Hour Zero: I keep telling myself, I am not in line, I am not in line, I am not.  I am being curious, I am checking out the human freak show, I am doing research, I am showing myself the people who have a problem, and in doing so, avoiding having that same problem, sort of like those alcoholics on the wagon who go to bars to see what people who really have a problem look like.  That's them, not me.  Nope.  It is 10:20 a.m., overcast, lightly chilly.  The line starts at the box office where it's thick like a pool of saliva, all tents, igloo coolers and video equipment, that stretches thinner towards the end of the block--hopping entirely over the entranceways to the gas station--and then starting again near the Kinko's, pulling thinner through a set of driveways, bubbles of lawn chairs and reading students at the corners, then around the next corner of the block where, like saliva, the strand has mysteriously grown thickish again, brackish with pup tents, young guys in black engaged in earnest theological discussions of whether Boba Fett rising again is literal or metaphysical, then stretching thin, thinner, threatening to tip onto the corner of the block again, and dangling there at the end of that strand of sleeping giant drool, at the end of that line, tentative and unsure, is me.  I am not in line, I am not in line, I am not in line.

A person comes up behind me.  "Are you in line?"

"I am," I tell them.

Hour One:  My father, a powerful Voodoo Houngan, used to warn me that I should be careful of the creatures with which I identify myself.  "Those who syncretize with the Scorpion risk being stung by the Scorpion," he used to say when I would come in, sweaty and frostbitten, from mowing the lawn.  "Those who ally themselves with Legba must be prepared to be ridden as well as be the rider."  My father would say this while chopping up herbs to later offer to Osanyin, the hermit-like orisha of medicines.  "Here's your five dollars.  You missed that spot by the sprinkler again."

So it is not so remarkable that out of all the 400 people in line that I, writer of Fanboy Rampage, end up next to the Ultimate Fanboy in all his awful glory.  He starts talking to me and will not stop.  Instantly, I adopt the posture that got me through high school, hands clenched in coat pockets, quietly nodding, praying for death.  It becomes obvious that I am to not only to be in line, but suffer horribly as well.  "So is there anything that really bugged you," he asks me. "You know, about the science in Star Wars?"  I start to answer diplomatically, even though the question strikes me about as sensible as asking if there wasn't something zoologically shaky about those Scooby Doo cartoons.  U.F. cuts me off and proceeds to answer his own question for the next forty-five minutes.  Halfway through U.F.'s problems with Yoda's ability to properly win lightsaber fights, the line makes an enormous lurch and we end up moving from one block corner to the next.  At this rate, I will have my tickets in three hours, it won't even be two o'clock and I won't have to listen to U.F. anymore.  High school, by comparison, lasted four years.  I think I can make it.

Hour Two: The line proceeds in less seismic fashion but is still steady.  It may be three and a half hours tops.  The woman in front of me working her way very slowly through Midsummer Night's Dream is joined by a friend who is even cuter, even curvier, and an even slower reader.  It takes her ten minutes to make it through two pages of H.G. Well's The First Men in the Moon.  I develop a crush on her instantly.  U.F. is still talking continuously, this time about the problems he had with Space 1999.  Little white flecks of foam have accrued in the corners of his lips.

Hour Three: I realize that the first huge lurch in the line was in fact merely a compression of all the tents, coolers, Orthodox Boba Fettians and students skipping classes the week before finals into one phlegmatic clot.  We are barely at the gas station, and U.F. is telling me his ideas for TV shows.  One is an action-comedy about a ninja.  One has something to do with robots.  He thinks that his own is pretty much crap but he writes it to keep him happy.  He mentions his ex-wife and shows me a picture of his son.  His son is ten, looks happy and well adjusted.  U.F. has purple lips from talking so continuously.  A reporter from the Examiner comes up and starts asking questions of the cute women in front of us.  U.F. provides answers to all the questions, even though no one is talking to him.  A combination of pity, apathy, cowardice and lack of a tire iron prevents me from doing anything about him, but I look at the group of people behind me who have bonded in line, and they are talking and joking lightly about how they're going to demand that the people they're standing in line for (nobody in line is buying just one ticket) buy them dinner, give them massages, etc.  Because I honestly, truly ended up in line on a lark, nobody has any idea that I am buying tickets for them.  If Moviefone ever starts working (there are people disgustedly hitting the redial button on their cel phones), I figure have the people I'm buying tickets for will end up with them.  I don't even really want to see the movie that badly, since I suspect it will be somewhere between The Empire Strikes Back and a really good episode of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in terms of enjoyability. 

Hour Four: We have made it beyond the gas station--barely.  The cuter of the two women in front of us has left.  My back feels as if someone has hit it with a board and I can feel my feet swelling up.  The sun is now shining brightly.  A guy in front of the cute woman turns out to be enough of a fanboy to have bought and read the Stars Wars Encyclopedia.  He seems like a nice guy, and I pray that God will forgive me when I ask him "so is there anything that really bugged you, you know, about the science in Star Wars?"  He starts to answer when U.F. jumps in and starts haranguing him. 

Hour Five: I'm able to talk with the people behind me more, and somehow the nice guy and I can talk with U.F. only occasionally chiming in because his back hurts, his feet hurt, and, thank god, his throat hurts.  Nonetheless, after saving up energy, he will start telling me about something for twenty minutes at a stretch and drive away everyone else.  These topics include:

** Why Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still didn't move faster;

** Why Land of the Giants was the best science fiction show on TV;

** Why the robot from Lost in Space was the best robot ever designed;

** His 458 page remake of Forbidden Planet that removes, as he calls it, "all that creepy pedophilia;"

** The restraining order, now removed, originally placed on him by his ex-wife.

Hour Six: The line has moved maybe a hundred feet.  I want to leave, but if I leave, I have wasted six hours of my life for nothing, as opposed to wasting six hours of my life for next to nothing.  I am looking up at the sky and stretching my back, when suddenly a disembodied Darth Vader head floats by.  It takes me a minute to realize that it is only a balloon and that I am not actually having a Star Wars related hallucination.  "Did you see that?"  I say to no one in particular.  "A Darth Vader head just flew by."  U.F. looks at me with open contempt, as if I am the biggest freak in the world.  Ten minutes later, he mentions his time in prison.

Hour Seven: The cute woman has come back to join her friend in line.  The wind is blowing and, even though the sun is out, it is freezing.  Just like where I grew up.  It is almost as I am back home, mowing the lawn.  I can almost hear the numbing drone of the lawn mower, see my father through the dining room window as he throws the obi and sprays mouthfuls of rum upon the idol of Legba on the mantelpiece, next to the 4-H trophies.  U.F. forces his way up the line to watch Hardware Wars on the TV in front of an empty storefront.  A Darth Maul inflatable chair will suddenly float into the crowd.  Although her hair is pulled back into a pony tail, the wind blows loose rows of the cute woman's hair off her head.  On a strong extended gust, it blows almost straight up and sways in the wind like long wild reeds in a meadow.  I realize that no matter how good The Phantom Menace is, nothing in the movie will be half as beautiful as this woman's hair swaying in the cold wind.

Hour Eight: The nice guy gets his tickets, comes back and says goodbye to U.F. and I.  I wish good luck to the cute women and then I'm in line.  I order twelve tickets for opening night, the 7:00 o'clock show.  It is now 6:30 at night.  Behind me, U.F. says to me, "If you get all the tickets for that show, I will kill you." That is his farewell to me.

I doubt that he is reading this now, this Ultimate Fanboy.  If he had come into Comix Experience, I have faith that Bennett would have already killed him, dismembered him and buried the body parts in long boxes in the back.  But for any of you who recognize any of the U.F.'s symptoms in yourself, please, I beg you, go to charm school or buy Human Interaction for Dummies or visit www.bodyposturesthatindicateiwishyouweredead.com.  The fanboy soul you might save as a result might be your own or, more importantly, mine.