Andrew Solmssen - Back Up Your S***!

 

Hi, everybody. I'm Andrew and I'm a nerd. I got a Nexus 5 and an iPhone 5 in my pocket right now. I love them both. I'm platform agnostic. [audience laughter] The other day, I got asked to participate in a show that a friend of mine does called Crapshoot. And the idea behind Crapshoot, is that people just do interesting, unusual things. What I did was I got up on stage and I yelled at people for three or four minutes to back up their hard drives. [audience laughter] I'm good at that, “Back up your shit. [audience laughter] Hard drives are mortal things.” My least favorite thing to do is to tell somebody they've lost everything. My refrigerator is covered with magnets from dead hard drives, and every one of those is somebody's baby picture or unfinished script, and now they're on my refrigerator. [audience laughter] 

 

Anyway, I did that, and it went well. People laughed. I was in the lobby at the end of the show, and this girl came up to me and she started talking to me about Harlan Ellison. I may not know a lot about women, but when a woman is talking to me about the man who wrote "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman and City on the Edge of Forever, which is the best episode of Star Trek ever made, [audience laughter] that's a girl I can talk to. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

We did talk very seriously, very intently for an hour. I'm a big dude. I'm heavy. I've been 500 pounds. I'm not now. And I get it. She was obviously heavier than she'd ever been and uncomfortable with that. I'm comfortable with it and not comfortable with it in a lot of different ways and we connected. We talked. At one point, she said, “Let's get out of here.” We went to a party some friends of mine were having, and we sat on the couch in the living room there. And after about 15 minutes more of really serious conversation. She grabbed my head and started kissing me. Like I said, I don't know a lot about women, but I read the signs [audience laughter] and I invited her back to my apartment. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

And she came. We got back there and we had a glass of wine, and one thing led to another and we found ourselves in the bedroom. We were lying in bed there. And from her side of the bed, I hear her say, “Does this mean we're boyfriend and girlfriend now? Just kidding.” [audience laughter] And I was terrified. No question about it. But she wasn't kidding. I was okay with that. I liked her. She was interesting. We’d, during the course of the evening, become friends on our phones. And the next day, I wrote her a message and I said “What a wonderful time I'd had and that I hoped we could see each other again.” 

 

A couple of days later, I got a message from her. And it said that she was embarrassed by what had happened, that she wasn't usually so impulsive, that she thought she might need to get her medication checked. I thought about that. That stung a little. But I liked her, and I just wanted her to be happy and she wasn't. And so, I wrote her back and I said, “Look, whatever you need to be happy is what I want you to have. Just know that I found you funny, smart, charming and beautiful. Be well. Be kind. Be kind to yourself and let others be kind to you. It's hard. Lord, I know it's hard. But in the end, it's the only thing that ever really matters. Best, Andrew.” And then, she blocked me on Facebook. [audience laughter] Thanks very much.