Though I think TPTB at Creation meant Thursday to be a convention 'lazy
day,' it was my busiest and most enjoyable. Doors opened at 9:10 am,
but my friend Erin and I got there at about 8:50. I saw no obvious organization,
but there was a very long line and the beginnings of a smaller line. We
finally figured out that the long line was for the likes of us, the
people who hadn't 'preregistered' the night before, but there were
plenty of both types in the line. Eventually an employee (I suppose he
could have been a volunteer, I won't pretend to have noticed the
difference. Whichever they are, I dub them E/V from now on) came out
and explained the lines. Ours got shorter, but not by enough to make me
happy. Eventually another E/V came down the line, followed by a kid
with a wad of lanyards. They did that several times, handing out
lanyards and wristbands (hi-tech registration, anyone?), starting with
the "important" gold members, then trickling down the totem pole to the
red, blue, and finally green general admission, which Erin and I were, voluntarily.
(I decided last year that they lit the room so fricking poorly that
unless I was a gold member, lugged around a tripod, or spent my time
wandering up and down the aisles then I wouldn't get any decent photos,
so I wasn't about to fork over any extra money for bad seating. But I
brought the camera anyway, and used the zoom lens like binoculars.)
While standing in line we saw Suzie Plakson and Patty Yasutake dart in because they were 2/3 of the first "act."
While we waited in line the guy behind us broke Erin's heart by mentioning to a guy near him that Louise Fletcher canceled. Erin had purchased her autograph ticket and a photograph on eBay of her as Nurse Ratched on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and was excited to see her. It really sucked because I tried to get Louise's autograph for her last year,
and she canceled then too, for health reasons. Apparently this year it
was for a conflict. Anyway, we finally got in the door around 9:25 and
I went directly to the main auditorium to get the closest seats
available to us lowly GA attendees while Erin went into the vendor room
to purchase a picture of Patty Yasutake to get autographed.
"Life with Star Trek," the first 'event,' was supposed to start at 10am, but it was delayed about 20 minutes because Scarlett Pomers
was late thanks to an 'injured foot,' which we decided was
convention!speak for a hangover. (Yes, yes... Where am I going and why
am I in this handbasket?) They eventually started without her, deciding
to move her to the spot originally reserved for the missing Louise
Fletcher. Suzie and Patty were wonderful on stage, very funny and they
mixed well together even though they hadn't met until backstage that
morning. One fan asked them a question about embarrassing moments and
they each had hilarious stories to tell. Suzie's involved her
semi-recent role on Enterprise as an Andorian. She used a
phaser during a firefight scene and was surprised when the director
yelled "Cut!" because of her. She had been making shooting noises
during the scene because the prop had none of its own! She said, "It
was then that I realized that for Star Trek acting, apart from all
other roles, I don't use my head and training; I just got caught being
a child." Patty's moment was similar, in a way. During one of her
scenes in sickbay her character was assisting Dr. Crusher during a
spinal surgery on Worf. She was affected by her affection for her
friend Michael Dorn
and "I wanted him to live so much I was too far gone—I was all
stressed. I heard the director yell 'Cut' and then say, 'Uh,
Patty—stabbing those buttons harder doesn't make them work better!" She
had been pressing hard on the medical panel buttons, trying so hard to
make him live. "Live! Live!" There was also a small exchange between
the actresses about Michael, since they both worked with him, Suzie
while playing his half-Klingon wife, K'Ehleyr. She mentioned never
seeing him out of his makeup, to which Patty replied, "Ooooooo, too
bad." The audience agreed. Suzie also sang a few bars of a country song
that she wrote that is on a CD she had available at her booth in the
vendor's room.
Next up was Tim Russ, who really wasn't on stage much, but he told us a little bit about a project of his (and loads of other people) called Star Trek: Of Gods And Men, which is a Trek webisode mini-series, and the first part is supposed
to be available for download in September. It has been delayed because
the extensive CG work is being done by volunteers in their free time.
It looks AWE-SOME! He also told us about his children's book/children's
songs, entitled "Bugsters." Tim also mentioned his work in the latest
"Die Hard" movie, Live Free or Die Hard. "They're already planning the next sequel," he said. "It'll be called 'Die Already!' Or, "Die, For Crying Out Loud!"
We
skipped the next few people to instead have lunch and wander the
vendor's room, specifically looking for Suzie & Tim's booths. We
found them, and Suzie showed up at hers just as we arrived for our
second go in our trip around the room. We each bought a copy of her CD,
personalized autograph included, yay. She's funny and friendly,
outgoing and shakes everyone's hand after meeting them and signing
something for them. That's classy.
Back to the main auditorium for LeVar Burton.
He came on stage to a standing O, and he started out talking a bit
about having a teenage daughter and the stress involved (he mentioned
that she's 13 and it'll be a miracle if she lives to be 14), and also
talked about his wife of 15 years and how he actually remembers things
like anniversaries and birthdays. He entertained us, told us what he's
been up to and talked about how lucky he has been being involved in wonderful
projects like Roots, Reading Rainbow, and Star Trek. He's a really normal
guy, and that was awesome to see. He ended his time on stage like he
ended his Reading Rainbow episodes: "Of course, you don't have to take my word for it. I'll see you next time!" He got another standing O from the crowd.
Except for the "Salute to the Star Trek Doctors" music video that played between LeVar and the next guest, Gates McFadden,
the audience could have stayed standing and clapping. When Gates got on
stage she walked up to the piano that was there for some odd reason and
said, "My first feat is going to be something special I've created for
you guys." She started playing a bit and then took her hands from the
piano and said, "If only I knew how to play, wouldn't that have been
great!?" LOL Like the other actors she told us about the things she's
been up to since her Trek stint ended. She mentioned spending
time in Paris and teaching theater classes at USC. I'd go back to
school if it meant learning from Gates! Contrary to what her Wikipedia article says, Gates told us why she was missing during TNG's
second season. There was a writer who didn't think that mothers could
'mentor' their sons; in her words, "We had a difference in how mothers
are perceived. I think that parenting, whether you're a mother or a
father, is a very complex business ... I felt that someone who is the
chief medical officer can have a heart-to-heart talk with her child,
but the lines were tending more toward 'Here's your lunchbox, honey.'"
So at the end of the first season, she went and the writer stayed. But
karma had to prove itself and at the end of the second season the TNG PTB decided that it should have gone the other way, so the writer left and Gates came back. Much to the relief of TNG
fans everywhere. Also contrary to the Wikipedia article, Gates read for
the part of Dr. Crusher because she enjoys humorous roles and the
audition scene for that character was the funniest of the three female
lead characters. If you've seen TNG, you might recognize the
scene; it's from the first season episode "The Naked Now" when 'Bev' is
in the Captain's Ready Room with Picard acting drunk, and she partially
unzips her uniform top. A funny scene for sure, but after that funny
scenes for her would be few and far between. Oh well, Dr. Crusher was
still fabulous. A fan asked Gates about doing the episode "Sub Rosa,"
which I don't really like, but that fan apparently did. Gates said,
"Here it was in seventh season, and I find out that the entire female
side of my family has been in love with lamps. I mean, he was a
good-looking lamp, I will say that! And I gotta say, he had some
moves." LOL Another fan asked Gates about her strangest experience when
being recognized as 'Dr. Crusher.' The story she told was awe-some. She
was in a hospital in Hawaii for a ruptured appendix, and the only
doctor in the state who could fix her without a huge scar was in the
same hospital, luckily. As he turned the corner and first saw her he
said, 'Dr. Crusher!" He operated not long later, and afterward she said
he treated her like a colleague, using terms she didn't quite
understand and going into excruciating detail about her operation. He
told her that while he was operating he looked around at her other
organs and said everything looked good, and even showed her 8x10s of
her liver and kidneys to prove that she was healthy. "Which was so
sweet but they were so awful looking! I'm going, 'That is really nice,
but I don't want to autograph those!'" I tell you what, I thought MY
appendix was going to burst I was laughing so hard. She told us about
the three garages she has full of Trek memorabilia (I love how Trek
alum are Trekkies), and also praised Wil Wheaton for being a wonderful
actor who has received unfair treatment because of his role as Wesley.
Gates was great, very fun, interesting and entertaining. We were sad to
see her get off stage, and she got another standing O.
Then TPTB
decided to infuriate me by combining LeVar and Gates' autograph lines,
making it go all the way past the back wall and bend at the corner for
several dozen yards. There were at least 600 people in that line and I
had at least 350 of them in front of me. Their line started at 5:00ish
pm and I needed to get to Wil Wheaton's reading at 6:45.
I
was of course late to Wil by 5 or 10 minutes which pissed me off
royally because I was looking forward to him most of all. But I had
paid $45 for Gates' autograph, so what else could I do? Erin saved me a
seat, which was awesome, because otherwise I would have been standing
in the back. Although it would have been awesome for Wil to be in the
main auditorium, he was in the "secondary theater." It was a great spot
for a reading, though, because the are usually done in a more intimate
setting anyway. There was probably 300-400 people in the room, and he
commanded the place. Nearly everyone was intently listening, heartily
laughing, and completely into it. He read the stories Exactly What I Wanted (which I missed the first dozen-ish paragraphs of) and Blue Light Special from his book The Happiest Days of Our Lives and his review of the TNG episode "Justice." Wil was just amazing. He read his stories like a pro, and he said later (in his blog) that it was the best reading he had done in years. It was great to see him up there, reading stories from his blog/books
and being appreciated by people, considering all the crap he went
through as a kid and after because of his often disliked character
Wesley Crusher. Anyway, after he finished reading he answered some
questions, got a standing O, and then we got right to the autographs.
And when I say 'got right to' I mean his autographs started at 7:30 and
I got out of the line and 8:45. I'm not grumpy about that because I
spent several minutes talking to Wil while he autographed Space Oddity (aka 'the Chapbook') and The Happiest Days of Our Lives for me along with the autograph card, and THDoOL
for Erin. It could have been worse, but lots of people got out of line
(or didn't get in) when they found out that he would also be signing in
the vendor's room on Fri & Sat. I dunno why I didn't just do that,
but oh well. While standing in line I had to suffer through the
conversations of the group behind me. One of the guys spent several
minutes telling and retelling the story of his meeting with Scarlett
Pomers earlier that day. He told them that while she was signing
something for him she asked him, "What is a cute guy like you doing
tonight?" (He wasn't very cute.) Apparently he replied that he would be
late at the convention, but nothing otherwise, to which Scarlett said
something about meeting up with her, and he said he joked that he would
go for that if her mother agreed. And during all three tellings of this
story I had two letters bouncing around in my head. B. S. BS, BS, BS!!!
Like Scarlett is gonna to hit on some uniformed Trekkie in her
autograph line. Puh-leeze. Get over yourself dude. You ain't all that.
I checked.
So ended my first day.
PS: I should warn you that Wil's blog is sometimes R rated. :(
