Cherry Hill, NJ Convention - July 19 - 22, 2007!!

[justTripn]

BIG NEWS! Elessar was in the Star Trek trivia contest in a three person panel that answered trivia questions from the audience. (This guy is SO SMART!) If the panel got 5 right in a row, they won. They got 4 right in a row. So afterwards it was like "IF ONLY . . . NOW, I remember!" The final question was what species had Borg designation 125? So close! Correct answer the Vulcans. (Not that I would have ever guess, but afterwards John felt he should have known.) Wierd, but I had another friend in the contest from the astronomy club. "I am proud to say that my friends arethe Trekkiest Trekies in the whole auditorium.

Anyway last night we were watching Harbinger and noticed something new. (Is that possible?) All that synergy when 4 Trekkies put their minds together. Actually, I guess it was John who noticed. After the whole thing was over, John shouts, "HEY. I'll bet that Trip and T'Pol were interuppted (on their first night together) by that same alarm that broke up the fight between Malcolm and Major Hayes." (The alarm says, "All officers report to duty" [or to something]). The alarm alerted them to the alien who got up out of sick bay and started walking through walls, shorting out circuits and stuff.

Gotta run to the next event: George Takei!

[Reanok]

Thank you for sharing your stories and pictures. Congratultions Boushh for winning the video contest. I love that video A Message it's one of my most favorite Trip & T'Pol music videos.It sounds like everyone is having a great time.

[boushh]

^^ Thanks.

Man, I wish Elessar won the trivia contest! Sounds like it was a good fight though!

How was Anthony Montgomery?

[y2kelly]

^^JustTrip'n and Bether group report here on Y2kelly's PC...

I thought he was really good, positive and polished this time versus Vulkon. He did his rap gig again, accapella (sorry spelling). He said he never watched *the_abomination* because he thought it was an insult to the Enterprise cast to have the TNG cast in it. He said "I just felt Enterprise stood on their own," at which there was an outburst of clapping and cheering from the crowd. But then he instantly said he doesn't like having negative energy around. He said he understood why he didn't get a lot of parts, because they were origianlly doing the triad w/ the Captain, Trip, and T'Pol. He's getting married August 8 and four days he's going to the Vegas con.

Someone said to tell Linda she was just as good as Jolene and he made this big deal that no, Linda doesn't aspire to be anyone but Linda and made some point about individuality and said Linda was perfect as Linda. '

He was less cocky this time, very positive, very down to Earth.

[CoffeeCat]

Awe - AM is such a sweetheart. He has got to be one of the nicest actors around...

[Jedikatie]

Everyone pretty much covered what we did....I just wanted to add that Conner told me to tell Katie he sends his regards AND SAYS HELLO. He likes the coin you gave him and he keeps it with his other coins that are rare or hard to find in an old miners gold pan.

Tell him hi back from me, if he's still there, and I'll probably see him again at another convention sometime (I'm halfway considering going to Orlando later this year, actually, though I haven't talked myself completely into doing it yet). I'm glad he likes the Morgan dollar I gave him, though I guessed that he did, considering what he said on the train when I handed it to him...

[Emberchyld]

When Connor came over to our table, he knelt right down on the floor between Emberchyld and T'Sara. I was sitting just to the right. They're both very intelligent engineers and were telling Connor all about their important jobs. Connor kind of frowned and sighed saying, "And I'm just an actor." But then he added, "It's fun, though." I was kind of relieved he didn't ask me what I did for a living after all of that top secret stuff. I kept thinking of what I might say. "Well, I wipe the floor in convenient store bathrooms with paper towels." It clearly would have been a Charlie Brown moment.

It would have definitely been better than the whole "I play with dead bodies" thing that I told him (the look on his face was priceless). Bether... you're great! I actually felt really bad for monopolizing the Connor-sation the way that we did. It was awesome to have at least 3 of us Tri-silk girls at the table. And it was fun to have my partner-in-crime, fellow engineer and dancer T'Sara, to make two of us grilling both Connor and Mark with absolutely random questions and commentary.

I had lots of fun meeting everyone and REALLY wish I hadn't had to go on this stupid business trip (I wanted to see Anthony!). I'm back, but the chances of me going tommorrow are probably slim (the thought of even trying to get near the Crowne Plaza with Nimoy and Shatner there is probably impossible).

(Highlights-- beyond meeting Connor: watching Boushh's video win-- especially when Connor came out to watch! Hearing about justTrip'n's and Bether's close encounter with Connor, which Elessar and I missed by minutes! The whole dinner experience. Chatting with one of the other ladies from the table on my way out the door who was also something of a convention newbie-- we both remarked about our initial shock at the convention demographics, how paramount should take notice, and how the percentage of young good looking professional women was incredibly high. We're not your parent's brand of geeks!)

FYI, Courier Post did a (weak) write up on the convention- http://www.courierpostonline.com. There's even a picture of my back, the back of my head, and arm as I grilled the Trek actors outside. In true Enterprise fashion, we were pre-empted by Harry Potter news stories. I'll scan the other local papers for articles and scan/post them if there are any random pics of Connor or the Triaxian Silk gang.

I'll do a better write-up when I'm on my own laptop. I don't know how I can beat Elessar, though. (Flatterer!) That was a great write up (even though you missed my technobabble engineering question to Connor, which apparently had me the rest of the nght being pointed out as "that engineer girl" by other people, even as I walked out of the hotel ).

And y'all were good luck for me-- I won a raffle at Borders that night and got to be #6 in line (good, because I had to be at Philadelphia airport at 6 this morning) to get Harry Potter!

[HopefulRomantic]

Great reports, all. Sounds like you're having a blast.

...But eventually, they said that it was time to announce the winner of a contest for the music video collage they would use to introduce Connor... And it was Boushh! And they said on stage that it was a Trip and T'Pol video and Adam Malin the Creation guy said what a great run they had, etc, and they asked Boushh (much to her surprise!) to say a few words about it:

http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m95/ ... c8ad1d.flv

boushh, hon, I thought you were adorable. Congratulations-- well deserved. And watching Connor watch the video must have been totally squeeful.

[boushh]

Oh, I am so afraid to look... but thanks. Man it was so much fun being there and meeting everyone... I so wish I could have stayed the whole weekend too. Good to hear AM was a great guest also!! The dinner sounded like fun... I wish I could have gone to that too!

I'm going to make a massive post that will likely bore you all but I'm doing it anyway. I'll post picture links too... I'll be back in a few...

[boushh]

Well here is my big convention post. This is also for myself so I am going to probably ramble quite a bit.

My friend Pete and I started off late morning. We were going to make good time until his GPS thing decided to take us some weird route in Queens for no reason. Of course getting out of NYC is just a pain in the neck no matter how try to do it. It was practically smooth sailing once we got out of here.

Our first stop was going to be in Philadelphia to get some cheese steaks (not cheesecake like we kept saying). We wanted to try one of the places we hadn't tried last time we were there. So we ended up at Pat's and had to eat our cheese steaks in the car because it was so crowded. Talk about assembly line ordering! It's just nuts how busy it is. We were lucky to find a spot just a block away though so we were able to get the sandwiches and go back easily...

Then we set off for Cherry Hill. Of course the GPS thing in the car had a listing for like five Cherry Hill's and five streets of the same name that the hotel was supposed to be at. We picked the one that looked to be the most likely correct route and set off. It was only 15 minutes away. A quick call to my brother and mapquest and we confirmed that we were on the right track.

Once we got in the hotel we ended up on a line that didn't seem all that long... We were stuck by the automatic doors which randomly started closing themselves, so we joked around about getting taken out by the doors at a Star Trek convention with the girl behind us in line. Turns out that was emberchyld! Little does she know I was trying to eavesdrop on her conversation behind us later on in the line. I heard the words Trip, T'Pol and shippers and I perked up. Couldn't hear much else though! What were you talking about anyway?

While standing on the line I got a call from Elessar. I had totally forgotten I had given him my number! I was so happy because that meant I could find everyone. Yay. So we chatted and eventually the group came down and I got to say hello to Just Tripin' and T'Sara and Bether later on. Later on was also when I realized that emberchyld was actually who she was and part of our group. LOL.

Well that stupid line took forever. It took us 40 minutes to get our tickets. By then we had missed the video opening thing and half of Marc Alaimo's talk... so that was quite the bummer. He seemed pretty cool and I would have liked to see the rest of his talk. The bit about Avery smashing his face in by mistake was pretty funny, since they apparently have conflicting stories about what actually happened during the stunt fight that went wrong.

After Marc's talk I went off to the side to try to talk to Adam from Creation, since he told him on the phone to come find him when I got to the con. I had submitted my video and had called to ask if it had arrived and he told me that I was one of the winners of the contest and had the possibility of getting my video played before Connor's talk. Since I wasn't sure when they were going to play it and since I was only going to be there the one day, he told me to find him to make sure they played it for me.

So eventually I caught him (after chatting with Elessar again on the phone to determined location and meeting up) and told him who I was and asked whether they had played my video yet. He told me that they hadn't because #1 they were waiting for me to show up and #2 because they were going to play it before CT came out on stage. So I managed to contain myself and just said, “Niiice!” or something to that effect. He then told me to act surprised when they said my name or whatever and they brought me on stage. So there I was wondering how I was going to do that...

That's when Pete and I met up with the group again and we were chatting out in the dealers area. Elessar and I noticed the cool almost T/T related banner and photos they had made and the big ENT banner they had on the wall. That when we all stood there trying to determine which episodes the pictures of the characters were from. Elessar said that whoever could figure out where the picture of T'Pol came from would win a prize, LOL. We all got as far as “fourth season” and that was it. We tried.

After that we went in a bit early since we didn't want to miss the CT introduction. It turned out that the auction went way, way over but it was cool that we were there early because of what happened. One of the last things they auctioned off was a Trip banner. People cheered for Trip but there wasn't a lot of bidding. I suspect most people had spent all their money at that point. So who comes out from behind the curtain but Connor! Basically he was all like, “Come on man, bid!” So he stood there staring down the audience into bidding. Eventually it sold for like $200 and the girl that won it went up to get it. CT blew her a bunch of kisses and then went off stage again.

So the next thing they brought out were two 8x10 photos, one of Archer and one of T'Pol. They were autographed. The way Adam was holding them he had placed T'Pol out front so she was the only one visible pretty much. Well they start the bidding and there is CT again peeking out from the behind the curtain making a zero sign with his hands and tell people not to bid. LOL. Then he went up to one of the side audience microphones and turned it on and said, “If she gets more than I got I'm not coming up on stage.” I was ON THE FLOOR during this whole auction thing because it was just too funny.

OK so the photos sold for less than the Trip banner and I guess that meant we got to see CT on stage. Before that though Adam (I keep typing Adama!) said that they had a “very special music video” to show the audience. So Pete and I start joking, “Oh it's special now...oooo...” and then Adam asked if I was in the house or whatever... That was my moment to act surprised so I stood up and went “Wooo!” because what the hell else was I going to do? Then the gang also cheered so I think that made me sound a bit more convincing, so thank you.

I ended up on stage where Adam told the audience that I was a contest winner and he gave me the certificated stating so. He then went on to tell the story of how they got my video. Meanwhile I'm standing on stage in front of hundreds of people trying to look composed. I'm totally afraid to look at the video Elessar posted! So he said that they were sitting in the Creation offices one day while it was rainy out (said for effect since it doesn't rain in SoCA.. his words) and talking about needing a video to open up for Connor at Cherry Hill and in comes this video about Trip and T'Pol. So he when on to talk about T/T having their own arc and how they sort of had a happy ending aside from Trip getting killed... and then he went and handed me the mic to set up the video! I was completely caught off guard... I had no idea what to say, so I babbled something about wanting to make an ENT video for a long time and that I knew it would be a T/T video since I'm a big fan... Then something about the song speaking to me about the characters and that the video kind of brought them from the beginning of the relationship to how we saw them towards the end. Then I shut up because I knew the people there were there to see CT and not me. So Adam gave me the gift certificate as well and somewhere in there CT came out from the side and kinda nodded to me and I gave him a little salute back and practically ran off the stage because I'm a chicken.

I should have stayed near the side but I went back to where everyone was sitting and sat towards the end of the row to watch my video after Adam introduced it... then out came Connor and stood there watching my video!! Needless to say I was freaking out and pumping my fist like a crazy New Yorker. I then tapped JustTripin' I think because my memory is a blur... and told her to get Pete's attention... so the tapping went down the line and I had to mime to him to take a picture of Connor watching the video!! So he realized it and took a couple. Needless to say my day was already made ten times over.

I had to split my attention between watching my video (because that was my goal after not having seen all of my “Clocks” video at the Grand Slam a couple of years ago) and watching CT watching my video! Cloud 9 man...

Once it was over CT went up on stage and I stood up trying to make my way over to my camera and cheering for him at the same time. He said, “Where'd she go?” So I waved and we were right across from each other. He actually said, “That was awesome. Really that was very good. Brought back a lot of memories... I don't remember quite so much snogging... but I think you got all of 'em!” To which I nodded in a sort of “pretty much” sort of way, since I got every T/T kiss not counting Sim or the MU.

Did I mention Could Nine? I'm still there.

On to CT's talk... some of the stuff has already been touched on here. A few from the group asked their questions which was good. I tried to get pics of CT as he answered... I think I got a few. The engineering bits with emberchyld were great as was the Archer/Trip related question. Interesting that CT thought the captain and Trip should have talked about T'Pol sort of like guy to guy, but I kind of think they did that with Malcolm... if they had done that with Archer too I think it would have been repetitive to the audience. Plus I think the conversation may have bordered on the inappropriate since T'Pol was part of the crew and Archer was her captain and they also had a friendship... since T/T were having so many issues it may have put Archer in an awkward position regarding the individual friendships as well as sort of being an issue of an invasion of privacy for T'Pol...

But anyway... some of my favorite moments from his talk was how he started from the end of my video with T/T and the baby, basically setting up that final scene from Terra Prime and telling the story about how he had found out that his wife was pregnant at that time and the situation facing T/T was hitting home for him, how he went in the corner to compose himself and Jolene coming over and giving him a hug and asking him what was the matter and him telling her what the deal was. That type of story is priceless to a fan of these character and the actors who brought them to life.

The other bit that was great was when he tried to tell one fan about the book series and how Trip was alive in the new novels... He couldn't remember the title of the book and the details, so everyone was shouting stuff out to him, including the title of th book. He couldn't really hear that the title was “The Good that Men Do” and instead thought the audience said something else. His words: “The Good That Do? That's not even proper English!” I fell over again.

The other great story was when “the question that always gets asked” came up. Elessar told that story well:

"Was it Jolene in that robe-dropping scene, and if so what was she wearing?"

We all sort of turned red and went "Oh boy" because this question has been asked 5000 times and Connor's gotten real irked by it before but I guess he was having a good day and realized it was a typical "guy" question, so he humored him. He said it wasn't Jolene, it was a body double and that she was wearing pieces of tape in all the necessary places. And then he went on (which is where it got good, and where I've never heard him say this before) and said something like:

"Yeah, you know, I was like walking into work that day thinkin, 'Man, jolene's gotta drop traw in fronta me today,' haha. We got to the scene and everything and we kissed and then they yell "CUTT! BODY DOUBLE!" and Jolene stood up and I went 'what, what...where, no! where are you going? Come back!' And they brought in this body double, who had a fantastic body, but... you know, it wasn't Jolene so, I was disappointed...

Except he said, “Cut! Stunt body!” I fell over yet again. He was just on a roll yesterday. Totally fun and loosened up...

He also did this bit where he was imitating posing for the promo pictures, and the poses that people told him not to do. I have some of that...

After that some of us were talking on the side and we come to find out about Bether and JT running into him in the dealer's area and the forgetting their names thing. LOLOL! Those Not Dead! Shirts definitely get the attention, LOL.

At that point the group went up to get changed for the dinner and I had to wait around to get an autograph. Pete and I were hanging out and suddenly this lady and her young daughter were standing in front of me. At first I thought the lady said to me, “Nice to meet you!” except that I didn't think I had met her. Turns out she said, “Nice video!” or something like that. Her daughter asked me if I had a site and then we chatted about videos and the contest for quite a while. Turns out the daughter makes videos too and to the stuff I like! Her little brother was there too so we all chatted for a while. It was pretty cool... like a little video makers club or something.

I went out the dealers room a few times and got stopped with praise for the video and heard congrats something like five times the rest of the day. I felt like a mini-Trek celebrity for a day. It was fun.

Finally we got to stand on line and wait for an autograph... Prior to that T'Sara had asked me to give CT a coin that she had brought for him, so I was all prepared to do that. I also wanted to tell him something also... so I gathered the nerve yet again. I got there with my T/T pic and he signed it and I said “Hi. I just wanted to tell you that the video wouldn't have been half as fun to make if you guys hadn't been so awesome, so thank you.” Then he said he thought it was great, and I was like “Really? I'm glad you liked it.” and he was like, “Yeah, it was really good. Can I get a copy?” So here I am like, “Holy cow...” and I said that he could maybe get a copy from Creation or I could send one to his agent or something. So then CT started hunting around for something to write on... He grabed a ticket stub and then kinda tossed it but I said that was OK. So he actually wrote down his name and an addy where I can send him my video on a little ticket stub. Talk about wow.

Then I brought out the coin and told him everything T'Sara wanted me to say and he just lit up with a big smile and everyone around was all like, “Oh wow.” So T'Sara got a nice reaction there.

Then I said thank you and kind of wandered off in a daze probably. My friend Pete had to wait outside because the moved him along! I was last on line, did they really have to do that? He was totally curious as to what CT was writing and all that, and just missed the whole thing. Oh well.

So we went up to Elessar's room and told the group everything as they got ready for the dinner. JT had Bajoran earing issues, LOL. It looked awesome, btw. You all looked great all dressed up. So we chatted for a while and then I followed everyone down and we said our good bye's. I so didn't want to go, but I had to... It was fun meeting everyone and all in all it was an awesome day, even if it was a short time at the convention!

We then came home, completely tired, ate dinner, met a friend and headed out to the bookstore to wait on yet another line to get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And the store WAS PACKED. My brother got on line an hour before us in the West Village and made it all the way home before they had even called us. Ugh... We didn't want to go into the city so we settled for a closer store... that of course is one of two in the area... OY.

Now for pictures...

These are my friend's pics:

my pictures...

[Elessar]

Today was a blast... definitely more people need to come next time. We are discussing the option of many of us trying to make one of these cons again some time...form a real good sized TriS group at the Con. And you are totally free to tell everyone you're from Triaxian Silk, that's the whole point!

I got some great Trip and T'Pol vinyl and photo prints as consolation prizes for being on the trivia panel. Basically the problem was that they had the audience think up the questions, so you had really ambiguous questions where nobody asked ahead of time "wait, does this have multiple answers?" So it was fun and I was incredibly excited about being picked to go up there, but I was a little disappointed by how intentionally ...'misleading' or 'exceptional' some of the questions were. For instance, which character in Star Trek has wore all 3 divisional uniforms? Tom Paris - medical as the doc, command as normal, and engineer... when he played in a holodeck program. So he didn't really WEAR it wear it, he just sorta wore it in the holodeck. Example 2: What was Trip's bother's name? Questions were supposed to be from the SHOWS only, not books, but because I was the only "later-Trek" specialist on the panel, the other two didn't realize that Trip's brother's name was only given in the BOOK whereas it was just mentioned that he HAD a brother, in the show. And I didn't pick up on it soon enough to disqualify the question, so, in other words, the questions were just kind of erratic and ambiguous since the audience was picking them, but there were still one or two I should have known: Like Trip's brother's name if I had finished all of TGTMD, which I haven't, or which race was Species 125, since I now remember the scene where 7 of 9 is talking to Tuvok about them (the Vulcans). Someone also asked what Keiko O'Brien's maiden name was, and we got CLOSE, but jesus, you'd have had to watch that TNG episode like just a few days ago. Sheesh.

Anyway, bedtime!

John

[Shakabutt]

I remember that Jolene said in Stuff that it was her in the ass scene

[Jedikatie]

Wow, boushh, good for you! Glad Connor enjoyed your video that much, that he wanted a copy of it. I can see why you'd forget about mentioning the Christie's auction catalogue to him...

[Bether6074]

Wow. Those pictures...



Thanks for sharing!

[Shakabutt]

Observe the shoulder bone :





I don't think they found a body double with identical backside ....i mean it matches with the pics she did in Maxim ,and why would they hire a body double when in the scene where she leans back to kiss him she was topples ...

I think Connor made a joke on you guys