Not sure whether this should be Cafe Society or IMHO, so hopefully if I chose poorly, the mods will move it.
So next month I’m having a…ahem…milestone birthday, and I wanted to do something I wouldn’t normally do to celebrate it since usually we just go out for a nice dinner and that’s about it (which is fine with me–the spouse and I are both introverts who are terrible at planning things). So…we’re going to go see Alice Cooper later in November, and we sprung for the VIP package where you get to go backstage, sit down and chat with the Man himself, get a lot of swag, and have him autograph stuff.
What should I have him autograph? I can bring some CDs, but that’s kind of boring if that’s all it is. We can each have him autograph up to four things. I’m thinking for mine I’ll take one CD, I think we get a poster so I’ll have him sign that…but what for the other two? I’m thinking of getting a riding crop, but not sure if that has enough space for a signature. And maybe I’ll take an old leather jacket and have him sign that. I wanted to see if anybody had any better ideas, though!
Caveats:
The items need to be fairly small, since the meet ‘n’ greet is after the show so I’ll have to have them with me during the concert.
Signing me is not an option! One of my friends (also an Alice fan) suggested having him sign my arm or something and getting it made into a tattoo, but I’m not that big a fan (plus I’m scared of needles!) I don’t want an autograph that I’ll end up washing off by the next day.
So…whatcha think, fellow Alice fans? Any creative ideas?
I don’t have any suggestions for what to sign, just that if you do have him sign a leather coat you might want to bring one of those silver pens (or a white paint marker) since black sharpie isn’t going to show up on black leather very well. Come to think of it, they might have white sharpies now, maybe bring one of those (and test it first, like on the inside of a pocket flap) I have no idea if it’ll work. OTOH, he’s probably signed tons of black leather stuff over the years and might have and know exactly what to use.
Wait I do have a suggestion, how about some golf shoes or a golf ball.
I have it on good authority (from my friend, who did the exact same VIP thing last year) that Alice comes equipped with a large variety of Sharpies, including silver metallic ones. So we’re set there!
Golf shoes is a good idea! Neither of us plays golf, unfortunately, so we’d have to get some, but that’s another good thought to consider!
I’m trying to convince the spouse to bring a Bible (he’s a Christian and so is Alice)…he’s thinking about it. Wouldn’t be right for me, though, since I’m not. I guess I could get a copy of his golf book.
I really love my Dead Milkmen signed album cover. And it displays nicer than a CD. I would go buy a $2 used-record-store album, leave the wax at home, and get the cover signed.
Have him sign a CD or record; more importantly, think about what you want him to say. Have some fun with it. I’d go for, “Hey, Infovore, I can’t believe that night, thanks for the bail money.”
Think about the stories you can [del]make up[/del] tell to anyone who sees it.
If the meet-and-greet permits pictures, maybe have him sign a picture frame for you to display your photo of meeting him in. Wow, that was hard to work out grammatically. But you know, he signs a frame, you get a print of your selfie from your phone, and put it in the signed frame.
The sharpies = Great idea! What to have him sign really depends on your style. Obviously electronics or any sort of tchotchke is a bad idea. A guitar sounds cool, if you play, but you’d never ever take it out of your house.
When I think of Alice Cooper, I think of black leather so… I think that the leather jacket is brilliant as an idea. Q: what else that is black leather would you wear? A belt might be cool, but belts wear out.
Black leather gloves seem cool, but you’d go ballistic if you ever lost one. I have no idea if hats are your style but there’s that. Also, what about one of a pair of matching black engineer boots that go with the jacket?
[spoiler] This is you like the boots idea. If you don’t, hey, don’t worry about it.
This is a Very hard thing to ask though. You’d want to make darn sure any boot didn’t smell like day-old sweaty feet or you might really piss him off (and he might back out of the deal on the spot and walk).
But… you can’t really risk using up one signature on a pair of out-of-the-box, never been worn never been broken in boots. Breaking them in after might wear the signature off.
If this is a good idea (and it might be a bad one) you will have to have a pair of boots that are already broken in, have had the hell cleaned out of them, are polished, fabreze’d, and probably carried separately.
Yeah, that’d be a Lot to lug around, but I think you’d be happy you did every time you wore them afterward.
Isn’t Doper faithfool a complete AC fangirl - like, a snake-wrangler for a tribute band, etc? Maybe she has experience with this and ideas.
With guitar players - e.g., Les Paul when he was alive and playing Mondays at the club Iridium in NYC - people would bring in pickguards off of Les Paul model guitars…
I saw Alice backstage in 2011; a friend of a friend used to work for him so we got an invite. I felt too dorky to have him sign anything but my friend got his baseball cap signed. I did get a few photos of Alice and I.
Very fun concert! The man has amazing energy for 66 years old.
One of his movies, the odder the better. Looking at his filmography, I’d go for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Sextette. Even better if you could find one on Beta!
An album by another artist to which he contributed? (This backfired on me when I took a Circle Jerks album to be signed by Debbie Gibson (!) when she opened a local supercenter. I genuinely liked the album, and thought she’d enjoy seeing it. She looked at it, me… “Uhhh… no. And it’s ‘Deborah’ now.”
