Blaise writes...

GATHERING CON JOURNAL, SAT. 6/24/06

I woke up fairly early (the first panel wasn't until 10am, and I was up by 7am or so), and headed into the hotel to wash up. Sat in the lobby and found myself having a nice chat with Greg B. and a few other fans whose names escape me at the moment.
At 10am I headed over to the "Kim Possible" panel and got a nice sneak peek at the upcoming season (a lot of funny stuff to look forward to). After that, and a few quick autographs, I made my way up to the con suite to watch the remaining four music videos that could not be played the previous night (I wanted to see all of them before I voted). The con suite was closed, so I wound up being a part of a small group of people looking for someone who could open it. Eventually A Fan volunteered to "man the suite," so to speak, until a full staff member was available (which wound up happening fairly quickly). Unfortunately, there was no way to watch the remaining four videos in the suite, so the staff was trying to figure out something else.
I'll just end the suspense now--I, unfortunately, never got the opportunity to see those last four videos, and as a result missed out on the voting. I am glad that a couple of my favs placed, though.

In the meantime I went back down to the panels, and saw that I had been cast in the Radio Play!
Now, a funny thing about me is that I tend to worry about the feelings of others--something that even extends to panels. I want every panel to have a decent audience. Consequently, when it came to a choice between the "Gargoyles: Development Process" panel, and the "Adapting Stories & Characters from Comics to Film" panel, although I would have loved to sit in on the "Gargoyles" one, I went with the "Comics" panel. The same thing went for the "Gargoyles: Writing" and "Hellboy" panels as well (although, the fact that Hellboy is a character published by Dark Horse Comics didn't hurt). Those two panels wound up being very fun and informative. They also touched on the differences between the mediums of comics and animation (highlighting why "X-Men: Evolution" had much better animation than the Fox "X-men" series), and they left me feeling psyched up for the DTV animated movies they'll be making for these characters later on.

Then came the Radio Play rehearsal. Several people were already in the room, including (fanfare please) Keith David! I could not help but feel a little self-conscious in his presence (it didn't help that I had a sunburn on my freaking forehead!). Seriously, I felt too nervous to just talk to him, even in such a casual setting. He however felt no such qualms about me, and complimented my oriental dragon shirt. I was happy.
As I mentioned before, the script was for the episode, "The Mirror," and although I had a suspicion, it was still a happy revelation. Likewise, I had a sneaking suspicion since my audition that I would be given the role of Broadway…and I was! It was great fun, and I always love the chance to strut my stuff like this. Naturally, Keith was Goliath, Thom was Lex, and Crispin did his best Hudson.
Anyway, the rehearsal wrapped up a little after 4pm, and we weren't needed until 5pm, so I just sat in on the last part of the "Darkwing Duck" panel. Tad Stones (who had also sat on the "Hellboy" panel…man, what a change of pace!) was there, but I either did not notice or (going by others' con journals) just missed another guest at the panel…Jim Cummings. It would be a little less than 24 hours before I would learn he had even been there.

At last, we come to the Radio Play. We were all introduced, although, despite having worked out the seating arrangements in rehearsal (it was decided that sitting Crispin next to Thom was an unwise idea), there was still some minor confusion and a couple easily fixed seat mix-ups. And, as for the play itself…well, it was GREAT. People laughed in all the right spots (though Greg had to prompt them to applaud for the first Act break), and it's always nice to see "lost" lines that got cut from the episode (one of them being Puck's little aside to the audience after his "Human's love a battle hearty…"). It was a good time, and any worries I had about my Broadway performance were quickly put to rest.

Afterwards, around about 6:30 or so, I had several hours until the Blue Mug with Greg, Keith, Thom and Crispin. I wandered around the hotel a bit, did some reading, and when Onyx came by looking for people to play Munchkin (it's a card game) I joined up, along with KingCobra_582 and a couple whose names escape me at the moment. Of course, Munchkin is a very LONG card game so we had to cut it short in order to make it to the Blue Mug.

Question: How many fans can you cram into the con suite? Answer: Not enough. The place was practically packed wall-to-wall. It was a miracle the guests had any room. There were a number of Blue questions (some asked by me, I admit…maybe I just wanted to "fit in" but I was genuinely curious, too) but not a whole lot. It was great fun (highlights for me include Keith interjecting a cussword into the "I've been denied everything…" line, and Greg venting his frustration with animation executives by standing on the chair and saying what he WISHES he could say ("ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELVES?!"). Unfortunately, there were too many noise complaints from neighboring rooms, so (to avoid getting kicked out), we headed for the ballrooms. Unfortunately, they were locked and so we gathered in the little lobby area before them to figure out what to do. At this point there was an unpleasant encounter with one of the hotel security, who apparently could not, or actively would not, understand that we needed to confer on what to do next before we could properly disperse. Seriously, we would have been out of there even sooner if he had just let us done what we needed to do.

Anyway, the remainder of the Blue Mug was pushed to tomorrow night, and we all headed back to our respective sleeping quarters for some shut-eye.

Next, Sunday….