OT: I am too @#$%ing old to be a fangirl

It's confession time, kids. I feel like a complete ass, and what better place to share that than here, right? (Wrong kind of ass, though.)

So here it is: I have been fan-crushing on an actor on Twitter.

It all started with the season 14 finale of Law & Order: SVU, one of my favorite shows. This episode introduced a character named William Lewis, played by an actor I wasn't familiar with at the time -- Pablo Schreiber. He gave life to possibly the most evil villain ever portrayed on that show; a serial killer/rapist, sadistic, cunning, manipulative, and yet somehow eerily charming. Usually, the bad guys die off or go away on SVU in one episode; not William Lewis. He stuck around, left Season 14 on a cliffhanger, and continued into a five-episode story arc that stretched all across Season 5, with him caught up in a twisted dance with Sergeant Olivia Benson (played by the brilliant Mariska Hargitay).

The William Lewis saga took off. It seems that I wasn't the only one mesmerized by this horrible character, or Pablo's incredible portrayal of him. During the time where he had Benson held captive, the hashtag "#SaveBenson" trended worldwide. Twitter was abuzz about the show, about the two of them, about his acting, about just what it was that made his character so compelling and watchable, even though he was horrifying. (The fact that Mr. Schreiber is rather handsome just seemed to make matters more confusing.)

There were even T-shirts...

Anyway, now that I'd laid the background... Pablo Schreiber is on Twitter. He's fairly active on it, and has a large following. No, not millions like Justin Bieber (gag), but up there in the tens of thousands, and he has a lot of fangirls (one young woman refers to herself as a Schreibette, which really tickled me; I guess I'm one as well). Because I follow him, I can see everything he tweets.

Sometimes, he responds to his fans. But there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to why or which ones. He has three levels of responses, it seems. If he likes what you've tweeted and wants to keep it, he marks it as a "favorite." That's not really a response, since he doesn't say anything, but you can still see that your tweet was favorited by him. Next level is he'll retweet what you posted. That says "Hey, I really like this and it's worth passing on to others." But the third level, the holy grail? He actually responds.

Again, there's no pattern. Sometimes, he'll post a thank-you to a compliment. But a lot of the time, his replies are dry and sarcastic, kind of anti-replies. They can be very clever. And he gets some pretty unusual stuff thrown his way.

A fan who calls herself Jesus: [a bunch of gibberish about how he needs to die]
Pablo: Jesus, are you OK?

Fan: There's just something about you that makes me want to kill myself.
Pablo: Is that supposed to be a compliment?

Fan: Hey Pablo, what r u doing right now?
Pablo: Oh, u know, tweeting back to my fans. How about u?

Fan: Why is Pornstache such a douchebag?
Pablo: Probably 'cause people like you call him names like that.

Who is Pornstache? Well, I was so impressed with Pablo's acting on SVU, I wanted to see more. Of course, William Lewis had to be dispatched eventually, so I went on to something else. Pablo is also in the NetFlix hit, Orange is the New Black, about a women's prison. He plays yet another creepy sleaze on this show, but this one is played more for laughs -- a prison guard named George Mendez, with a greasy dark flat-top haircut and a really cheesy porn-star mustache, hence giving him the nickname "Pornstache." So I started watching OITNB. Yup, he's creepy, all right. And the mustache has taken on a life of its own, appearing everywhere and on everyone and everything.

What's the upshot to this story? Here it is: I became obsessed with getting a response from him. I wanted to be one of those random fans to whom he chose to reply. Why? Just because. Call it feeding the attention whore, who knows.

No, I didn't go nuts tweet-bombing him. But I did tweet to him on occasion. And the only level I got to was "favorite." No retweets, and no responses. I guess I wasn't worthy. So I kept trying.

I did the direct approach -- I posted sincere compliments. I tweeted that he had created one of the most compelling and watchable villains in TV history, and I was sort of sad to see him go down. He favorited that. Another time, after one of the episodes, I tweeted that if he and Mariska didn't win Emmys for this, I've give them mine, and I posted a picture of myself pointing to my dad's Emmy. That one got nothing.

I watched his random replies and thought, "Goddammit, he'll respond to that, but not to me?? What's the secret? I must know!"

I saw all the weird Photoshop creations people were doing with mustaches, and last weekend, my own idea hit me. Pornstache... Pornstache... Hey! Wouldn't it be hilarious if there were a Ben and Jerry's ice cream called "Pornstachio"?

I recalled that long ago, Lea had blogged about creating naughty flavors with a Ben and Jerry's Flavor Generator, so I eagerly dug through her older posts until I found it. But unfortunately, that site was no longer. Dammit! Now what?

OK, I am no whiz with photo editing. I can do the rudimentary stuff like cropping and resizing, and adjusting the exposure, but nothing impressive. Still, I was determined to create something.

I searched and found a picture of Ben and Jerry's Pistachio ice cream and downloaded it. Then, with my Photoshop wannabe program, PicMonkey, I proceeded to fool around with the pic, doing my best with my meager skills to create something at least somewhat close to what I had in mind. 

An hour later, I figured I'd done all I could do. I'm not proud of this, folks. It's crap. But it has its charm, I guess.

Pistachio ice cream with mini chocolate mustaches, yum! And there's His Creepiness's face on the carton.

I tweeted him, posting the photo and writing: "Apologies for my lousy photo-edit skills, but here's a Ben & Jerry's flavor I'd love to see."

After all that? He favorited it. But still no retweet, and no response. Several of his fangirls saw it and retweeted it, and commented to it. But nothing from him. I suppose some would say, "Well, at least he favorited you; that's something." But not enough for me.

It was then when I had my "What the @#$% do you think you're doing?" moment. I felt ridiculous, wasting this time and effort. 

Teenagers can get away with being rabid fans. So can some 20-somethings. But someone of my advanced years fan-girling on Twitter is laughable! (groan)

So, kids, I have officially given up. I will never get Pablo Schreiber to reply to me on Twitter. And I have tweeted my last tweet to him. A person can make an ass of themselves only for so long (one would hope, anyway). 

(sigh) OK, have at it. Let the teasing commence. I deserve it.