RSL made a movie back in 1988 that was called "My Best Friend is a Vampire" in the US and "I was a Teenage Vampire" internationally. In Mexico, it was called "Vampiro Adolescente."

Several months ago I found this poster on eBay and snatched it up. It's a lobby poster for the Mexican release of the film. I love this poster so much. It's SO cheesy. The "fangs" are just bits of white paper glued over the photo. Someone decided to crop his ears unevenly to give him Spock-like features, even though he didn't have pointed ears in the movie. They even cropped the dark background of the photo into a Count-Dracula-style collar. Plus, it's in all-caps and in Spanish. What is there not to love?! I had the original framed and kept a copy in case I ever had a chance for an autograph.

So when I met RSL that night, I brought my unframed copy with me. I showed him the poster and asked for an autograph. Apparently he had never seen it before. He seemed very fascinated/horrified by it. Ha ha. I went back the next week (he did the play two weekends in a row) and left an 8-1/2"x11" color version with the venue staff to give to him, so he could take a better look when it wasn't so dark out. The woman I left it with told me the next day that he received it.

Sooooo... that's the saga of the poster!

When I made the decision to accept an invitation from Procter & Gamble to attend their party in Hollywood celebrating the new CarpetFlick, and also the fall season for FOX, I had a few things I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to see the sun, the ocean, some celebrities, and In-n-Out Burger. ...

I like Robert Sean Leonard. I’ve seen many of his movies, and have felt that his role on HOUSE has been underutilized until this season. When he told House, in the episode when the little girl was dying of cancer, to go to hell (because House was being all cynical about the girl’s courage), I felt it was the best moment in the series this season. So I like him. However. I was standing next to him when he arrived, and he started talking to the people with him about how the Swiffer Wet jet supposedly causes cancer in pets. This is an urban legend, and it’s been debunked all over the place, but Robert Sean Leonard did not know this. So I set him straight. I interrupted his conversation — but it was OK, because it was kind of a general conversation and I was standing near enough to have overheard in a non-spying kind of way — to tell him and his friends that they should go to Snopes.com and check it out; that I’d written a book about Swiffer and my publisher had also checked out the source of this legend and decided that there was nothing to it, and that they wouldn’t have let me use it in a book if it was actually responsible for the death of household pets. And Robert Sean Leonard was appropriately chastised. But then he started in on the new CarpetFlick, worrying about how effective it was. He really seemed concerned; he mentioned how high the pile was on the carpet in his house, and if the CarpetFlick could really get up the dirt — and from the way he was going on and on and on, I could only surmise two things. That he has a thing for vacuum cleaners. Or that his house is extraordinarily dirty. ...

[HL comes in, they play roulette, he leaves]

Robert Sean Leonard, then, spun the wheel and when they tried to get him to use the CarpetFlick, he went on and on AGAIN about the how high the pile on his carpet was, and I really wanted to interrupt him and tell him to go get some therapy. Or new carpet. Or something — sheesh!