Aah, the Saturn Awards, where Hollywood puts the fancy Manolo stilettos in storage in favor of some Converse and black square-rimmed glasses to celebrate the best in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror in film and TV. Laidback and casual by awards standards, my evening spent at the Castaway restaurant in Burbank was rife with serious fangirl moments and memorable exchanges with genre staples: I'm now allowed to call Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager; Stargate SG-1; Stargate Atlantis) "Bob" and Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica) "Eddie." They gave me their permissions and they're on tape so I think that makes them binding under the "You're cool enough to call me by a nickname"-celebrity clause in the state of California. I expect to be on both of their Christmas card lists come December.

I arrived just in time for the red carpet to wrap up where fellow FEARnet host, Spider, and the rest of the FEARnet crew were hanging out, running down the evening's stars so far. Spider and I have yet to work together but we had a mini-bonding session over our fancy footwear (high-top sneaker-boots and red heels – I'll let you figure out who wore what) and I'm definitely looking forward to tag-teaming it at Comic-Con (!!).

My post for the evening was the pressroom – basically where the winners get ushered into to smile and pose for photogs with their new statuettes and talk to, well, the press about their big wins.

Among the highlights? Chatting up both Eddie – I mean, Mr. Olmos – and the gorgeous Grace Park about the BSG flick The Plan; meeting Lifetime Achievement award recipient and OG Spock, Leonard Nimoy; witnessing a little Hollywood bromance between Life Career award winner Lance Henrickson and screen legend/The Abyss star Ed Harris; seeing horror queen and fellow FEARnet blogger Christa Campbell; and, my personal highlight of the evening, chatting up Michael Emerson who plays Benjamin Linus on Lost, where my fangirl enthusiasm doth runneth over like some giddy tween doing a meet-n-greet with her favorite Jonas brother. Yeah, I was that into it. As a huge Lost fan, it was incredibly interesting and insightful to chat with Michael about what he thinks of his complicated, calculating and Machiavellian villain; to paraphrase for you Losties, Michael told me, "Ben understands everybody but himself." Insert Lostie swoon here.

I wrapped my evening of post-awards interviews with my fellow FEARnetters at the most appropriate establishment for sci-fi, fantasy and horror-enthusiasts (and probably the only place open in Burbank at 11:30 PM): In-N-Out.

Yes, the Saturn Awards – where nerd dreams (and boners) are made.