Fourth Annual Adventures in Con-Going
Tracey Rich
convention report. Well, OK, so I didn't get around to writing one for last
year's convention. So sue me. But I know that a lot of Space Cases fans
don't get to conventions, so I like to introduce you to the culture and the
experience of a good convention, and the conventions in Baltimore are some of
the best.
So let's get started! As usual, Peter David was a guest at Shore Leave, and
he had some things to say about Space Cases co-creator Bill Mumy and George
"Warlord Shank" Takei. If you want to skip the overall convention experience
and get straight to the stuff related to Peter, Bill and George, then scroll
down: the Peter David stuff is clearly marked. As usual, this report
emphasizes the Peter stuff because... well, that's what we're all here for.
Shore Leave 22, June 7-9, 2000
FRIDAY NIGHT
Normally, our con-going experience would start on Friday night, leaving for
Baltimore immediately after work, but we've got Phillies partial season
tickets this year, and Friday was one of our game nights. Oops. We could
have switched nights, but this weekend happened to be the only weekend that
the Baltimore Orioles were playing in Philly, and one of the people in our
season ticket group is an Orioles fan. Game ended at 10:20 PM (we lost). No
problem; we can get to our hotel by 12:30, since we're already in South
Philly. I tried a different way out of the parking lot, because we're heading
for I95 South instead of I76 West. Oops. 40 minutes later, we were onto I95.
But we managed to get to our hotel by 1AM, when we immediately went to sleep.
SATURDAY
We woke up bright and early and got breakfast. I had my cel phone with me,
waiting for a call from our very own Lynn, who would be meeting us at the
convention. We got ourselves registered for the convention and started going
over the schedule, trying to figure out what panels we would go to. Nothing
was open yet, so we just sort of wandered around until...
10AM: Farscape Panel: For those who don't know, Farscape is an original SF
show on the Sci Fi Channel. It has some distinct similarities to Space Cases:
it's a crew full of misfits of different races on an alien living ship a long
way from home, most of them hoping to get home and learning to live and work
with each other. The room wasn't actually set up for the panel when we showed
up, with splinter-covered tables with no tablecloth scattered around the room,
and very few chairs. It took us a little while to get things organized. A
few pieces of interesting gossip about the show that came up (which, like all
gossip, may or may not be true): 1) The second season was late because of Star
Wars II -- Lucas decided to film in Australia, and the only studio in the
country that was big enough to accommodate him was the one where Farscape
films. Oops! So the studio kicked Farscape out. When Lucas found out about
what happened, he reached into his deep pockets and ponied up the money to
build them a new studio. 2) Creation Conventions pulled a slimy one. For
those who don't know, Creation is a company that runs science fiction
conventions all over the country. They do it purely for profit, not for the
love of the medium, and their conventions are about as cold and heartless as
you would expect from such a source. But they get all the big-name stars,
because they've got the big bucks, so they tend to squash the fan-run
conventions. Many people in the SF community refer to them as "Cretin Cons"
both because of the people who run them and the kind of people who tend to go
to them. Anyway, word is that a group of fans decided to create the world's
first Farscape convention in St. Louis, put the money down to reserve a hotel,
and a week after they announced it on the Internet, Creation announced that
they were having a Farscape convention the same weekend in Los Angeles, and
that they were going to have EVERY member of the cast there. Slimy. The
fan-run convention may have to declare bankruptcy. Rumor has it that when the
cast found out about what happened, two of them burst into tears.
After about 15 minutes of discussion about these rumors, the panel decided to
show this week's episode of Farscape. You see, Farscape airs on Friday nights
and none of the hotels near the convention carried the Sci Fi Channel. Oops!
So there was a new episode that almost nobody had seen, and we got to see it
all together. It was a great episode in which the characters wind up
switching bodies (not quite like Both Sides Now -- they had their own minds in
other characters' bodies). Fifteen minutes into the episode, my cel phone
rang. Lynn has arrived! Yay! She came up and joined us at the panel. She
had never seen Farscape before, so I have no idea how she was following this.
Imagine trying to follow Both Sides Now if you'd never seen Space Cases
before!
11AM: Nothing really big going on, so I spent some time talking to Lynn and
cruising the dealer's room a bit. My favorite things in the dealer's room are
Nancy Leibowitz's calligraphic buttons (I could spend hours reading them) and
a guy who has a lot of exotic stuffed animals (there is a red panda finger
puppet beside my computer monitor that I got from him). After a while, Lynn
went off looking for some other friends. I was going through the buttons,
trying to find some for my co-workers. For Ken in Technical Support: "Will
answer stupid user questions for food." For Ron in tech support: "What part
of NOT SUPPORTED didn't you understand?" For Lori the schedule manager: "I
love deadlines. They make such a nice whooshing sound as they go by." For me
(training director): "Experience is a lousy teacher. It gives you the test
first and the instructions afterwards." I got to talking with Nancy, and the
next thing I knew, it was 12:15PM. Oops! The Peter David panel started at
noon! Gotta run....
*** 12:00 NOON: PETER DAVID ***
When I arrived in the Belmont Room 15 minutes late, the room was packed.
Literally. The room was far too small, and had a large table in the back. It
was standing room only and way too close for comfort, because SF fans are not
known for personal hygiene. When I arrived, Peter was doing a reading from
his forthcoming book, Apropos of Nothing. He's been talking about this one
for a while now, because he's been having a hard time selling it. It's not a
Star Trek novel, and Peter is mainly known for writing Trek novels. The
publishers who were willing to publish it were going to pay him as if he were
a first-time novelist, arguing that Trek readers only read Trek novels (loud
groans of disagreement from the audience full of Trek readers as Peter said
this). But he finally got Simon and Schuster to pick it up and pay him
properly. Keep an eye out for this one, it sounds like a lot of fun. It's a
fantasy novel set in a medieval period and it's full of puns: it's the story
of a young squire named Apropos who is squire to Sir Umbrage, and it sounds
like it's going to skewer the stereotypical notion of chivalrous knights.
Parts of it reminded me a bit of Don Quixote. In fact, there was even a
knight named Sir Vantes (ie, Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote). He said
he wants this book to do well so he can go [obscene gesture] to the people who
said that his fans wouldn't buy his non-Trek novels.
Peter talked about seeing the movie Galaxy Quest with other Star Trek authors
and similar type people and they all loved it. The scene that seems to have
most stuck with him was the one where the fanboys go onto the Internet and
download the ship's specs.
He talked about his comic book work, particularly his work on the Hulk. He
left the Hulk about a year ago because they wanted to go back to a "Hulk
Smash!" type of storyline, which is what they thought the readers wanted.
They hired a different writer who wrote it that way, and the series tanked.
Now they're back to writing it Peter's way, and he feels vindicated by that.
When Peter started writing the Captain Marvel series, he said he wasn't going
to include the Hulk because he didn't want to have to consult with the new
author about story lines. But when the new author got fired because the
series tanked, "I vaulted over [the author's] corpse to put the Hulk in
Captain Marvel!"
He also talked about his work on the Supergirl comic. He went with a
theological theme in that book because Supergirl used to be "Superman with
breasts and bad taste in men," and he wanted to do something different.
He wrapped up by showing an 8-minute preview of Overload, a movie that was the
brainchild of Space Cases co-creator Bill Mumy that Peter co-wrote.
Basically, Bill wanted to show that not all child stars rob 7-11s and die of
drug overdoses. The movie has lots of child stars in it: Bill (duh), Tony Dow
(Wally from Leave it to Beaver), Angela Cartwright (Penny from Lost in Space)
and a few others that I confess I didn't recognize. George "Warlord Shank"
Takei also has a part in it, as does Claudia Christian (Ivanova from B5).
**** end of this Peter David section -- More Peter to come later! ****
1PM: Gerrit Graham speech -- Gerrit was one of the headliners of this
convention. Most recently, he's been working on Now and Again, the show where
John Goodman's brain is implanted in a Superman-like body. That series was
recently cancelled, and he spent a lot of time talking about that. A lot of
it was painfully reminiscent of Space Cases, in that petty network politics
seemed to be involved and the suits didn't seem to know what a good product
they had on their hands and didn't allow it to live up to its potential. His
most interesting comment, "Show business is a lot like government, but show
business is better because sometimes show business makes money; government
never does."
2PM: Denise Crosby speech -- Denise was originally known to fans as Tasha Yar
(and her daughter Sela) from Trek's Next Generation, but more recently she is
known for her work producing Trekkies, a documentary about Star Trek fandom
and convention culture. It was interesting to hear the fans' reactions to
Trekkies: about half of them loved it and thought it was an accurate
portrayal; about half thought that it focused too much on the weirdos (e.g.,
"slash" fanfiction -- explicitly sexual fiction that usually involves same-sex
relationships between major characters on a series). I'm definitely going to
have to rent that movie... She talked about the movie Galaxy Quest and the
similarities between that movie and Trekkies (although GQ was fiction while
Trekkies was fact). She said that the re-writers of GQ attended a screening
of Trekkies to get ideas and to help them understand the fan culture. She
also said that Alan Rickman (the Shakespearean actor who played an alien on
the fictional TV series) reminded her of Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard).
3PM: Claudia Christian speech -- for some reason, I don't have much in the way
of notes on her lecture. Claudia played Ivanova on Babylon 5. She's very
different in person than her character: very goofy and funny, and quite crude
in her humor. Maybe that's why I don't have much in the way of notes: I'm not
sure how much of it was appropriate. I have some notes about her talk on
Sunday afternoon, which I will reproduce there.
4PM: Buffy and Angel panel: A fan discussion of last season's Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Angel series. Everybody was pleased about the smooth
transition that the Buffy series made to college life, opening up whole new
dramatic ideas like the Roommate from Hell and the first beer bash. Fans were
ambivalent about the season finale. I was surprised at how many Angel fans
there were there. I always thought Angel was generally inferior to Buffy, but
many people thought it was better than Buffy. Most thought it was a mistake
to get rid of Doyle, although some liked what they've done with Westley.
There was some speculation about the real reason for Doyle's departure, but
most of it was contradictory. Suffice it to say, nobody actually believed the
story that the show was spreading around: that they intended to kill off Doyle
from the very beginning.
5PM: Whose Trek is it Anyway. A group of fans doing improvisational comedy
based on Whose Line is it Anyway, but with a science fiction theme. There is
an old saying, "Dying is easy; Comedy is hard" and this panel proved it by
dying instead of doing comedy. The people on this panel are amusing people,
but I don't think they realized how difficult improv is, and most of it fell
flat. In fact, some of the most amusing things were simply the ideas
suggested by the audience. For the A-Z sketch (where they do a scene and each
line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet): an audience member
suggested that they have Qui Gon Ginn and Obi Won Kenobi arguing about whose
light saber is bigger. When they got to Film and Theater styles, and the
moderator asked for a suggested situation, a person in the doorway said, "I'd
like to see Chuck in the Green Room at 7:10." No, this wasn't actually a
suggested situation; it was a member of the convention committee who wanted
Chuck to be in the Green Room at 7:10. Still, it probably would have been
funnier than some of the stuff that they did. Lynn and I sat through about 40
minutes of this before we gave up.
We thought about going to dinner at that point, but there was a panel
scheduled at 6PM: Never Give Up!, a discussion of the way that fans and fan
culture were portrayed in the movie Galaxy Quest. It sounded like fun, and it
was in one of the small rooms upstairs, so I decided to get there early. We
all arranged to meet for dinner at 7PM, after that panel ended.
6PM: Oops... the Galaxy Quest panel was moved to Sunday afternoon.
Apparently, somebody figured out that it was not a good idea to run a GQ panel
at the same time that they were showing the GQ movie in the video room. Took
us a while to regroup, but we managed to find each other and get to dinner.
We planned to get back by 8PM for the Masquerade (costume contest), but we
were running late. This turned out to be a good thing, because the masquerade
was also running late. Masquerades always run late, but this one was pushed
even later with a half-hour memorial tribute to an important member of the
Baltimore fan community who died recently.
9PM: The masquerade started. Peter was one of the judges. When he was
announced and came out on stage, he called out "Never give up!" to which the
audience all replied "Never surrender!" (it's a Galaxy Quest thing--if you
haven't seen the movie, rent it. NOW!)
Some of the more amusing costumes from this masquerade: Renaissance Barbie,
complete with her box, which talks about the companion dolls: Christie the
Moore, Monk Ken and baby sister Typhoid Skipper. There was also a great
little skit based on Star Wars, in which young Anakin is caught between the
two opposing forces in his life: the Jedi (singing to him "In the Jedi," based
on the Village People's In the Navy) and the Sith (singing "S-I-T-H" to the
tune of the Village People's Y-M-C-A). The judges got so into the performance
that the started doing the hand gestures for Y-M-C-A. This was one of the
bigger masquerades I've ever seen -- over 45 entries.
While the judges were making their decisions, a comedy troupe called Luna-C
did a few sketches. My favorite sketch was a sort of crossover parody of
Voyager and the movie In and Out. If you've ever seen In and Out, there is a
hilarious sequence where the main character buys an audio tape to teach him
how to be a "real man." In this parody, B'Elanna Torres is listening to a
tape on being a "real Klingon."
Tape: Repeat after me: Kill them all!
B'Elanna: Kill them all!
Tape: Fire all phasers!
B'Elanna: Fire all phasers!
Tape: Let's be reasonable and make a treaty.
B'Elanna: Let's be reasonable and make a treaty.
Tape: That was a trick.
You get the idea. The ultimate test (in In and Out, it was listening to disco
music without dancing) was to stand in a pile of tribbles and not pet the cute
furry things. Suffice it to say, B'Elanna failed.
They also had a drawing for a charitable raffle. They called out the numbers
and told everybody to check their tickets. They just forgot one minor detail:
they didn't turn on the lights, so nobody could see their tickets! After a
few minutes of everybody shouting "lights!" they got the picture and turned
them on. Nobody in the room had a winning ticket. Suzanne threw her tickets
away. Unfortunately, nobody mentioned that these same tickets would be used
in a raffle the next day. Very unfortunate, because one of Suzanne's tickets
was a winner the next day, and she threw it out and couldn't prove it. Oops.
Normally, there is a dance after the Masquerade, but the Masquerade wasn't
over until about midnight, and I was way too tired to stick around. We said
goodbye to Lynn (who could not stay for Sunday) and called it a night.
SUNDAY
9AM: Well, Sunday morning got off to an awkward start. Nothing on the
schedule until 10AM, so Suzanne and I were sort of wandering around, waiting
for something to happen, looking for something to do. As we passed by the
Hunt Room (one of the main convention rooms), somebody walked into the room
and we saw something playing on a video screen. Cool, we thought. We walked
in to see what was going on. Peter was on stage, doing a sketch of some kind.
We realized almost immediately that it was a rehearsal for Mystery Trekkie
Theater, scheduled to start at 10AM. Oops. I turned to Suzanne and told her
we probably weren't supposed to be there. Somebody came towards us and was
saying something, but I couldn't hear him. I walked over to him. Ahem.
Suffice it to say, he told me that we definitely weren't supposed to be there.
Oops.
*** MYSTERY TREKKIE THEATER WITH PETER DAVID ***
10AM: OK, it's finally time for Mystery Trekkie Theater. Some idiot got the
bright idea to publicize a V convention in Los Angeles by putting flyers on
all of the chairs. Unfortunately, everybody thought that this meant that the
chairs were reserved, and they all sat in the back of the room! Those of us
who knew better removed the flyers.
Mystery Trekkie Theater was running a bit late due to technical difficulties,
so Peter entertained us. First he did shadow puppets. "This is a dog barking
at a car. This is a dog run over by a car." Gee, where have I heard that
before? <grin> Peter talked a bit more about Overload. He described it as
"Lifeboat in space." He said that Tony Dow (Wally from Leave it to Beaver)
was the director of the movie as well as an actor in it, and it was hard
taking script notes from him, because in real life, he sounds just like Wally.
Tony would say something like, "Gee, Peter, the story arc doesn't pay off on
page 84 like you said it would," and Peter found himself turning into the
Beaver and saying, "Aw, gee, Wally, I'll try to do better next time!"
Peter told amusing stories about working with George "Warlord Shank" Takei
(who appears in Overload). He explained that George talks very slowly, which
affords him maximum screen time. It takes George a minute and a half to say
dialog that would take another actor a minute. When they first had him on
Space Cases (I think Peter was talking about On the Road to Find Out here),
they had to cut part of the first act to fit in all of George's material,
because George took too long to say the dialog, and he was just too good to
cut. The cast was very OK with this, because they were all so excited to be
working with "Mr. Sulu!" Peter also told stories about the way people treat
George. When Peter came to Canada and had to pay his $100 fee at customs for
a working visa, the customs people absolutely refused to walk outside and get
the money from the people who were there to pick Peter up, and they also
refused to allow Peter to go outside and get the money from them. He had to
pay out of his own pocket. But when George came, whole different story: the
customs guys came outside to where Peter was waiting for George and said, "Are
you here to pick up Mr. Sulu?" When they went to a restaurant six different
waiters came out to serve them, just so they could get a chance to meet "Mr.
Sulu." When it was time for dessert, and George asked what they had for
dessert, a light went on in the waitress's eyes and she said, "You know, the
chef is very proud of his desserts. I'm sure he'd love to come out here and
tell you about them." You knew that the chef was sitting in the kitchen
grumbling, "how come I'm the only one who doesn't get to meet Mr. Sulu!"
Peter said he is tired of people asking if he's writing any new books, so he's
decided that his answer will be, "No, I've decided to stick to writing old
books, because it's much easier that way. I'm working on Huckleberry Finn
right now."
Finally, Mystery Trekkie Theater started. Of course, I had already seen half
of the opening sketch. Oops. Well, anyway, there is creepy music and a
scared kid. They show scenes from Star Wars on screen, with characters dying,
and as each one dies, somebody in costume as that character shows up on stage
(also, a puppet of Yoda was floating in back). Finally, Peter comes out and
asks the kid, "What do you see?" He says, "I see dead Jedi!" And a logo
appears on screen for "The Si th Sense." Everybody groan with me now. Then
the people on stage start complaining about how this whole sketch is just a
setup for one bad pun. Peter says he thought it was timely, but these are
last year's movies. In fact, one of the cast says, this is last year's
sketch! Peter didn't show up for Shore Leave last year, so there was no
sketch! Then they start making fun of Peter's previous sketches: "South Trek
only worked because of a guest appearance by Bill Mumy!" says Peter's sister
Beth (she promptly gets a pie in the face). The other cast members want to
re-do their classic sketch River Borg. Then Boris (from Bullwinkle) appears,
saying that the sketch is off to a Rocky start. <groan> Hmn... well, it's
always a dangerous thing to do self-referential humor about how bad your own
humor is. There's a fine line between saying you're bad and actually being
bad. I think Peter managed to stay on the right side of the line with this
sketch, but just barely.
The episode that the MSTed was The Paradise Syndrome from the original series.
That's the episode with the American Indian culture on a planet that's about
to get nailed by an asteroid. Lots of good stuff in here. At the beginning,
they show a scenic river shot. "New Jersey and You! Perfect Together."
Peter starts reciting the moose business from the opening credits of Monty
Python and the Holy Grail. When they find the obelisk, Kirk asks Spock what
it is. "It's a large metal thing; what part of that didn't you understand?"
I think the biggest laugh came at a scene where they show Kirk, Spock and
McCoy at the edge of a lake. The shot is taken from behind, over their
shoulders, looking onto the lake. One of the MSTers comments that they are
peeing in the lake. The second biggest laugh, I think, came when Kirk's
Indian girlfriend asks how Kirk's shirt is removed, since it has no lacings.
"Usually, it's ripped off in a fight." Another big laugh: Kirk's Indian
girlfriend says, I bear your child. "Yeah, you and half the other women in
the quadrant. You're not getting a penny out of me!" Some running gags:
every time somebody puled a communicator out of his back pocket, the MSTers
commented that he had to scratch his butt. Kirk loses his memory in this one,
and every time he says "try to remember" or "I can't remember," they sing "...
the kind of September..." They also had a lot of gags about Shatner's
priceline.com commercials: when the Indians bring him some food, someone says,
"look how much we saved when we named our own price on groceries!" Kirk's
girlfriend says she knew that Kirk would save her people... "money on airline
tickets." Kirk asks McCoy to help his girlfriend, who has been injured.
"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a... oh, right."
No panels that interested me between the end of MST and Peter's chat at 1PM,
so I just cruised the dealer room for a while.
**** 1PM PETER DAVID SPEAKS ****
1PM: Peter David speaks (again): Peter has two new books coming out in
September, including New Frontiers, and a third in November. There is going
to be a hardcover New Frontiers (remember back when the powers that be said
Trekkies wouldn't buy books that weren't based on an existing TV series? HA!)
Also coming soon, the third of the Centauri Prime series, which will answer
all of the unanswered questions left open in Babylon 5 relating to the
Centauri Empire. It includes within it many of the scenes that were included
in flash-forwards in the B5 series, and explains things like what's the deal
with David Sheridan. The book is "official" because the outline came from
JMS. Peter was asked if there was any chance if the book would be made into a
movie. "About as much chance as pigs flying out of my ass."
Peter showed the Overload preview again, and explained that he wasn't sure
when (or even if) it would come out, but "we got our money; we're going to
Disneyland!" Regarding George Takei's appearance in the movie: when they were
getting ready to make the movie, someone (Bill?) had asked Peter if he could
get George Takei to do it. "I talked George into going to Romania for three
months to film a sci-fi/western [Oblivion]. I talked him into going to
Montreal for a week to be filmed under two pounds of latex. Twice! I can
talk him into filming in Los Angeles for a week."
He talked more about Apropos of Nothing, and read another scene from it.
He talked about the process of writing a comic series, which I suspect is much
like the process he used in creating Space Cases: He usually has a general
idea of where it is ultimately going, which might not pay off for five years,
but he drops hints along the way. He doesn't know each step of the way, but
he knows the goal, and the groundwork is laid, so when you see the end, you
can see where it came from.
He talked about going to the screening for the Lost in Space movie. That's
=the= screening, the one with the cast. It was awkward to be candid with them
because... well, it sucked.
Bill has always wanted to do a follow-up to Lost in Space. He had a comic,
but the publisher went belly-up, and nobody else wanted to publish a
half-finished product. They were going to do something on Space Cases: have
the Christa find a planet with a man in his 40s named Bill, a man known only
as "the doctor" and a robot, and a family in suspended animation that is not
seen. They would find a way to get back to Earth through some kind of spatial
portal, and basically, only one of the two ships could get through at the last
minute, and the crew of the Christa would let the family go instead of them,
because the family had been stuck away from home so much longer. Nickelodeon
scuttled this idea, because they didn't think anybody was interested in a
20-year-old TV series. A year later, the movie came out. Peter then recited
the litany of Nickelodeon mistakes on SC, which I think most of us already
know: Weird Al wanted to appear on the series, but Nick didn't think kids knew
who he was. They were going to have most of the B5 cast do cameos for scale
(i.e., real cheap) in one episode (probably LDC, though he didn't say), Nick
refused. Peter talked about this stuff with some additional details in his
But I Digress column, reproduced on the Xfficial site at
http://www.spacecases.com/peterdavid/bid050297.cfm.
Peter said that his favorite Space Cases episode is On the Road to Find Out.
Space Cases is the television work that he is most proud of. His favorite TV
shows to watch include Buffy, The Practice, West Wing, Xena (but not the last
season), and South Park. His favorite novelists are Laurell K. Hamilton and
Robert Crais. If he could write fiction for any series he wanted, he would
want to write a crossover of the Phantom and Tarzan (both jungle heroes) or
Doc Savage.
He told a great story about going to a concert with his daughter. Like all
teens, she was embarrassed to be at a concert with her father. He was being
good, staying the required 10 feet away while she was with her friends. Then
one of her friends saw him. "Is that your dad?" Daughter rolled her eyes and
huffed, "Yes." "Omigod! It's Peter David!" And all these squealing little
girls threw themselves at him like he was some kind of rock star. Apparently,
these girls had read Imzadi (a Star Trek romance novel that Peter wrote) and
thought it (especially the Riker/Troi sex scene) was the best thing ever.
"Uh... girls, I'm old enough to be your father" (points to his daughter
meaningfully) "Yeah, but you're so much =cooler= than my dad!"
**** end of Peter David stuff ****
2PM: Claudia Christian's Sunday lecture. She did an episode of Highlander
that was basically a test pilot for the series Raven, but they decided to go
with a different actress because they thought she "wasn't pretty enough." She
gloated about the fact that the series tanked. She is doing voice work for
the forthcoming Disney movie Atlantis, playing Helga. She said it's very hard
to do voice work, because you have nothing to react to, not even other actors.
She did not have a hard time playing the Jewish character Ivanova (even
though she obviously is not Jewish) because she grew up in a predominantly
Jewish area, and she is very tired of people pointing out how funny it is that
she played a Jew and her name is Christian. She is also tired of people
pointing out that Ivanova is not a Jewish name. When one person asked why she
left B5 in the 5th season, she tied him up in a microphone cord (playfully).
She has cats, but she doesn't like cats. "If cats were your size, they would
eat you. They would hunt you down and play with you for four hours, then kill
you and eat you. Some dogs ARE your size, and they don't eat you. Cats say,
I'm going to treat you like dirt and you'll love me... come to think of it,
I've had boyfriends like that." About the sex dance that she did in one
episode of B5, she explains that she asked JMS to let Ivanova loosen up and
have some fun. This episode was his response. Nothing was choreographed for
her, so she deliberately did the stupidest thing she could think of, thinking
they would never use it. JMS said, "fine." Oops.
3PM: Denise Crosby's Sunday lecture. Most of this was more love/hate the
Trekkies documentary, although she did tell a rather amusing story about
Patrick Stewart's first experience with an earthquake. They don't really have
those in England. He had just bought a new car, and was driving to work when
an earthquake hit. When he got to work, he complained loudly about what a
piece of junk his new car was, it rattled all the way to work, he was going to
take it back to the dealer. Then the cast explained that there had been an
earthquake while he was driving in. "Oh... an earthquake... so that was an
earthquake..."
4PM: Finally! The Never Give Up panel about Galaxy Quest. Actually, it was
hard to avoid comparing GQ's treatment of fans to Trekkies' treatment of fans.
Interestingly, most people at the lecture seemed to think that GQ was a much
more accurate portrayal of fandom, even though it was fiction and Trekkies was
a documentary. The fans were pleased with the way that fans were portrayed in
GQ. They thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of a commercial
convention (the kind that Creation runs). Everybody seemed to have really
enjoyed that movie. There was some degree of ambivalence about the way fans
were portrayed in Trekkies.
5PM: Dinner and the long ride home! Whew! Until next year...
Overheard at a development scheduling meeting:
Company President: Tracey, I want you to finish coding on the new product by five thirty.
Tracey (panicked): Five thirty tonight???
Company President: No, no, no. May 30th.
n2deep
same for Spider-man. Back on topic- I read your whole report and it was great and very
insightful.
Peter acknowledging Bill was wonderful and its good to know their doing fine. Also I've
seen Galaxy Quest(never give up and never surrender) about 5 different times. And own it on
dvd which is a must.
Graham being from Now and Again(or N&A) breaks my heart to have the show cancel so soon.
I hate networks because sci-fi just doesn't survive there too long. It was good to hear about
Claudia and what a beauty she is. B5 was lost without her character and the show sunk quickly
thereafter like the Titanic.
Thanks Tracey for starting my week off nicely. Now I'll get ready to watch RR. Peace Out
Casers!