Roberta Quest

I knew it was going to be okay when Roberta Williams said she shared my creative love of theme parks. The Zoom changed from a picture of my face to a picture of an idiot smiling like he just got whacked in the head with a bag of candy. This was part of what I would legitimately describe as one of the best moments of my life. There’s an old Saturday Night Live sketch with Chris Farley completely crashing out as he talks to Paul McCartney, and I’ll be real: Roberta Williams is more or less my Paul McCartney.

Let me back up.

They say never meet your heroes, right? Ostensibly because meeting your heroes takes them off that glorious pedestal when you learn they’re only human. Or, you know, complete jerks. As someone who’s spent over a decade writing comedy for both television (Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) and video games (Kid Icarus: Uprising), I can assure you the latter isn’t always the case, but it’s definitely sometimes the case. I have absolutely met someone I spent years worshipping as a kid and left the conversation thinking, “Oh God, their only memory of me will be hate.” As Troy said in Community, you can’t disappoint a picture. And buddy, I did not want to disappoint the person in that metaphorical picture.