Stupid, stupid, stupid! How long have I been doing these conventions? Rhetorical question. Repeat after me … pre-order your damn tickets … or suffer the ignominy of the ticket queue that stretched the whole way round Hall 10 before heading out into the corridor and weaving towards the ticket booths. That’s was half an hour that could have been better spent.
Take a glance at the photos I took here or read on to find out why Kit should be afraid of Daleks and Xena should be afraid of Ivanona! For those of you with a photographic bent, for these events I use a Canon EOS 30D (a little long in the tooth now perhaps yet still a trusty servant) with a Canon F2.8 L Series 70-200 IS USM lens. This lens is bloody excellent in desperate light conditions and regularly digs me out of a hole at these things. If only I’d taken my own advice and used it for the Inva3ion Opening Ceremony earlier this year rather than my 28-135 IS 🙁
Some good memories of the day in Hall 9 at the NEC in Birmingham – as always perfectly organised by Brian Cooney and his crew, thanks guys.
Eddie McClintock working a nice production line, dutifully folding what seemed to be an ever-increasing pile of Warehouse-13 T’s, there’s dedication to the show for you and yes he admitted he may have done it before! I was well pleased with my shots of Eddie – put both in the gallery in the end – especially as he only flew in from the US the day before and was back on a plane on Monday, yuk!
Managed to bring a conversation that Virginia Hey was having with some fans to a grinding halt, sorry Virginia, while snatching what I thought was a few surreptitious shots. Can’t think of the last time Farscape crossed my mind before today? Thanks for a thoughtful shot though.
The main reason for going to this con, aside from the chance to grow the autograph and photo collection was to see Claudia Christian. A good friend of mine, Richard, there I said it(happy now?)! Had snagged a seat at Claudia’s table for the day and had a short interview lined up with her, more of which later. Caught me on the hop as I didn’t realise Claudia had a new memoir, “Bablyon Confidential” and only a few copies left. Quickly snapped up a copy and had it signed to moi! In a quiet moment later in the afternoon I read the Introduction and first few pages of Chapter 1. Claudia you are in need of a BIG hug – in a nice way, come on keep it clean. I guess “I never realised” doesn’t quite cut the mustard. One brave lady!
Had a chat with her father too, you are a gentleman and a scholar sir, even if I can’t pronounce the German language to your standard!
What can I say about Aaron Douglas that he probably hasn’t said about himself already. Proudly sporting his Anthrax T-Shirt (twas’ Iron Maiden at our meeting earlier in the year). I thought I’d test his memory and asked him if he remembered my damned dice game from the Inva3ion Meet and Greet. Did he?
“Yeah, Zombie Dice wasn’t it, I thought I recognised you from somewhere! That girl was really handing my arse to me in that game wasn’t she!”
Cool! I complemeted his choice of ale for the day and mentioned that at the Opening Ceremony he’d actually had 2 bottles alongside him. Aaron mentioned he’d enjoyed that M&G as each of the tables was up for something different and he had actually enjoyed playing Zombie Dice – he just couldn’t stop rolling. He also said in some ways he preferred the UK cons; where else could he have a beer while he was “at work”. Which if he was in the US would surely p*ss off some religious group or other. Just checked his IMDB entry to make this link and lo’ and behold … an Anthrax T-Shirt in his official photo. Nice one, I owe you a beer my friend … at our third meeting.
Not sure why but I didn’t get to chat with David Nykl but I managed to grab a couple of shots anyway, particularly liked the shot of him, pensive, on his chair-back; half-glass of ale in view. Obviously picking up bad habits from his neighbour Aaron. Oh and there were a couple of other actors in attendance you may just have have heard of, Michael Biehn and David Hasselhof!
At the end of the afternoon Richard (and Tony) were lining up their interview but were pipped at the post by a checky team of 3. While waiting for Tony to complete his preparation I couldn’t resist watching the other lot in action. I took a photo of what I saw but it’s not in the gallery, so don’t bother looking! Front-man held the mic. and asked the questions, 2nd young lady the camera and filmed while the 3rd young lady … looked uninterested and teased some particularly difficult knots from her hair!!!
If you’re still wondering where Xena, Ivanova, Daleks and Kit fit in, read on, dear reader … The event brought out the usual high standard of cosplay. Xena, apologies I don’t know you’re real name (and no it’s not Lucy Lawless smart arse!) but you wow’d us at many excellent Starfury ‘Chariots of War’ Xena cons (still deaf from Hudson Leick screaming btw) – visited Claudia’s table for an impromtu photo shoot; again see my gallery for evidence – a nice peice of life immitating art immitating I’m not quite sure what. Towards the end of the afternoon and while it thought no one was looking a Dalek could be seen sidling up beside Kit, no doubt to swap an industry in-joke about the quality of special effects in low-budget TV shows! Here I am brain the size of a planet etc.
THE INTERVIEW, the interview, sorry. Was a blinder; Rich was in fine form as host and Claudia the consummate professsional answering the questions – you could almost believe she’d done it before. Nice shot of them having fun with the Q&A.
And then, all too soon, it was time to leave Hollywoodland and beam back to reality. That sucks! But the day still had some mischief left to deal. So, please DO NOT ask me about the hour wait for a friend followed by the even more fun hour spent wandering aimlessly about in the labyrinthine NEC car parks, in the pouring bloody rain, hunting for the car 🙁
Now where did I leave my Boy’s Own Book of PTSD – Post-Con traumatic stress disorder – exercises 🙂