David Archuleta Book-signing at Borders

Photo above courtesy of somebody who's not me

This entry actually written July 18, 2010

So there I was just checking my Twitter feed on the afternoon of June 2, and I saw that David Archuleta said he was doing a book-signing to promote his book Chords of Strength here in New York at Borders in Columbus Circle! Believe it or not, I wasn't positive at first that I was going to go. I was worried about homework. After some debating in my mind, I realized that I was being stupid. How could I pass up an opportunity to meet David Archuleta just because I had some worthless homework to do? I mean, that's just kind of laughable.

The book-signing was supposed to start at 7:00, and of course there would be a ridiculously long line waiting for him, so I went a bit early. I bought a copy of Chords of Strength, and got in line. It didn't matter that I was way far back in the line, which went from one end of the store to the other, blocking the aisles along the back wall. The officiators said David was going to get to everybody. They also said he was going to sing one song for us. Aw, how sweet to his fans! Ha. And they asked for our names, wrote it on a sticky note, and stuck it by the title page of the book, so that David could easily write out everybody's names along with his autograph in a timely manner. I guess there were probably a few hundred people--mostly girl fans, some of the younger ones were with their parents, but there were also a fair number of male fans of various ages. Oddly enough, three of this current year's American Idol contestants showed up at this event too, for some reason: Casey James, Andrew Garcia, and Didi Benami. I could see Andrew and Didi when I was standing in line. I was like, "Huh. Okay."

From where I was standing, I couldn't actually see the area of the store where David came out and the signing table was set up. David came out a little after 7:00 and you could here the screams coming from that part of the store, and then David started singing "Lean On Me," which could only be faintly heard where I was even though he used a microphone. Once the autograph session started, it took like 40 minutes or something for the line to really get moving, because there was a roped-off section with seats in the front that got special priority or whatever. But overall, it didn't actually feel like too long. Soon enough I was up front, and there he was sitting behind a table smiling kindly to everyone in that special David "Archie" way. I couldn't get a decent photo with my camera, as per usual. But here's a video clip I took of him signing books for fans:

But anyway, once it was my turn to approach the slightly elevated platform on which he and the table sat, I kept my cool quite easily, just smiled and said "Hi David." I think he asked me how my "evening" was going, and I also asked "How are you?" and he said something or other, I don't really remember because David Archie was sitting right there in front me and I was probably staring creepily at him. He signed my copy of his book (including my name of course--how awesome is that, right?) then I congratulated him and thanked him, and then it was somebody else's turn in probably less than sixty seconds. That was pretty much it. I got to see Archie face-to-face and get his autograph in his new book. Living in Manhattan really does have it perks. I mean, do you think he would do a booksigning back in freaking Tucson, Arizona? Now, I've had face-to-face encounters with two of my favorite American Idols! How lucky am I? Here's a snapshot of my signed book: