I am many things. Dashing. Hilarious. Always right. Probably manic. And, I'm told, possibly retarded - all wrapped within an oft-questioned sexuality and facade of glorious courage. What I am not, and never have been, is an interviewer. It's never really been on the list of things I've wanted to do with my life. I want to meet awesome famous people, but I have no questions. Everything I want to know about them I can either already find on the Internet or they don't wish to divulge.

What I suppose I'm getting at is the fact that all of my questions for Metroid Metal were written around six in the morning (granted, so are these journals, but at the time I was getting to bed around five in the morning, rather than the current 7 or 8 or 9 or the occasional two-hour power nap around noon. This didn't bother me. It's an interview. We'll be sitting in a room, and we can be awkward and weird and spend more time getting reactions than answers.

Well, that was not exactly how this works out. Okay, so it's less of an organized sit-down one-on-one as much as it's a find the person and hope they have time to talk to you... thing. That's fine, CK's got it all control, maybe. And hey, we're still doing these interviews as a team, so I'll have time to look down and pick a good question that should go next, and we can riff off of each other and make this entertaining.

Oh, but now I'm on my own.

Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck. Okay. Now I'm terrified.

N1NJ4 and I arrive at Metroid Metal's table. They're mostly just hanging out and taking a breather. I head up and introduce myself and tell them CK sent me. Ah! They stand up and introduce themselves. Grant, Kirk, "...and that makes you Hope," I say, referencing fellow MAGFest guest Grant Kirkhope (another person I had hoped and failed to meet). Oh, but I heard that wrong. It was Kirby, not Kirk. Grant, Kirby, and Kevin. I don't even know their names, I'm obviously the worst at this, ever.

In my defense, I don't know the individual people in most of my favorite bands. Save for maybe three quarters of Mötley Crüe.

I then spend the next couple minutes preparing myself and making myself look bad by apologizing too much and criticizing myself for being too unprofessional. I look at my questions. Dear lord, every single one of these is terrible and not at all funny as I originally believed! The interview starts. I introduce myself, Smoss, and the band. I ignore the paper in front of me and ask the first couple questions off the top of my head. This goes pretty well. They have humorous responses to my questions, and that's really key. Of course, I'm so embarrassed and fearful that I can't come up with anything funny to say back. After that, it sort of breaks down. The rest of the questions, I have to look at the paper, so I'm either scanning very quickly for the first thing remotely not awful or, at one point, I stop and look and say we can edit this out while I search for something good.

Also, I hinted that I would like to be their lead singer as a joke, and they urged me into singing. Which I did just as bad as everything else, due partly to nerves, partly to being out of practice, and partly to not singing anywhere near the pitch I usually work with to sound anything remotely good. I'm sorry to anyone who watches the video and has to listen to that.

Most of the way through, one of the Protomen sticks his face in front of the camera and is about to make this interview even better. So of course, I start to say something and he turns to look at me and my heart explodes. I usher him on, and he strikes up a conversation with N1NJ4, who insists he's not there, as he's the cameraman. They exchange some banter and the Protoguy leaves again. I start to wrap up the interview here. They urge me to ask one last question. I look at the paper, and I've got nothing, and they point at the paper and say, that one. So I ask that one. It's a fake question I wrote mostly as a joke to myself that I hadn't actually intended to ask, even when I was half-asleep. Basically, when I was playing Batman: Arkham Asylum challenges, I had their first album, Varia Suite (buy it today!), playing over it. So I asked if they knew that their music made a very exquisite soundtrack to that. Then I spend some time forgetting to hold the mic up to people, and finally end the interview with a comedic message from the band.

Next, I switch on fan mode and get a picture with them and pull out my Varia Suite CD. They don't see this, and assume I want to buy one. When I say it's mine, they don this disappointed look. Now, I knew even then that they were joking, but the thing you have to understand is that these guys, they are proud owners of the greatest deadpan I have ever experienced. So I still feel like tool about it. One of 'em runs off to find a silver Sharpie, but comes back with yellow, which is actually worse than the black, so back in black blah blah joke.

So they all sign and everybody but Grant runs off and I have to ask the request of the century. As though I wasn't already embarrassed enough, I promised Leus that I would try to get a video of myself performing the Mr. Amazing theme (the theme to a series of horrible videos we did years ago that we recently filmed a bonus episode of) with these guys. So ask Grant and we wind up singing an a cappella version into the camera with our heads about an inch from each other (his idea). I thank him and tell him I can't believe he agreed to do that. He tells me he can't believe I asked him to.

Fair enough.

N1NJ4 and I head back to CK, who still hasn't gotten his interview, yet. As we arrive, Wes Johnson and Matt Mercer are leaving. Darn, I kinda wanted Johnson's autograph, too. Ah well. But we show up just in time for the interview, and begin it shortly thereafter.

CK kicks off the interview, and I stop him immediately and repeatedly tell him to start over, and he keeps insisting we're fine and should keep going, but I won't have it. I had an intro that I had really, really wanted to do, and dammit, I'm gonna do it.

We start over.

I start by introducing Jon St. John as Big the Cat.

He calls me a bastard. He says it was his least favorite role. He starts to say I've got balls, then turns to the camera and says, "HE'S GOT BAAAALLLS OF STEEEEL!"

Oh my dear Carlin. Could it be? Did I just earn my BALLS OF STEEL from Jon St. John? Yes! YES! I have! I am now... somebody.

It's like being knighted a badass by the King of Badassery. Or, well, the Duke of Badassery.

Okay, okay, fine. He actually said, "They've got BALLS OF STEEL." But whatever. We know who he meant. Still counts.

CK and Duke play out the rest of the interview while ignoring my existence, so I mostly spend my time being half in the shot while looking around at things not pertaining to the interview.

We head back, I get a shot of Dr. Wily and Wonder Woman posing together. Whenever I get two completely unrelated characters to pose together for a picture (which I try to do as often as I possibly can), there's always that moment where they're like, "...You sure?" Yes. Yes, definitely. How many actual photos do you think there are of Dr. Wily and Wonder Woman hanging out together? Time to make this happen.

We head over to registration, where I'm now on the lookout for Eli, as per Steph's instructions in her reply email (I remembered I had her email address since she sent out the Iron Chef emails, you see, and sent her one to try and get the cash figured out). He's not there, but they give me a description, and that will have to be enough.

We make our way to the arcade. It's time for some more damn games.