-list movie/TV event (if you're being kind), but they do bring on some marquee names for the event. The big two headliners I wanted to meet were Lee Majors ("The Six Million Dollar Man") and Penny Marshall (comedienne-turned-filmmaker). So they were my "targets" for the living room.

Carol was high on seeing Penny too, so when we finally made our way down the long corridor line and into the room, we were happily surprised to find Ms. Marshall's line wasn't too long. I anted up for both a signed photo and a picture with her. She was decked out in the G-Men sweatshirt that I've wanted to get for myself for a while.

We had some polite chatter and then a rogue photographer came by and snapped a picture of her -- pretty much a no-no at this show. She was irritated by that and I asked her if she wanted me to "take care of him for her," that made her laugh a bit and kept the brief meeting light. I also told her I had recently seen her in some "Battle of the Network Stars" video, I think she did everything short of rolling her eyes at that.

It took me a while to figure out which of the photos to get -- it's like a smorgasbord when you get up to the table and see so many cool professional shots -- but I opted for the "silly" one from "Laverne & Shirley" and happily got that one signed.

Joan Collins was on a break while we were in there, but we got to "check out" Connie Stevens, and let me tell you, she looked better than a lot of the actresses half her age. Then we headed for the Lee Majors line.

Now the trick about Chiller is that you can't tell the pricing structure until after you've stood on the person's line, and by that time, you pretty much want to get something for your time. The former Steve Austin was $40 for a photo, $40 for an autographed photo and $50 if you wanted something of your own signed. I ridiculously thought that the $50 was combined and decided to get my Season 1 DVD cover autographed. Until they asked me for $90. Uh, no, thanks. I guess they have to pay off the six million dollars for that bionic surgery somehow, right?

I did resign myself to at least getting a picture with him. After all, I am a child of the '70s, and during that time, you couldn't get much better than being bionic. But the technology must have rusted, because Mr. Majors said he couldn't get out of his chair because of a bad knee. He didn't say much beyond that and the old axiom of not meeting your favorites for fear of disappointment bounced around my head for a few minutes.

But fresh off that disappointment, we were about to leave the room when we saw Steven Bauer's short line and intriguing sign -- photos $10! Although I haven't seen him on "Breaking Bad," I do remember the likes of his '80s flick "Thief of Hearts" and "Wiseguy."

I thought he was the most genuine person we met that day. Gives good hugs too. That was $10 well spent.

Sitting nearby was the actor I kept making fun of during the afternoon, much to Linda's chagrin. Andrew McCarthy -- who I deemed the least talented actor at the event, even though there was no way that could be true -- was a borderline Brat Packer and my least favorite character in one of the movies from the era I saw dozens of times, "St. Elmo's Fire."

His line was short as well, but like Steven, he seemed to be really conversing with the people who stopped to meet him and not just taking their money and scribbling down a name. But sue me, I still wanted Molly Ringwald to end up with Jon Cryer in "Pretty in Pink."

The person I had been most looking forward to meeting at the event was Pamela Sue Martin, who I loved in "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries" and later in "Dynasty." I was super-psyched about getting to meet her, because Nancy Drew was just my hero when I was a pre-teen. I had all the novels and had rewatched the series prior to the last Chiller (at which I met Hardy Boy Parker Stevenson).

Carol seemed to be almost as excited about seeing me meet Pamela Sue. She had a friend who arrived while we were waiting for the actress to return from her lunch break, but she still stuck on the line with me. Poor Eric Shea (PSM's young brother in "The Poseidon Adventure" was at the next table, but he seemed to be spending more time trying to track her down for those of us waiting for her).

She finally did arrive and I got to meet Nancy Drew/the real Fallon! (Both Carol and I will work overtime to maintain that we adore Emma Samms, who later assumed the role of Fallon, but that we preferred PSM in the part.) She was really sweet and surprised to hear that my major reason for attending the event was to meet her. Then Carol upped the ante by saying that she just wanted to watch me meet her because she was such a childhood hero of mine and I tend to race my motor when it's someone that meaningful to me. Pamela Sue got a hearty chuckle out of that one.

And by the way, her deal was MUCH better than Mr. Majors'. I got my photo taken with her and my Nancy Drew DVD cover signed for $25, and she made conversation with me too! I really should let Steven Bauer retain his title as "Deal of the Day," but I was thrilled to have it play out that way.

After we got chided for sneaking a photo of Valerie Harper (I told you the actors/handlers don't take kindly to that), Carol and Linda went their own way. Later in the afternoon when I finally found Mark, I got to meet wonderful Roger Kastel, the very talented artist who created the art for the movie posters for "Jaws," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." He was sweet and appreciative, and he took a lot of care to sign his autograph in places that would stand out and be unobtrusive at the same time.

The day wasn't even over for us as Mark and I were heading to the city to see Asia. A certain superstorm was making its way toward us as well. And while I perused the convention during the ensuing power outage, I resolved to remember not to bust on the Chiller lineup so much when they start announcing the celebrities for April, since it's the non-marquee names who prove to be the most interesting at the actual event and they keep out-of-pocket costs down. That should last for, oh, about five minutes.

An 'Affair' to remember

As providence would have it, the Rick Springfield fan documentary, "An Affair of the Heart," was set to premiere the same week I was on vacation and my sister was in town. And Rick was scheduled to be in attendance for the first shows!

Once upon a time, Koop and I went to see Rick in Orlando during the "Living in Oz" Tour. We both sported signs, Mine was "You'll Always Be No. 1 With Me" and hers was "Rick, You Gorgeous Hunk." Those were the kind of memories I expected to revisit while watching the movie that followed the travails of several diehard fans. The poster sports the tagline -- "Do you remember where you were when you forgot about Rick Springfield? ... They never did."

Kind of hard to forget someone who was plastered on my walls for years and years. And on my t-shirts. And in my scrapbooks for both music and acting. ... Who I followed over various TV shows -- starting with my "General Hospital" obsession to the short-lived "The Human Target" to the syndicated tongue-in-cheek "High Tide," which once cheekily paged Rick's "GH" persona Dr. Noah Drake to liposuction in the background. And all the slick TV movies in between.

However, I knew I didn't really qualify for the kind of rabid fan I expected to see in the film -- there are fans who follow him everywhere. The special shows -- like the Rick Springfield & Friends Cruise and four-day acoustic ones in the Midwest, and the regular ones too -- like his umpteenth visit to Atlantic City. People who don't feel they've had the full experience unless they've also paid for the soundcheck and touch him in the meet-and-greet.

I've seen him maybe 20 times over the years, and figured that number would probably strike derision in the hearts of the people who would be featured in the movie. But I still wanted to see it, and about a year after its initial film festival appearance, it was finally coming to a theater near me.

It took weeks of watching the IFC Center website before tickets went on sale, but I snatched them up as soon as I saw them. And that day, as both sis and myself started showing signs of a flu bug that would knock us silly for the next few days after that, we made our way into the big city.

I snared a copy of the new CD, "Songs for the End of the World" at Best Buy because it had a couple of bonus tracks and we headed for the theater. We picked up the movie tickets and I saw a line for a meet-and-greet. It was shorter than one might expect, and when we got to the front, a security guy asked for our tickets. I presented the ones for the film. "No, not those, do you have tickets?" he asked. "Yes," I said. I showed him the movie tickets again. "No, are you supposed to be here?" "Yes," I said. I could have gone on like that all day. Fortunately, I didn't have to as he ushered us in.

Not much of a line from there either as I quickly got in Rick range. He had started the day in a New York City subway, bellowing his new song "I Hate Myself," and of course, the ol' chestnuts like "Jessie's Girl" and "Don't Talk to Strangers." I asked him how that went and he replied, "Crazy."

Not much time for formalities, so he signed my CD and we took my fourth picture with him. Then it was sis' turn. One of the ushers took the pictures for us and my iPhone chimed with a message just as she was finishing the task. "Mark's messaging you," she told Lorrie. "WHO????" Rick asked with mock outrage.

We waited until we were outside to laugh about pulling a fast one. ... And another fast one was about to come too. There was not really a line for the showing of the film, everyone was kind of just clustered in one place. Until someone from the theater decided to rope off the area starting at a motor scooter about 200 feet away. Guess who wound up first on the line?

Yep, it was me -- the 1,326th biggest Rick fan of all time!! Well, it was me for a little while because a little elderly couple pulled an even faster one. They sort of loitered to the right of the sign and then when we started to be let in, they just skipped out in front of us. I appreciated the craftiness, so I let it slide.

The theater chairs might have been a little too comfy, they were angled back so you could look up at the screen from the second row without craning your neck too badly.

Not much of a chance to fall asleep though, as the stories ranged from touching -- Rick's music helped a scared girl who had heart surgery make it through 18 months of being confined to her bed -- to funny as Rick had to (and did) win over a heavy metal crowd at an outdoor concert in Sweden -- to slightly contrived as two best friends alienate their husbands with their attachment to Rick. (All's well that ends well, though, as the two spouses get their own private audience with Rick and come away from the meeting smiling almost as much as their wives.)

The film definitely reminded me of my own concert memories -- from the first one back in 1981 in which my friend Linda and I stood on the chairs the whole time and I sang/screamed myself hoarse the night before I was supposed to give a speech in school. The second one I already mentioned; the third one, my mom drove me, sis and best friend Cheryl to Hollywood (what Rick deemed the "Hollywood Sweatatorium.") I left thinking that all Rick fans would probably have a tale or two or three to tell, even if it was something as small yet meaningful as listening to "Kristina" on the Walkman through two headphone jacks while participating in a March of Dimes' Walk-a-thon with Koop.

Rick seemed genuinely touched, both in the film and during question-and-answer afterward, by the effect he's had on people's lives. He's actually the person who probably has been transformed the most. Which was the surprise of the film and of the night.

Sis and I wound up bedridden for most of the next few days, and then Rick had to cancel some dates due to his own illness. I guess I shoulda asked if he wanted to hang and watch movies with us during the Q&A period. But it's just as well I didn't, they might have shoved us in some sequel to the film. I've since decided that the low end of the diehard Rick totem pole has its rewards.