My story of awesomeness requires some awesome backstory.
Spring of 2008, I took a TV Production class. I was pretty well into Doctor Who, but hadn't had any experiences with the fandom.
Anyway, there's a girl in that class who's wearing a Torchwood pin on her hat. I bring it up and she instantly pulls me along to meet her friends. Turns out she's part of an all-girl Torchwood cosplay group, friends with writer James Moran as well as actor Gareth David-Lloyd, etc., but that doesn't matter so much, because what it did mean is introducing me to cosplay (beyond making fun of anime cosplayers online) and got me to sign up for the Gallifrey One convention in 2009.
The convention was fantastic, but the important part came in on Saturday morning, when I realized that some of the clothes in my bag would actually match up with the old, old promo pics of Matt Smith (which were, at this point, still pretty new).
At first I thought "What the hell, I'll just do this as a joke." But after about an hour of being on the floor in costume, people asking questions (some asked if I decided to do this because my name is Matt - no, just a coincidence), people getting pictures, I started saying "Yeah, when production stills start coming out, I'll try and get a real costume together."
Cut to the week before Comic-Con. I only had a pass for Sunday, which was the day Russel T Davies and David Tennant and John Barrowman were all gonna be there. On the Monday prior to con, the first pictures of Matt Smith in costume, onset with Karen Gillan, came out. That Friday, I spent the entire day running all over Southern California raiding Goodwill stores. Managed to find a great match for the jacket, a passable shirt, and a burgundy bowtie. Already had combat boots and passable pants - only part that was missing was the bracers, I just used black ones this time around.
Anyway, during the Doctor Who panel I was way toward the back, but managed to move myself closer up front as each panel switched, until I was in the second row with the aforementioned Torchwood cosplay group I'm friends with in time for the Torchwood panel.
Halfway through the panel... well, I'll pull up the youtube for this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r56XOTT06k#t=2m40sAfter that day (and the millions of pictures I took with random con-goers), I thought it couldn't get any better.
Until last night.
So I step away from my phone for five minutes last night, come back to it and there's a voice mail.
"Hi, Matt, this is Karen Gillan! I play Amy Pond in Doctor Who. And your friend was just telling me that you were the guy at Comic Con last year who was dressed as Matt Smith. Just wanted to say that everyone at work's been talking about you because you were the only one dressed as him. Just wanted to say that, talk to you later, bye!"
Turns out my friend Amy (who plays Gwen in the Torchwood cosplay group) had managed to get into the invite-only Los Angeles BBC-America premiere event as a plus-one. She managed to approach Karen, and when she mentioned me apparently Karen's eyes lit up with recognition.
Anyone know a good, free method of putting a voicemail up online?